“Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts -- some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole.”
~ Theodosius G. Dobzhansky
“What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
~ Carl Sagan
“The evidence supporting the idea that all living things are descended from a common ancestor is truly overwhelming. I would not necessarily wish that to be so, as a Bible-believing Christian. But it is so. It does not serve faith well to try and deny that.”
~ Francis Collins, MD, PhD. Former Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Former Leader of the Human Genome Project (HGP). Aug. 2006, BeliefNet.com
Evangelical Christian, Founder of Biologos
I am usually surprised when people tell me they have no problems accepting Evolution - the theory that all life on this planet has evolved from very simple forms, it’s all related (we share genes with yeast) and probably life emerged from non living precursors. Life is so complicated and the more we learn the more unimaginably complex it is. How could all of this life have arrived through natural processes only? Is it no wonder that even the non-religious will often view life as intelligently designed, usually because they don’t know of all the unintelligent designs that can only best be explained by evolution and work-arounds by natural selection?
I find that the above quote by Sagan also applies to Evolution. This scientific theory is so extraordinary, so radical, so counter intuitive for most, and touches so many aspects of our lives that we should demand robust and incredible evidence for it. That evidence is available and comes from fossils, genetics, biogeography, anthropology, comparative anatomy, paleobiology, developmental biology, and so much more. Equally important, the evidence is often the result of confirmed predictions, the evidence that would disprove evolution such as fossils out of sequence never occurs, the theory has been rigorously tested for over 150 years (want to get 1 million dollars and a Nobel? Show that it is wrong) and the evidence comes from independent fields of science demonstrating consilience.
I assert that evolution is not intuitive for most. A pilot must be taught to accept their instruments when flying in poor visibility instead of what they may feel but is dangerously wrong. We must reject our feeling that we are not moving in spite of knowing the earth is spinning at 1,000 mph and going around our sun at 67,000 mph. Science is our instrument into the past and present life on this planet; evolution is that theory that ties it all together and we must accept it even though it seems counter intuitive. Whales really did evolve from a terrestrial animal the size of a raccoon. We really do share a common ancestor with chimps that lived about 6 million years ago. Evolution is true for all species, past and present. All life is connected through shared ancestry.
Shared ERVs
For brevity I have chosen only two examples that demonstrate evolution, macroevolution, is true. The DNA evidence of shared ERVs among the great apes which includes humans, is very sound and has withstood many years of attempts to discount it. Other DNA evidence discussed specifically include chromosomal fusions see here, and shared DNA repairs but not LTR divergent ratios, shared chromosomal inversions, shared synonymous mutations, shared pseudogenes and their mutations and comparative indel mutations (insertion/deletion). Of interest, at least 50% of human genomes are derived from viruses and repetitive sequences (Shubin even says 75%). What a strange way to construct humans, by using parasitic viruses that leave a trail of their attacks on ape genomes demonstrating evolution?
From Reece et al. 2013. Campbell’s Biology. No copyright infringement intended. Fair use permitted. [Exons are the coding parts of DNA. Although Introns are non-coding they often have several functions. Transposons and repetitive DNA are often functionless and much is junk left over from evolution.]
A look at where some of the retroelements come from. Note especially the retrotransposons and LINEs and how they relate to viral derivatives.
Virology - Retroviral Derivations
Vincent Racaniello, Lecture #9, 2013. Columbia University. Course: Virology
No copyright infringement intended. Fair Use Permitted
Whale Evolution.
The evidence for whale evolution seems to me to be very convincing to an objective person. More than 220 fossil whale species have been found and described. The legs shrinking and vestigial pelvis is there for all to see. All those olfactory pseudogenes. A blowhole that starts at the nose and migrates to the top in embryos, and a migrating blow hole is demonstrated in the fossil record among so many other facts that point overwhelmingly to evolution.
Sir Harold Kroto, PhD. Nobel Prize Winner : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Kroto
Treat Science Right and It Could Help Save the World https://www.sciencenews.org/article/treat-science-right-and-it-could-help-save-world
If Not Evolution, Then What?
In addition to whale evolution, other items to examine might include the Hawaiian Islands and the Emperor Seamounts. Those islands are about 2,500 miles away from any major land. One needs to explain without evolution how all those unique species got there, when, and why they resemble continental forms. Why some species are not found in the islands and only those that could float or get blown there became founder species, and then new species radiated out onto other islands from an ancestral species. Darwin’s Finches is an example on the Galapagos. How the hot spot of magma that is producing the Hawaiian islands as the plate moves over it did that without millions of years and also produced the worn down Emperor Seamounts that extend eastward thousands of miles without evolution seems like wishful thinking. And if one is going to move a plate that much in a year as some anti-evolutionists propose, the physics of heat production tell you that's impossible. See the Heat Problem immediately below for addressing groups that claim the earth is only a few thousands of years old. Begins at 7:00. Darwin of course derived much of his theory of Natural Selection from island biogeography.
Even more basic to try and explain without evolution is the fossil record itself. About 15,000 feet of sedimentary rock in layers like a cake with fossils not mixing, going from simple to complex over 500 million years and with many transitional fossils where they should be if evolution were true. Wish to use a Global Flood as an explanation? Then why are the pterodactyls only found in one layer? If all the marine animals that ever lived were swimming at the same time, why are their fossils in sequence? Why do the plants also separate out by layers going from simple to complex? Why are fossil animals also found with fossil plants and pollen only found in certain layers? In a cataclysmic global Flood the best one could hope for are transitions of fossils between layers with some mixing. That’s exactly what we don’t find.
As one person wrote, the DNA findings alone should result in a second Galileo Moment and the death of common design as an argument.
I have presented shared ERVs as fantastic evidence for human evolution, but there are also many other DNA findings such as human chromosome 2 fusion and shared pseudogenes.
Evolution explains that the human population never went below 10,000. Modern humans evolved over millions of years in populations in Africa and then moved out finally successfully to colonize the globe about 70,000 years ago after several outings did not “take”. Women have excruciating pain in childbirth, sometimes resulting in the death of one or both of them, because of the evolution of bipedalism. Any low back or sinus problems you have is also probably due to evolution since natural selection can only work with what it’s got. You must have vitamin C in your diet or you develop a disease called scurvy (and why British sailors were called “Limeys” because they took them on board limes to avoid it), yet your cat and dog have plenty in their blood naturally because of evolution. You carry a dead gene, a pseudogene, for making egg yolk because of your ancestors and it matches the same homologous location in chickens. Because - evolution.
Even Michael Behe of the Discovery Institute and the champion of the Intelligent Design Irreducible Argument accepts macroevolution with mutations occurring when necessary. Of course the Pope speaking for billions accepts evolution but with ensoulment at some time.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
After the Site Conclusion, I will take a candid examination of a few of the many consequences and ramifications to our world views if evolution is true. If our origin is millions of years in the making what does that mean for us living today? What does it mean if we are connected to all life? If we are here because of evolution that adapted humans to situations that often now are nonexistent, how do we respond to urges like tribalism or its larger cousin nationalism that now threatens our societies? Are people morally responsible for bad behavior? What does it mean to have morals in a world view on evolution?
We Can Still See these 5 Traces of Ancestor Species in All Human Bodies Today
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