Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution

From Biol301

• We accept scientific models because "it makes sense of a multitude of facts which are otherwise meaningless or extravagant."
• studies based primarily on the analysis of isotopes in rocks suggest the universe to be 10 billion years old, origin of life to have occured between 3 and 5 billion years ago, and the origin of manlike creatures to have occured 2 and 4 billion years ago.
• P.H. Gosse wrote Omphalos to suggest that the naval of Adam (who had no mother) and fossils were placed by God so as to deceive human studies.
• The author notes that the mere discussion of whether viruses are living or not highlights the "obliate" nature of line between living and nonliving.
• The author gives examples of very specific living environments: insects living on crude oil, fungi growing on the elytra of beetles in france (in limestone caves), etc.
• An explanation to this diversity and specificity? Only evolution in relation to specificity of environment can answer this says the author.
• The process of evolution fills gaps in ecology.
• One should not think of the environment imposing evolutionary change on its inhabitants but has the environment presenting challenges to those inhabitants which then make adaptive genetic changes.
• The number of living species has not dwindled, although we do see that most the species of the world have gone extinct.
• There is nothing conscious about natural selection. It is a creative and blind process, hence there is the generalized human and the specific examples of fungi and insect from earlier.
• Dobzhansky says he is a creationist and an evolutionist; he believes evolution to be God's way of creating and than God began creating 10 billion years ago.
• The unity of life is as stunning as the diversity of life: DNA and RNA are the alphabets of nearly every living creature.
  • Amino acids are also universal and translated nearly exactly the same way in all creatures. Most creatures go about the most basic functions of life in molecularly identical ways.
  • Universals like these suggest that life sprang from the inanimate only once and that far back enough, all living beings are related.
  • The alpha chain of hemoglobin exemplifies protein and enzyme similarity from species to species
  • Cytochrome C is another example of homologous protein structure and the way variation can show relationships between species.
• Comparative biology has also made the case for evolution and relation between species:
  • In 1555, Pierre Belon showed the comparable bone structures of what seemed to be two very different designs: the human arm and hand and the birds' wings.
  • Comparative biology was even taken to the extent of believing that evolutionary change is replayed during development (Haeckel). This is called ???
• Work with Drosophila in Hawaii are an example of adaptive radiation: the diversification of a species into many species with much variation. The largest and smallest of all Drosophila are from Hawaii. Shall we believe that God intended to make many different species of a fly for such a small number of islands and landmass?
• Everything makes more sense in the light of evolution but we should not believe we know everthing. Indeed Dobzhansky points out that the more we know the more we argue about points and the more we research to answer questions. Antievolutionists use these debates as evidence that we do not know evolution to be true. Ha!
• Dobzhansky attempts to clarify that which is questionable and that which is not:

Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the hisotry of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evicence, owing to emotional blocks or plain bigotry. By contrast, the mechanisms that bring evolution about certainly need study and clarification.