“Evolution. Evolution. EVOLUTION! It doesn’t matter whether you’re an atheist, a churchgoer, a craven Faust in a foxhole. You may be Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Druid, a born-again Baptist, a born-again-and-again Buddhist. It doesn’t matter what you believe to be our purpose here on Earth or hope to find in the hereafter, or whether you have faith in a Supreme Being or prefer the Ronettes. It doesn’t matter what disk you insert in the mental module marked “God.” None of it will suffer if you see the principle underlying and interlocking all earthly life. The life of that we see around us, the life that we call our own, evolved from previous life forms, and they in turn descended from ancestral species before them. Newer species evolved from a prior species through the majestic might of natural selection, a force so nearly omnipotent in its scope and skill that it needs no qualification, supplementation, ballast, or apologist. […] For many biologists, evolution is part of the definition of life. “What is life?” one researcher puts it. “That which eats, that which breeds, that which is squishy, and that which evolves.”
There’s one fundamental law that comes from the life sciences, and it’s just as deep and all-pervasive and universal as anything in the pantheon of physics. Evolution by natural selection is an absolute principle of nature, it operates everywhere, and it is astonishing. But evolution is underappreciated, and, what hurts me far more, is under assault.”
No comments:
Post a Comment