Evolution: the Devil is in the Details (part One of Four)

Why is evolution so widely accepted nowadays? What supports it? Does anything cast doubt on the theory? Let's take a look.

Most intelligent, educated people take evolution for granted. Evolution, as far as they are concerned, is an established fact. Boiled down to its essentials, their thinking goes something like this: Science tells us that the oldest living things were simple, one-celled organisms living in the sea.

Billions of years later, more complex multi-celled organisms were found in the oceans. At this point, some could be classified as animals while other were bona fide plants.

Another few million years goes by, and we find simple forms of life on land - both plants and animals. Millions of years pass, and we find larger, more complex land life forms, including reptiles and birds. Millions more and primates appear as small shrew-like creatures. Again, millions of years go by, and we see monkeys.

Another few million and we have apes. Flash ahead a few million more, and we find things that might be early man. Finally, with another million or so years, we discover Homo sapiens. Mankind is on the scene.

Some on the religious side disagree, claiming the earth is not that old. However, most on the religious side line up with the naturalist and say those are the facts. But if we agree with that sequence of events, what logically follows?

If the oldest life form were a single-celled bacteria, and a couple of billion years later we find multi-celled plants and animals, the latter must have descended from the former. They had to come from somewhere. They couldn't have just popped into existence out of thin air.

Bacteria types somehow gave birth to more complex plants and animals that followed them. Early invertebrates must have spawned the later vertebrates. Water creatures must have been the ancestors of later land creatures.

And so the argument goes with amphibians giving birth to reptiles, from reptiles to birds and primates. And the same process eventually churned out monkeys, apes, and finally man.

You can see why naturalists claim evolution is a fact. In a vague sort of way everything seems to fit. At least it does until someone asks, "How exactly did a single-celled bacteria mutate into a multicelled, multi-organ animal? How did something with a relatively simple three million nucleotide program change itself into a very complicated three billion nucleotide human?"

Good question. We will continue our microscopic investigation into Genetics with (Part two of Four) Evolution: The Devil Is in the Details.

Quote: "It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence." Allan Sandage, astronomer