Darwin Rules!
Where did we come from? Who made this world so beautiful? How did so much variety and complexity form in the natural world? From a tiny bug to a majestic elephant, who created life in millions of different forms? This beauty of life all around us couldn't have arisen from scratch on its own. Life is wonderful.
And the next wonder would be the magnificence of its creator. Sure the creator's world is a wonderland, its heaven. Everything is possible and beautiful there. But before you get going on a heavenly tour, I'm sorry to inform you that we did in fact arise from scratch. This is a real world and if you like to keep your dear delusions of heaven with you then read no further. I won't introduce you to God. I worship Charles Robert Darwin.
He 'discovered' the 'Theory of evolution'. Actually, I am not a hard-core believer of the theory of evolution. I don't have to believe it because I know it. The same way that I know that I am alive. So this write-up isn't an attempt to change anyone's beliefs either. A not-so-recent debate that I read about in the newspapers actually motivated me to write this. Some schools in Texas, USA have started teaching the 'Theory of intelligent design' in their classes. To those who are not familiar with this theory, it actually proposes an alternative hypothesis to answer questions like the ones in the beginning of this post which already have been answered by my God. It preaches that life is too complex to not have an intelligent creator to start with. This theory has got nothing to do with any religion, allegedly.
Well, first of all I'd like the 'believers' of Intelligent design model to 'know' that evolution is not theoretical anymore. It can be seen live! Pay close attention to this, my colleagues. Many micro-organisms, say bacteria, multiply logarithmically producing millions of progeny in a matter of few hours or days. When certain adversities are presented to them, for example a drug, a few of them that already had some resistance to it survive. Rest may be destroyed. These resistant fellows then multiply into enormous numbers and now we have a colony of new kind of bacteria. The former species has evolved into a new one. And this happens. So we can see the genetic pool of a population changing practically.
Someone said to me somewhere, "I can't digest that (science says) a few chemicals combined in just the right proportions a few million years ago to create life." Science says that. Only it happened a few decades ago. Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated formation of complex organic molecules from basic carbon, hydrogen and oxygen when the weather of a few million years younger earth was mimicked in the laboratory. Science doesn't just say. It shows.
And to see the miracle of science you've got to shed some delusions that you carry as the price for being social. Everything is explainable with the help of logic. And logic is the tool of science. Everything around us. Where did it come from, why is it the way it is... The answers to all these questions are trying to find us from the moment we asked these questions. Its we who make up a lie to support another and keep running away from the truth.
Evolution is far too obvious to call it a theory. I mean, how can someone ignore the phalanges present within a bat's wings and call it a bird? It had a hand for Darwinssake! What we see now as the wings are just former web spaces.
People's enthusiasm to find a purpose to their lives is partly responsible for the promotion of such stupid ideas. Purpose is one's aim. You decide it. It can't be found. You create the purpose of YOUR life. But the purpose of LIFE is only more LIFE. The DNA has to replicate. Purposelessly. It surprises many here. But it replicates only because hydrogen burns to form water. Its just a chemical reaction! And those who question that should first get their basic chemistry right. There's something within a molecule, an atom, a nucleus, a fundamental particle. Understand that before you say that you are not convinced that DNA replicates on its own, without a purpose. The scratch that we arose from is a lot 'complicated' to disappoint someone who feels uneasy by the simplicity of the idea.
Evolution started with sex. Sexual reproduction brought about variations. For those without any biology background, children produced by the natural mating of a man and a woman would look different while those cloned from a single person would all look alike. If you were wondering how can certain bacteria have drug-resistance to begin with, this is the reason why. Sex occurs, variations occur, adversities occur, selective propagation occurs, evolution occurs. Sex itself may become a selector. (I just wanted to say sex one more time.)
In conclusion, life wants to propagate, by sex, for sex. We are all Agent Smiths in effect.
This is so damn obvious people! Do we need an intelligent design to make sense of something so simple? Or are you just baffled by your own intelligence which sometimes says that life is purposeless? Is your consciousness too complicated to understand? Even for that, use logic people. Call it science, call it philosophy, call it psychiatry (you hear me Mr. Tom Cruise?). But say something that makes sense. Do not insult your intelligence by 'assuming' things. Don't make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'! Do not mislead your children. You might have given up your quests to find your answers. They have a right to decide if they want to be weak or not. Stop spreading myths.
And finally, show those people some respect who dedicated their lives to find the truth that makes our journey easier now. Darwin was not fake. Respect my God please.
Just to be sure no one has misunderstood my voice, I am not anti-religious. I only oppose the 'Theory of intelligent design'.
posted by spriha @ 23.12.05
10 comments
10 Comments:
Oh God! whtat an article.. so u seem to have finally got bak at me & shivanand :) ..wht do i say? i am not against science.. i know it has given logical explanations for many things which even i agree. maybe Darwin theory is rite.
Ya i do agree with you that blind faith in anything is ridiculous and the theory of intelligent design is a humbug...just a very stylish way of putting forth ground level realities...but all said and done...i still believe and justifiably so...that science and logic is not everything...no, im not propagating the para-normal and super-normal....its just that science and logic has its limitations..its thorough but not complete...and where science ends..divinity begins...there is a god..and i'd like to believe that theres a lot more to it than meets the eye...
I kno ur not an athiest nor r u propagating any kind of a believer to non believer conversion,but i do believe that science has its limitations...
All in all...an eye opener for some..a repetition of realiies for others...but its a welcome change!
2 Meghan: Yup! M back with a bang! Waitin' for something new on your page.
2 Niraj: Science has no limitations. Our imagination has limitations. Links are there. We may take some time to find them. Although,one can believe whatever he wants until then.
2 Tink: Who are you? I really don't know about Darwin's life really. I just know that his discovery is one of the most brilliant things human mind has ever done. And I do not worship darwin or anyone else for that matter. I said it JLT... I am not a worshipper.
Darwin was a lovely guy. I always use the words "Survival of the fittest" in appropriate conversations as a mark of tribute to him. And I 100% agree with the theory of evolution. It is a perfectly valid theory which has enough undoubtable evidence in support of it and i admire the guy's intelligence for being able to put it all together. The ONLY way that humans have descended are by evolving from Monkeys and whatever the monkeys evolved from, and whatever the things that whatever the things that monkeys evolved from, evolved from. (By the way just returned home after seeing King King.. I felt like the gorilla had more brains than me)
But the question is not about evolution or chemicals combining. It's about 'Life'. There is a vast difference between few chemicals combined in just the right proportions a few million years ago to create life and experiment demonstrated formation of complex organic molecules from basic carbon, hydrogen and oxygen when the weather of a few million years younger earth was mimicked in the laboratory
I just did a comprehensive google search regarding Miller Urey experiments and have gone through atleast 20 different authentic sites before posting this. These are just some of the excerpts i have found on all the sites i went through that i am posting here.
"These discoveries created a stir within the science community. Scientists became very optimistic that the questions about the origin of life would be solved within a few decades. This has not been the case, however. Instead, the investigation into life's origins seems only to have just begun."
"At present, the relevance of the experimental results of Miller and Urey are being questioned, since the atmospheric conditions used in the experiment are not thought to accurately reflect those of the early earth."
"The molecules produced were simple organic molecules. Far from a complete living biochemical system, but the experiment established that the hypothetical processes could produce some amino acids that are present in a biological system"
"The experiment did not produce amino acids, only some chemicals which may lead to the development of amino acids. And amino acids are not life either."
Infact NONE of the sites offered me any information which had a positive conclusive statement. Anyway i also stumbled upon
"http://www.ucsd.tv/miller-urey/" which i found really funny, and i failed to create life there too.
(...continued below...)
(...continued from above...)
Now the basic common flaws mentioned on almost all sites are:
1)The weather conditions created by the scientists were only assumed to be similar to ones present on early earth and that there is no means of knowing what the exact weather was like when life began.
2)Nothing close to 'life' was ever created. Only things created were new 'life-like' chemicals from old chemicals.
3)The experiment was carried out in 1953. Almost all modern scientists disagree with the results of the experiment today. ("Icons of Evolution - Science or Myth" by Jonathan Wells. Check it out on print.google.com)
I'd like to stupidly analogise a point here which i think is appropriate (The time is 1.30 am now, and anything my sleepy mind is deciding to analogise at this moment has GOT to be stupid)
It is argued that people construct a God to believe in, whenever they need a 'miracle', whenever they found no answers to their curiosity and that God is just their fantasy that they hold onto for a while in a moment of weakness.
Similarly to me it seems that the people who attempt to find answers to everything, who try to find valid explanations to seemingly complex questions, those who are focussed on trying to find answers that negates the need for the existance of a God, too are, in a way, disillusioned. For them a 'miracle' is the formation of a few chemicals, discoveries which seem to answer fundamental questions of our existence somewhat but only to throw open more questions and more tasks upon them to 'unprove' the existence of God. Most don't have a clue about how to go about with their experiments to find the right evience, but they do have a blind belief that yes it is possible. Someday. Each new finding gives them the hope that questions can be answered without attributing everything to God. This too is a belief they start hanging onto when they don't have answers to find, and their basis for such a belief is just a little 'chemicals combining to make more chemicals'...whether it is valid or not- it is just something new for them which gives them hope.
I find that this 'Hope' of continuing with the quest to find evidence, the belief that they can prove everything by science and logic, the fact that they 'just know' that God didn't do anything is pretty similar to the 'Hope' that the majority have in which they believe that life cannot and just couldn't have formed 'by itself'. They 'Just know' that God did do everything. They too might have their belief based on facts and myths with no validity, but the belief is enough in itself.
You have just mentioned the aspect of evolution. I'd like to mention the broader picture of life. Life as i see it is much more complex. It is intelligent. Life comprises complexities of breath, energy, the raw desire for having sex, the perfect fit of the male with the female, the feeling of hunger, the need for all the organisms to eat, the need to sleep, emotions like fear, love, lust, jealousy, even in the most primitive organism basic essentials are present... it's not just about DNA mutating to make a human being out of a bacteria.. Such things cannot be explained just by 'at one point of time intelligent forms evolved'
I feel that there has to be a God who governs the 'Laws of life' - the law of hunger, law of sleep, the law of good and evil natured organisms, the law of the need for a breath, the law of reproduction, the design of the genitals, the law of a sperm combining with an egg, in fact the law of evolution and the law of the survival of the fittest as well.
It's just that the inquistive scientific man is in the continuous process of finding the footprints left by a God without realising that what he is unraveling are just the fingerprints on that footprint.
I have no idea if i could convey what i felt appropriately... anyway though i do believe in a higher power's existene for sure, i do not believe that he is responsible for everything per se. and as i have mentioned in a fellow blogger's comment - my faith is very flexible- the day that science can explain everything, i'll stop believing in God.
Ok.. before i conclude.. i thought i'd share a poem with you that i wrote in my school days...
"Why are we on this earth?
Is it by evolution, or is it by birth?
If it was by birth, how did the first human being get here on earth?
So it's got to be evolution as Darwin put forth,
I guess I'll have to thank Adam & Eve, the apes, infact both."
Sorry for the mammoth comments and having to post it in two parts... but blogspot said my comment was too long to post in one part... heh heh...
ALRIGHT Mr. Govindraj in making! I am going to blog this comment.
"survival of the fittest" is so often repeated, but it has a huge background.
we need to see it in perspective.
first, lets assume X organism having a set of traits KLMN, Y organism having a set of traits MNOP and Z organism having traits BCDE
an environmental (for example) constraint, such as increased ambient temperature or something else, is imposed and the organisms are exposed to it.
the trait M is for adapting to temperature and happens to be in X and Y. so, X and Y are the fittest, they survive.
another type of constraint, say food shortage, is imposed. the trait to overcome starvation (suppose gene D is for hoarding up on fat stores) is present in organism Z. so it survives, X and Y perish.
what this elementary example implies is that the tag "fittest" is on an event-by-event basis and is largely determined by the environmental, or other, constraints and less by the organism itself.
frequently, organisms are born with freak mutations or traits that code for certain qualities. if the environment imposes constraints that only they are able to handle, they survive preferentially. thus, it is "survival of the fittest", but that has less to do with "an intentional behavioural/constitutional change by the organism" and more to do with "the extinction of the weakest". thus, survival of the fittest is the apparent result of extinction of the weakest.
being a medico, you will know what i mean when i say it's the difference between a spot diagnosis and a "diagnosis of exclusion". something like that joke about the army class. the general, addressing a whole line of cadets, says "who wants to lead the march, take a step forward" after a huge thump, one sleepy cadet was ahead of the rest. but that was because the others had taken a step backwards.
it's so strange how we talk about primordial soup and the "living chemicals" but don't, as often, debate about what line distinguishes life from death. my opinion on this matter is on my site, if you are interested in reading about it.
you have a nice blog. good work.
Thanks for supporting my article Sumedh but I hope you knew you were supporting it, right? I just went through your views about life- as it is on your site and I find your clarity of thoughts very impressive. U c, this is precisely what I've been trying to say too. And your idea of the universes in different time-scales is going to eat away a lot of my thinking time.Keep visiting my blog.
i must admit, i had not completely read your article before setting forth to comment on it. my thoughts just flowed on the phrase "survival of the fittest"; though i did give a cursory glance to the article contents and those of previous comments to make sure i don't say something that's already been said.
yes, i do support your point of view. but it does depend upon what definitions you use when you refer to "intelligent design". obviously, the possibility that a greying old man with a long, grim face, sitting up in the sky somewhere, is the intelligent creator - is quite bleak.
scientific thinking, in other words, using logic, has given man the brilliant approach of cause and effect. everything can be explained on the basis of a forerunner. but, there's a catch. due to the limits of our perception (which are severely constrained, i mean all we can see is 400-800nm, all we can hear is 20-20000Hz, we have a lousy sense of smell, our faculties of understanding and foresight are still quite, quite rudimentary) we cannot go beyond a certain point.
at this stage, man must "believe". he sees the effects but cannot ascertain the cause. this is where religion and "God" enter the pitcure. with the unquestionable tenets of "belief", no explanations are required and everything inexplicable is taken to be the doing of "God". we modern people, tired of the whole "God" rigmarole, call it "intelligent design".
the fact is that despite explaining so much on the basis of DNA and complex macromolecules, we cannot go beyond a certain point. of course, we are in a process of intellectual evolution. i mean people considered chicken pox to be a devi's curse sometime back, but now we know better. hence, there is always a smoke screen beyond which lies our uncertainty. but, there's a certainty that there's SOMETHING behind there but we don't know what. so we call it God.
but the destiny of mystery is to melt into discovery! at the same time, the smoke screen always retreats to another location - never truly disintegrating altogether.
stephen hawking's idea of God is very interesting. he says that the laws of nature, the laws of physics and all the forces that act in the universe, constantly, equally and on all things existent, are collectively God.
so, in summary, yes, darwin is very correct in his observations. but neither he, nor we, know the reasons behind it in their absolute depth. and that uncertain force behind all this is, by some people, referred to as God. people who don't like that tag, thinking it's too "religious", use expressions like intelligent design. :-)
Post a Comment
<< Home