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Ashley Stein
English 103
Ms. Carlson
January 4, 2006
In Defense of Evolution
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of
all true art and all science.” Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of all time,
characterizes the curiosity of man beautifully. And what better to provoke the curiosity
of man with what is probably the biggest mystery of all time, where did all this life
around us come from? From the single-celled organisms called prokaryotes to the human
being, this universe if teeming with questions, questions that scientists and people all
over the world have not yet been able to answer. All great mysteries have two sides that
challenge each other, and in the battle of evolution against Creation, evolution is
undoubtedly the clear winner, with very significant biological, physical, and scientific
evidence supporting it.
To be able to understand this argument, it is important to understand the concepts
behind each side and what they believe in. Despite someone’s beliefs, whether it is for or
against evolution, most people have heard of Charles Darwin. In 1831, Charles Darwin
set off on an expedition aboard the HMS Beagle, and in the course of his travels he
landed upon the Galapagos Islands, where he studied many different plants and animals,
noticing subtle differences even though they were of similar type. When Darwin returned
to London, he did further research using his findings and thus started his theory of
evolution. He started with a theory called “descent with modification,” which later
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turned into evolution (Freeman 56). He saw that the plants and animals had evolved, the
change was more gradual than rapid, and that it had required millions of years to do so
(“Introduction to Evolutionary Biology”). Darwin found that the main mechanism of
evolution was something he called natural selection. Natural selection essentially means
that in a particular environment, the individuals with characteristics that are more
favorable to survival will survive, and the ones who do not have these characteristics will
die out. This theory helped Darwin explain why there had been thirteen different species
of finches occupying areas of the Galapagos Islands, and he wrote most of his theories in
a book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Thomas Huxley tried
to spread a lot of Darwin’s theories, some calling him “Darwin’s bloody-fanged bulldog”
because of his harsh tactics. Even though the theory of evolution was a new concept and
people were hesitant to believe them, they kept working and eventually all of their
missing links would fall into place (Pugliucci 8).
However, all great theories do not go unchallenged. The most prevailing
argument against evolution is a theory called Creation. Creation advocates believe that
the creatures of the earth were products of a Divine Creator, who made many different
species of plants and animals. It is believed that all the creatures are essentially constant
in its characteristics and that they have the inability to cross-breed (Zetterberg 116). The
theory of Special Creation also says all organisms were created by God during the six
days of creation, found in the Book of Genesis. The ideal types (Adam and Eve) formed
by this special creation haven’t been changed since they were created, and the variation
within each type is extremely limited. Creation has two main components; species were
created recently and they do not change over time (Freeman 45).
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There are several different views on Creation. The first is the Literalist view
which believes that the universe is very young and that all life was created
supernaturally- essentially in its present form- within the past 4,000 to 10,000 years. The
second is the Progressive view, a lot like the Literalist view, which believes that all life
was created supernaturally in its present form within that last 10,000 years. The third
view is the Theistic view which believes that the evolutionary process is guided by God
to produce humans, but they do believe that Evolution has occurred. The last view,
Intelligent Design (ID), believes that an unidentified form of supernatural intelligence
designed complex biological structures such as DNA. Followers of ID distance
themselves from Creationists because they do not want any connections to the religious
arguments of Creationists (Alters 46).
Intelligent Design is a more recent development in the case against Evolution.
Even though ID was founded on the basis of Creationism, it varies in some of its tenets.
For one, ID supporters don’t believe in a young Earth or in a literal interpretation of the
Bible (Pugliucci 53). One argument proposed by ID theorists is the idea of irreducible
complexity. Irreducible complexity tries to explain the difference between a natural
phenomenon and an intellectually designed one (Pugliucci 57). An intellectually
designed object must be planned or considered, and an intelligent agent is not
“constrained by a step-by-step evolutionary process” (Pugliucci 57).
Creationists have many arguments, some which are hard to dispute, others of
which are clearly not logical. Creationists try to mislead people by saying that evolution
is just a theory and that since it is a theory that it is merely a hypothesis that has been
tested successfully many times. According to Creationists, since evolution is just a
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theory, it isn’t considered factual in the scientific community and opposing theories
should be presented, such as Creationism (Alters 87). But what about other theories,
such as the theory of gravitation or the atomic theory? They are accepted as scientific
truths, so why can’t the theory of evolution be accepted?
Most life forms are reasonably similar, especially on the biochemical level.
Heredity is coded by two chemically related substances: DNA and RNA. There are only
four genetic “letters” of DNA: A, G, T, and C. In RNA, a U replaces the G found in
DNA. The evolutionary development of living organisms comes about by making new
and more elaborate combinations of these “letters” (Zetterberg 23). These sequences of
“letters” translate into the amino acids that comprise proteins. Some 20 different amino
acids compose mostly all organisms. This suggests that life came from inanimate matter
once and that no matter what the differences the organisms have; they still have the
features of the primordial life (Zetterberg 24). Stanley Miller conducted an experiment
showing that under what was thought to be the original conditions of the Earth, amino
acids could be formed very rapidly (Ruse 159). With added electricity, it turned these
inorganic compounds (methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulphide) would
turn into organic molecules of the required sort (Ruse 162). This experiment opened the
doors for many evolutionists; they had found some way to explain how life had been
created spontaneously from things that had already been on Earth.
Early in the 1900’s some dinosaur and supposed fossilized human tracks were
discovered coexisting in close proximity in Texas. Creationists said that the tracks
showed that human and dinosaurs coexisted despite paleontologists’ assertions that
dinosaurs became extinct a long time before humans came about. So for many decades,
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people believed that, contrary to the theory of evolution, humans and dinosaurs had lived
together. But, after examination of the exhibits, they concluded that there was absolutely
no evidence that humans and dinosaurs had lived together- the human tracks were false
while the dinosaur tracks were real (Alters 94). Creationists also claim that the fossils
found of the homo erectus are the same found in the homo sapiens (modern humans)
which would support the part of their theory that says that all humans have been the same
since Adam and Eve. However, they failed to notice the difference in the brain sizes and
other anatomical differences (Foley 5).
Many Creationists try to argue the theory of evolution with the second law of
thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics states that matter and energy
always tend to change from complex and ordered states to disordered states. Heat is lost,
and with the passage of time, complex arrangements of matter become simpler
(Zetterberg 237). So, Creationists ask, how it is possible under the theory of evolution,
which says there is a slow change of organisms from simple to complex, be right. The
second law of thermodynamics is not questioned, but we must remember that is only
applies to closed systems for which the parameters are defined. However, the Earth is
not a closed system. The Earth is getting massive amounts of energy from the sun and
other such energy that can be and is used to construct complex from the simple. If
Creationists will admit that a fertilized egg can develop into an adult (simple to complex),
then the second law of thermodynamics obviously doesn’t contradict evolution
(Zetterberg 122).
Another main tenet of the Creationist theory is that species are unchangeable. But
there is living evidence of change through time. One way is through closely monitoring
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natural populations, where it is possible to observe small-scale change (microevolution).
Secondly, if the bodies of organisms are examined evidence can be found of dramatic
change (macroevolution). In 1992, Scott Carroll and Christin Boyd worked with the
soapberry bug, an insect which is native to the southern U.S. (Freeman 112). Soapberry
bugs feed by using their long beaks to break through the fruit. The bugs reach in;
somehow liquefying the seeds, then suck up the contents (Freeman 113). In the 1950s,
planters began to plant balloon vines called the flat-podded golden rain tree. As their
name might suggest, the tree has thin flat fruits. Researchers have found that the
population of insects living near the thin-fruited trees had a much shorter beak than the
bugs living by the thick-fruited tree. The short-beaked bugs living on the thin-fruited
trees are descendants of the long-beaked bugs that lived on the thick-fruited trees because
a shorter beak was now what the birds needed in order for better survival, a clear example
of natural selection (Freeman 113).
The English Moth is another example that is commonly used to substantiate
evolution. This particular moth can be either light or dark. Researchers found that the
dark moths accounted for less than 2 percent of the population prior to 1848. However,
by the 1900s, 95 percent of the moths in industrial cities were dark. The moths changed
from being mostly light to be mostly dark. This moth’s color is determined by a gene,
and since this gene is changing, that is a change in the gene pool (“Introduction to
Evolutionary Biology”). This is an example of natural selection as a result of changing
environments in the late-1800s when England was going through its industrial revolution.
With all the factories around there was a lot of soot in the air. The soot fell on the trees
nearby, and by being a light colored moth; it was easier for predators to find them. So
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over time the dark colored moth increased in population because all the lighter colored
moths were dying out and the dark colored moths kept reproducing. Evolution is the
change in the gene pool of a population over time; this is an example of an observed
evolutionary change (“Introduction to Evolutionary Biology”).
Another way we can observe evolutionary change is through Vestigial structures.
A Vestigial structure is a functionless version of a body party that has an important
function in other closely-related species. Darwin argued that vestigial structures were
unexplainable under the theory of Creation, but are easily explained by the theory of
evolution. Some examples of Vestigial structures can be seen in the Mexican tetras
which have eye sockets but no eyes, in the North Island brown kiwi that has wings but is
a flightless bird, and in the rubber boa which has remnants of hind limbs (Freeman 67).
So by evolutionary interpretation of these Vestigial structures, each species has
descended, with some modification, from an ancestor in which the eye, wing, or hind
limb was fully developed and fully functional. Humans have Vestigial structures also:
our goose bumps imply that we have descended from ancestors that were hairier then us,
and our tailbones imply we have descended from ancestors with tails (Freeman 68).
In the 1860s the fossil record had a few missing links. Creationists pointed out
that evolution needed more evidence to show that today’s organisms came about from
very different organisms in the past. Evolutionists believed that birds and mammals had
been a recent evolutionary change, possibly coming from reptiles, but they still couldn’t
figure out how birds and reptiles and reptiles and mammals were linked together
(Zetterberg 119). Evolutionists did not have an answer until they discovered the
Archaeopteryx, an ancient animal combining bird and reptile characteristics. This
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creature had lived about 150 million years ago in Europe and its skeleton was so similar
to a dinosaur, that it was once classified as the dinosaur, Compsognathus. But dinosaurs
don’t have feathers! The animal was not in fact a dinosaur, it was a bird. This discovery
was concrete evidence of how a species changed over time, from a dinosaur to its avian
descendant. This is an example of macroevolution, where a species changes over time on
a larger scale- when birds evolved from dinosaurs (Freeman 45).
This is when the argument starts to get tricky- it is hard to challenge each other
when dealing with two completely different things, science and faith, and it is the only
argument that cannot be dealt with by scientists. The Reverend John Dun said, “Mr.
Darwin’s work is a direct antagonism to all of the findings of natural theology, formed on
legitimate inductions done on the study of the works of God; and it does open violence to
everything which the Creator Himself has told us in the Scriptures of truth…” (Zetterberg
122). So if one is a fundamentalist, the theory of evolution is completely out of the
question, going against everything he/she believes in.
As shown, there is so much evidence that supports the likelihood of evolution.
Although there are some missing links, that is to be expected with all great theories. We
can’t have the answer for everything. We just have to trust what we know and what is
presented to us in facts. There have been observations of evolutionary changes; with the
Soapberry bug and with the English Moths. There are also Vestigial structures, structures
that aren’t useful to a species now but were useful to the species it has descended from.
Most arguments that Creationists make has been refuted with scientific evidence, such as
their claims about the second law of thermodynamics and their “missing links” in the
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fossil record. Scientists have made it clear that evolution is definitely the way that life
came to be on earth almost 4 billion years ago.
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Works Cited
Alters, Brian, and Sandra Alters. Defending Evolution. Massachusetts: Jones and
Bartlett Publishers, 2001.
Colby, Chris. “Introduction to Evolutionary Biology”. The Talk.Origins Archive.
January, 1996. 19 January 2006 <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-tobiology.html>.
Freeman, Scott, and Jon C. Herron. Evolutionary Analysis, Third Edition. New Jersey:
Pearson Education, Inc., 2004.
“Origins of Darwinism”. Straight talk about issues affecting America today. 3 July
2005. 31 January 2006 <http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/origins.shtml>.
Pugliucci, Massimo. Early Evolution. Germany: Birkhauser Verlag, 2000.
Ruse, Michael. The Evolution Wars. California: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2000.