The God Delusion, Part 4, Why there is almost certainly no God

I am not the only blogger who is discussing The God Delusion. If you want a view that is really different from mine you can go to the Apologetics homepage where you will find comprehensive criticism of Richard Dawkins latest book. Deepak Chopra whom I recently criticized for his abuse of quantum physics also taken the challenge of trying to break the arguments put forth in The God Delusion. Needless to say I don't think that the Apologetics or Chopra are able to break the very strong message in the God delusion, but that should be up to you readers to decide.

After having met the many arguments or proofs for God, one by one, in chapter four Richard Dawkins goes on to describe not only why we do not need a God to describe our world but also why such a God in fact is quite implausible.

He starts out by explaining why the alternative to a creator God, Charles Darwin's (see picture) Theory of Evolution, is not, as many people tend to think, the same as blind chance. It is really quite wearisome to hear people say "so you think we just popped into existence" when you say you believe in evolution, but I have already written about this issue in my blog post Evolution is NOT blind chance. Dawkins also points out that to call upon a creator in order to explain complexities which we have not yet understood does not solve nothing, all it does is to invent another complexity that needs to be explained. I would like the ID proponents to suggest an empirical test, similar to the one below, which if it succeeded would support their "theory" and if it failed would falsify it. Dawkins writes:

"Darwin himself said as much: 'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.' Darwin could find no such case, and nor has anybody since Darwin's time, despite strenuous, indeed desperate, efforts. Many candidates for this holy grail of creationism have been proposed. None has stood up to analysis"

Another common tactic used by religious people is "The worship of gaps". Whenever there is something science cannot explain such as for instance language, certain religious people take this as proof of God's existence. After all, if science doesn't have the explanation, then it has to God right, right?

"The logic turns out to be no more convincing than this: 'I [insert own name] am personally unable to think of any way in which [insert biological phenomenon] could have been built up step by step. Therefore it is irreducibly complex. That means it is designed."

But what about the Universe and what about us humans? Why should there be a Universe? Why should we exist? Surely someone must have wanted us to exist? No not of necessity. Though I am still merely an amateur astronomer (I am trying to help that by following a lecture series by Professor Alex Filippenko available at Berkeley's webcast), I know that there are theories out there which could potentially elucidate why our Universe looks the way it does. There are also good attempts to explain how the first cells arose. These theories I admit can sound a bit far fetched an even unlikely. However, it seems that we are also relatively lonely in our Universe and so the unlikely event of a cell (see below) forming spontaneously from various organic constituents only had to happen once for us to exist. If you throw a dice billions and billions of times you are likely to at least once get say 10 sixes in a row even though the probability of this series is as low as 0.00000002.

We humans are also ill equipped to accept hard nosed scientific theories instead of explanations that invoke an agent such as God. Humans have a natural tendency to see agents everywhere. Dawkins writes:

"Maybe the psychological reason for this amazing blindness has something to do with the fact that many people have not had their consciousness raised, as biologists have, by natural selection and its power to tame improbability. J. Anderson Thomson, from his perspective as an evolutionary psychiatrist, points me to an additional reason, the psychological bias that we all have towards personifying inanimate objects as agents. As Thomson says, we are more inclined to mistake a shadow for a burglar than a burglar for a shadow. A false positive might be a waste of time. A false negative could be fatal. In a letter to me, he suggested that, in our ancestral past, our greatest challenge in our environment came from each other. 'The legacy of that is the default assumption, often fear, of human intention. We have a great deal of difficulty seeing anything other than human causation.' We naturally generalized that to divine intention."

In summary, chapter four in The God Delusion, bring up a few quite important points. It is shown that a creator God is really an inadequate answer since it merely brings up another problem namely who created the creator, or who designed the designer? The best theory we have to explain our own existence without invoking an agent is the beautiful and simple Theory of Evolution.

Americans’ belief in evolution

I would very much like to recommend Gallups daily briefings which presents, in video format, interesting data from Gallup polls on a daily basis. Today for example, Gallup presents the latest figures on the 2008 presidential election. They ask, "who would you vote for today, Clinton or Gulliani (the two front runners for either party).

In yesterdays briefing Gallup presented a survey probing about Americans' belief in the theory of evolution. Apparently, three of the republican presidential candidates claimed not to believe in evolution (none of the front runners thank God). I am almost hoping that they said so only because of their voters. An unbelievable 48% of the Americans' who were asked in this survey said that they did not believe in evolution. Why do some people not believe in the extremely well established theory of evolution? When you ask those who do not believe in evolution a large majority says that evolution contradicts their religious beliefs. In other words they chose to base their world view on faith rather than on evidence. These figures are an inspiration to me to keep writing on this blog.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the more educated you are, the higher the probability that you believe in the well established theory of evolution. Also not surprising republicans deny evolution more often than democrats (68% of republicans claim not to believe in evolution).

The Mating Act of a Ladybird

To describe the copulative behavior of a ladybird, or a coccinellidae as it is called among scientists, is actually quite hard due to the fact that the category contains at least 5000 different species (I wonder if they can tell the difference between us and say a gorilla). The account that I will give here will no doubt be oversimplified and perhaps only applies to a fraction of the 5000 different species, but it is nevertheless a fascinating type behavior.

So imagine that you are a female ladybird. Because you are already four days old you feel it is really about time that you get a hold of yourself and cease to live your life in an aimless fashion. You feel that it is time to get pregnant. While wandering about on your green plant reflecting on where your life has gone you suddenly look up and see an attractive male about 2 cm ahead (which is about how far a ladybird can see). You feel really flattered when this handsome stud mounts you, but then, when he is just about to insert his thing you instinctively start to run around, kicking forcefully backwards to get him off. This stud won't give up that easily though so in spite of the rather uncomfortable ride he hangs on. You therefore switch to a different strategy. Almost to your own amazement you throw yourself of the green plant and falls towards the ground. You make your handsome stud lands first thus making him absorb the long fall. For a second the male lets go of you and you try to escape, but luckily for the male he retains his consciousness before you have been able to run more than 2 cm away in which case he would not have been able to find you.

The stud mounts again and this time you don't fight. Instead you think to yourself, this guy can copulate right after falling down an equivalent of ten floors, now that is a trait I want my ladybird offspring to have. So the romance begins, and since you are ladybirds, and since ladybirds are fond of copulating you go on for a long time. (Here is a video of two ladybirds getting it on to the tunes of Donald Crawford's "You Know I Know".)

If both the male and the female have not mated recently they will keep going for about 275 minutes, or 4.5 hours. However, if both have had sex recently and thus feel a bit tired or drowsy or satisfied, then they will limit they will stop after only 176 minutes or 3 hours.

Following not so much cuddling you depart, exhausted but happy… However, for a ladybird sex is not just joy. Because ladybirds are really really promiscuous animals they are also very often the victims of sexually transmitted diseases, in fact the ladybird has more STDs than any other insect. According to one estimate that I found, up to 90% of some populations of ladybirds can be affected, so you better use the condom (or become a ladybird nun).

Most of what you have read here is my recollection of a lecture that was given to me by Professor Mike Majerus at Cambridge University, UK. In 2004 I attended a science summer school at Fitzwillam college and there I had the great privilege of taking a course called "sex and aggression in insects" taught by this extraordinarily entertaining ladybird world authority (I would vote for him to take over after David Attenborough if he ever quits). Though I have not read his books he has written several, so if you are interested in ladybirds and evolution I am sure that the following books are probably really good references.

Melanism: Evolution in Action: In this book majerus decribes the evolutionary forces that has given rise to melanism, or skin color. I'll bet that many of the examples are on the somewhat rare black ladybirds which he talked alot about during his course.

Guide to Ladybirds of the British Isles: As the title suggests this is a short (8 pages) guide to ladybirds.

The argument from design

Imagine that you are out walking an early Monday morning. Suddenly you detect something shining on the ground. You pick it up and see that it is a delicate watch. Intrigued, you take the clock back home and pick it apart. Amazed by the fine, very complex machinery inside you say to yourself "this cannot have just come about by chance, someone must have made this clock". Tuesday morning, when you are out walking again your foot suddenly bumps into something, and you look down… There lies a dead man. You take him home and dissect the body. With the aid of electron microscopy and other high tech tools you look into the cells and see how extremely, impressively complex they are. Again you look up and say to yourself "this human being is far more complex than the watch I found yesterday, this human cannot have just come from nothing, there must have been a creator"…

This argument which I believe is referred to as the argument from design or the watchmaker analogy, was put forward by a man named Paley (actually I think I have read somewhere that he was not the first person to use the argument, but it is associated with him). Unless this is the first time you read my blog you will probably know that I do not buy this argument, for several reasons. First of, this is an analogical argument, and analogical arguments are only as good as the analogy. In other words, the argument is valid only to the extent that a clock and a human being are similar, and we all know they are not very similar. For example, I happen to know that humans can make babies. In contrast, I have never seen clocks make new clocks, not even when I put my different clocks in the same drawer (though maybe that is because all my clocks are broken?). There are of course many other differences between clocks and human beings but I will let the reader use her imagination here.

The perhaps biggest flaw in the argument from design is to suppose that the alternative to design is sudden, random formation. Paley simply did not understand evolution, and neither does anyone today who argues that the theory of evolution by natural selection suggests that things just come about by chance (see my previous post called, "Natural selection is NOT blind chance"). Mutations, which are approximately random will give rise to new DNA molecules every now and then. Some DNA molecules, independent of whether they are in a virus, bacteria, mouse, dog, cat, whale, monkey or human being, will be more successful in terms of survival and replication, than the average DNA molecule. Sometimes the molecules just "gets lucky", but over time the phenotype (the characteristics) of the DNA molecule plays an important role in determining the fitness of that molecule. Say that one DNA molecule contains the code for making Prions, which then goes up and destroys the brain of its host. This molecule would not be very successful (unless it lets its host reproduce before starting to express the protein)... The Ebola virus is another example of a rather "unintelligent" strand of DNA (or is it RNA, I don't really know). Sure it is great at spreading between different individuals, however, this does not compensate for the fact that Ebola viruses kill their host really rapidly and brutally. Had the virus been a little bit more subtle and patient it would have been much more successful.

The point here is simply that the fitness of a particular strand of DNA is not random. Depending on what it does it will have a larger or lesser chance of getting into the next generation, and this process is referred to as natural selection. It is quite ironic that the argument from design so often comes from those who believe in God.

In essence, the argument from design becomes something like the following: No, humans surely cannot have come about through natural selection, that is just too unlikely! It is much more likely that we have a divine being, superior to all human being who came about (wait a minute, how did he come about???), and made the humans, that is much more likely… hmmm. Seems to me that creationists are undermining themselves…

For a much more thorough analysis of the argument from design I recommend Richard Dawkin's "The Blind watchmaker".

The evolution of happiness

Our genes, containing the recipe for making us, do not care about our feeling. All they care about is replicating themselves. Whether their host is the most depressed anxious, suicidal person out there doesn't matter to the genes as long as they get into the next generation, preferably in great numbers. In a sense we are merely the means to obtaining a goal: replication of our genes.

So why do we have emotions? Why are we not just insensitive robots that do not break down because of something silly such as your dog dying, or too much stress at work? The reason is of course that emotions are adaptive in many important ways, and people who lack emotions evidently do not succeed very well in our society. Fear makes us avoid many dangers; pleasure makes us come back to the things that induced it. Guilt and shames tells us we have not been fair and that we should try to fix it, and so on. In other words, we are not born to be happy. Of course we are not born to be sad either; rather we are born with a spectrum of emotions, all of which are probably important in some ways.

What I want to argue here is that, by learning more about evolution, our ancestry, and which situations are likely to produce different emotions we will be able to form our lives as well as our society in such a way that happiness occurs more often, and sadness not so often. David Buss (see picture) from the University of Texas, have written an interesting article on this topic in which he lists the lessons that research in evolutionary psychology have taught us. For example, Buss argues that our anonymous metropolis society is bound to cause distress and anxiety due to a lack of belonging. You can easily live your entire adult life without really getting to know someone today. Our genes, because they are used to a society containing no more than a hundred or so individuals (read about ancestral environment), may feel distressed in the big cities today. Buss advices us to try to get closer to our extended kin, and to make use of today's technology in order to keep in touch with family as well as friends.

Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, two evolutionary theorists from University of California, Santa Barbara (where I used to go to school), have done some interesting research about the meaning of deep friendships. David Buss writes about this research in his article as well. Without going into any details, it can be said that deep friendships are good for all kinds of reasons (e.g. live longer, less stress, happier etc). Talking about your problems is simply good for you (there is no ambiguity in the research on this point), so go get good friends!

Other examples of advice that Buss gives us in his article include, (1) Educating people about evolved psychological sex differences (I believe that sex differences, without proper understanding, can destroy any relationship), (2) Managing our competitive mechanisms, and (3) Fulfilling your desires and dreams (go do that thing that you have always dreamt about!).

Another thing that makes us happy is democracy. If you ask people whether they are "happy" and "satisfied with life as a whole", and then correlate that with the degree of freedom in the country, you will find a very nice positive correlation (see diagram). In other words, countries with democracy, free elections, and elective rule have happier citizens, than dictatorships. So here is a lesson for the society as a whole, don't vote for dictators, and keep fighting for freedom of speech…

Some people say that a belief in evolution by natural selection will corrupt a person into immorality. In contrast, I think that evolution is one of the keys to create a society in which people are happy, or as my former teacher put it:

"Go save the world, but do it using what you know about human nature"

”Natural Foods” contain more carcinogens than ”Unnatural Foods”

If you are like me, the first thing you will react to in the headline is my discrimination between natural and unnatural foods. It is my impression that people who call natural foods "natural foods" refer to foods which have not been treated with pesticides. Personally I don't think this makes them more natural, and it definitely does not necessarily make them better. I suppose that natural foods are more natural in the sense that it is what we used to eat back in the days when we did not have the kind of technology that we have today, though based on that one could argue that primitive foods would be a more appropriate label. I must admit that I have never actually heard anyone talk about unnatural foods, I just assume that if someone asserts that foods which have not been treated with pesticides are natural, then they must think that foods which have been sprayed with pesticides must somehow be unnatural.

In any case, people who eat natural foods often claim that it is better for you. Why? Well according to the people I have talked to, natural foods are less toxic to you because they have not been sprayed with pesticides. Pesticides, according to these people are quite poisonous and ingesting them will result in all kinds of bad effects such as cancer. Therefore natural foods, which have not been sprayed with any pesticides must be better for you. The problem is that all foods, including natural foods, produce their own pesticides. In a moment I will argue (convincingly I hope), that natural foods in fact have a larger concentration of pesticides and that the pesticides in natural foods are even more toxic than the synthetic pesticides that we produce and spray on our "unnatural foods".

So how come natural foods have pesticides in them? If you think about it the answer is quite obvious. All plants need defenses against plant eaters. If a plant cannot avoid predation, then natural selection will take care of that plant in no time. That is, any plant without defenses will die and only the ones that do have a proper defense will be able to survive, reproduce, and thus send their genes into the next generation. Now plants are not particularly mobile, and therefore they cannot run away from their predators. So what do they do? They evolve defenses which either makes them hard to eat (e.g. thorns on cactuses), or they evolve chemical or pesticides that will either kill or hurt the predator when they try eating the plant. These substances are called natural pesticides. Natural pesticides are the chemicals contained within plants in order to make organisms that eat them sick or even kill them.

So we have two types of pesticides. There are pesticides that we produce in our industries and spray on plants to protect them from other organisms, and there are pesticides that the plants make themselves for the very same reason. What is the difference between these two types of pesticides? You may be thinking that since we have been exposed to natural pesticides (the ones the plants make) for a longer time, we would be able to handle them better, not so. The defenses we have in our body to protect us from pesticides are general, that is they don't care whether it is a natural pesticide or a synthetic pesticide, in fact they treat almost all different pesticides the same way. Throughout our evolutionary history, as we have included more things in our diet, we been exposed to new "natural pesticides". To our body the synthetic pesticides that we spray on plants are simply yet another novel pesticide. If you are still not convinced, consider the fact that there are quite a few types of pesticides that we have been exposed to for thousands and thousands of years which still today can be very bad for us.

I hope to have established that there is no general qualitative difference between the pesticides that we produce in our industries and the pesticides that plants produce. However, in all fairness this is not entirely true. The synthetic pesticides that we use today are selected based on their ability protect the plants on which they are sprayed, and importantly only mild toxins are used, that is our body can take care of them relatively easily. This means that if a plant is sprayed with synthetic pesticides that plant doesn't need to make its own pesticides because it is already protected. Of course, to the extent that the synthetic pesticide is toxic, the plant will also become more toxic, but normally this effect is very small. Now if, on the other hand, you do not spray a plant, then that plant will have to form its own pesticides, and the stronger the better. The plants that do not do this, as I mentioned before, will die. In consequence, each new generation of natural food crops will be the offspring of the most toxic plants in the previous generation. This should logically mean that the natural pesticides in natural foods are much more toxic than the natural pesticides in foods that have been sprayed.

This question has in fact been tested experimentally by Bruce Ames at the University of California, Berkeley. How did he test this? Well first, being a cruel scientist, he created a bacteria that lacked an enzyme that was critical for its survival. The only way for the bacteria to survive was if it, through random mutations got a working gene capable of producing the vital enzyme. Now, Ames would create say a thousand colonies of these unfortunate bacteria. Then he would squirt something, say a natural pesticide, on all the different colonies and see how many would grow. Ames could infer that if a bacterial colony would start growing then mutations had occurred in that colony, in other words the substance squirted on them must have been mutagenic and therefore carcinogenic. If you compare natural pesticides and synthetic pesticides in this type of test you will see that the natural pesticides will leave much more survivors than the synthetic ones. This may be good news for the bacteria, but not for us, because more mutations means higher risk of cancer. In other words the predictions stated above has been confirmed in the experiments performed by Ames.

What do I want to say with this? Well, I do not want to give the impression that I think natural foods are necessarily bad. Doing a very quick literary review I found a few studies claiming that there are more nutrients in organic relative to normal foods (organic foods is an extreme form of natural foods). However, all I want to say is that I think that our fear of synthetic pesticides is probably a little bit exaggerated, and that in many cases the toxins produced by the plants themselves are far worse.

Ps: For a good chapter on carcinogens in foods see Ames here in Handbook of toxicology

The cruelty of male circumcision

Today it is quite unthinkable to question the cruelty of female circumcision if you are a relatively informed person. However, to my own amazement, male circumcision (see picture) is still considered by many to be perfectly justified. It must evidently be so, considering how often this surgery is performed on young naive infants.

At one point in my life I actually became a little bit ambiguous as to whether circumcision might perhaps be justified. It was last year when, during my exchange year at UCSB, I attended some highly entertaining and informative lectures on Human Sexuality taught by two very charismatic (and married) professors John Baldwin and Janice Baldwin. You can read more about the Baldwins' view on circumcision here. I am not being ironic when I say that these were indeed great lectures, and that is perhaps why they almost convinced me that the costs and benefits associated with male circumcision more or less cancels out. As far as I can remember they referred to two positive consequences associated with male circumcision. One is the supposedly improved hygiene, which by the way is one of the most common justifications that people in favor of circumcision refers to. However, bad hygiene under the foreskin is only a problem for guys who never clean under the foreskin, so if we would simply remind guys that they need to remember to clean their more private regions this would not be a big problem. In any case I hardly think that this justifies circumcision….

The other favorable effect of male circumcision, the one that made me think that perhaps it was justified, is the reduced risk of being infected with the HIV virus. A few studies of this kind have been made and the effects superficially seem quite large. However, the studies which have shown this difference have been of poor quality, with poor control. Just as an example, in one large and frequently cited study, circumcised males were given advice on sexual behavior whereas those who had not been circumcised did not get this offer. Was the lower incidence of HIV among the circumcised due to the sexual advice or the circumcision? Studies with better control i.e. studies which try to rule out alternative explanations, have found smaller effects (see here for more information). I will not go as far as to say that circumcision does not give any improved protection at all, on the contrary, I believe that there is some truth in this. Nevertheless, it seems that the effects are significantly smaller than what the original studies suggested.

The fact that there seems to be no great benefits of circumcision is however not my main problem with it. Neither do I dislike it just because it is very much entangled with religion. I think it is a good example of how religious beliefs sometimes takes the upper hand over rational arguments, but it is not the main reason why I disprove of male circumcision. So what is the main reason? The reason is that the foreskin, which is removed during a circumcision, has a lot of very important functions. I think that this is hardly surprising because if the foreskin had been completely useless or even a burden to us, natural selection would probably have taken care of it long ago. The benefits of having a foreskin are many. To name a few, the foreskin is important because it gives protection to the glans penis, it reduces friction during intercourse, it gives important feedback to our brain about the "state" of the penis, it aids erection, and it regulates the timing of the ejaculation (people who have been circumcised often either ejaculate too early or too late). You can read about these as well as other function of the foreskin on this excellent page.

However, I think that the most important function of the foreskin, and hence also the most important reason why circumcision should not be allowed, is that it brings sexual pleasure to its owner. This of course also means that lack of foreskin will result in reduced pleasure. Sex, along with drink and food and neuroscience (that last one is probably rather personal), are things that make life worth living, and taking away the pleasure associated with sex just seems rather cruel to me. Now I am not saying that circumcised people do not feel any pleasure, I would not know, all I am saying is that there is good reason to believe that they feel less pleasure.

Summing up, besides just being a nasty and invasive surgical procedure which could well cause some kind of trauma in the infant, taking away the foreskin is associated with many other disadvantages. Even if the risk of contracting HIV would be slightly reduced, this hardly justifies circumcision.

Evolution is NOT blind chance

At one point in Woody Allen´s excellent movie Match Point, the main characters, all coming from the British upper class, are having a conversation about the meaning of life. Chris Wilton (see picture) played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, comments that scientists are becoming more and more certain that there is no meaning to life, that we are all here by blind chance (after which the other in the company desperately tries to change the subject. I do not know whether this is what Woody Allen believes, a fast google search suggested that he was an atheist so maybe he is just having Chris say this because it is something people often think. In any case, this is something you hear again and again, and it is quite tedious to be frank. It is also a cause of concern if you ask me. If people hear that evolution is the same as blind chance when they go to the cinema, have a chat at the pub or turn on the telly, then they might start to believe that it is in fact so, even though it is not.

(Warning, spoilers in this paragraph!!!)
I do not know if it is a coincidence that it is the same Chris Wilton who later in the movie commits adultery, makes his lover (played by Scarlet Johansson) pregnant because of carelessness, and then kills her, her neighbour (to make it look like a drug related crime), as well as his own child that is growing inside his lover. I am personally inclined to believe that Woody Allen is well aware of this "coincidence" considering the many references made to Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky thought that without a religion and a God who punish bad behavior and rewards virtuous behavior, we would all be savages.

I had a similar experience one late evening about two years ago when I was visiting my father on Jamaica. I was zapping around on the telly to see if I could find anything interesting to watch. I finally stumbled upon a program in which a scientist would, in a very intriguing way, describe the amazing feats performed by many animals. Most vividly I remember his description of a lizard. He showed how, on a microscopic level, this lizard had almost perfect machinery for walking in the roof. In the end he asked, "do you really believe that this lizard came about through pure chance?". He went on to say, "of course not, it is obvious that it has been designed to do what is does". Since I liked his descriptions of the animals I was actually quite saddened when I learned that he had bought into the idea that evolution is the same as blind chance.

Considering that it such a widespread and often articulated myth, it is perhaps not so strange that people believe that evolution and blind chance are synonymous. To me the fact that evolution is not the same as blind chance, complete randomness, accident etc is extremely obvious. Random mutations change the phenotype of the individual with the mutation. This change in the phenotype can increase the chance of the individual surviving, it may decrease the chance of the individual surviving, or it may have no effect on survival. When the mutation affects the chance of survival (or more accurately, the chance of copying genes into the next generation), natural selection will either favour that mutation, or work against it.

To illustrate, imagine a hypothetical population of rabbits. On average they get the same number of offspring, and they are equally likely to be eaten by whatever animals eat rabbits (is it foxes??). However, one day, two happy rabbit parents give birth to a rabbit baby with a mutation in a gene that affects the sensitivity of the retina. This new baby rabbit, as a result of its improved retina is ten percent more likely to discover a predator in time and therefore avoid being consumed. When this baby rabbit (unless he or she is eaten) becomes a proud parent one day, the offspring inherits the improved retina and therefore the higher chance of survival in encounters with predators. How long would it take for a mutation that increased the survival chance by 10% to spread throughout the whole population? Is it one thousand generations, or a million perhaps? No, if you do the math in this hypothetical example a more plausible estimation would be around 15 generation. At that point, due to the better survival chance of individuals with the mutation, all rabbits will have the new retina. That is how natural selection works. EVOLUTION IS NOT THE SAME AS BLIND CHANCE!

Experimental evidence of evolution

For those who say that the theory of evolution is a belief just like intelligent design is a belief, here is another piece of evidence for you. The two species shown to the left are involved in a "red queen" antagonistic co-evolution race. The wasp feeds on the larvae of the house fly, and because wasps that eat more larvae are more likely to survive and have offspring, the population as a whole become more and more efficient predators. The fly on the other hand must develop defenses against these wasps. Those larvae that are unable to defend themselves against the predator will die and therefore cannot contribute any genes to the next generation. In sum while the wasps become more and more efficient killers, the flies get better at protecting themselves, thus the relative frequencies remain stable.

What happens though if you, for each new generation, take out, say all the surviving flies, that is, all the flies that were able to survive the attacks from the wasps, and instead introduce a new population of flies that have never encountered these wasps before? What happens is that virtually all flies are killed! The wasps have evolved by natural selection, but the flies have not. If you do the opposite and introduce naive wasps to flies that have had a chance to evolve, then the relative frequencies tilt to the advantage of the fly. The wasps starve to death because they cannot overcome the defenses that the house fly has evolved.

This experiment has actually been done, way back in 1963 by Plmentel and Al-Hafldh, and yet, there are still tons of people who claim that the theory of evolution asserts that all species were formed accidentally (not to mention all the Christians who firmly believes this is what the theory of evolution says). How is the process illuminated in these experiments chance? Please, someone explain that to me, I do not understand

Why we need the theory of evolution to explain HIV

If you are wondering why the HIV virus unlike other viruses kills you and if you have not accepted the catholic explanation that all Africans who get aids are sinners and deserved it you might want to continue reading.

The reason that our otherwise extremely impressive immune system is not able to cope with the HIV virus in the long run, is that the virus has a very high mutation and proliferation rate. Following any type of virus infection, the number of viruses in your body will go up exponentially, however, once your immune system is able to recognize the virus it will mobilize its troops (the white blood cells) and destroy the invader.

The same thing happens when someone is infected with HIV, first the number of viruses go up, then down. However, because of its rapid mutation rate, some of the HIV viruses will change so much that the immune system no longer recognize the virus. This new virus, which has evolved by natural selection will proliferate. Our immune system will soon be able to recognize the new invader, but then yet a different virus will be present. This constant race will go on for about ten years. At that time the HIV virus will have killed of so many white blood cells (the HIV virus is specifically targeting white blood cells) that the body can no longer defend itself against otherwise non-fatal infection, and you will die, perhaps, from a simple flu.