Evolution: Debate vs. Denial

There is no debate over evolution. Evolution occurs.

If you deny evolution, I urge you to explain to me what is wrong with the model I am about to present, one which has been shown to be as true as heliocentricity:

1. DNA and RNA store the basic information for creating life. (still with me?)
2. DNA and RNA function best when they copy themselves accurately.
3. DNA and RNA are imperfect, so sometimes they mess up.
4. Sometimes the error is in a location that makes it harmless, sometimes the error is harmful, and about .0000000001% of the time, the error provides a benefit.

The above happens all the time in your body. Whenever you get sick, bacteria or viruses use your body as a little world. They multiply so fast that billions of them end up in your body within a few days, and they all have to shit. Not literally, of course, but they have waste products. Most symptoms of being sick are a result of these by-products circulating in your body.

They “pollute” your body, so to speak. Sure, they’re so small you could never hope to see them with the naked eye, but they can make a giant organism like you die. Something to think about for climate change deniers.

During this crap-fest inside your body, they’re multiplying. It’s like a giant orgy in there, only no actual sex. The bacteria are just dividing once they have accumulated the necessary resources. The viruses are almost having sex, but the process is more like raping your cells, which then burst open like someone in “Alien” when the next generation is born.

During all this, most are born normal. Because they don’t reproduce sexually, they essentially clone themselves… unless one of those little mistakes occurs. If a mistake occurs, usually nothing of notice happens; those two may die early or be unable to reproduce, or they may be fine.

On rare occasions, the mistake turns out to be better than the original. The problem is, that little beneficial accident is in for an uphill battle from the start: it is surrounded by millions of other bacteria or viruses essentially just like it. They all want to multiply and spread their genetic blueprints. How is one lone mutant going to reproduce enough to compete?

Well, there’s dozens of ways documented, but my favorite is the “population bottleneck.” All bacteria have a wall, and that wall is full of doors with passcodes. Our drugs have the passcodes. Our drugs essentially blockade bacteria, because those doors are how the bacteria eat. If a single bacteria mutates just right, so that the passcode changes, our drugs stop working. That means this bacteria can keep reproducing, even during antibiotic treatment (which is also when it will be easiest for them to succeed, without any competition from other bacteria).

This is why you should always take antibiotics completely: the antibiotics kill the bulk, and your body’s own immune system cleans up the rest. If you stop the treatment, you’re liable to give the resistant mutants a fighting chance. The odds of a new drug-resistant strain evolving inside you is slim, but we don’t like risking it (because SOMEONE has to be patient zero).

These are all events we know happen. I know, it’s sad to see another tale from the Bible relegated to metaphor, but it’s not the first thing to go.

Remember the “firmament?” That bowl in the sky that holds back the waters? Religion didn’t go anywhere after we realized it didn’t exist.

Remember “geocentrism?” Yeah, we censored and oppressed people for suggesting the Earth revolved around the sun. Why? Because the Bible says otherwise!

Remember “demons?” Now we just call them “diseases” or “conditions” or “illness.” Except the mentally ill, they hold onto the idea of “demons in their head.”

Remember “slavery?” The Bible not only condones it, it prescribes it for the paying of debts and as punishment. We seem better off without it, if you ask me.

There’s no debate over evolution; there is only a group of deniers (largely in the Uneducated States of America) who refuse to acknowledge the small evidence for fear of the larger consequences. If you absolutely must, convince yourself that all life EXCEPT people evolved, and that man was designed to work just like an animal in every way, but that we are made in God’s image.

Why you worship a God who looks like a chimp is beyond me.