NOT Designed for Life

Part 2: Yours is the World and all things in it?

In Part 1 of this critique of the Creationist / ID agenda, I addressed the formation and expansion of the universe, the nature of the universe, and up to and including the formation of the Earth, and touched on the rise of mankind. In this part I shall elaborate on how we got here, and the immense time it took for Homo Sapiens Sapiens to be the (allegedly) dominant species.

I warn the reader now, this article is somewhat lengthy, due to a. a long explanation of evolution, and b. me banging on a bit.

Before we get to mankind ourselves, we have to ask the question of how we got here in the first place, that is how life began. There is only one honest, truthful, and informed answer to this question, and that answer simply is “I don't know.” Now, before any of you theists / creationists / ID proponents get too smug, let me add the caveat, that “I don't know.” is equally the only answer you can give, and if you try to say anything else, then you are being neither honest, truthful, or giving an informed answer. One of the most ignorant things I hear from evolution deniers is “Were you there?” No, I wasn't – and neither were you.

And please do not point me to your dusty old books of ancient campfire tales – whichever book that happens to be, the Bible, Qur'an, Talmud, or whatever – for that does not offer any proof either. Your 'holy' book is not the evidence; it is merely the claim. And strangely enough, few of the many religions in the world offer up the same narrative of life beginning on Earth. That strikes me as kinda strange for an allegedly omnipotent and omniscient deity. Unless you've lived under a rock all your life, then the chances are that all reading this will be more than well acquainted with the Judeo/Christian/Islamic creation narrative, of God creating man and woman “in our image, after our likeness” (who was he talking to?) on the Sixth Day – and then creating Eve from one of Adam's ribs afterwards. But hey, the Hindus believe that Brahma sprang from a lotus flower in Lord Vishnu's navel and made the Earth, the Heavens, and all living things. Chinese creation tells that the god Pan Gu cracked open the cosmic egg and created the Heavens from one half, and the Earth and all living things from the other. Wicca teaches of the Goddess placing women upon the Earth first to be the bringers of all life, gave them magick, and taught them to do what they wished, but harm none. In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams wrote “The Jatravartid People of Viltvodle Six firmly believe that the entire universe was sneezed out of the nose of a being called The Great Green Arkleseizure.” Think I'm being facetious now? Think these beliefs are plainly absurd? Do tell me about the rib-woman again, add in her conversation with a talking snake, don't forget the talking donkey, and you can even throw in every species on the face of the Earth being taken aboard a ruddy great boat. The fact is that unless you can offer proof for your assertions, then all creation myths, including the Great Green Arkleseizure, have equal merit.

Equally in science there is no standard model of just how life arose upon Earth, but competing theories of abiogenesis - the origins of life. Most of these hold that the chemical conditions of the early earth were just correct for amino acids, the very building blocks of life, to form and from them single-cell organisms developed, which were the origin of all living creatures on Earth, including me, you the reader, and the dog next door.  Others think that perhaps life, or the elements necessary for life thereof, were carried to earth on a meteorite. And if you think that sounds fantastic, or if it stretches your credulity to the limit, do tell me again about that incredible rib-woman. Again, all hypotheses are equal, and nothing is off the table. And surprising as some readers may find it, nope, not even God is off the table. Just bring your evidence (NOT that book) along and science will be more than happy to take it under serious consideration. It is also of interest that scientists tend not to speak of 'origin' singular, but rather 'origins' plural; the inference being that perhaps there have been many times life has arisen on Earth, only to fail, which would fit in with natural selection. As a very wise man once said, “It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.”

A great many creationists / ID proponents make the mistake of thinking that the Darwinian Theory of Evolution claims to explain the origins of life. Indeed it does not. Evolutionary biology merely explains the change and variation of lifeforms over vast period of time, nothing more. If you want a synonym for 'evolution', then 'change' is as good a one as any. Some creationists, rejecting evolution, all the evidence which proves it, and all the sciences which not only support but confirm it, often state that they don't see something like the infamous 'crocoduck', or say, a horse giving birth to a dog. Of course you don't. They are two different species, you daft bastard. But then, I've never seen a woman spring from a man's rib. These are the creationists who accept microevolution but not macroevolution. For a start microevolution and macroevolution are invented creationist terms, but even then, macroevolution is merely a great many of steps of microevolution over a vast period of time.

Creationists seem to have a real problem grasping the immense timescales involved in evolution. The original lifeforms from which we all sprang took several different paths. Those paths took several paths, as did those paths, leading eventually to billions of species. As these species split, eventually they became too distant genetically to interbreed, which is why you tend not to find horses giving birth to dogs, or any crocoducks going about (shame really, I want a pet crocoduck). This also explains that humans are not 'top' of the evolutionary table – there is no 'top' (another creationist misconception). As a (relatively) peaceful omnivore, we are not even top of the food chain, which is reserved for predatory carnivores. Tyrannosaurus Rex was top of the food chain. Alligators are top of the food chain. Homo Sapiens are in fact around the middle. Oh, and while I am about it, more ignorant creationists, no you never evolved from a monkey. No-one with even a rudimentary knowledge of evolution ever said humans evolved from monkeys. Homo Sapiens and other apes (for we are apes), monkeys, and all other simians all evolved from separate branches of common ape-like ancestors. Creationists, please show me the person who says humans evolved from monkeys, and you and I can take turns slapping the stupid out of them.

The keywords to the diversity of life are “natural selection”, a term first coined by Charles Darwin, but by no means first formulated by him. I'm not sorry to burst the creationist bubble perpetuated by the likes of Kent “Jailbird” Hovind, but there was plenty of evidence of evolution presented before Darwin, and I am proud to say that it was a Scot who got there first – as per usual. Patrick Matthew was a tree hybridiser who cultivated timber for sale to shipwrights, on his land in the Carse of Gowrie, between Perth and Dundee in Scotland. He observed how some species of tree would flourish in a given environment, whilst others would wither and die. Yet that latter species if placed in a more favourable environment, would flourish where the former tree may not. Matthew published his observations in On Naval Timber and Arboriculture in 1829, six years before Charles Darwin had even set foot on The Beagle, and 30 years before he published On the Origin of Species. When Patrick Matthew read On the Origin of Species, he was furious, and wrote to Darwin accusing him of plagiarism. Darwin had no idea what Matthew was talking about, managed to obtain a copy of his 1829 paper, was fascinated by it, and responded to Matthew, intimating these facts. This led to a correspondence between the two men in which they found that the scientific observations they shared were far more important than petty rivalries. Matthew's trees came, like all trees, from common ancestors (ferns being one of the oldest survivors – they was around with the dinosaurs), yet they were suited only to their own suitable environments, and that is how it is with all life, including mankind. This is an important distinction, for I shall be touching upon it later.

Oh, and creationists, did you notice anything about Patrick Matthew's observations? They were all made in nature. Sorry to burst another bubble, but evolution has long been observed in nature. If that were not true, you would be eating ordinary grass instead of wheat, barley, rice and maize corn, all of which have evolved from grasses.

Look out, here comes the long sciencey bit.

So, with life having kicked off, the ID proponent still maintains that the Earth was perfectly designed for human life. Well of course, our species had to arise first, which was going to take a while. The first life, single-celled “prokaryotic” organisms, such as bacteria appeared around 3.8 billion years ago. Of these, photosynthetic cyanobacteria created oxygen as a natural waste product, leading to the “great oxidation event” of 2.4 billion years ago. Around 2 billion years ago eukaryotic cells, the first with internal organs occurred when single-cell organisms absorbed each other and lived in harmony as one, leading to the mitochondria bacteria. Around 1.5 billion years ago eukaryotes split into three separate lines which would rise as plants, animals and fungi, but were still single-cell organisms. Multicellular life only formed around 900 million years ago. But before that could happen, organisms were still reliant upon asexual reproduction by division. Around 1.2 billion years ago, a whole new game hit town – organisms started reproducing by sexual congress (and life has never been the same ever since).

Sexual reproduction and the rise of multicellular life was what really kick-started the true explosion of the species across the planet. Nobody quite knows exactly why sexual reproduction started, but it has several advantages over asexual division, not least of which being that it allows for multiple births, and hence growth of population. So it was that as the simplest sexually-reproducing sea creatures led to the chordates (animals with vertebrae), fish, amphibians, and thence the animals, of which there were several lines. I am simplifying this to keep it brief, but the rise – and fall – of life is truly fascinating, and I highly recommend those interested study it further. However, notice I say the fall of life as well. This is important as mass extinction events allowed other species to rise.

Mammal-like lizards were just evolving when the first and greatest mass extinction event took place at the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago. This almost wiped out all species, including the distinctive Dimetrodon (just to muddy the waters, Dimetrodon was not a dinosaur – different epoch), the giant predatory lizard with a sail on it's back, and the trilobites in the oceans. At first it was long believed that the cause of the Permian mass extinction event was an asteroid hitting earth, in the same way that the Chixculub Impactor later wiped out the dinosaurs. However, it has since been established that it was due to earthbound processes, mainly prolonged volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes raged in what was to become Siberia for around 500,000 years, not only erupting and sending vast clouds of ash into the atmosphere, but creating vast amounts of carbon dioxide, as well as releasing trapped pockets of the same, leading to mass deoxygenation. As well as soils being stripped and plant life destroyed on land, the oceans were particularly badly hit, as trapped gasses killed marine creatures, including algae, which vastly reduced the oxygen being produced. The evidence for this huge volcanic event is the accumulation of basalt lavas some 3 million cubic kilometres in volume and covering 3.9 million square kilometres of what is now eastern Russia. The Permian mass extinction event cannot be underestimated; it came close to wiping out all life on the face of the planet, almost destroyed the atmosphere, and could very well have ended up with the Earth being similar in environment to Venus. As it was, it took another 50 million years for the ecosystem to fully recover, as all life teetered on the brink of oblivion. In proper terms, the Permian mass extinction can be seen as a “starting over”. Out of the myriad of species before the event, at the end of it a mere 6% of all lifeforms survived.

As it recovered, small, furry, nocturnal creatures with canine teeth (any resemblance to the author here is purely coincidental) would eventually evolve into mammalia. Seeking refuge, some species of reptiles returned to the seas, and would grow to become the giant marine reptiles of the dinosaur era. The sauropsids were the dominant species, but just as the Earth had recovered the Permian extinction event, disaster again struck, in the form of the Triassic extinction event, 200 million years ago. The Triassic extinction may have been again caused by the release of vast amounts of carbon dioxide, this time caused not only by volcanic activity as the supercontinent Pangea rifted, increasing greenhouse gases and acidifying the oceans. Volcanic activity caused by the rift lasted some 620,000 years towards the end of the Triassic period, and was particularly intense in the first 40,000 years of the extinction. Another hypothesis is that the rising carbon dioxide could have released huge pockets of methane trapped in ice and undersea pockets. Methane is a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and would have caused Earth temperature to rise considerably. The end of the Triassic era ushered in a new epoch, the Cretaceous era.

The end-Triassic extinction was nowhere near as extensive as the Primean event, but it did vastly reduce populations, saw entire species wiped out, and asserted the dominance of the sauropsids, one line of them rose to be the dinosaurs. Alongside this, the first proto-mammals were forming, and living underground to avoid predatory dinosaurs. In an important step, perhaps triggered by the Triassic extinction, they developed warm-bloodedness, which enabled them to maintain internal temperature, regardless of conditions. Then the first split occurred in early mammals, in which the monotremes – mammals which lay eggs – divided from those which give birth to their young. The wonderful duck-billed platypus is a rare surviving example of monotremes.

140 million years ago the next step in the road to “us” took place, when placental mammals separated from the marsupials. These mammals, like the modern kangaroo, that give birth when their young are still very small, but nourish them in a pouch for the first few weeks or months of their lives. 105 million to 85 million years ago, the placental mammals split into four major groups; laurasiatheres (a hugely diverse group including all the hoofed mammals, whales, bats, and dogs), Xenarthra (including anteaters and armadillos), afrotheres (elephants, aardvarks and others), and our ancestors, euarchontoglires (primates, rodents and others).

As this was going on, Cretaceous dinosaurs were to reach their apex around 100 million years ago, when Argentinosaurus, the largest sauropod ever to have existed, evolved. A long-necked herbivore, between 30–35 metres (98–115 ft) in length and with a weight of up to 80–100 tonnes (88–110 short tons), Argentinosaurus absolutely dwarfed the predatory carnivore, Tyrannosaurus Rex. But the Earth was in upheaval again. Around 93 million years ago, the oceans suddenly became starved of oxygen, possibly due to underwater volcanic activity, wiping out 27% of marine invertebrates. Whilst this would have resultant adverse effects on land, mammalia faired rather well. 75 million years ago the line which led to modern primates split from that which led to modern rodents and lagomorphs (rabbits, hares, pikas). Rodents would go on to be an extremely successful species, eventually making up 40% of mammals (primates did not bad either). In flora, an extremely important step took place 70 million years ago when grasses first appeared.

The dinosaurs were the dominant species on the planet for around 135 million years – and then very suddenly, it was all over for them when they were wiped out, along with a great deal of life, extremely quickly (but not instantly, as some claim).

The most widely-accepted hypothesis for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs is that an asteroid approximately 10 kilometres (6 miles) in diameter smashed into the earth around 66 million years ago. A crater of over 180 km (110 miles) near Chixculub in the Yucatan Peninsula, Central America, confirms this event. The blast covered the entire earth, and as it brought about the end of the Cretaceous era, the resulting scorching can be found all over the world today as a broad, dark line in geological features, known as the “K-Pg Boundary” (marking the geological timeline, where the Cretaceous – starting with a K in German – ended, and the Paleogene era began). The theory being that as well as thousands of species wiped out immediately, including a great deal of plant life, this was followed by a “nuclear winter”, when ash blotted out the sun, killing other plant life, leading to the starvation of the omnivorous dinosaurs, which in turn starved out the last of the omnivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs.

The life of mammalia during the Cretaceous era proved to be a complete fluke to it's survival. As mammals had largely stayed underground to avoid predators, so it was that a great many species of them, including our ancestors, managed to survive the effects of the Chixculub Impactor. Emerging into a dinosaur-free world, primates were able to thrive, and the rise to mankind was finally underway. 63 million years ago the primates split into the haplorrhines (dry-nosed primates) and the strepsirrhines (wet-nosed primates). The strepsirrhines eventually become the modern lemurs and aye-ayes, while the haplorrhines develop into monkeys and apes. The first primate with enormous eyes to help it see at night, the tarsier, split from the rest of the haplorrhines around 58 million years ago.

The next fluke was to take place in the form of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which took place 56 million years ago. The PETM was a period when mean Earth temperature raised by around 5%. The cause may have been vast amounts of methane being released from the ocean floors, or from rotting organic matter. Whatever the cause, approximately 2,000 gigatonnes of carbon are thought to have entered the atmosphere and oceans at the same time as the PETM. Temperatures rose rapidly over approximately 6,000 years, and then gradually cooled to near-background levels over the next 150,000–200,000 years.

Convoluted scientific stuff aside, the basics are that our atmosphere was changing into more or less what we know today as the Eocene era was ushered in, and while he PETM was another mass extinction event, it actually benefited many survivors. During the Paleocene–Eocene boundary, primates underwent significant changes and three distinct mammal groups arose; Artiodactyla, which includes deer, camels and cows; Perissodactyla, which includes horses and rhinoceroses; and, at last, enter Primates, which includes monkeys, apes and humans. Other older and less adaptable mammal species became extinct during this time, and mammals generally became smaller. Why should this be a benefit? Simply because a smaller stature means more adaptable metabolisms, which meant that our early ancestors were able to survive on the smaller amounts of food available. Small can indeed be beautiful, as this particular shortarse can attest to. One of the more interesting facts about these early mammals, including the primates, is that they arose in what would become Asia and our primate ancestors were yet to find their way into Africa.

45 million years ago, the first of the anthropoids, the line from which we came, called Eosimias evolved. 5 million years later, primates were on the move. One group split off, somehow found their way into South America (as crazy as it sounds, possibly on rafts of vegetation), and would eventually become New World Monkeys. The anthropoids meanwhile were heading east, and 38 million years ago Afrotarsius was alive and well in Africa. From this humble creature came all the simian species of Africa. Afrotarsius is the common ancestor of us, the apes and monkeys – despite what some of the God Squad claim about us being evolved “from monkeys”. It was around 25 million years ago that the lines of apes and Old World Monkeys diverged, leading to the ape superfamily, Hominoidea. Gibbons split from the apes around 18 million years ago. By 14 million years ago, the Orang-Utans must have had enough of Africa, for they buggered off back to Asia. 8 million years ago, the Gorillas branched from the other great apes, Hominini, which included Australopithicines, other extinct biped simians, and chimpanzees, while in turn Hominina (human and other biped ancestors) parted from Panina (chimpanzees, bobonoes) 7.5 million years ago.

The feature which defines hominids is that of bipedalism. The species Sahelanthropus or Orrorin were the earliest bipedal hominins, and closest to the divergence from chimpanzees and humans. By 2.8 million years ago, an ape-like creature was using tools, and eating meat. This was Homo Habilis, the first of the genus Homo, and the species to which the famous 'first female', Lucy, belonged to. It is thought that meat eating led to increased brain size and intelligence. It also led to these early humans becoming hunters, for which they had to stand upright, and by 1.9 million years ago, Homo Erectus had arrived. There were several branches of the Homo genus, but the dominant branch which survived led to Homo Sapiens, which arose about 350,000 years ago, then split into two species 230,000 years ago; Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis, and Homo Sapiens Sapiens – us; a mere whippersnapper in the terms of life on earth, who arrived as recently as 200,000 years ago. That may sound a long time, but it is nothing in the terms of evolution.

Exactly why we thrived where the Neanderthals failed is not fully known, as they were just like our ancestors, a sophisticated people who made and used tools, hunted, gathered, farmed, had rudimentary language, buried their dead, and had cultural rituals. It may even have been the Neanderthals who introduced the concept of religion to humankind (I knew they had a flaw somewhere). One hypothesis is why they became extinct is that Homo Sapiens Sapiens was far more aggressive and wiped them out.

So, what am I getting at by banging on about evolution? Because notice how I have thrown in the frequent mass extinction events and other chance happenings, which have continually been fortuitous in allowing the best-adapted species to survive and thrive. Mass extinctions and other chance events cannot be underestimated in the context of challenging the ID narrative, for the simple reason that they completely defy any assertion that the Earth is designed for life. If life has risen and fallen in many, many forms, constantly for 3.8 billion years, when our planet has changed constantly, leading to the said life to rise and fall and actually driving evolution, constantly for 4.6 billion years, then when the ID proponent maintains the Earth is perfectly designed for life, they are not merely mistaken; they are talking havers to the point that I would suggest they take more water with it.

The critics of evolution will maintain that it cannot be proven, as “you weren't there”, “(macro)evolution has never been observed”. No, I wasn't there. But then I wasn't there to see Adam being sprung from the dust either. Sorry, but evolution has been observed both in nature and under laboratory conditions, including “macro”evolution. As I stated above, Patrick Matthew hybridised trees, and by doing so effectively created new species of trees from others, and of course, I will reiterate that wheat, barley, maize and rice, and many other grain staples of life, are all evolved from the same common ancestors of grasses as that on your lawn, favourite golf course, or by the beach you visit. In Lake Victoria in East Africa, the species pool of cichlid fish have all diverged in the last 15,000 years. The lake formed 400,000 years ago, then dried, then refilled 15,000 years ago, when cichlids entered and flourished. Not enough? Experiments on flies in laboratory conditions have been carried out since the 1960s, which have created many divergent species. Way too far to itemise here, there are in fact numerous examples of the proof and observation of macroevolution, you only need to do a quick Google search and you will find countless articles, including peer-reviewed scientific papers, detailing it. And no, you will never get a dog from a horse, or a crocoduck, and if you are still expecting one after reading this far, then you are merely being wilfully ignorant of the way evolution works.

Another foolish argument is that there are gaps in the fossil record, which creationists and ID proponents will point to as if to smugly think their god wins by default. Right, there are gaps in the fossil record, because fossils are in fact incredibly hard to create, and of course the pure timescales involved mean that any evidence which may have been there has long since disappeared. But so what if there are gaps? The way science works is very much detective work; if evidence of an early species is found, then the evidence of a much later species is found, then it only makes sound logical sense that there must be transitional steps between the two, which palaeontologists can build a picture of based upon the evidence of the two species they have. This was not lost on the brilliant Swiss-American geologist and naturalist, Louis Agassiz, who found early and later fossils of the same species of fish. He knew there had to be a transitional phase, and he actually saw in a dream what the transitional species must look like. Shortly afterwards he split a rock, and hey presto, there was the transitional fossil exactly as he saw it in his dream. Nothing spooky about that. It's simple that Agassiz's observations built up in his mind the educated guesswork which was to prove correct.

The periodic table works in exactly the same way; by looking at the elements which are identified, we can work out and predict other elements which exist, and the periodic table has never let us down on this. Sorry creationists, but the elements have moved on a long time since Air, Fire, Earth and Water.

And by the way, young earth creationists, who maintain the Earth is only 6000 year old, how come whenever ancient fossils have been found, there has never, not once, ever been an instance of a modern species found alongside them? Doesn't that tell you a little something? It should.

If you want it in simpler terms, then let me put it this way; I have a jigsaw of a picture of the city of Edinburgh, which has a few gaps missing. Because not all the pieces are there, would the creationist argue that the city of Edinburgh does not exist? And if so, where the hell am I sitting as I write this? And while we are about Edinburgh (home to James Hutton, the chemist who realised the world must be very ancient, and thereby kick-started geological science), and that palaeontology is so very much based in detective work, let us consider what one of my city's more famous sons, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, once say; “First eliminate the impossible. Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” In this instance creation and ID myths, wheresoever they may come from, have all been proven impossible. The Darwinian model of evolution, as improbable as it may seem to some, not only all fits together but is supported by other sciences, just as evolutionary biology in turn supports them, and thereby can only be the truth.

And were that not enough, the gaps are irrelevant, for the DNA evidence of evolution is proof enough. I had an online argument once with some fool trying to pour cold water on Patrick Matthew, and asking how I can equate plant life with human evolution and suggesting we have banana DNA. I never mentioned bananas of course, but did point out that if we go back far enough, then given that all life comes from the same origins, the principle remains the for both flora and fauna. Therefore dear reader, as bizarre as it may seem, we humans must indeed share a little banana DNA (with some of us being more bananas than others).

When we look at the immense timeline of the rise of life and gradual evolution over 3.8 billion years, including the extremely unlikely survival of devastating mass extinction events, chance happenings, and a catastrophic accident which unseated lizards as the dominant species, for any of our species, who just appeared in the evolutionary eye blink of 200,000 years ago, to claim that this planet was designed just for us is not just ignorant in the extreme, it is an incredible arrogance. It's like the new kid on the block throwing his weight around, trying to prove he's a big man, or the guy on the gate of the office car park, who in his mind thinks he is CEO of the corporation. It's a moot point that it is mankind's sapient mind that has made us so arrogant as to think we are not only 'top' species, but the world was made for us. Yet if cats ever evolved opposing thumbs, we all know it would be all over for our species.

I don't care what your creation myth or ID idea is. It is not only nonsense, it not only has been proven to be nonsense, it has been proven to be impossible. And if any of you care to argue with that, then given that so many creationists are so ready to demand evidence, then so can I, and if you wish to debate it with me, then first show me clearly observed peer-reviewed scientific evidence of a woman springing from a man's rib.

In part 3, I shall be looking at the Earth itself, why it is not perfectly designed for human life, at the human body and why equally we are ill-fitted for life on Earth, and why we are such a waste of space and really have no business being on Earth in the first place.