NOT Designed for Life

Former dense forest, Tunguska, Siberia

Part 4:  Forever and ever?

In the three previous articles in this series criticising the teleological / Intelligent Design (ID) argument, I have looked at the way the universe and the Earth came about, the rise of mankind, and common dangers in life we live with every day, which makes the survival of each of us extremely tenuous. In this concluding article I shall look explain how our entire species, and even all life on Earth, and how eventually it shall disappear completely.

Space is fraught with dangers. Asteroids and comets fly freely about space, but are attracted by the gravitational pull of other bodies in the cosmos. Some fragments of these break off and become meteoroids. As they are drawn in to planets, they become meteorites. Our own Moon, almost certainly the result of a planet-sized body colliding with the Earth, is testimony to the destructive potential of debris flying about in space. Also, the evidence of craters on the moon and on other planets shows just how common it is for meteorites to collide with other bodies in space. Our very survival relies upon gravity, but it is the gravitational pull of planets which pulls asteroids into them. This is precisely what happened to a comet fragment, Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) was pulled into Jupiter's gravity in 1994. SL9 impacted Jupiter with a force of 6 million megatons, which sent a cloud 3000km above the planet's atmosphere. Even an object that size would be enough to wipe out our species, and consider that SL9 was but a fragment. Earth is somewhat fortunate in having Jupiter and the other gas giants in the outer solar system, as their huge gravitational pull makes them our first line in defence against asteroids and comets. On the other hand, the pull they and the sun have actually brings these objects into the solar system, and makes a strike on Earth not only all the more likely, but inevitable.

When one looks at the way meteors have hit the Moon and other planets, they may be tempted to think just why that doesn't happen on Earth. And the simple answer is, it does – every day and all the time. Most spacebourne rocks are in fact quite small and burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere, losing most of their mass in doing so. When we see them at night, we call them 'shooting stars'. If you've ever found small, burnt, metallic-like 'stones', those are in fact meteorites, and if you ever handle one, consider that you are in fact holding an extremely ancient piece of the universe, created billions of years ago, which travelled billions of miles across space before being drawn in by Earth's gravity and burning up in our atmosphere.

The doubter may scoff at this, that if such things burn up in our atmosphere, then they can scoff all they want. For if small objects can hit Earth, it logically follows that larger ones can do so. Which of course they do; some of them much larger than others, and which can have devastating consequences.

On the morning of 30 June 1908, there was a massive explosion above the Stony Tunguska River in Siberia. The shockwave of the blast knocked people off their feet, and shattered windows for hundreds of kilometres around. Reindeer in the area were scorched to a crisp. Over 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi) were flattened, while those at 'Ground Zero' were scorched through. The shockwave was recorded by seismographs all over Europe and Asia, including in Edinburgh, Scotland, over 3500 miles away, as the equivalent of an earthquake measuring over 5 on the Richter Scale. Edinburgh was also one of a great many places across the northern hemisphere where the sky was seen to glow as bright as daylight all night long for several nights afterwards. The explosion was initially estimated to be 30 megatons, although this has more recently been downgraded to 10 to 15 megatons.

“The fire came by,” said Reindeer herdsman Ilya Popovich, “and destroyed the forest, the reindeer, and the storehouses. Afterwards, when the Tungus went in search of the herd, they found only charred reindeer carcasses.” Another eyewitness, S Semenov, stated;

“At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara Trading Post [65 kilometres/40 miles south of the explosion], facing north. [..] I suddenly saw that directly to the north, over Onkoul's Tunguska Road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest [as Semenov showed, about 50 degrees up—expedition note]. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few metres. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn a part of the iron lock snapped.”

Russia at the time was in turmoil at the time in the aftermath of the first revolution of 1905. Other little matters such as the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Russian Civil War held, coupled with the remoteness of the blast site, meant that it was not until 1921 that the first expedition reached the area. Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, based on eyewitness testimony, was persuaded that the event must have been a meteor impact. He finally convinced Soviet authorities to back a more in-depth expedition in 1927. When he reached the impact area, looking down on “ground zero” from a ridge, Kulik got the surprise of his life; there were the remnants of trees standing upright, scorched through, and further out trees were flattened out in a fan-like pattern – but no sign of the impact crater he expected to find, and which by all accounts, should have been there.

The absence of a crater at Tunguska drove science, and the general public, crazy. And for over a hundred years after the event, all sort of hypotheses which were put forward, along with the more-crazy speculation of the deluded and conspiracy theorists. Many believers in UFOs and extraterrestrial aliens postulated, and even downright maintained, that a nuclear-powered alien spacecraft had overheated and exploded. Note to anyone believing such nonsense – whatever the rights and wrongs of nuclear power, it is quite simply an impossibility for a nuclear reactor to explode like a nuclear bomb. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as various atmospheric atomic bomb tests, it was noted how trees at Ground Zero were charred through, whilst those further out were flattened in a fan-like pattern. This, along with the charring of the reindeer, eyewitness reports of clothes being burned off (actually very similar to an eyewitness report in John Hershey's Hiroshima) and reports of local people, known for their good health and longevity suddenly developing illnesses and dying early, led many others to postulate that the event may have been something causing a nuclear explosion, perhaps a pocket of antimatter entering Earth atmosphere and exploding upon contact with matter. Others claimed a nuclear weapon sent back through time from the future.

Thankfully, serious science never listened to all this daftness, and finally in 2013, Russian and American scientist found meteorite fragments in peat bogs in the impact area. This debris shows high proportions of iridium, also found in the remnants of the Chixculub Impactor, the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs. The leading hypothesis therefore is that an asteroid entered Earth atmosphere, and exploded above the Stony Tunguska River, thereby leading to the enormous blast and catastrophic results.

Had the Tunguska meteor exploded above a densely populated area such as a major city, then it would have killed millions of people. And neither was it a one-off nor a rare event. Tunguska was indeed the largest recorded meteor event in recorded history, but there have been similar air burst meteors – bolides - in history. What is now believed to be such an event occurred in the Qìngyáng district of the then-Chinese province of Shaanxi, in which contemporary reports recorded widespread destruction and hundreds of deaths. The most recent happened right here in Scotland, on 29 February 2016, when a bolide burst with a bright flash seen from the Shetland Isles to the north of England, followed by a loud blast, 90 seconds later. Thankfully, this event was a small one, but had it been the size of the Tunguska event and had occurred in the Scottish Central Belt (roughly Edinburgh, Glasgow and surrounding areas) then it could have killed hundreds, thousands, or even millions.

Bolide explosion caught on cameras, Scotland, 29 February 2016:

The last airburst bolide to cause any injury was that which burst above the Chelyabinsk Oblast, Siberia, Russia, on 15 February 2013. The yield of the atmospheric impact was around 500 kilotons, or 20 to 30 times more powerful than the atomic bomb exploded above Hiroshima. Over 1500 people had to be treated for injuries, and the resultant blast damaged 7200 buildings in six cities around the region. Yet it could have been much worse. In 1957 there was an explosion at an underground nuclear waste repository in the Chelyabinsk region, which blew the top of the repository, and the resultant fallout leaving it as one of the most radioactive regions on Earth, which is still being cleaned up. Had the meteor burst near above, or impacted the earth in that region, then apart from immediate blast deaths, the irradiated debris thrown up could well have led to millions of cancer deaths across Eurasia.

Consider that most meteorites do indeed explode in mid-air and Earth has been extremely fortunate in not having had a ground-impacting event, such as the Chixculub Impactor, for many years, and most happened millions of years ago. This however does not mean we are safe, not by any mark. The most recent confirmed meteor impact crater is that of Nördlinger Ries, Bavaria, Germany, where an object with a diameter of about 1.5 kilometres (4,900 ft) impacted Earth around 14.5 million years ago with the force of resulting explosion had the power of 1.8 million Hiroshima bombs, an energy of roughly 2.4×10²¹ joules. Another unconfirmed crater however has been postulated as a possible impactor from as recently as c.1400. This is the Mahuika crater off the coast of New Zealand, which measures 20 ± 2 km (12.4 ± 1.2 mi) wide and over 153 meters (502 ft) deep. Reported by Dallas Abbott of Columbia University, and named by her after the Maori god of fire, the claim is disputed, but Maori legend tells of a huge explosion followed by a vast tsunami. This is important, for as devastating as a meteor strike on ground, such as happened at Meteor Crater, Arizona, if a large meteor ever hits one of our oceans – which cover two thirds of the globe – the subsequent tsunamis alone would have the potential to wipe out entire countries, killing billions. Do not forget that as I mentioned in a previous article, the vast majority of human beings live on or near to coastlines.

So, why does this happen? Well, the answer lies within our own solar system. Most come from the Asteroid Belt; an area of spacebourne rocks lying between Earth and Mars (and perhaps the remnants of a former planet), which range in size from nearly 1000-kilometres across to microscopic dust particles. As these rocks are free-floating, collisions between them can cause them to be dislodged, as can heat from the sun dislodge 'smaller' rocks (still big enough to devastate regions of Earth) by warming them more on one side, causing a gradual push, which sends them spinning. This can build up over millions of years, giving asteroids significant speed. After that, solar and Earth gravity does all the rest of the work. Some asteroids hitting the Moon or Mars can and do send shards flying off, which are captured by Earth's gravity and pulled into us.

Similarly, the way our sun and the solar system act within the Milky Way Galaxy (stop thinking about chocolate) presents it's own dangers. Our sun does not merely travel around galactic central point in an outward spiral arm. As it does so, it traverses in and out of the area of the arm – think of it very much like that of an old-fashioned carousel horse, going up and down as it goes round. Every 30 million years or so, the sun and the solar system traverse through the centre of the spiral arm, and approximately every 30 million years, there has been a mass extinction event on Earth. The solar system is surrounded by the Oort Cloud; a vast cloud of icy objects floating in space. As our solar system travels through the “danger zone”, the gravity of nearby stars pull at this cloud, which as it rebounds, sends objects hurtling inward towards the sun. We call these objects comets, and one of them, missing the outer gas giants, then skimming around the sun, slingshot by it's gravity, is what impacted at Chixculub, 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs as the dominant species.

These events are extremely important to this narrative, for they present enormous problems for the ID proponent. For if our own solar system has within it's own machinations processes which threaten our very existence, then if the ID proponent were correct, we see that our solar system, and by extension the universe itself, contain serious 'design faults'. So much for the perfectly-designed universe. Again, think of the carousel horse, think of a kid on that horse – and think of part of the overhead machinery coming loose due to a design fault and falling on top of her. Like the badly-designed carousel, if our universe is designed, then it is a shit design which the pisspoor designer ought to be held culpable for.

And worse still, if a big one did hit, there's not hellish much we can do about it. There have been various hypotheses of what could be done, but until we are in that position, we are powerless, and even then, there may be nothing we actually can do. Neither Bruce Willis and a bunch of misfit riggers, nor anyone else would be going up there to plant a thermonuclear weapon on it to blow a comet or asteroid apart, and doing so may actually make matters worse, as Earth would be hit by several objects in various places, instead of just one in one place. Placing a sail or motor to redirect the object's course may not work. Mankind may not even have sufficient time to act once the danger became imminent. That's if it even became imminent – the Chelyabinsk and Scottish meteorites came without warning. Similarly an object big enough to wipe out most life on the face of the planet, perhaps all life, could literally come out of nowhere. Or by the time it got close enough for us to send anything to meet it, it may then be too close to Earth to take any effective action. And as it first burned the oxygen out of the air and out of our very lungs, we would not even have time to put our heads between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye. Neither am I overplaying this. As I said, a mass extinction occurs approximately every 30 million years, due to a space impact. We are now well overdue having a large object hitting us, and have been lucky so far. That luck cannot last forever; it is not a matter of 'if' but 'when'.

Much less likely, yet not outwith the bounds of possibility, are black holes. In a term coined in 1967 by John Wheeler of Princeton University, Einstein's Theory of Relativity predicted “black holes” are the remnants of dead stars which have collapsed in on themselves, leaving an extremely tiny yet incredibly dense core whose enormous gravitational pull sucks all matter in it's path into it which then cannot escape, not even light, hence “black hole”. More technically known as singularities, black holes were purely hypothetical and only confirmed as recently as February 2016, when the Hubble Telescope observed gravitational waves – waves in space-time also hypothetical until recently – from two black holes merging together. Black holes lie everywhere in the universe, and not only even in our own Milky Way Galaxy, but indeed, the galaxy is here in the first place because all matter in it, including our solar system, our sun, our Earth, us, as strange as it may seem are all gradually being sucked into a supermassive black hole, billions of times bigger than the sun, which lies at the centre of the galaxy. It is possible that all galaxies are formed by such supermassive black holes drawing in matter around them.

So, whilst it is extremely unlikely, what would happen if a black hole entered our solar system? Well first it would tear into the Oort Cloud, sending a huge number of comets shooting towards the sun. At this point, it would not even be detectable, apart from slight gravitational lensing on distant stars as seen by powerful telescopes. It would not be until the black hole reached the gas giant planets of the outer solar system that it would become noticeable, and by that time it would be too late. In much the same way that we cannot see a tornado, but the matter which the vortex sucks in, as the black hole swallowed Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter, it would form an “accretion disk” of matter around it's tiny centre. Without the gas giants of course, the inner solar system would be at the mercy of any flying space debris which had managed to avoid it's pull. But by the time the black hole reached Jupiter, it would already been all over for mankind, and all life on Earth anyway. With the massive gravitational pull causing earthquakes and supervolcanoes, the likes of which Earth has not seen since its earliest days. And indeed, as Mars was swallowed up, our planet would already be reduced to a superhot ball of magma, as it was in its days of being a protoplanet, and all life would have been wiped out – not even the cockroaches could survive this one. Then our planet itself would be torn apart and sucked into the black hole, then Venus, then Mercury, then old Sol himself, before the ever-hungry monster continued across the galaxy, sucking in anything and everything in it's path.

That is but one possibility. Another is that once in the solar system, the black hole would be attracted to the two largest bodies, Jupiter and the sun. As above, the loss of Jupiter would remove our first line of defence against meteorites and bolides, then as it started to suck matter from the sun, a massive galactic 'tug-of-war' would ensue, which the sun would lose, being drawn closer to the Earth, destroying all life, and eventually either our own sun or the black hole swallowing first Mercury, then Venus, then our own planet.

Of course, this is all hypothetical and the chances are extremely slim, having been calculated at around one in a trillion. However, that one chance does not mean never, the chance still exists; it's highly unlikely that most of us will get hit by lightning – but it still happens to some. There may be as many as 100 million black holes in our galaxy alone, and we have no idea where the overwhelming majority of them have. So while the chances are extremely slim, they are by no means impossible. Of course, the naysayer may disregard this because the chances are so slim, but that misses the point, which is that again, if the universe is designed, then that design is not merely slipshod, but downright dangerous. For such a 'perfect' universe to include things which are capable of not just wiping out all life, but entire solar systems, would be nothing short of gross negligence on the part of the designer and creator.

But then, we need not worry about the long-term future of planet Earth and humanity, for if there is one thing this planet does not have, it's a long-term future.

One of the favourite – and most mistaken – claims of ID proponents is that how 'perfectly' our planet is distanced from the sun, and how 'perfectly' our moon is distanced from the Earth. They are fond of saying that a little closer to the sun and we would burn up, a little further away, and we would freeze. I have heard and read this claimed from “a few miles” to even “a few inches”, and it's complete bullshit – well, almost.

It is true that the Earth lies in a “Goldilocks Zone” which has led to the rise of life. Indeed, if our planet were closer to the sun, then the planet would be too hot for life – as we know it, just like Venus. If Earth were further away, then likewise life as we know it could not exist in the cold, just like Mars. However, our Goldilocks Zone, or Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ) is extremely wide, and due to gravitational pulls and our elliptical – not round – orbit around the sun, we do draw closer to and move further from it, not by “a few miles”, unless you are counting thousands as “a few”. Add to this that Earth is not alone in the CHZ of the solar system, but Venus and Mars are indeed included in it, due to one element – water. Venus and Mars, like Earth, have atmospheres and water, which of course is essential for life to exist in the first place.

Is any of this important or relevant to this article? Yep, sure is, for one day Mars may become mankind's lifeboat. Our sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago, and is roughly halfway through it's lifetime. In around 4.4 billion years, the sun will start to expand towards it's red dwarf phase (Lister, Cat, Rimmer, and Kryten will be 6 billion light years away). As the sun begins to expand, we can kiss goodbye our CHZ, and like Goldilocks, our species, along with any other species we take, will have to run for it, or stay and die. Then Mars may become a temporary home, but even then, as the sun keeps expanding, one of Jupiter's moons, perhaps Europa (if the aliens allow us to attempt any landings there) or Titan, would be our next target. Eventually, if mankind is to survive at all in the deep, deep future, then relying upon our own ingenuity to move out of the solar system – the 'local neighbourhood' – altogether. As the sun expands even more, it will indeed consume every planet, every object, in the solar system. Eventually the sun itself would expand beyond it's own capabilities, and it's light will go out forever.

If our species has managed to survive this, then our distant descendants will be far, far from this tiny, blue-green rock we call home, which will have long since have disappeared. They will more than likely have evolved to adapt to their new environments, on another planet, in another solar system, elsewhere in the galaxy. We have after all already evolved as we populated new environments across the planet, so adapting to another planet would be an inevitability. But even that may not be a permanent home, as the star it surrounds will expand just like our sun. And of course, the entire galaxy, continually being sucked into the supermassive black hole at its centre, will eventually disappear altogether.

But even then, no matter how far mankind evolves and how far out into the universe they go, although it make take billions and billions of years, our distant descendants will merely be postponing the inevitable, the annihilation of our species, as the universe itself comes to an end. One hypothesis of this is “heat death” of the universe; that as it continually expands, it will reach a state of no thermodynamic free energy, and therefore can no longer sustain processes that consume energy, including computation and life. This idea came from the ideas of William Thomson (no relation – sadly), First Baron Kelvin, who in the 1850s took the theory of heat as mechanical energy loss in nature (as embodied in the first two laws of thermodynamics) and extrapolated it to larger processes on a universal scale.

Even before this happens, as black holes continue with no way of abating them, there is every possibility that all will remain of space will be black holes, which may very well collide with each other, becoming increasingly dense as they swallow everything up, including the very universe itself.

Or then there is the “big rip” hypothesis. It was once thought that as the universe expanded, it must decelerate, which would allow for the universe to expand so far, and then contract. In 2011 however, it was discovered that far from slowing, the expansion of the universe is in fact accelerating. For this to happen, then there must be some kind of material or field within the universe which is exerting a negative pressure, or repulsive gravity. This is called dark energy. Dark energy is everywhere in the universe and is so powerful that it has been observed to retard and even prevent the growth of superclusters of galaxies. The 'big rip' hypothesis is that as dark energy increases, it will be able to overcome all, including gravitation. Thus entire galaxy superclusters will be ripped apart, perhaps even black holes destroyed, leaving nothing of space but a cold, empty vacuum.

So, for a “perfectly designed universe”, it not only is full of things which threaten all life on a daily basis, but has within that design the very things that will cause major parts of it to break down, and may well include factors which will one day cause it to stop working altogether. It seems our designer has slapped a best before date on the “perfectly designed” universe, and like a dodgy car manufacturer, has included built-in obsolescence into the design.

In the past four articles in this series I have taken the reader of a journey from the birth of the universe, some 13.82 billion years ago, through the formation of the solar system, 4.6 billion years ago, the rise of life some 3.8 billion years ago, the evolutionary journey which against all odds led to mankind rising a mere 200,000 years ago, up to the present day, and have looked into the future fate of our planet, our solar system, our galaxy and the universe itself. I have shown any idea of the universe, the galaxy, solar system, Earth, life and mankind being created by an intelligent designer to be clearly preposterous. Yes, I have mocked, and I make absolutely no apologies for that. When the misinformed, the deluded, the frauds and the charlatans put forward preposterous ideas which have no evidence to back them up, and which cannot stand up to even the slightest scrutiny, even by a layman like me, and try to present that as fact, then they roundly deserve to be mocked. And if you think I can mock, I invite anyone to go and read or watch the claims of ID proponents, and just how much they mock serious peer-reviewed science, those who spread that science, and how they try to downright bully others, including schools, into accepting their nonsensical and baseless claims in the name of science.

This Earth, our home was never “perfectly designed” for life, nor was our solar system, our galaxy, or the universe. Nor were we “perfectly designed” for life on Earth. The simple fact is that due to the dangers of life on Earth, due to the limitations of our bodies, Homo Sapiens Sapiens evolved and adapted for life on this planet, just as every other species, be they animal or plant, has thus evolved. That is the very essence of evolution; adaptation to a given environment. “Survival of the fittest” does not mean the strongest, but which species is best suited to an environment. That's why you don't find many human beings living in the oceans, or fish in dry areas. And of course this means that we are indeed not 'top species', just best suited to the environments we choose to live in. There is no 'top species', and contrary to what some creationists and ID proponents try to claim, no-one seriously interested in evolution would ever claim any such thing. I know the idea of humanity being 'just another animal' must really stick in the craw of some creationists and ID proponents, for after all, it is they who claim that, according to their Bronze Age campfire stories of goat herders campfire tales, mankind was given “dominion” over all the species on the Earth. It is actually creationists and ID proponents who see humanity as a “master race”, while those of us who have an active interest in evolution realise that there is no such thing.

Intelligent Design, creationism and the teleological argument are sometimes referred to as pseudoscience. I would not even grace them with that title, for pseudoscience is based on mistaken notions of science. They have no such basis and are really nothing better than a fairy story – and not even a very good one at that.

Well, I for one like fairy stories, but there comes a time when one has to realise that the garden (our Earth) is beautiful and fascinating enough, without going looking for fairies at the bottom of it.

NOT Designed for Life

Mankind conquering nature in Pompeii

Part 3:  Dominion over all the Earth...

In the first and second parts of this critique of the teleologial / intelligent design (ID) argument; that the Earth was designed for life, and mankind was designed for Earth, I looked at the arguments, the universe, the formation of the Earth, and the rise of life up to Homo Sapiens Sapiens. In this article, I shall address the Earth itself, human biology, and our very place upon the planet.

Still the ID proponent will maintain that Earth is perfectly designed for human life. So, we have homo sapiens sapiens, “thinking man” (HA!), inhabiting this world which is allegedly “perfectly” designed for him, and we are allegedly perfectly designed to inhabit. Except that is for the 72% of it which is covered in water, 97% of which is salty ocean, another 2% of which is polar ice caps, far too cold for human survival. So that leaves us 28% landmass. But hold on, of that area, 33% - a whole third - is uninhabitable desert. We cannot survive permanently at altitudes of over 5500 metres and at over 8000 metres, it may be a great environment for yetis, but impossible for humans to survive in, so that's mountainous areas out. Neither can we live for long periods in rainforest, due to the many dangers which lurk therein.

Have a look at a world map sometime and see just how much of the planet is occupied by humans, and you will find that the inhabited areas make up less than 1% of the landmass. This is no mistake; like any other species, humankind will only concentrate in environments suitable to their survival – see points above about evolution and natural selection. Consider Australia alone, and go have a look at a map of it; the population lives mostly around the coast, while the inland area, the Outback, is almost completely uninhabited. Why is the Outback mostly uninhabited? Because it's bloody uninhabitable, that's why. Better still, look at Egypt; the oldest continuous civilization on the face of the planet, where that civilization has thrived for over 7000 years (someone must have forgot to tell them about Bishop Usher's calculations making the Earth 6000 years old) on the edge of the Sahara Desert – wholly due to a ruddy great river, the Nile, running through it to the Mediterranean coast.

So, let's stay away from all the dangerous areas and stay in largely temperate zones and we should be okay, yes? Hmm. Make sure you are careful about anything you pick off bushes and eat. Likewise, be careful of any meat you should eat, and make sure you cook it first, which of course means learning how to create (and control) fire – also essential for survival. And of course, you will need to wear clothes – the only animal to do so (with the possible exception of hermit crabs) – not only to protect yourself from the elements, but some plants which you may brush up against, which can kill, as well as bites and stings from other creatures, which can be equally lethal. And while we're about that, our prototype human needs to be on the ever careful watch out for predators, of which there are a great many. Of course, the best way our human can protect himself from predators, the elements and many other dangers is to house himself. Early man decided that caves would suffice as housing. Ermm, bears like caves. As do poisonous spiders, snakes, and many other predatory and dangerous creatures. And they offer scant protection from the elements, so mankind had to build his own domiciles to survive.  This perfect environment's looking too good so far, is it?  And we're just coming to the end of the fourth paragraph.

So our guy (let's assume it's a man, because he's so haphazard to the point that a woman would be covering her eyes and shaking her head by now) has to build his own dwelling, instead of relying on his god giving him a perfect environment. He should be safe now, right? Wrong. If he has built in a seismic area, he runs the ever-present risk of earthquakes, sinkholes, landslides, and even volcanic eruptions. Indeed, in volcanic regions, he could be killed by pyroclastic flow, ash, mudslide, or even silently by deadly gasses being released. This is precisely what happened to around 1700 people who perished around Lake Nyos, Cameroon, in 1986, when an underwater landslide released a pocket of carbon dioxide which rendered them unconscious before killing through oxygen starvation. Similarly the dead of the Pompeii eruption of 79 CE were so perfectly preserved because they had been rendered unconscious before being covered in a thick layer of volcanic ash.

Perhaps our chap could live in a coastal region? Then there would be the dangers of flooding and in some areas, tsunami. Of course, flooding does also occur in inland areas, and kill many every year. But even if sufficiently high or protected, our man would still be at the mercy of the winds, which kill thousands worldwide every year. And then of course, there is always the chance of being struck by lightning.

So, perhaps our friend could take all possible precautions, staying out of adverse weather, building a strong enough environment to withstand the elements, high enough to avoid flooding, in a non-seismic area, and stays indoors whenever inclement weather shows. He is already living a completely unnatural life, but whoops, he has to go out sometime, and interact with other people. And because of that, he now runs the risk of contracting a myriad of diseases, many of which, can be easily contracted merely by touching an area an infected person has touched, and can indeed kill. The end of the First World War saw people again beginning to move across Europe, including from Spain into France. Unwittingly, some of these Spanish carried the H1N1 influenza virus with them, leading to the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people. Consider that by comparison the First World War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, killed 38 million. Mother Nature can be much more cruel than humanity. But our friend need not even come into contact with other humans or the diseases they carry. Malaria, spread by mosquito bites, is one of the biggest killers of humanity every year, with 438,000 deaths in 2015 alone.

But then our friend is not even in the modern era, and so is prone to every disease going, including not just the myriad of tropical ones, but anything as common as tetanus. It will be thousands of years until his descendants develop vaccines and cures against even the simplest of diseases or infections. Right now, his life is vulnerable to anything as simple as an untreated scratch, and his lifespan is around 30 to 35 years. Why? Because bacteria which causes disease and infection are everywhere. Bacteria vastly outstrip humanity, or any other species on the face of this planet. They were here long before we arrived, they may well be here after our species is long gone. In fact, if anyone was to consider the Earth to be designed for life, then it could strongly be argued that it was not designed for us, but rather for the microbial life which abounds and thrives everywhere.

The God-botherers must be quite irate at me by now. Perhaps they should take a glass of water to calm down – secure in the fact that their treated water contains no disease-carrying bacteria, or for that matter parasites which kill slowly from the inside out.

However, meantime our friend has decided to get away from those deadly mosquitoes and thus has travelled north into Europe, built a house in a non-seismic area, away from coasts and flood plains, strong enough to withstand the elements and keep predators at bay. He's taking all the precautions he can, and he should be safe enough. Well, he will be. Unfortunately his descendants will end up with much lighter skin, will suffer a Vitamin D deficiency, and will be much more prone to skin cancers. The incidence melanoma in white caucasians is much, much higher than any other race. The US Center for Disease Control shows that in 2012 around 25 whites out of 100,000 developed skin cancers. For Native Americans / Inuit, and Hispanics, the incidence was around 5 our of 100,000, with the darkest-skinned peoples, African Americans and Pacific Islanders, way down at 1 out of 100,000. But even if our proto-human were African, living in the north of the planet, he may be safe, succeeding generations of his in the future would not be, for their skins too would lighten with every passing generation, and thereby greatly increase their likelihood of skin cancer. It has happened before, which is precisely why I am white (well, not really 'white' - I prefer to say “peach-flake”), it could only happen again in the same circumstances. That's the way evolution works.

White supremacists who claim they are the “master race” amuse me more than anger me, for if anything it is white people who are an aberration from the original human race; all of us come from black African ancestors (suck it up, KKK, BNP, EDL, etc, etc.). So am I saying that black people are more 'racially pure', or better adapted to life on the planet? Nope. Not for one moment, for African peoples also have their own problems. I mentioned malaria above as one of the biggest killers on the planet. As malaria is a parasite carried by mosquitoes, one would imagine that evolution would have developed a resistance to it, and you would be correct. However, nature can be cruel, and in some people who developed the resistance to malaria, it left a ticking time bomb in the nature of sickle cell anaemia.

Sickle cell anaemia occurs only in black people and is due to a purely evolutionary quirk. Sciencey bit coming. The DNA code tells the gene that tells the body how to make a form of haemoglobin (Hb), the oxygen-carrying molecule in our blood. In some people this gene has mutated through evolution for their red blood cells to carry abnormal amounts of haemoglobin. These form a sickle shape when attacked by the malaria parasite, and pass through the spleen, and being an aberration from normal blood cells, are culled, with the malaria parasite along with them. Clever, no? Those with these mutated genes, haemoglobin sickle (HbS), are sickle cell carriers, who are otherwise perfectly healthy, and who make up some 40% of the areas of Africa hardest hit by malaria. However, while these carriers suffer no ill effects, it takes two HbS genes to cause sickle cell anaemia. Therefore, if a child of two HbS carriers inherits mutated genes from both parents, then the abnormal form of the haemoglobin protein causes the red blood cells to lose oxygen and warp into a sickle shape during periods of high activity. These sickled cells become stuck in small blood vessels, the spleen unable to cope with them, causing a crisis of pain, fever, swelling, and tissue damage that can lead to death. This is sickle cell anaemia.

Sickle cell is what scientists would call “elegant”. The way it works in combating malaria is certainly fascinating, and what is more, it is yet one more proof of that evolutionary biology is factual. Sadly, the payoff is pain and suffering for millions of black people, hours of tiring and destructive chemotherapy treatment – for sufferers in developed countries, no real cure, and ultimately death for approximately 1.2 million black people every year. In 2012 one Chicago woman was successfully treated for sickle cell anaemia with stem cell transplants, but not only does such treatment, just like chemotherapy, remain out of the reach of the majority of sufferers in Africa, as long as stem cell treatment remains controversial with many theists, the deeply religious peoples of Africa – with prompting from the major churches of the world - would be highly unlikely to accept it.

And of course, as the huge prevalence of HIV, Ebola, and many other diseases and parasites in Africa are testimony to, malaria and sickle cell anaemia are not the only infections which many peoples in Africa have to cope with daily. And that's before we even get around to the lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, crocodiles, the fucking scorpions (I HATE scorpions), snakes, elephants in must, and the hippopotami. Strange as it may seem, despite all the predatory animals and poisonous beasties in Africa, the humble herbivore hippopotamus is the biggest killer of humans in the continent. Male hippos are extremely territorial, while females will kill to protect their young. And of course, where Africa is concerned, all the above is before we even get round to crop failures, lack of clean water (another of the continent's biggest killers), and many other natural impacts, without even considering the great many manmade ones.

The overwhelming majority of people who claim that the Earth is designed to be perfect for human life tend to be white, male, Americans, living very comfortable lives in nice air-conditioned and centrally-heated homes, in modern cities - and thus could not be further from the natural life they maintain we and the planet were designed for. They also tend to be mid 50s to elderly, having spent an absolute fortune on healthcare which has kept them alive. Because they see the world through their privileged first world eyes, they fail to comprehend any other kind of world. Because children starving and dying of terrible diseases is so very far away from them, because other US citizens living in poverty and dying of terrible diseases is so very far from their lifestyle, they have a psychological disconnect from those realities, and those less fortunate than them may as well be on another planet. And while they may well live to a grand old age, they may wish to reflect that very few people, even in developed countries, die peacefully of old age; disease gets most of us, one way or another.

The ID brigade can think all they want that Earth is perfect for human habitation, but the fact is that nowhere on the planet is safe for our species. Even putting manmade dangers to one side, there is not one spot of landmass, anywhere on the planet, where humans are not at risk from adverse weather and environmental conditions, predators, poisons, infections and diseases, or natural disasters. If there is any miracle about human beings thriving on this planet, it is just that; that we have managed to survive at all.

Even our bodies are not suited for life on planet Earth. The way we lack hair offers us poor protection from the elements, poisonous and stinging plants, and UV rays from the sun, and we have to cover our bodies with clothes to compensate for this. Our immune systems are so poor that after 200,000 years on the face of the planet, we can still be felled by the common cold, and are prone to a myriad of other infections and diseases just waiting to attack, and we are an open target for just about every parasite going. Even if otherwise perfectly healthy, many of us carry genetic defects which may go back generations.

Our eyes, as complex and brilliant as they may indeed be, are in fact extremely poor in correcting aberration of light. The payoff for this is that our eyesight decreases intensely from the moment we first open our eyes, with the result that most of us need corrective lenses past the age of 40, and some will go blind with age. So much for “irreducible complexity” of the eye – a great favourite of ID proponents. German physicist Hermann Herholtz (1821-1894) wrote of the human eye; “Nature seems to have packed this organ with mistakes, as if for the avowed purpose of destroying any foundation for the theory that organs are adapted to their environment."

Our body temperature operates extremely poorly, and it's failure to keep the body within a few degrees of 98.6 Fahrenheit will lead to us feeling unwell, and in extreme cases, death. And note that there are few places on the face of the planet that will cope with an organism whose survival is assured by staying within that safe zone of body temperature.

As Homo Sapiens Sapiens evolved and became a hunter, the anatomy of the species underwent a profound distinction from the other simians. As our species had to stand upright to hunt and to be alert for predators, we developed an inward-curving spine, instead of the outward-curving spines all other simians (and most other mammals in fact) have. This is great for hunting, surveying the environment, swimming (Homo Sapiens Sapiens is the only simian who can swim), and running on two feet. It is not so great however when it comes to supporting the intestines, for supporting the womb and any foetus it may be carrying, or for that matter just carrying the weight of the human body. Everyone's spine deteriorates with age, from the mild to the extreme. Consider that even in less extreme cases, backache is one of the most common causes of workplace absence. While in the more extreme cases, with age many human beings can become wheelchair-bound or even bedridden for the remainder of their natural life.

If you stand anything upright, gravity will inevitably take it's toll, and mankind is no different from any other body on the planet in this respect. In other mammals, the weight of the internal organs is distributed evenly as they go on all fours. In bipedal creatures, such as our species, suddenly everything is being dragged downwards, and the pelvis suddenly becomes a 'basin' holding our internal organs up. This inevitably puts a strain upon these organs, including arteries, other blood vessels, and even the heart itself. Plus, being bipedal makes for another disadvantage on a planet which abounds with dangers; it leaves our chests and stomachs vulnerable to attack from predators or other humans. Look at how many other mammals under attack will instinctively curl into a ball to protect those very regions. It is not possible for humans to curl into a ball and defend themselves at the same time. We can protect or defend, we cannot do both at the same time.

And while we're about it, if we are perfectly designed, what the hell is it with the penis and testicles? In many other creatures the penis is sheathed within the body, but oh no, not in simians. And as for testicles, there's the poorest-defended part of the male human body, and the part which needs defending the most. So perfectly designed that if the sperm our testes create were in the human body, our body heat would kill them. Therefore the testes have to hang in a bag outside of the human body, where they can stay cooler. Okay, it's great the way we evolved, where one teste hangs lower than the other (no, no choruses of “Do Your Balls Hang Low”), but as a man who has at times caught his coin purse between his legs, even in my sleep, I have to ask if there is a God, why didn't he / she / it / they make the covering somewhat more robust? Some people commonly call testes “nuts”. I sometimes bloody well wish they had the same hard nutshell covering.

There is an old joke about Intelligent Design, that has many forms but generally goes you don't put the sewage plant next door to the amusement park. Amusing it may be, but it also happens to be true. Having the genitalia right beside the anus has all-too-obvious disadvantages for cleanliness and the dangers of spreading disease. And of course, in most male creatures, including those of our species, there is the double disadvantage of urine and semen passing through the same vessel. Okay, urine is mostly pure – it is not that pure, and if a man has a urine infection, then that's going to cause problems in any sexual partner they may have if that infection is untreated. But don't worry, these infections are easily treated with antibiotics. Oh wait, those are manmade – so much again for that perfect Earth perfect human body. In women of course, you have the womb cheek-by-jowl (if you'll pardon the terminology) with the bowels, and 'wrong hole' sexual incidents apart, that presents extreme dangers in pregnancy and childbirth.

In the genitalia of both genders a build up of matter can occur, which can result in infections, which is why genital cleanliness is of utmost importance. And as unlike many other mammals, we can't lick ourselves clean, we have to rely upon manmade cleaning methods. Judaism and Islam thought they got around the male problem by circumcising their sons, which of course remains popular in the USA, even among Christians and even atheists. But if our bodies are so 'perfectly' designed, why should we need to cut any part of it off at all? Is this one of God's (many) design faults? Circumcision does not guarantee cleanliness in any case. Bottom line (wash that too), everyone – male and female – should clean their genitalia every night and every morning. And I cannot emphasise this too much for sexually-active heterosexual men, because one of the biggest causes of cervical cancer is – a dirty penis. If you won't do it for yourself guys, at least do it for your sexual partners.

Another word on the genitalia and sex (yes, I am obsessed with sex – get over it), is that the way the vagina has been formed, one would be tempted to think that if there is a god, then that god must be a woman. For consider the clitoris (it's that little button-like thing, guys, right at the top of the labia minora); it's only purpose is to give sexual pleasure. Sorry to burst your little puritanical bubbles, God Squad, but if your god designed the human body, then the purpose of the clitoris could only have been deliberate. And while you are fuming at that, consider that men can be led to greater arousal by manipulating the prostate gland. And what's the easiest way of arousing the prostate gland? By inserting something up the anus, that's how.  And if you're not fuming enough by now, consider also that many other mammals have a more devloped clitoris - even spiders

On a side note, every man knows that God is a woman; we all know we've done something wrong, but don't know quite what, and when we try to ask God what we've done, She's not talking to us.

I could bang on continually about how poorly-designed the human body is for life on this planet, but I don't have the space, or the time, and you probably wouldn't have the time or the inclination to read it – and there's no more sex jokes. But our from the arches on our feet, to our thin ankles, our spindly legs, our 'basin' pelvis holding up our innards, our poor inward-curving spines, our vulnerable chests and abdomens, our scrawny necks way too weak to support our large heads, the body of Homo Sapiens Sapiens is in fact a terrible design for survival on planet Earth. If this organism was designed at all, just like most other species, the designer would not pass a High School Technical Drawing exam.

If you put these things to the creationist and / or ID proponent, many will immediately come back that Earth and mankind were created perfect before the Fall of Man when Eve, who had never been taught right from wrong, ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and tempted Adam to eat it as well, and that is why the world and mankind are like they are today. This is a complete cop-out.

Firstly, you'll find that the same people never put that caveat in when they first claim that perfectly-designed humans inhabit a perfectly-designed Earth. It is always a fall-back position when they find their arguments on the ropes.

Secondly, it is not supported by the Bible. The Bible certainly states that after the fall, Adam would have to toil for a living, and that Eve would suffer pain in childbirth, but says absolutely nothing the 'design' of the human body (and most other creatures for that matter), or the Earth environment being changed. Of course, some may claim the topography of the Earth changed after the flood at the time of Noah, but apart from that being another impossible nonsense, 1, there is nothing in the flood narrative that can explain most natural disasters, 2, it says little for their God's “bond of peace” with mankind, which he gave Noah after the flood, and 3, it still does not explain natural disasters or most changes in Earth environment.

Thirdly, anyone who uses the 'Fall of Man' argument, and this includes 'old earth' creationists (who accept evolution) and ID proponents', must believe that every word of the Bible is true and accurate. If they believe that, then they must, by definition, also have to believe that we live on a flat, stationary Earth, in a geocentric universe, which is so foolish, they are not even worth debating. And if they do not believe in such things, then they have to admit the Bible is not accurate, and therefore cannot fall back on the Fall of Man argument - nor creationism, nor intelligent design for that matter.

The fact is that no deity ever designed Homo Sapiens Sapiens, nor any other species for this planet. Natural selection adapted us for the Earth environment, to which we are in fact completely alien. Some theists ask if there is no god, then what purpose is there to life? Get ready for a stiff glass of perspective; life has no purpose, and especially not for our species. When you look at any ecosystem on the face of the Earth, you will find that nearly each and every species fulfils a function which works in harmony with nature, for the common good of all other species, and the planet as a whole. Where does mankind fit in with this holistic worldview? Absolutely nowhere at all. We take, take, take from the Earth, and give back nothing in return. We destroy as we go, and once we have destroyed one environment, move on to the next.

In the movie The Matrix, when Morpheus is captured and interrogated, Mr Smith gives a speech which sums up mankind and our place in this earth perfectly;

“I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.”

That's all we are; a virus with shoes. A sorry half-ape, who only arrived here a mere 200,000 years ago, in the 3.8 billion history of life, and in that time we have done more to destroy the Earth environment than every other species combined, taking all life to the very edge of the abyss. And we have the arrogance to think we are 'top' species, who has 'dominion' over all. Behave. As omnivores we are not even top of the food chain; that particular distinction goes to predatory carnivores – who will only kill as much as they need to eat. We are around the middle of the food chain, and food for many other creatures.  And make no mistake about it, I do indeed blame the God Squad for this.  Their 'holy' books taught that their god made man and gave him dominion over all the Earth and all creatures in it.  This has led to a haughty arrogance among mankind that has led our species to believe they can do whatever they want to the planet and the creatures on it, and bugger the consequences.  Doubt that?  I have actually encountered a Christian who claimed that his god gave him the animals to do what he wanted with, and he chose to hunt them for sport (I'm not anti-hunting, so long as you eat your kill.  Sport hunters however are lower than pond scum in my opinion).  Another whose views I was reading online once stated that mankind is "at war with nature".

I realise that all the above is a pretty dystopian view of mankind and our place in the planet. However, let's go back to our proto-human, and imagine he is living safely in a temperate zone, in a nice house, well away from predators and other dangers, keeping himself healthy by eating properly, getting plenty exercise, and having regular health check-ups, and all the while believing he was perfectly-designed for life on a perfectly-designed Earth. And as long as he keeps away from all the hazards, he should be perfectly safe.

Unless he goes out one day and is struck on the head by a meteorite, that is.

And in the fourth and final part of this critique, I shall examine such things, explaining why if this Earth was designed, then the very existence of all life, and the planet itself hangs by a thread, and why if there is one thing Earth does not have, it is a long-term future.

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.