Going toe to toe with Darwin
Roll over Charles Darwin.
Darwin’s ground-breaking work relating to natural selection and
adaptive radiation
– what came to be called evolution – is a myth.
It’s in the book.
Going toe to toe with Darwin
Roll over Charles Darwin.
Darwin’s ground-breaking work relating to natural selection and adaptive radiation – what came to be called evolution – is a myth.
It’s in the book.
The book in this case is a substantial tome, weighing in at an arm-numbing several pounds. “The Atlas of Creation, Volume I” by Harun Yahya arrived at the office a few weeks ago. We don’t receive nearly enough unsolicited graft here at The Pinnacle, but once in a great while a book or CD will arrive in the mailbag.
This one looks like an expensive volume. The hardcover book contains more than 800 pages packed with color illustrations. The cover is festooned with those changing little blinky things that sometimes come in Cracker Jack boxes.
The author was born in Ankara, Turkey and studied in Istanbul. To save you the expense and trouble of plowing through the book’s 800-some pages, I’ll sum it all up.
“Here’s a picture of a fossil that’s millions of years old. Here’s a picture of a remarkably similar organism taken just last week. See? No changes. Therefore evolution’s a shuck.”
Really, that’s it in a nutshell.
The book ignores empirical evidence that’s there should anyone care to pay attention. In “The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time,” Rosemary and Peter Grant describe their lifetime of work on the Galapagos Islands.
A nondescript collection of little brown birds, several species collectively known as Galapagos Finches, are the objects of their research.
The beaks of different species differ, and that influences their diets. But the Galapagos are often swept by drought, markedly affecting different plants that make up the finches’ diet.
The Grants, who over time have come to recognize individual birds, have seen that the birds over generations begin to change, to adapt to new conditions.
What is it about the notion of evolution that so excites opposition among a few of us?
Perhaps it’s the notion that we are first cousins to the apes.
But, given our talent for inventing new and creative ways to wipe ourselves out, it should be comforting to know that there’s an outside chance the human race can adapt before it completely extinguishes itself.
The staggering variety of life – also likely influenced by evolution – populates the planet with fascinating variety.
If Harun Yahya wants his book back, he’s welcome to it. It’ll take more than 800 pages and little winking illustrations to prove to me that Darwin wasn’t on to something pretty profound.
