Evolution, Part 2

My previous post alluded to my belief in "evolution" but did not completely clarify what exactly I meant. There are indeed many kinds of evolution. But in biology there is really only one kind, the evolution of the species from some single ancestor, including humans. Biology does not distinguish between micro- and macroevolution because to a biologist they are the same thing, microevolution is simply the smaller aspect that makes macroevolution possible. However there are many misconceptions people still have about evolution itself. Let me clarify only a very few.

1. Darwinian evolution is the dominant theory for evolution. No! Darwin's theory was genius but quite lacking. Today we do not discuss Darwinian evolution because current evolutionary theory really doesn't look like the theory proposed by Darwin. I haven't even read Origin of the Species simply because it is no longer necessary, the modern theories of evolution have changed as new data shapes the way we see evolution.
2. If it weren't for Darwin there would be no evolutionary theory. Actually Darwin wasn't the only who had noticed the relationships between species. Darwin was the first but would not have been credited with being the first had he waited a little longer to publish his theory. He had developed his theory over many years and had waited to publish for various reasons, until a Frenchman, I forget his name, claimed he was soon to publish on the same subject. Had Darwin NOT proposed the theory at all, someone else would have.
3. Evolution says that people of different races are not equal in intelligence or in social importance. Actually no, social evolution was a subtheory of biological evolution that gained popularity early on but was quickly proven wrong and mostly abandoned by the scientific community. Today it is only seen among special interest groups with preexisting racial agendas, a bit like the continued existence of the flat earth society. What humans do in the name of anything is really just our latest excuse for inexcusable human nature.
4. Evolution says that there is no God. Actually evolution says nothing about God because it is a theory of how the natural laws work among living things. This is really how science works, we are simply describing the laws of nature and how those laws shape what we see. There is also a lot of confusion about the difference between evolution, which is genetic variability among living things, and abiogenesis, which is the theory of how life could have evolved from premordial chemicals on the early earth. Evolution and abiogenesis are quite different I assure you. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming while the evidence for abiogenesis is currently zilch.
5. Evolution is a theory in crisis and is dying out because the data doesn't support it. I actually don't know what to say to this but I hear it a lot. The theory of evolution is as strong as it has ever been and only getting stronger as new data is published almost daily in science journals from biological feilds such as Biochemistry, Genetics, Cell and Molecular Biology, Developmental Biology, Cladistics, Comparative Anatomy, and the list goes on and on. In fact, modern medicine is based on the strength of evolutionary theory. Why is it that we can do tests on flies, mice and ginuea pigs and somehow translate those tests to human physiology? It is because evolution tells us that the relationship is still strong and that the shared pathways still work in a similar manner. The predictive value of medical experimentation in animals is so strong that it is has become unethical not to have animal studies in most new drug development.

Another interesting thing I seem to hear is that there is a relation between biological evolution and the Big Bang. These are completely seperate feilds of study. Biological evolution measures natural laws that deal with living things. The Big Bang is a theory that describes the creation event of the universe which is the subfeild of Cosmology in the broader feild of Astronomy, NOT to be confused with astrology. The evidence for both biological evolution and the Big Bang is overwhelming and I can address the Big Bang in some later post. I have only partially dealt with my belief in evolution here, there is much much more. I could probably do an entire web site on the evidence we have for evolution and not even touch on it all.