Extra Credit: GSOE Chapter 6

1. What do you think of the butler story?

I think the Butler story is a very clear & convincing analogy to respond to the false allegation of missing gaps. When putting together a case, it requires multiple pieces of evidence all working together to prove something. The same is true for evolution. There are many scientific evidences of evolution, and fossils support this. In the story of the butler-murder, there were gaps in the video because there were not cameras in every single room. However, the general footage made it clear that the butler was the murderer. Rather then burying one’s head in the sand like the defense attorney in the story, one should use logic and clear thinking to examine all the evidence.

2. Rebut this challenge: “if Chimps evolved into us, why are chimps still around?” This statement is partly based on the misinformation given by the Great Chain of Being. Chimps did not evolve into us, we both evolved from a common ancestor. Chimps are not “lower” animals then us, just as we are not “higher” animals then earthworms. We have more similar characteristics to a chimp then say, an earthworm, but chimpanzees did not turn into humans, or begin giving birth to humans one day. It is a serious fallacy to characterize evolution as a belief that “humans evolved from chimps.” Furthermore, the common ancestor that we both descended from is not around anymore.

3. Why don’t platyhelminthes fossilize well?

Platyhelminthes are a type of worm, meaning their bodies are completely soft. They don’t have a vertebrae or internal skeleton or bones to become a fossil. They also have no circulatory or respiratory organs. There are over 4,000 kinds of platyhelminthes but no account of them in the fossil record for these reasons. The continued existence of platyhelminthes supports the claims made in the first question I answered. Platyhleminthes could be considered a huge gap in the fossil record, but we know they have existed for the same length of time as organisms. Logical thinking does not consider it a “missing link,” because we know why there are no platyhleminthes fossils. Considering the many environmental factors working against any organism becoming a fossil, it is amazing we have any at all.

To me the most helpful part of this chapter was when Dawkins addressed the huge question of humans and chimps. I have always heard evolution wrongly generalized and oversimplified as “humans evolving from apes.” I now understand that we don’t come from monkeys, but we share a common ancestor just as all forms of life share common ancestors.

I also really enjoyed when he clarified the Great Chain of Being nonsense. It is easy to see some organisms as more higher then others, just because they have characteristics that we see as more useful or “cooler.” It’s easy to assume that a giraffe is a higher form of life then a tapeworm, but that is just a matter of perspective. Dawkin’s said that: “Despite the Great Chain of Being’s traditional ranking of humans between animals and angels, there is no evolutionary justification for the common assumption that evolution is somehow aimed at humans, or that humans are ‘evolution’s last word’ (pg 158). This made me wonder if millions of years from today there will be more advanced forms of life that view us as “primitive.”