by Dave Hughes

Created on: August 11, 2009   Last Updated: August 18, 2009

The debate over how our species came to be, focuses upon a single text written in order to provide a depiction of life as having developed in order to meet the pressures of an environment whose one truism is change.

A single three-letter word finding its way into the title of Darwin's book where it was never intended to be and a complete misquoted line from the science of genetics have created incredible disagreement with science apparently on one side and religion on the other.

The entire matter is pure nonsense.

First, the title of Darwin's book is not Origin of THE Species, implying that Darwin's intent was to show how our species came into being from other primates. Origin of Species explains, based on evidence Darwin gathered from observation and scientific speculation along lines reinforced by that observation that life forms were not isolated one from the other but united under the broad classification separating living beings from all else, divided upon genetic lines but possessing certain similarities that favored development and diversity.

Darwin did not deny the place of a supreme being in the creation of life. He sought only to discern the method behind the diversity of that life. Based upon Darwin's postulates, medical science, ecology, animal husbandry, and agricultural genetics have made modern life possible. By recognizing the similarities and analogies among species, humanity works within the bounds of nature in order to improve the quality of life and to help relieve some of the pressures that can lead to extinction.

Another grand misstatement, survival of the fittest finds its way to many mouths, most too ignorant to understand the difference between Mendel and Mendelssohn. Mendelian genetics generated the actual claim that survival for a species and its variants depended on their being fit for the environmental circumstances creating the ecosystem in which that species must procreate. The actual phrase is survival of the fit, and the difference between the two are enormously significant.

The first piece of foolishness belongs to Hollywood blockbusters defining the human struggle to survive against conditions that would prove the demise of lesser humans; that is lesser in whatever terms the film happens to be championing at the time.

In fact, the Mendelian genetics that uphold Darwin's theory regarding how species came to diverge depend on certain individuals surviving in any given environment to an age that allows them to procreate. Their survival

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>