Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic EvolutionSM
 Trilobite - 450 mya |
Organic Evolution 3.8 Billion years of it! Dictionary Definition:
"The doctrine that all forms of life have been derived by |
"Well, evolution is theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
"All complex life on earth has developed from simpler life-forms over billions of years. This is a fact that no longer admits of intelligent dispute. If you doubt that human beings evolved from prior species, you may as well doubt that the sun is a star. Granted, the sun doesn't seem like an ordinary star, but we know that it is a star that just happens to be relatively close to the earth. Imagine your potential for embarrassment if your religious faith rested on the presumption that the sun was not a star at all. Imagine millions of Christians in the United States spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to battle the godless astronomers and astrophysicists on this point. Imagine them working passionately to get their unfounded notions about the sun taught in our nation's schools. This is exactly the situation you are now in with respect to evolution."
"Every wild species, even the lowly ant, is a masterpiece of evolution, as intricate and beautiful in its way as a bird of paradise, whale, or towering Douglas-fir."- Edward O. Wilson
A Grassroots Jungle in a Vacant Lot
Wings (Essays on Invertebrate Conservation)
Spring 2007 pp. 17-18 (Originally Published in the Fall 1993 Issue)
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"Humans are not the end all, be all of evolution, but merely a strand in the web of life, with no inherent right to wreck everything and spoil the grand evolutionary pageant for everyone else."
EF! Journal, Samhain/Yule 2005, p. 43 |
"Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again."
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Click Here for my page on Life... |
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Click Here for my page on Biology... |
"The fundamental evoluionary event is a change in the frequency of genes and chromosome configurations in a population. If a population of butterflies shifts through time from 40 percent blue individuals to 60 percent blue individuals, and if the color blue is hereditary, evoltuion of a simple kins has occurred. Larger transformations are accomplished by a great many such statistical changes in combination. Shifts can occur purely in the genes, with no effect on wing color or any other outward trait. But whatever their nature or magnitude, the changes in progress are always expressed in percentages of individuals within or among populations. Evolution is absolutely a phenomenon of populations. Individuals and their immediate descendants do not evolve. Populations evolve, in the sense that the proportions of carriers of different genes change through time. Theis conception of evolution at the population level follows ineluctably fromt hee idea of natural selection, which is the core of Darwinism. There are other causes of evolution, but natural selection is overwhelmingly dominant."
 Charles Darwin |
 Stephen Jay Gould |
Stephen Jay Gould died on May 20, 2002 from a metastatic adenocarcinoma of the lung (lung cancer). Dr. Gould was the nation's preeminent evolutionary biologist and certainly doesn't need accolades or descriptions on my web page. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed many of his books and writings (Wonderful Life, Bully for Brontosaurus, The Flamingo's Smile, An Urchin in the Storm, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, Ever Since Darwin, and others...) and also had the distinct privilege of corresponding with him once. It was sometime around 1990 that I wrote Dr. Gould asking what he thought of the current rate of extinctions due to human activity/interference. Much to my delight he wrote back expressing his sadness with the situation. I'm still looking through my files, for that letter, and will post it here once I find it again! - Roger J. Wendell summer, 2006 |
"Over 99 percent of the species that ever walked, flew, or slithered upon this earth are now extinct. This fact alone appears to rule out intelligent design. When we look at the natural world, we see extraordinary complexity, but we do not see optimal design. We see redundancy, regressions, and unnecessary complications; we see bewildering inefficiencies that result in suffering and death. We see flightless birds and snakes with pelvises. We see species of fish, salamanders, and crustaceans that have nonfunctional eyes, because they continued to evolve in darkness for millions of years. We see whales that produce teeth during fetal development, only to reabsorb them as adults. Such features of our world are utterly mysterious if God created all species of life on earth 'intelligently'; none of them are perplexing in light of evolution.""The biologist J.B.S. Haldane is reported to have said that, if there is a God, He has 'an inordinate fondness for beetles.' One would have hoped that an observation this devastating would have closed the book on creationism for all time. The truth is that, while there are now around three hundred and fifty thousand known species of beetles, God appears to have an even greater fondness for viruses. Biologists estimate that there are at least ten strains of virus for every species of animal on earth. Many viruses are benign, of course, and some ancient virus may have played an important role in the emergence of complex organisms. But viruses tend to use organisms like you and me as their borrowed genitalia. Many of them invade our cells only to destroy them, destroying us in the process - horribly, mercilessly, relentlessly. Viruses like HIV, as well as a wide range of harmful bacteria, can be seen evolving right under our noses, developing reistance to antiviral and antibiotic drugs to the detriment of everyone. Evolution both predicts and explains this phenomenon; the book of of Genesis does not. How can you imagine that religious faith offers the best account of these realities, or that they suggest some deeper, compassionate purpose of an omniscient being?"
"I can tell you, I'm getting a PhD in Neuroscience, there's no point in the training to become a scientist where somebody sits you down and says, okay, all of these dogmas you're holding onto, that are religious, need to be talked about and subjected to the same tests of credulity that we're going to subject all of your other scientific beliefs to. I mean it's just not a conversation that gets had, it's taboo.""In the Christian West you can get a PhD in biochemistry and not believe in Evolution and that's a problem of discourse, it really is a massive problem of conversations not being had."
- Sam Harris interviewd by Michelle Martin on NPR's Talk of the Nation
about his new book, Letter to a Christian and keeping religion out of public policy.
Broadcast on Monday, October 02, 2006 and transcribed by Roger J. Wendell
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Click Here for my page on Creation Theories... |
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
(www.dmns.org)
We joined my brother and his friend on a visit to Denver's Museum of Nature and Science on September 2nd, 2006. Their evolution and pre-history displays are simply fantastic! Also interesting, but unfortunate, I learned that certain Christian groups make repeated visits and challenge the volunteer presenters about the museum's interpretation of natural history. Luckily these folks are much more calm and controlled than I would be and simply stand there and take it with a smile. Anyway, whether you have a chip on your shoulder or not, I highly recommend Denver's Museum and provide these few snapshots of their display as both an incentive to visit and a rough explanation of evolution:
 Recipe for Life |
 Origin of Life |
 Cell DNA |
 First Nucleus |
 Ocean Life |
 Natural Selection |
 Peppered Moths |
 First Flowers |
 Fossil Flowers |
 Primates |
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 Replicating Life in a Lab... |
Stanley Miller was a doctoral student working with Harold C. Urey at the University of Chicago, researching possible environments of early Earth. In 1953 he reproduced the early atmosphere of Earth by creating a chamber with only hydrogen, water, methane, and ammonia. Miller used an electric discharge to simulate lightning and, after just a week, had a residue Organic compounds settled in the system. |
Most notable of these compounds were the amino acids, the "building blocks of life," that had formed in Miller's system. Amino acids are necessary for the formation of proteins which form the structure of cells. Miller found glycine, alanine, aspartic, glutamic acid, and other amino acids in the sytem. Fifteen percent of the carbon from the methane had been combined into organic compounds. As amazing as his discovery of amino acids was, it was even more astonishing how easily they had been formed in the system!Miller's work showed that compounds necessary for life could have been formed in an environment without free oxygen - similar to Earth's early atmosphere. The creation of amino acids from Earth's raw materials may been the begining of evolution. Miller's results also suggests the possibility that similar amino acids could have formed elsewhere, in the Universe, since the Earth's early atmosphere was based on proportions of elements in the Universe...
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Life, living systems, and evolution are fascinating to me. Admittedly, these are huge subjects that can be hard to understand at times. Nevertheless, the beauty of our natural world is more wonderful and special than anything our little human institutions could ever invent or imagine. So, I'll be adding bits and pieces to this page about that strangely beautiful dance of organic evolution that's been gracing our planet for the last 3.8 billion years!
Sadly, of course, I'm writing this during one of the darker periods of American history. Our government and society has been taken over by a destructive form of fundamentalism that not only mocks scientific effort, but has no respect for beauty and the natural world. So, hopefully, my little web page will help reverse this damaging aspect of our collective psyche so that nature and the real world can heal a bit and continue on as the arena for evolution. |
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(deoxyribonucleic acid) adenine thymine guanine cytosine |
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In the early 2000s, when I was creating these pages, "Intelligent Design" seemed to be growing in popularity, especially among the religious right. I'm not sure what it's all about but hope to report, here, what I learn. Initially I'm very skeptical because this particular little "theory" seems to be an attempt to reinforce religious beliefs while thumbing its nose at thought, reason, and scientific inquiry in general. Hopefully the government, or anyone else, won't attempt to force the idea of "Intelligent Design" on the rest of us but stranger things have happened...
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Miscellaneous Definitions: |
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I've got mail!
(you can also check out my Guest Book for
thoughts and notes from other visitors...)
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Here's a little note I received from the Institute for Creation Research on April 13, 2007. In defense of Mr. Sherwin, my immediate response was that we'd need to revisit the idea a few months later as I was preoccupied with follow-up medical visits for a diagnosis of bladder cancer in 2006. Well, those few months passed and I telephoned (a couple of times!) the Institute for Creation Research to tell 'em I was ready to "chat" about evolution in a public forum right here in Colorado. I suggested that my radio show might be the best venue. Funny, I never heard back from them... |
Hi Roger -I also sent an email, on August 7th (2007), to back up my phone calls:I read your website and I'd like you to support your position in a formal, public debate with me. It has to be somewhere in Colorado.
Please contact CONNIE Pxxxx at the Institute for Creation Research: 619) 448-xxxx and tell her I contacted you regarding a debate. She'll tell you what nights I'm free.
Looking forward to it!
- frank sherwin
Frank,Whenever you're ready we can give the discussion a try on
my part-time radio show - it's up to you!Looking forward,
Roger
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