The American Spectator

I think this subject has declined into a “can you top this” sort of debate. Creationism vs. Intelligent Creation vs. Evolution, ad nauseam.

I don’t have a problem with the concept that evolution is driven by random events, and I’ll explain why. Or at least try to explain, which is more than the “pur-sang” Creationists do.

As my father was fond of saying, “The more I know, the more I know I don’t know.” So to understand why I think evolution is the proper way to understand the Origin of the Species, I’ll start with what I don’t know.

I don’t know what caused “The Big Bang” and furthermore I don’t care. I have never heard any logical explanation for that event other than God did it, but since God is unknowable, so is “The Big Bang.” To paraphrase Descartes, “It happened, therefore it is.”

I don’t know how long ago “The Big Bang” occurred, but I do know that it was a hell of a long time ago. I also know that given enough time a billion monkeys pounding away on a billion typewriters will write every word in the Library of Congress. (As a matter of fact, that’s probably where most of that stuff came from in any event.)

So given that “The Big Bang” occurred an unknowable, albeit a vast, number of years ago, I believe that every possible genetic modification over the eons has been and is being tried and that the ones which are successful pass their DNA on to subsequent organisms. Procreation is, in the final analysis, simply DNA using organisms to propagate itself.

Over the eons certain climatic events have occurred on this, the planet Earth. One such was the collision of a gigantic comet, asteroid, or other celestial body with the earth creating, among other things, the Gulf of Mexico, drastically altering the Earth’s climate (no slow global warming here) and practically eliminating, among other things, the dominant life forms of the time; specifically, the dinosaurs. That such events did occur is written in the rocks. So the DNA of the dinosaurs, although very successful at propagating itself in its day failed miserably after “The Little Bang” in the Gulf of Mexico. You could look it up!