I attended my first college level biology class today: Basic Biology: Ecology & Diversity of Life. I forgot that I was going to have to deal with the seemingly uncontested belief that the theory of evolution explains the origin of the human species. I was also a little surprised that this issue was one of the first raised during the first lecture.
It was brought up that the DNA of humans and bacteria have many similarities. The instructor therefore concluded that humans must have evolved from bacteria. She made an unqualified claim, and her statement contains the logical fallacy that since two things are similar, one must be the product of the other. Oranges are a sweet fruit that grow on a tree. Raspberries are also a sweet fruit, therefore they must come from orange trees.
Similarities in DNA between two species doesn't suggest that one species evolved from the other, but rather that both species may have come from a common source. These are very different ideas; with one suggesting that B is a product of A, and the other suggesting that both A and B are both derived from C. Common source is a more logical conclusion of the observations than evolution.
- Timothy Weisz
- A sailor recently freed from the grasp of the Navy, who now dedicates his time to the advancing of his mind and body through reading and writing, biking and running.
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2 comments:
Good luck to you, sounds like this class will be good for your critical thinking skills as well. May the "Source" be with you!
Your prof probably didn't argue that humans evolved from bacteria. She would probably agree that both humans and bacteria have a common source. She believes that both species evolved - in the sense of one species turning into another - from a common ancestor.
I see things a little differently, though. I think the similarity of genomes across species is evidence that there is one creator, and he had a big pile of building blocks from which he "built" all the different species. No species-to-species evolution.
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