In the Evolution Files

The thing about Facebook, one of them anyway, is that you see things that sometimes you just can't let go. In this case, a friend commented on a post of someone I am not friends with. So I can see the original post and the comments, but I cannot comment or share the post itself. Most of the time, this is fine. Whatever. It doesn't matter.

Then there are times when what you see just makes your head explode. The words written, the ideas conveyed are just SO.WRONG. that the need to share comments on the wrongness of it all just cannot be contained.

This happened today.
As an educator
As a biologist
As an "evolutionist" ... I must comment.

Luckily, I have skills. Perhaps not mad computer skills, but enough, in this case. to get the job done.

So what is this post that made my head explode. .



It was a link to this wonderful picture of a beautiful bird. . .




The person, whose name isn't important, who shared it to his Facebook Page wrote this.

"Take one good look at the way each feather lays upon the other, perfectly, symetrical, and the coloring is magnificent...and evolutionists tell us we are supposed to believe that some bird, millions of years ago, decided it needed to flap its wings hundreds of times per minute, and have the most strikingly beautiful colored feathers, and a pencil lead thin beak, and all of that just came about because the bird of origin willed itself that way?
Um, think again Darwin students....even he admitted fault in his theory, prior to his death.
Here's a theory: God designed this bird this way...now let's go play football."

(My brain is screaming - That is not how this works! That's not how any of this works!!!!)

This comment caused my head to explode because it shows a complete, utter, astounding, and perhaps willful ignorance of how evolution actually works.

And it boils down to this

No organism, plant, animal, microbe, or other, has ever willed a trait into existence. Darwin does not suggest this to be the case. No one in evolutionary biology has ever stated this. IT DOES NOT HAPPEN.

Some other minor issues
1. We aren't 100% sure what feathers were originally used for. Perhaps it was flight. Perhaps is was for thermoregulation. Here is an interesting article about the evolution of feathers from National Geographic Magazine.

2. Darwin never doubted that natural selection was responsible for evolutionary change. Rather, he questioned how the mechanismsof inheritance worked relative to natural selection. REGARDLESS....there has been over 150 years of evolutionary biology SINCE Darwin published "On Origin of Species".  The questions of how inheritance meshed with natural selection were worked out during a period referred to as The Modern Synthesis.

If you want to know more about how evolution REALLY works - the University of California at Berkeley has a great resource called Evolution 101. It's a site I have used in several of my college level classes and I highly recommend it.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.