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Dec. 21, 2005 First of all, I’ve decided that the evolutionist must be right. Evolution has done some remarkable work in design for other species. For cave dwelling species, evolution and/or DNA has decided that eyes are useless so has turned sight off and fined tuned other senses. By the same token, for deep sea dwelling fish, has given them big eyes and also nature’s equivalent of a flashlight which also doubles as a lure. Then again, by the same token, it hasn’t enabled the prey of those species of fish to figure out that anything bright at these depths is probably a bad thing. So, I would suppose that part balances out. It has enabled the simplest life forms (bacteria and viruses) the ability to adapt to everything that the most intelligent species on the planet can throw at it and keep coming back for more and more. It has allowed for a fairly stable ecology. Everything from mutual beneficial bacteria to predator and prey species to plant ecology exists in more or less balance. Even wildfires caused by lightning strikes serve a purpose. In fact, you could say that the entire universe is finely tuned, however, more on that later. That being said, I being a member of the dominate species, have some complaints. Those complaints must be directed at evolution. Evolution, while doing such a wonderful job for the lower species, has been woefully inadequate in taking care of its finest work. As an intelligent member of that species (Mr. Keyes opinion not withstanding) I have some ideas where things should have been left alone, especially since evolution isn’t intelligent. First of all, where is my tail? I can think of uses for a third appendage. How many of us, have gone to a buffet style restaurant, fought through the lines to get our main course and drink, then passed the dessert bar? Of course, if we eat first then that one dessert we really wanted will be gone or if we just instantly head back, then our food will be cold by the time we get back to the table. How about giving medicine to a baby that has made up his/her mind that “I don’t want this stuff.” One arm pinning down the flailing arms, the other hand holding the medicine and the baby in question does her impression of the scene from the exorcist (where she turns her head all the way around). How about fixing something or hanging up something on the wall. We’ve all been there. You’ve finally got said object positioned exactly where it needs to be, and know if you so much as take a deep breath, its going to take you another 5 minutes to reposition it. Suddenly, neurons start firing and you either realize that you have precisely the wrong tool and the tool box, following some law of quantum physics, has positioned itself so as to be totally inaccessible with only one hand or you have the object positioned against the wall with one hand and with the other your holding either a nail or a hammer. Neither one is very good without the other. Everyone else in your family has positioned themselves in acoustical dead zones through out the house so as not to hear your frantic screaming for help. An easy solution would be that tail. How about a better sense of smell? Every guy that has been single for extended periods of time, has wondered to the fridge, opened a Tupperware container, and looked at something completely unrecognizable and doesn’t remember what it might have been or when it might have been put there. So, like every other guy, you smell it hoping that it will either trigger a memory of what it is or at least tell you its safe to eat. Most of the time when that has happened to me, the smell is completely neutral, the object in said Tupperware has absorbed the smell of plastic, which tells me nothing. If I had the same olfactory senses of say a dog (lower on the evolutionary ladder) I could probably have determined what was in the container and saved my roommates an unpleasant evening. Just as a note, I was in the navy. After a few years of eating shipboard food, you either developed ulcers or a stomach of cast iron. You can guess which one I got. Here’s a more important reason for a better sense of smell. Your wife has bought a different perfume and asks the most dangerous question a man can ever be asked. “Notice anything different?” As from above, shouldn’t every man have evolved the ability to instantly being able to detect when something has changed and instinctively knowing the correct thing to comment on instead of that sense of dread that something has changed and you don’t have a clue of what it might be? How many men have been asked a simple question by either their wife of girlfriend and instantly been put into the survival mode of there is something very dangerous in this room. You could raise a guy in a cave, never seeing another human and have the first woman he meets ask him “do you notice anything different?” The first thought that will go through this guys head will be “oh crap,” and have to think of an answer. Evolution (if it had been doing its job properly) should have programmed responses into the male psyche for such simple questions such as “have I gained weight,” “isn’t that girl pretty,” “which dress do I look better in,” “how much do you love me, “etc, etc? If evolution was really concerned with the survival and procreation of the species, these answers and the ability to instantly determine what has changed (no matter how slight) should be implanted into the male psyche. A better sense of night vision. How many people here have wondered through a dark house and stepped on a cat? 5 years of life gone in an instant to say nothing what it does to the cat. How about wondering through a dark living room and having your shin reminding you of your exact position because it has located the coffee table or that nail you dropped in paragraph number 2. How about our supposed gills? How many people drown every year? How many small children fall into pools or irrigation ditches? I could come up with more but the point is made. A shark (very primitive species) can sense the electrical energy put out by other fish. A male moth (not very high on the evolutionary ladder) can smell a female moth from 2 miles away. Almost every other species on the planet has many times better hearing then humans. If we’re the top of the evolutionary ladder, shouldn’t humans have these finely tuned senses or at least comparable? Smell and taste would have especially come in handy when we were learning what was safe to eat. Hearing would have made survival much easier, especially when predators discovered that this new species wasn’t very fast or could fight very well. You can’t use the excuse of as we became more civilized we lost those things. According to theory, we’ve only started civilization in the last 100,000 years or so. Hardly enough time for evolution to have removed those benefits we once had. If evolution is just a thoughtless natural process how would it know that we wouldn’t need those things in the future to survive? Information is processed by the brain and since we’ve evolved the most complex brain, we should be more then able to process more data input. All of that being said, I wish to thank those of you that I’ve had the opportunity to communicate with via e-mail and those that have posted on this site. Agree or disagree, I’ve enjoyed reading varying opinions and the spirit in which they are posted. Agree or disagree with me, my prayers are that you, your family’s and your loved ones have a happy Christmas a joyous New Year. ------------ Email Tracey Stevens: phoque62@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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