Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

by Bill Nye

“What would it take to change your worldview?”

Any single piece of evidence.

The Second Law applies only to closed systems, like a cylinder in a car engine, and Earth is not even remotely a closed system.

Evolution, and the selection of reproduction-worthy genes that drives it, is the opposite of random. It is a sieve that living things have to pass through successfully, or we never see them again.

Darwin’s descent by natural selection was a result of not only a great step in thought, but also the sidestepping of a great many ideas that missed the mark.

It is an unfortunate linguistic happenstance that “survival of the fittest” sounds so good, because random natural variation does not produce perfectly fit individuals, nor does it need to. Evolution is driven by the idea of “fits in the best,” or “fits in well enough.”

It’s survival of the hang-in-there’s, or the made-the-cuts, or the just good-enoughs.

If the argument is, “Well, that was all part of the plan,” then I have to ask: How can you take the lack of evidence of a plan as evidence of a plan? That makes no sense.

(A cubic centimeter is a milliliter in beer can and baby medicine measurement; it’s the same as a cc in old-school medical terminology.)

Here’s a big one: Why did all life apparently descend from just a single ancestor? Did some other type of primordial life take a shot at living and reproducing, but it just couldn’t keep up? It’s possible that life started more than once, and that you and I are the result of an ancient sorting out.

The animals living around deep-sea vents are different than those near the surface. Their metabolism is based on chemical exchange with the hot, nutrient-rich seawater. We call the process chemosynthesis rather than green-plant photosynthesis.

(The water at this depth does not boil because it cannot form vapor bubbles under the pressure of the weight of the ocean above.)