Why Evolution Is True

by Jerry A. Coyne

Perhaps the “teach all sides” argument appeals to the American sense of fair play, but to an educator it’s truly disheartening. Why teach a discredited, religiously based theory, even one widely believed, alongside a theory so obviously true? It’s like asking that shamanism be taught in medical school alongside Western medicine, or astrology be presented in psychology class as an alternative theory of human behavior.

"Why teach a discredited, religiously based theory, even one widely believed, alongside a theory so obviously true?' Exactly! No need for critical thinking at all. It's all been worked out.

Perhaps the most frightening statistic is this: despite legal prohibitions, nearly one in eight American high school biology teachers admits to presenting creationism or intelligent design in the classroom as a valid scientific alternative to Darwinism.

No, not the most frighting statistic. That'd be the rise of Neo-Marxism based in Darwinism, because critical thinking isn't necessary any more. All the facts are in!

Accepting evolution needn’t turn you into a despairing nihilist or rob your life of purpose and meaning. It won’t make you immoral, or give you the sentiments of a Stalin or Hitler. Nor need it promote atheism, for enlightened religion has always found a way to accommodate the advances of science.

But, why mention it all then. Nothing to see here. "Accommodate the advances of science." Dont worry! China is working hard on that. They're total like soooo progressive over there with science!

Despite our general resemblance to our primate cousins, then, evolving a human from an apelike ancestor probably required substantial genetic change. Can we say anything about the specific genes that did make us human? Right now, not very much.

Conclusive proof that a given gene causes human/chimp differences requires moving the gene from one species to another and seeing what difference it makes, and that’s not the kind of experiment anyone would want to try.

Why?

From the beginning of modern biology, racial classification has gone hand in hand with racial prejudice. In his eighteenth-century classification of animals, Carl Linnaeus noted that Europeans are “governed by laws,” Asians “governed by opinions,” and Africans “governed by caprice.” In his superb book The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould documents the unholy connection between biologists and race in the last century.

Has evolution caused certain races to become smarter, more athletic, or cannier than others? We have to be especially careful here, because unsubstantiated claims in this area can give racism a scientific cachet. So what do the scientific data say? Almost nothing. Although different populations may have different behaviors, different IQs, and different abilities, it’s hard to rule out the possibility that these differences are a nongenetic product of environmental or cultural differences.

"nongenetic product of environmental of cultural differences." Sure...

My guess—and this is just informed speculation—is that human races are too young to have evolved important differences in intellect and behavior. Nor is there any reason to think that natural or sexual selection has favored this sort of difference.

Does this mean that we’re really de-evolving? To some degree, yes, but we’re probably also becoming more adapted to modern environments that create new types of selection. We should remember that so long as people die before they’ve stopped reproducing, and so long as some people leave more offspring than others, there is an opportunity for natural selection to improve us.

But Pearcey’s notion that these lessons of evolution will inevitably spill over into the study of ethics, history, and “family life” is unnecessarily alarmist. How can you derive meaning, purpose, or ethics from evolution? You can’t.

Do we carry the psychological baggage of our millions of years on the African savanna? If so, how far can we overcome it?

In parallel with many animals, human males are largely promiscuous and females choosy (this despite the socially enforced monogamy that prevails in many societies).

Bahahahahahaha... Yeah, they all princesses.

the institution of marriage has gone a long way toward curbing the promiscuous behavior of men.

"promiscuous behavior of men." Ok, boomer.

The biggest of these misconceptions is that accepting evolution will somehow sunder our society, wreck our morality, impel us to behave like beasts, and spawn a new generation of Hitlers and Stalins. That just won’t happen, as we know from the many European countries whose residents wholly embrace evolution yet manage to remain civilized. Evolution is neither moral nor immoral.

Good luck with that.