My son needs some help

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. Darwin Was Exactly Right

Darwin was more right than he could possible know at the time. That is because he did not know about DNA, which is the superstructure of biological change. Go to the PBS website in your area and look up NOVA. In that library of CD,s you will find a NOVA two hour special "What Darwin Never Knew" or "What Darwin Did Not Know". Try to get a copy of that special and have your son watch it. It explains a good many things. But I will try to summarize here.

For one Darwin did understand that natural selection happened. He was pretty accurate about why it happened. He could not know the all exact reasons natural selection happened. And not knowing that DNA existed he could not understand why there is so much complexity as well as so much refinement.

We have decoded the genome of most living things. We have completely decoded the human genome. So we know where all the genes are and are getting a better sense of what is happening. We know the number of genes and chromosomes that a cell has in its DNA. What puzzled biologists was that the genes in the DNA were only about 2% of the entire DNA molecule. originally cell biologists believed that the extra 98% of the matter was just inert. Even then they were not sure.

Now move down a few years and more sophisticated research and "wala" they discovered that all that extra matter was not inert. In fact it was millions of switches that turned genes on and off. And that changes in organisms did not just come down to a mutation itself. Mutations or changes or anomalies could occur when and how long switches turned certain genes on or failed to turn on at all or were missing or were sending signals to mutated genes or genes that were not there.

Here is how that works. What they discovered is let's say if a gene turns on too soon, turns off too soon, too short a time or too long a time you will get a heart defect or tendency in a sequence that is part of heart development. And that is the wonder of it all. For every living organism all the genes have to turn on and off at the right time and in the right place for that organism to develop as it should and be healthy. The number of genes and the millions and millions of switches will determine what a creature is. The fact that there are perhaps millions of switches turning on thousands of genes gives the possibility of trillions of combinations. This discovery explains the differentiation of living organisms and species. If some of your genes turned on wrong or were the wrong gene or had too much in common with a cow you could be a part cow.

From the most primitive microbe to the most sophisticated creature, there are some sequences that everyone shares. A human being shares some of the same "tunes" or sequences of cows, dogs, cats, grass, etc ect in difference percentages. We share 98% of the same DNA sequence with Chimpanzees. Based on this fact there is a tree of life based on genes and not the old biological method.

Finally, with new research fossil studies we are finding transitional creatures all the time. And evolution continues at. Even at the human level we are evolving in nearly undistinguishable ways. In the microbe world evolution occurs every millisecond. Germs are getting harder to kill because they are adjusting to our treatments. Generations of germs can grow in just hours and perhaps even minutes.

So that guy is full of it. If you have any more questions contact me on DU email. I have stop here. There is a lot more to the story. But GET that NOVA special. And they have many other specials on evolution that can fill the gaps.