Bananas R US.

When I used to work the most depressing day of the week would be a Monday but since I have finished I now love it. There is not as much traffic on the roads or people in the shops. Also for the last three weeks Richard Dawkins has made a mini series as a tribute to Charles Darwin which I have enjoyed but cant help feeling that he could have made a more convincing program. I read his first book, “The Selfish Gene” in the early 1970’s and immediately felt that it was the best explanation yet of how evolution works and even better than Darwin’s own. I read each of his books as they came out but each time more of the book was devoted to arguing with other people and explaining himself where he had been criticized rather than explaining what he does best. The program seemed to be both defensive and attacking of his critics rather than simply explaining the facts. He should have started by showing and pointing out simply that evolution isn’t a theory but a fact. Few thinking people could argue with the overwhelming evidence even before dna was discovered. Evolution is a fact; the only theory is its mechanism to which Darwin put the best one forward, “evolution by natural selection”. Undoubtedly natural selection happens but I suspect it is not the only driving force in place.

The fossil record is more than enough evidence to prove evolution but since we have had the added advantage of dna I am at a complete loss as to how anyone could ever question it. As in a court of law it can be proved beyond doubt who a child’s parents are and in just the same way it can be used to show more distant relatives beyond question. We can even tell where people have lived from their dna. This has been extended further to show the relationships and distance between species and very largely it completely agrees with our previous knowledge from the fossil records. There have been a few surprises where dna has shown unexpected relationships but these have been exciting as it improves our understanding of nature. In this way it can be shown that we share about 99% of our genes with chimpanzees and Bonobo’s and we even share 60% of our genes with a banana.