Story of evolution can be seen as comedy of errors (The Ancient Hiccup, Male Hernias, and more)

"Oh what a piece of work is man," wrote Shakespeare, long before Darwin suggested just how little work went into us. Somehow, that same process that gave us reason, language and art also left us with hernias, flatulence and hiccups.

One argument scientists often make against so-called intelligent design — the idea that evolution cannot by itself explain life — is that on closer inspection, we look like we've been put together by someone who didn't read the manual, or at least did a somewhat sloppy job of things.

Viewed as products of evolution, however, our anatomical quirks start to make sense, says University of Chicago fossil hunter and anatomy professor Neil Shubin, author of the recent book Your Inner Fish. And by focusing on our less lofty traits, evolutionary biology can help dispel one of the most egregious and even tragic fallacies surrounding Darwinian evolution — that it moves toward perfection, with man at the apex of some towering ladder.

That misreading of evolution has been connected to the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, with the Nazis extending the man-as-ideal notion to blue-eyed blond German-man-as-ideal notion.

"Darwin didn't believe it, but some, who saw it through a more religious light, tended to want to interpret evolution as a steady march toward the pinnacle of humanity," says University of Pennsylvania ethicist Art Caplan, who has written extensively on the eugenics movement.

By today's understanding, evolution by natural selection doesn't march toward anything — it just modifies existing creatures to better compete in ever-shifting environments.

Understanding something as seemingly trivial as the evolution of hiccups can help clear up some profound misperceptions on the nature of life and humanity.

The sound of a hiccup echoes back to our very distant past as fish and amphibians some 375 million years ago, says Shubin. It's really just a spasm that causes a sharp intake of breath followed by a quick partial closing of our upper airway with that flap of skin known as the glottis. It's best if you can nip it in the first couple of hics, he says.

It's much harder to stop once you've let yourself get up to 10. By that point you've reverted to an ancient breathing pattern orchestrated by the brain stem that once helped amphibians breath, letting water pass the gills without leaking into the lungs.

The theme of his book is that we owe much of our anatomy to our animal ancestors. "Parts that evolved in one setting are now jury-rigged to work in another," he says. "When you look at the human body, you see layer after layer of history inside of us."

The first layer is what we share with chimpanzees and gorillas. The next goes back to mice and cows, while further down, you get to the relatively underappreciated layers we share with fish — which include the backbone and basic layout of the body.

Our descent from fish explains why men are so much more prone to hernias than women. In fish, Shubin explains, the testicles lie up near the heart.

(Had they remained there, he said, it would give a whole new meaning to the Pledge of Allegiance.)

The budding gonads still form up high in a human embryo, but male mammals reproduce better with their sperm kept a bit cooler than body temperature. And so during gestation, human testicles take an incredible journey down through the body to their destination in the scrotum.

The trip downward puts a loop in the cord that connects the testes to the penis, leaving a weakness in the body wall where the cord attaches that never quite repairs itself.

No good story about human design flaws can pass up a discussion of flatulence — and science has addressed the kind that would occur if everyone in the world drank a tall glass of milk at the same time.

Geneticist Pragna Patel of the University of Southern California said one of her favorite examples of evolution in progress involves the gene that determines who can digest the sugars in milk and who cannot.

From genetic studies it appears that so-called lactose intolerance was our ancestral state.

A few people, however, were genetically gifted with an enzyme called lactase, which breaks down lactose, and in groups that started drinking lots of milk around 10,000 years ago, that version of the gene started to take over.

Scientists recently sequenced the lactase gene and found 43 different variations that allow adults to drink the milk of other animals.

"It's the first clear evidence of convergent evolution," Patel said, though it's not known whether those lacking this innovation failed to pass on their genes because they suffered from lack of nutrition or just didn't get invited to any parties.

Literature is endearing, and powerful; no matter where the source:

KRISHNA: Yea! thou hast seen, Arjuna! because I loved thee well,
The secret countenance of Me, revealed by mystic spell,	310
Shining, and wonderful, and vast, majestic, manifold,
Which none save thou in all the years had favor to behold:
For not by Vedas cometh this, nor sacrifice, nor alms,
Nor works well-done, nor penance long, nor prayers nor chaunted psalms,
That mortal eyes should bear to view the Immortal Soul unclad,	315
Prince of the Kurus! This was kept for thee alone! Be glad!
Let no more trouble shake thy heart because thine eyes have seen
My terror with My glory. As I before have been
So will I be again for thee; with lightened heart behold!
Once more I am thy Krishna, the form thou knew’st of old!	320

SANJAYA: These words to Arjuna spake
Vâsudev, and straight did take
Back again the semblance dear
Of the well-loved charioteer;
Peace and joy it did restore	325
When the Prince beheld once more
Mighty BRAHMA’s form and face
Clothed in Krishna’s gentle grace.

ARKUNA: Now that I see come back, Janardana!
This friendly human frame, my mind can think	330
Calm thoughts once more; my heart beats still again!

KRISHNA: Yea! it was wonderful and terrible
To view me as thou didst, dear Prince! The gods
Dread and desire continually to view!
Yet not by Vedas, nor from sacrifice,	335
Nor penance, nor gift-giving, nor with prayer
Shall any so behold, as thou hast seen!
Only by fullest service, perfect faith,
And uttermost surrender am I known
And seen, and entered into, Indian Prince!	340
Who doeth all for Me; who findeth Me
In all; adoreth always; loveth all
Which I have made, and Me, for Love’s sole end,
That man, Arjuna! unto Me doth wend.

Here endeth Chapter XI. of the Bhagavad-Gîtâ,	345
entitled “Viswarupdarsanam,” or “The Book
of the Manifesting of the One
and Manifold”

No reply, huh?

Please look again.

What do you do to wile away your time? What lurks in your heart?

I just sit back and wonder- in this short span of life that we have, with the ability to realise just this, how lucky we are!

Peace lurks in my heart! And amazement.

Why do you feel it so important to make us nothing more than some cosmic chance meeting.

Why do you force yourself to believe that this cosmic chance meeting is, "nothing"? Does that bring you peace?

Do you think Chewbacca got together with Princess Lea and spawned the human race?

No, but do you? Oh right, men were shaped of soil, and women, out of a man's rib. Yea, that's the ticket.

Oh, it all happened by chance... so why should a man need a protruding sexual organ, when the safest position is interior?

You should go back to the time when evolution favoured gene-mixing and variety brought out by sexual reproduction, over asexual reproduction. Lots of male creatures don't have protruding genitalia- especially cold-blooded ones. Don't male fish just pour spermatozoa over female fish eggs? Perhaps the climb out of water and into land brought about new realities.

For that fact, why male and female? Inquiring minds want to know, but ALL of us accept things by faith...

Male and female? The bipolar-attraction model has several advantages- mutually concentrated goals, and mutual reproductive benefits, including the processes of gene mixing, and genetic diversity, brought out by it.

A model of reproduction where three or more individual living creatures came together to mate would be more advantageous to genetic diversity, however such a model is extremely unsustainable in the wild, and basic gene pairing processes negates the need for the third component. Barring spontaneous mutations, mating-pair models are the lowest minimum needed for genetic diversity.

And as for sexual reproduction, well, we do have creatures that can reproduce without a mate- hermaphrodites. Why them?

How do you know that God wrote the book? That is just what I shall not try to prove to you. I could if I pleased, demonstrate it, for there are arguments enough, there are reasons enough, did I care to occupy your time to-night in bringing them before you; but I shall do no such thing. I might tell you, if I pleased, that the grandeur of the style is above that of an mortal writing, and that all the poets who have ever existed could not, with all their works united, give us such sublime poetry and such mighty language as is to be found in the Scriptures. I might insist upon it, that the subjects of which it treats are beyond the human intellect; that man could never have invented the grand doctrines of a Trinity in the Godhead; man could not have told us anything of the creation of the universe; he could never have been the author of the majestic idea of Providence—that all things are ordered according to the will of one great Supreme Being, and work together for good. I might enlarge upon its honesty, since it tells the faults of its writers; its unity, since it never belies itself; its master simplicity, that he who runs may read it; and I might mention a hundred more things, which would all prove, to a demonstration, that the book is of God. But I come not here to prove it. I am a Christian minister, and you are Christians, or profess to be so; and there is never any necessity for Christian ministers to make a point of bringing forward infidel arguments in order to answer them. It is the greatest folly in the world. Infidels, poor creatures, do not know their own arguments till we tell them, and then they glean their blunted shafts to shoot them at the shield of truth again. It is follow to bring forward these firebrands of hell, even if we are well prepared t quench them. Let men of the world learn error of themselves; do not let us be propagators of their falsehoods. True, there are some preachers who are short of stock, and want to fill them up; but God’s own chosen men need not do that; they are taught of God, and God supplies them with matter, with language, with power. There may be some one here to-night who has come without faith, a man of reason, a freethinker. With him I have no argument at all. I profess not to stand here as a controversialist, but as a preacher of things that I know and feel. But I too, have been like him. There was an evil hour when I once shipped the anchor of my faith; I cut the cable of my belief; I no longer moored myself hard by the coasts of Revelation; I allowed my vessel to drift before the wind; I said to reason, “Be thou my captain;” I said to my own brain, “Be thou my rudder;” and I started on my mad voyage. Thank God, it is all over now; but I will tell you its brief history. It was one hurried sailing over the tempestuous ocean of free thought. I went on, and as I went, the skies began to darken; but to make up for that deficiency, the waters were brilliant with coruscations of brilliancy. I saw sparks flying upward that pleased me, and I thought, “If this be free thought, it is a happy thing.” My thoughts seemed gems, and I scattered stars with both my hands; but anon, instead of these coruscations of glory, I saw grim fiends, fierce and horrible, start up from the waters, and as I dashed on, they gnashed their teeth, and grinned upon me; they seized the prow of my ship and dragged me on, while I, in part, gloried at the rapidity of my motion, but yet shuddered at the terrific rate with which I passed the old landmarks of my faith. As I hurried forward, with an awful speed, I began to doubt my very existence; I doubted if there were a world, I doubted if there was such a thing as myself. I went to the very verge of the dreary realms of unbelief. I went to the very bottom of the sea of Infidelity. I doubted everything. But here the devil foiled himself: for the very extravagance of the doubt, proved its absurdity. Just when I saw the bottom of that sea, there came a voice which said, “And can this doubt be true?” At this very thought I awoke. I started from that deathdream, which, God knows might have damned my soul, and ruined this, my body, if I had not awoke. When I arose, faith took the helm; from that moment I doubted not. Faith steered me back; faith cried, “Away, away!” I cast my anchor on Calvary; I lifted my eye to God; and here I am, “alive, and out of hell.” Therefore, I speak what I do know. I have sailed that perilous voyage; I have come safe to land. Ask me again to be an infidel! No; I have tried it; it was sweet at first, but bitter afterwards. Now, lashed to God’s gospel more firmly than ever, standing as on a rock of adamant, I defy the arguments of hell to move me; for “I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him.” But I shall neither plead nor argue this night. You profess to be Christian men, or else you would not be here. Your professions may be lies; what you say you are, may be the very contrary to what you really are; but still I suppose you all admit that this is the Word of God. A thought or two then upon it. “I have written to him the great things of my law.”

http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0015.htm

So, do you worship Vishnu, or are you just posting antithesis to my Christ? Do you BELIEVE we are created beings, or just happenstance sojourners?

By what deductive reasoning did you accept the hypothesis of evolutionary chance chemical juncture bringing about life and bringing us to this point in civilization? How much of your "reasoning" is nothing more than accepting the works and words of others? Or, is your personal experience sufficient for you to understand these things?

Literature is the result of emotion. There is always a desire to share our knowledge, particularly when we don't fully understand things. God created us in that mode.

In my belief, Adam was persuaded to eat of the fruit. That fruit came from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil". It has been popularized as an apple, but it may be something else. That is irrelevant. What counts, is that man has always sought to have ALL the knowledge in God possession. We can pretend, but we can't be God (even if there are some ARE fooled by an 1800's charlatan). God is a little larger than mortal man.

I have heard God's voice. It wasn't a shout, nor even a whisper. I know, I heard His voice! He called me "beloved", and promised me something that your "religion" cannot. He gave me hope. Science just tells me I'm a lump of elastic water.

God doesn't place many requirements on you. He makes life easy. He doesn't stifle intellect. He is calling you, and you can decide to listen... or not.

How would an organism “know” that spermatogenesis was more effective using external cooling if every animal up to that time used the internal model?

The organism needn't know anything.

Testicular over-heating is one of the chief causes of infertility.

If creatures of a particular trait have more offspring than the others, soon, that model will dominate. And competition for resources will wipe out, or severely curtail, the disadvantaged.

Cold-blooded, sea-dwelling creatures didn't need too much of thermal regulation. Water tends to keep its temperature with great stability. Once things like laying eggs on land to avoid predation, and eventually living on land itself, brings their particular advantages, other things need to evolve as well- warm blood, for example. I'm not saying that creatures suddenly jumped out of water to develop warm-blooded bodies. No.

Species that laid eggs on land probably increased their numbers because of the increased safety for their eggs. These species probably differenciated further, with some of them living entirely on land with cold blood, and some others evolved rudimentary systems to keep blood thermally stable, say by means of mutated muscle tissue or benign tumour that always kept warm through breakdown of energy-providing chemicals.

The advantages and disadvantages of each model could further complicate themselves over the eons, with different sorts of adaptations through mutation.

One by-product of this gene mutation: Cancer.

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