I consider myself a champion of evolution. Ever since I was a wee lad - which technically includes most of high school - I’ve been an avid learner of evolutionary theory. In college, I finally found my academic paradise in the geology department studying paleontology. How beautiful it is to look at a series of fossil bones and bone fragments covering hundreds of millions of years and seeing the changes over time.

Not too long ago I had a conversation with a family member. He related how he had seen a “world-renowned” scientist on TV, and he had said that there was absolutely no evidence for evolution. I was shocked. I knew the scientist he was referring to [though the name escapes me at the moment]. This “world-renowned” scientist who apparently has all the answers is a molecular biologist. Why is this relevant?

First off, how many people believe the Theory of Gravity? That’s right. It’s a THEORY that keeps you from rocketing off the planet. I would venture to guess that everyone who isn’t a Lawsonomist believes that gravity exists. Would you believe that there is almost no evidence for gravity? That’s right. We have no idea how gravity works. We don’t know why it works. But everyone accepts it as truth.

Now take a science like evolution. There are literally billions of pieces of incontrovertible evidence. If you include modern life, the number jumps to incalculable levels. Evolution is so widely documented, so many pieces have been collected, examined, cataloged, argued over, and accepted, it boggles my mind how so many people can just discount it. Just because you don’t like what science has to say does NOT make it any less valid.

Getting back to the relevance. There are really only two kinds of people one should consider “authorities” on evolution. Evolutionary biologists and paleontologists. It’s what they do. A nuclear chemist may be extremely intelligent and hold a PhD, but would you ask him why you pee blood? No. You’d ask a physician, someone who actually studies that sort of thing.

Now this bunk scientist is in biology. He’s sitting on that edge where he should have studied enough evolutionary science to know better. But he claims that evolution has no evidence, that it’s wrong, and that we should all ignore it.

Analogy time! If you were a mathematician, and you concerned yourself with complex differential equations [of course, what diffeq’s aren’t complex?], what would you think of a colleague who considered addition and subtraction as baseless and false? You cannot be a mathematician of any caliber if you deny the very fundamentals of the science, can you?

The very fundamental levels of modern biology are based inextricably in the theory of evolution. Simply put, one cannot honestly call themself a biologist in the modern sense of the word if they do not think that evolution is true.

Evolution is undeniably true - as far as it is possible to know. Evolution is more valid a theory than gravity. Ask physicists to explain gravity, and you’ll get a shrug. Ask a paleontologist to explain evolution, and you’ll get a weeks-long demonstration with mountains of references. There are only two things that evolution does not cover:

1. Origin of life. There are hypotheses, but at this time, we have no way of testing them to a satisfactory conclusion.
2. The process. Is evolution slow? Punctuated? Is natural selection the mechanism or is there something else? Everything we have so far points to a synthesis of all of the above: mostly slow, occasionally rapid change due to natural selection. Those with an advantage persevere. Those with a disadvantage do not.

That evolution occurred and still occurs and will occur as far into the future as we can imagine is as certain as the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Of course, that’s just a theory, too, since no one’s ever seen it happen.

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