Evolutionary History and Divine Presence

Abstract

B iology has developed at two scales. Molecular biology, discovering genes and DNA, has decoded the of (once ascribed to the Spirit of God). Evolutionary history has located the secret in natural selection operating across enormous timespans, with the fittest selected to survive. The two levels are theoretically interrelated. The genetic does the coding of life in DNA and constructs molecular proteins, lipids, assembling them into organisms. Organisms cope at their nativerange levels, inhabiting ecosystems. Across deep evolutionary time, species are selected as they track changing environments, transforming one into another. The process is prolific but not fine-tuned in rather strong contrast to what physicists have been saying with their anthropic principle. To the contrary, evolutionary history can seem make-shift and blundering at the same time that, within structural constraints and mutations available, it optimizes adapted fit. Natural selection is thought to be blind, both in the genetic variations bubbling up without regard to the needs of the organism, some few of which by chance are beneficial, and also in the evolutionary selective forces that select for survival without regard to advance. Frances Crick complains that biology is not elegant. As organisms evolve through the interplay of chance and necessity, they become encrusted with solutions by which they cope, but which have no more overarching logic than the layout of the Manhattan subway system. Stephen Jay Gould insists that the panda's thumb is evolutionary tinkering and that orchids are jury-rigged. Even Darwin, though he could find in some moods a