Eternal Vigilance, As They Say, Is The

The World, Unfortunately, Rarely Matches Our Hopes And Consistently Refuses To Behave In A Reasonable Manner.

We Can Now Determine, Easily And Relatively Cheaply, The Detailed Chemical Architecture Of Genes ; And We Can Trace The Products Of These Genes ( Enzymes And Proteins ) As They Influence The Course Of Embryology . In So Doing We Have Made The Astounding Discovery That All Complex Animal Phyla - Arthropods And Vertebrates In Particular - Have Retained, Despite Their Half-billion Years Of Evolutionary Independence, An Extensive Set Of Common Genetic Blueprints For Building Bodies.

I Like To Summarize What I Regard As The Pedestal-smashing Messages Of Darwin's Revolution In The Following Statement, Which Might Be Chanted Several Times A Day, Like A Hare Krishna Mantra, To Encourage Penetration Into The Soul: Humans Are Not The End Result Of Predictable Evolutionary Progress, But Rather A Fortuitous Cosmic Afterthought.

Facts Do Not 'speak For Themselves'; They Are Read In The Light Of Theory.

In His Anti-darwinian Book... (and Eponymously Named The Neck Of The Giraffe ), Francis Hitching Tells The Story... "the Need To Survive By Reaching Ever Higher For Food Is, Like So Many Darwinian Explanations Of Its Kind, Little More Than A Post Hoc Speculation." Hitching Is Quite Correct, But He Rebuts A Fairy Story That Darwin Was Far Too Smart To Tell - Even Though The Tale Later Entered Our High School Texts As A "classic Case" Nonetheless.