Noah's Poodles

A Letter to Du'a Khalil Aswad

A favorite refutation of evolution often carted out by believers is the idea that God must exist because “it all couldn’t just happen by chance.” The gist of the argument is that life is so complex that it could not happen by chance, therefore God did it.

Putting aside the obvious contradiction that theists believe God just happened by chance, no person who accepts evolution believes for a moment that “it all just happened by chance.” The confusion (or, at times, deliberate obfuscation) comes from two vital roles played by chance in evolution.

The first is the likelihood of survival. A organism that is more suited to its environment is more likely to survive and pass on its genes. A slightly faster lion, taller giraffe or better sighted hawk is more likely than its slower, shorter or more myopic brethren to live long enough to breed and pass on its genes. No rocket science here.

The second role chance plays is that the very characteristic possessed by the parent that gave it the edge is more likely to be inherited by the child. Once again, no surprise here. One look around you will confirm that children tend to favor their parents.

In neither case, however, is anything certain. It is not certain that the faster lion will outbreed its less endowed siblings. It might, for example, be killed as a cub by marauding hyenas or die of disease or drought. Nor is it certain that its speed will be passed on to its offspring. Some tall parents have short children, some fast lions, slow cubs. However, the chances of an offspring inheriting the advantageous trait of its parents and passing it on to its children are slightly better than for those that do not have the advantage. A fitter, more prepared athlete is not guaranteed, but certainly more likely to win a given athletic event than his more portly competitors.

So far, easy. But here is the key. The way in which any child will differ from its parents will generally be small (such as eye color, height etc.) but, given enough time and enough generations, and provided some external element is selectively favoring specific traits, the differences will add up. Over thousands of generations, so much cumulative change builds up that the great-great-great etc. grandson will be so different from its great-great-great etc. grandfather as to amount to a new species.

If, for example, a dog breeder only ever allows the fastest male dogs to breed with the fastest female dogs, after many years of such selective breeding the resultant dogs will differ so much in body shape, leg length and, perhaps, lung capacity from their ancestor as to be considered a separate breed. No one set of offspring will differ greatly from its parents, but it will differ a little more from its grandparents, and even a little more from its great-grandparents etc., until we go all the way back to the original dog, which will be quite different in appearance.

In point of fact, this has happened. They are called Greyhounds and they differ considerably from the original Sighthounds from which they were bred. Likewise, when the trait chosen was ability to smell and track, one result, after many generations, was the Bloodhound, while selective breeding for the ability to herd sheep has resulted in the Collie and German Shepherd (note the name).

All breeds of dog alive today descended from wolves. In fact, it is likely (but not certain) that they all descended, ultimately, from a small pack of wolves that were domesticated in either the Middle East or Manchuria some 10,000 years ago. In any event, every last one of them, from the Teacup Chihuahua in Paris Hilton’s purse to the Great Danes of European car advertisements, are the cumulative result of selective breeding down different paths from the original wolf.

While there has not yet been enough time for different dog breeds to amount to separate species as opposed to breeds, that is just a matter of degree. Given enough time, and many thousands of years are generally required, the added up effects are so great that breeding and producing viable offspring with the original breed is no longer possible, and thus the new species emerges. The first signs of this can already be seen in dogs. The ability of a Chihuahua to mate with a Great Dane or Irish Wolfhound, absent artificial insemination, is probably approaching the theoretical at this point, regardless of which breed is the female.

Evoution is, in fact, a work in process, as dog breeders all over the world, along with horse breeders, wheat farmers, rose growers and all other professions that depend on the traits of plants or animals to make their living, selectively breed for desired traits. Even the most cursory of research into any branch of horticulture or animal husbandry quickly reveals that the size, variety, health, longevity and resistence to disease of most of our domesticated plants and animals were the thing of dreams as recently as 100 years ago. Indeed, biotech companies like Monsanto would quickly fall behind the competition if they did not spend millions each year on Darwinian selective breeding programs.

Standing at the Playboy Club in Las Vegas and looking out at the famous Vegas Strip, the cumulative effects of small random events are readily apparent. In every casino, every second of the day, and every day of the year, people can be found betting their money. No casino is bound to win any individual game of poker or roll of a dice. However, with the odds slightly in the house’s favor in every game offered, and with thousands of hands being dealt, dice being rolled and slot machines being played every second, the cumulative effect is soon felt.

From the casino’s perspective, for every ten casino wins, there are only about seven losses to the customer, and the money pours in. They can thus afford to keep the lights on, to pay their staff, to have elaborate volcanoes explode, enormous fountains shoot off to music or even Eiffel Towers built to attract the public, and still ensure a handsome and somewhat predictable return to their shareholders.

The final result is an entire city of elaborate and different casinos. Like animals in the wild, they come in all shapes and sizes, from the beautiful and vainglorious Bellagio and Aria, through the stately elegence of the Venetian and Ceaser's Palace, the sweeping brown arcs of Wynn and Encore, through pyramids, castles, and waves, down to vestigial one story relics from the sixties and seventies. Vegas itself, as much as a rainforest, is living, breathing proof of the sheer power of accumulating small random events.

The analogy is imperfect, in that every role of the dice does not directly build on the roll before, the way DNA complexity accumulates, but the money in the bank certainly builds. Indeed, in this vein, a second Darwinian element is soon in play in Vegas, that of competition between the casinos for customers. Just like species in the wild, the casinos are the result of billions of random events, and they compete like the beasts for survival.

Those that make money live, those that don’t are torn down and replaced. To attract prey, the Rio and Palms casinos proudly display their bright, primary colored neon lights each night, like a peacock displays its feathers. The sleek Wynn has seen success, so its genes are passed onto Encore. Further up the Strip, in the area the hip crowd avoids, the lumbering dinosaurs Gold Nugget and California have seen their environments change as younger, more nimble competitors have moved in. They are now relegated to hunting older, slower, social security prey and are perhaps destined for extinction.

In short, Vegas is built on and lives by the cumulative effect of numerous small, random events. Thousands of people make their living from it, just like they do in its uglier cousins, Atlantic City and the grossly over-rated Monte Carlo, and in hundreds of other cities all over the World.

So, the next time a believer smugly asks, “so you think it all just happened by chance,” or states that “complexity cannot happen from chance,” suggest that they buy a book on dogs or take a plane to Vegas and see for themselves the cumulative effect of billions of small random events.

I doubt it will help much, though. Given their seemingly indefatigable ability to ignore inconvenient facts, they will probably just argue that Vegas legends Kirk Kerkorian and the Maloof brothers were on Noah’s ark, right next to the Pomeranians, Poodles and Pit Bulls.