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Name: The Greatest Show on Earth
Rating: 4.5 (112 reviews)
Author: Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

The Evidence for Evolution

4.5 (112 ratings)

19 mins

Table of Contents

The Greatest Show on Earth
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Embryos develop according to instructions given by genes – a species can be manipulated by selecting which genes are spread.

Consider the many breeds of dog, from the hulking Great Dane to the minuscule Chihuahua or short-legged Dachshund. Despite the massive differences in their physical appearance, they all descended from the wolf.

Dog breeds are the result of human design, implemented through a process known as artificial selection. Over thousands of years people have selected individual dogs and bred them with similar-looking dogs to make certain characteristics, like short legs, more prominent. The same process has been applied elsewhere, too – for example, to breed tastier cabbages.

In reality, it is not the characteristics of dogs or cabbages that are being selected for, but the genes that cause these traits. Individual genes determine what length a dog’s legs will be or how a cabbage will taste, because an organism’s body grows according to instructions provided by its genes during its embryonic stage.

Genes are passed on via reproduction, a process by which the offspring get half their genes from their mother and half from their father. This creates individuals with new unique sets of genes and hence unique characteristics.

With artificial selection, the parents are carefully chosen because they exhibit similar desirable characteristics, with the goal that the genes for these characteristics will be passed on to the offspring. Such breeding has enabled some species to diverge into several vastly different breeds very quickly – for example, changing a wolf to a Chihuahua and a wild cabbage to a cauliflower.

The wide spectrum of life today is the result of populations being separated and hence evolving separately.

Life on Earth is a wonderfully diverse kaleidoscope of different species that live in a variety of environments. Every one of these species is in fact a cousin of every other; go back far enough in time, and you will find common ancestors that link all the species together.

The descendants of common ancestors have diverged and evolved into different species after being geographically separated. This separation allows their gene pools to develop independently from each other.

Competition among individuals and species drives evolution through natural selection.

The reason that many trees tend to grow so high is the result of evolution through natural selection. Trees compete with each other for energy from the sun, and so the trees that thrive are those that grow above other trees and capture more sunlight. These trees then pass on their successful genes to their progeny.

Natural selection is also seen in the battle between predators and prey. Consider speed: Predators evolve to become faster in order to catch more prey, and the prey evolves to become faster to avoid capture. This is known as an evolutionary arms race, which results in both fast predators, like cheetahs, and fast prey, like gazelles.

Evolution through natural selection is driven by new additions to the gene pool caused by mutations.

The phenomenon of evolution is largely a result of changes in the instructions provided by the genes, and the resulting differences in how bodies are built. But how do those instructions change?

Every species has its own gene pool, meaning all the genes contained within all the individuals of that species. The gene pool represents the sum total of the possible genetic variations within that species, and it is from this pool of possibilities that individuals receive their subset of genes, as given by their parents.

Certain characteristics are similar amongst many species – evidence of their shared origin.

All life on Earth is related. Go back far enough and you find ancestors connecting every species to every other, linking humans to bacteria or bananas to crocodiles. In fact, it is possible to draw a ‘family tree’ showing how all life has branched out from the earliest life forms on Earth.

The evidence of our shared histories can be found everywhere. If you look at the skeleton of a bat, you will be able to see that it is incredibly similar to our own. The hand of a bat follows the same layout as the human hand, although a bat’s ‘fingers’ have been greatly stretched to support wings. This shared similarity is known as homology; the human and bat skeletons are homologous.

Evolutionary changes can occur so quickly that we can observe them ourselves – conclusive proof of the theory of evolution.

Creationists have often argued that because you cannot see it happening, evolution cannot be a provable fact. Indeed, a great deal of the evolutionary process happened a long time before any human was alive, so, like a detective at the scene of a crime, the evolutionist must look for the clues left behind over billions of years to piece together what has happened.

However, evolution isn’t something that has occurred only in the deep past. While some animals, known as living fossils, have hardly changed at all over millions of years, in some cases the evolutionary process can become apparent in mere decades: contrary to the creationists’ argument, evolution can happen before our very eyes!

The ‘clocks’ that measure the age of the Earth can be used to date and prove the evolutionary process.

Using the events recorded in the Bible, many creationists have concluded that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. They argue that since evolution couldn’t possibly have taken place in such a short space of time, every species that has ever lived must have been separately created by God. The creationist argument is, of course, bogus. The actual age of the Earth is 4.6 billion years, ample time for life to have evolved to become the colorful spectrum of species we see today.

Scientists are able to date the Earth by using a variety of tools to estimate the age of its rocks and organic material. The vast timescales involved mean that multiple ‘clocks’ of varying reach are needed. Some are quite inexact, because they must reach back billions of years to the earliest periods of life on Earth, whereas others are far more precise and chart more recent evolutionary developments.

Modern life forms carry relics of their ancestors – evidence that life has evolved rather than been created.

Creationists believe that all life was designed and created by an all-powerful God. Yet, when you examine life more closely, the various mistakes and flaws contained in the different species become clear. It must be stated that if God did indeed design all life, then he did not make a very good job of it! The human body, for example, contains a tail hidden beneath the skin; why would a designer bother to include this useless feature in his design?

These mistakes are, in fact, evidence of our species’ history. Our bodies contain a mix of mistakes and relics inherited from our ancestors. Goosebumps, for example, are the remnants of the once vital processes of raising and lowering of body hair to control body temperature, a process redundant in almost-hairless modern humans.

Despite creationist misinterpretations of ‘gaps’ in the fossil record, fossils offer conclusive evidence of the development of life.

One of the many sources of conclusive proof of the theory of evolution is the rich fossil record. Trapped in the preserved bodies of ancient species are clues to how life on Earth developed.

Creationists, however, point to the fossil record as a hole in the theory of evolution. They highlight the gaps in the record between different species as evidence that life cannot possibly have evolved. They argue that life cannot be connected if intermediates or missing links between different species cannot be found. For example, some creationists point to the absence of a fossilized ‘crockaduck’ linking ducks and crocodiles.

Many people are reluctant to acknowledge evolution, yet it is not a matter of opinion; it is a scientific fact.

Since the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859, an avalanche of new evidence has been discovered to conclusively support his theory of evolution by natural selection. For example, modern genetics revealed how characteristics are passed on from parent to child.

Nevertheless, the theory of evolution is always under attack from groups who misunderstand it or cannot comprehend the science behind it. These groups are, in reality, ‘history deniers’; they refuse to accept what is proven fact. Yet, they represent almost half of the North American population and, consequently, have a powerful voice.

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What is The Greatest Show on Earth about?

The Greatest Show on Earth (2009) tackles the arguments made by the creationists who deny that evolution is a scientific fact, and shows their criticisms to be false.

Richard Dawkins provides the evidence that explains how the wide variety of life on Earth has developed through the process of evolution by natural selection, a process first discovered by Charles Darwin in 1859.

Who should read The Greatest Show on Earth?

Students of biology
Those who want to understand how life on Earth developed
Anyone who wants to counter the arguments made by creationists

About the Author

Richard Dawkins is one of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists. He is the author of several best-selling books on biology, including The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker,and has written and presented various television series on scientific subjects.

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