By Michael Carroll
Best-selling author of Did the Dinosaurs Fake the Moon Landings?

Introduction     Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5

Lesson 4: DNA and Evolution

What is DNA?
As the very, very old joke goes, DNA stands for the National Dyslexia Association. But... Could there be some truth in this?

No, of course there couldn't. That would be stupid. DNA really stands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid. This is commonly referred to as the "building block" of all life, a phrase that conjures up an image of a sort of biological Lego from which one can make many different things. Those of us in the know are aware that the phrase is merely a way of giving the thickos something to hook on to: "They can't possibly hope to grasp the complexity of DNA so let's save ourselves a lot of time and fob the buggers off with something they can understand."

Since I know that you lovely people do not fall into the category of "thicko", I'll be able go into DNA in some detail here! Yay!

DNA is a very lengthy chain molecule that contains chemically-coded sequences that determine how a life-form will develop. DNA exists inside pretty much every cell in our bodies, and there's DNA inside the cells of every single plant, animal, bacterium, virus, fish, banana, donkey and - because I know you were going to ask - sparrow.

Now, the DNA strands in your body are not all the same: See, every life-form has a number of chromosomes, that number being forty-six in humans. Each chromosome contains a strand of DNA, and each strand has a number of different genes. Note: these genes are not of the Autrey or Roddenberry variety; they are coded sequences and stuff. Genes determine the colour of our eyes, the length of our tongues, the shapes of our toenails, and so on.

How does it work, then?
Okay, it's like this... Ever wonder why everyone in your family has the same colour hair? Well, that's because the content of your DNA has been derived from the DNA in your parents' cells.

See, when your parents "got together" in an "act of love", your father "donated" some DNA "samples" to your mother, then one of these samples "combined" with an "egg" containing your mother's DNA. So you see, we truly are all created in an act of love, even if that act of love wasn't planned as a baby-making process, and in fact may have involved any number of "straps", "feathers" or "uniforms".

So: the two DNA samples sort of battle it out for supremacy, gene taking on gene in a sort of biological one-on-one wrestling match. If, say, your mother has red hair and your father has brown hair, well, it's more likely that you'll have brown hair because the Brown Hair Gene is stronger than that Red Hair Gene. This explains two things: first, it shows us why there are fewer red-haired people now than there were when we were kids, and (b) it explains why the children in one family aren't all completely identical.

In such a case, it's possible that your DNA will retain the recessive Red Hair Gene, and you will pass it on to your own children. Recessive Genes can be dormant for many, many generations and then suddenly jump out and come to the fore. So if you have a sibling who looks absolutely nothing like the rest of the family, it doesn't necessarily mean that your mother was fooling around: it might just mean that a Recessive Gene got a lucky break. Unless of course your sibling happens to look exactly like the postman.

Okay, I understand that now. But where does evolution come into it?
Ah! Evolution! Now, you have to remember that evolution is only a theory. It has not been proved. Nor has it been proven. I can never remember which of those two words is the correcter.

There are lots of people who maintain that evolution cannot possibly be true because there's no mention of it in The Bible. These people should bear in mind that The Bible also makes no mention of Australia, chocolate or under-floor heating, yet we know all of those things exist.

Anyway... At its most basic, evolution is simply "survival of the fittest". This does not mean that in the future only athletes will survive: "fittest" means "most fit" or "most appropriate."

This is a true story of an example of actual evolution in work (some of the facts have been altered because I've forgotten them, but the gist is true)...

A couple of hundred years ago in London there were lots of little white moths that fluttered about the place. Every now and then a recessive gene or some other mutation would produce a black moth instead of a white one, but these moths quickly got eaten by the pigeons because they were easy to spot against the light-coloured buildings.

Then the industrial revolution happened, and all the soot, dust and other crap in the air caused the buildings to turn black. This meant that the white moths were easier for the pigeons to spot and catch. The dark moths were better camouflaged against the dark buildings and thus they had a greater chance of surviving long enough to mate and pass on their DNA to the next generation.

Within twenty years or so, that particular breed of moth became predominantly black.

See? That's what evolution is! It's not magic, nor is it design. It just happens.

So evolution is really just a matter of chance, then?
In some ways, yes. If, in the above example, the white moths didn't occasionally produce some black ones, then they'd have all been picked-off by the pigeons and would now be extinct. This is exactly what happened to the long-extinct domestic Cowboy: unable to blend in with the surroundings when civilisation spread to the West, the Cowboys were quickly tracked and killed by savage, yet stupid, hunters, who sought them out on the belief that the Cowboys' spurs were made of peppermint fudge.

But... Evolution can be deliberately shaped! In fact, this is pretty much what occurs every time a man and a woman decide to get together and have children: both partners like something they see in the other one and they want to pass those positive traits on to the next generation.

However, because of modern medical technology, the human race's evolution is going a little wonky... Back in the old days, people who weren't attractive had less of a chance of passing their seed on to the next generation because no one would sleep with them. So if there was an "Ugly Gene" (there isn't, but suppose there was), it would have less of a chance of being passed on. Therefore, the human race as a whole would get prettier and prettier.

But thanks to cosmetic surgery, now ugly people can pass themselves off as pretty people! See, cosmetic surgery doesn't affect your DNA: physically you might have normal-sized earlobes, but in your DNA they'll be as huge as they were before the surgery.

This means that we are going to see more and more examples of good-looking parents producing ugly children. Those children will most likely have cosmetic surgery themselves, thus passing the "Ugly Gene" on to their offspring.

So, is everything about us down to our DNA?
No, not at all! If that was the case, there wouldn't be very many gay people, would there? If gayness was genetic it would have less of a chance of being passed on. From this we could conclude that gay people choose to be gay; that would mean that everything that happens to them is their own fault.

This is not true: Alongside our DNA, we are shaped not only by our decisions but also by our environment and our upbringing. All that's way too complicated (and thorny) to go into here, so I won't bother (look for my new column "Understanding Psychology and Neurology for Thickos" coming soon to this very publication!).

Will I burn in Hell for promoting the Theory of Evolution?
I doubt it. Traditionally, Creationism (the idea that the world was made in one go by God) and Evolution are mortal enemies: the acceptance of one denies the other. This is a conceit held by many Christians, based on the idea that The Bible is one hundred per cent true and that anything that appears to disagree with it is blasphemy. Setting aside all the many contradictions within The Bible itself (look for my new column "Winding-Up Religious Zealots for Beginners" coming never), couldn't it be possible that when God created everything he built evolution into the design? I mean, I would, if I was God (which, I should stress, I'm not).

Summary: With or without the concept of a Creator, evolution is the neatest, simplest way to explain how the world works.

It may not be true, but if it's not, then it ought to be.