The Universe is utterly indifferent to everything. Looking at Earth's history, however, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. During the Permian–Triassic extinction, just one of the 'big five', around 96% of species were lost. The five mass extinction events took place long before we arrived – at 23:58:43 if Earth’s history is pictured as a 24-hour clock.
Predator and prey existed then as now. Certain prehistoric parasitic wasps had a life cycle which remains unchanged today and begins with a female wasp laying an egg in a fly pupae. After hatching, the wasp larva feed on the still living fly pupa, ultimately causing its death. Nature then as now was red in tooth and claw.
Over 200 years ago Shelley's blasphemous freethinking got him expelled from Oxford University. And still today such thoughts can result in the death penalty in thirteen countries. For PBS, ‘Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred’ (The Necessity of Atheism, 1811). He would have been fascinated by our current understanding of human biology. We are an evolutionary hodgepodge made largely of bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea. Our eyes see less than 1 percent of the light spectrum, and retinas detach easily – even the humble shrimp has better vision. We are also fitted with sub-optimal plumbing (breathing, eating, excretory and reproductive) and, yes, programmed to die – unlike Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish! But perhaps this should not come as a surprise: we are part of a world where at least 40 percent of animal species are parasites, and over 99 percent of all species that ever lived are extinct. A total of 105 billion people have lived so far; just over 8 billion of us are currently alive.
PATHFINDERS: ALFRED THE GREAT
DARWIN AND THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN BRIGADE
Why some parts of the human body don't make sense
"Evolutionary flaws disprove the theory of intelligent design"
Why I Am Not a Christian, Bertrand Russell
Aliens don’t exist and we are totally alone in a bleak lifeless universe, scientist says
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