The Thing About Evolution

The thing about evolution is, it only works when it has to, and once people realized that, really realized it, that shut up the Creationists for once and for all because people realized that if slowly needing to alter one’s physiology meant slowly doing so, then quickly, etc etc, and so people began forcing themselves to quickly evolve by putting themselves into extreme danger.

In many ways, this was not so different than what people had been doing all along, tinkering with nature and themselves and their environment and altering it so that they could become better, or at least different-er, creatures than they had been. It was just more dramatic. Instead of responding to the changed environment (say, living more indoors) by reducing the amount of natural body hair they grew, people responded to new changed environments (say, suddenly being in midair a mile up from the ground) by growing wings and BAM! You have flying people now, not to mention jealous birds who are all “Wait, who knew it was that easy?” and some of those birds probably went off to try and grow themselves opposable thumbs, but good luck with that.

The thing about evolution was, though, that it was not always predictable, either. Whether a given person or a given gene had a given propensity for being able to, on a moment’s notice, become invulnerable to penetrating objects like cop-killer bullets, or instead would simply help grow gills in addition to lungs, was almost impossible to know.

Without trying, that is.

There were tests invented, of course. The thing about humanity is humans always think they can figure things out about the universe and reduce the element of chance in their everyday lives, and the thing about that is: sometimes you can’t.