Evolution Reaction Paper

After finish watching the movie "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", our biology teacher asks us to write a reaction paper based on each section in the movie. There are ten parts in the movie, which include: Darwin's Observations from the Beagle, Humming Birds, Darwin's Idea of Natural Selection, HIV Evolution, Complex Organs: made/evolve, Eye Evolution, God versus Natural Selection including Humans, Can God Fit in Science, Society Control of Church and Book Publishing.

The first section in the movie is Darwin's Observations from the Beagle.

As Darwin was on the Beagle from 1831 to 1836 and traveled South America coastline, he found different finches on different climate on different islands. Why God put different species in different climate? Then Darwin said that these animals have adapted. They change from generation to generation to fit in the climate where they live, so that they could survive. Then, Darwin drew a tree of life. It shows the first ancestor parent animals from the root of the tree to the animals have evolved on the branch of the tree.

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I totally agree with Darwin's idea because there are many animals that are from a same spicy, but they have a little bit different as they live in different places. Darwin also found evidence said that mountain rise from the see which is a new idea at his time.

Continue on the movie, it's the part of the scientists did a research on the humming birds. They wrote down all information on the humming birds they'd caught on different places including took some of their DNA.

All These humming birds have different beaks to adapt on the individual climate even if they have similar DNA. The environments where they live force them to adapt to survive. Humming birds which live near the equator where day is hot and night is cold can drop 15 degree on their body temperature to fit in the environment. These humming birds must have the same ancestor, then, because of some reasons, they must change their living places. To adapt to the new environment, they must change so that we can see a lot of kind of humming birds today.

During Darwin's travel, he wrote Natural Selection which said that the organisms that are more suited to the environment will more likely to survive. This is true, but I don't think it works for human now. Nowadays, human create many kind of medicines, they invent new technology that help people to survive even if they are not fit in the environment. For example, a lot pf people move to Antarctica, where it's freezing, but they can still survive without adaptation because they have warm clothes, heats, and houses.

The next section in the movie was talking about HIV. It's a very dangerous virus which there is not any drug can kill it today. The virus keeps adapting, evolve to a new strange to defeat the drug. Each time people try a new drug, then after a while, the viruses start coming back. When the new drugs come, the virus start to change by changing their DNA, they would have trait that make them resistance to sudden drugs. Even if the drugs enter, the viruses still survive and reproduce. It's really hard to imagine. If the patient tries a new drug, the virus evolves to resist it. The doctors have a new idea to against the HIV. This idea is based on the Natural Selection.

They let the patient has 3 months with no drugs, then, the population of the viruses has changed completing from being resistant to every drug to apparent to be acceptable. When the drugs stop enters, the environment inside the patient where the viruses live change, the wild type come back. It would bring back to natural state of not having any drug. After that, the patient will use drug again. I hope this will work because it sounds like a good idea, and it's also based on the natural selection theory of Darwin. However, I don't really think human can find a way to kill the HIV because HIV always changes to adapt and survive.

After the HIV section is the Complex organs section. If organism disuse an organ of it, that organ will get smaller and smaller, on the other hand, if that organism uses too much an organ, it will develop. In the movie, Darwin said that the mole eyes getting smaller and smaller because they live underground so they don't need to use their eyes. Furthermore, we can see this happens in many organisms in the world, like the giraffe has long neck to eat leaves on tall trees.

The next section is about the eye evolution. Human eyes make possibly have been acquired by gradual selection of slight but useful deviation. In different organisms, they have eyes with different structures that make eyes can look further or not. Blood vessels and nerve vessels in front of eyes connect with the brain to show the image the eyes see. Eyesight helps animals with finding food or mates. Nowadays, when a lot of human use their eyes too much on books, computers, studies, the eyes get shortsighted, but human can get out of it be using glasses or go to an operation.

Move on to the next section, we have God versus natural selection. This shows us that nature can do everything. Nature by itself unaided by God can even make eyes. People at Darwin's time said that God create everything, so why did God put different organism at different places? Why some organism disappeared, the other one can survive? If like these people idea, God created perfect organisms, so why didn't some of them survive? The people who follow God couldn't answer these questions while natural selection could explain all. The bigoted people at that day, who believe in the fallacy of the church and the Bible which were very powerful, said that: "Natural selection is an ingenious theory for denying and therefore the existing of the creator." Today, when people are well educated, they can understand the indubitable idea of natural selection and the paradox of God.

Nowadays, when science has developed and when people are well educated, they can understand the indubitable idea of natural selection and the paradox of God. Some common accentors such as all come from ocean are unacceptable in the world of God. God is just something people create in their belief. Anything in science must be proved, and God is an opposite thing with science, because people have never seen God. In my opinion, I think follow some religion is a waste of time, and God doesn't help anybody. In my country, most of people don't follow any religion and most of the religions are banned because there is no God and I think it's a good idea for the development of science. God doesn't fit in science.

When Darwin tell everybody his idea, the society at that time against him. In the society which is control by the church, it's hard to tell something against the Bible. Most of people said he was wrong, that human was created by God, not evolved from apes. I think Darwin was a brave person to say something against the society.

Finally, like the name of the movie: Darwin's dangerous idea, his book was very dangerous because it against everybody thoughts and beliefs. The book was a revolution in science when it was published. The church and the Bible would be more powerful today if Darwin didn't publish his book.

The most important experience of Darwin's life was his trip aboard HMS Beagle as a naturalist. The Beagle left England in 1831, and it returned in 1836. The overall purpose of the voyage was to map uncharted areas of the South American coastline. And then, he wrote the theory of Natural Selection:

One of the prime motives for all species is to reproduce and survive, passing on the genetic information of the species from generation to generation. When species do this they tend to produce more offspring than the environment can support.

The lack of resources to nourish these individuals places pressure on the size of the species population, and the lack of resources means increased competition and as a consequence, some organisms will not survive.

The organisms that die as a consequence of this competition were not totally random; Darwin found that those organisms more suited to their environment were more likely to survive.

This resulted in the well-known phrase survival of the fittest, where the organisms most suited to their environment had more chance of survival if the species falls upon hard times.

Those organisms that is better suited to their environment exhibit desirable characteristics, which is a consequence of their genome being more suitable to begin with.

In my opinion, this theory is a great invent that change the future of science and also the society from his time to today, and it still affects the science world in the future. Darwin's natural selection is an axiom in science, especially in biology. Nowadays, many scientists still use his theory in science research, like the scientists who find out how to destroy the HIV. However, I don't agree a piece of this theory, because I don't think human is a part of the organisms in his theory. Human with developed technology, can decide how they want to live, develop and reproduce without the affect of nature. They can survive in many environments without adaptation to fit into them. The human's intelligent has evolved to a place where they can get out of the control of nature, and now, human even can reform the nature to fit into their demands.

My personal thoughts about the evolution of new species is that it's a long period change from generation to generation and is very necessary to create more new species in the world. I truly believe that life began from the ocean, from a single cell, than it evolve and change for many millions of year into fishes, than some of them went to the land and evolved into many species like today. Not like some bigoted people, I don't think there is an organism called God which creates everything. All organisms on Earth appear after long times evolve. I wonder how the first single cell was created; I think the life on Earth possibly has origin from another planet, because that first cell couldn't just appear. Organisms become extinct because they can't fit in the environment.

When the environment change suddenly, many organisms could become extinct because they are not ready to live in a different environment, but if some can survive, they begin to evolve to fit into the environment. Today, human is the main reason directly or indirectly make a lot of organisms become extinct. Human have been killed a lot of animals, they destroy the environment by produce pollution; they destroy most of the forest in the world. Human also bring organisms from one place to another place, which make a big change in environment. You can see nowadays, we have more disasters than before, and the number of species has decreased more and more rapidly.

As the human change the environment, many species have to adapt to it to survive like the rats live in the city or the dogs live in our houses. I wonder what happen if millions year ago, the apes didn't evolve to human, what would the world look like? The world might be more beautiful, with lots of species live together, where they don't have chance to become extinct because of human. The world would be more beautiful if human follow the natural selection like other species does.