Reading Richard Dawkin’s book, “The Ancestor’s Tale”, got me thinking about something I have never seen mentioned regarding Evolution.
For the evolution of an organism there must be at least one continuous line
of reproducing offspring, as well as mutations to produce change. As I
understand it, the vast majority of mutations have a harmful effect, some have a
neutral effect, and very few have a “good for survival and
reproduction” effect.
Since you have at least one continuous line of ancestors all the way back to
the beginning of life and even before that as replicating molecules, all the
“good” mutations must have happened throughout at least one of your
lineages (as unlikely as this would be). All the “bad” mutations must
have happened to many other organisms that went extinct for that reason.
This argument can be made for all plants, animals and other organisms that
are alive today. At least one of the lineages of a living organism alive today
must have had all “good mutations for survival and reproduction”
throughout life’s existence.
This is astounding!!
Another possible way of looking at this:
Imagine you can see one of your successful lineage organisms from the far
past to your present — like a movie. Also imagine that you don’t see any of the
other organisms that affected your ancestors — same and different species.
You should see a continuous sequence of millions of organisms all the way
back that have had good mutations and essentially no bad ones.
This is remarkable! Are we lucky or what?
As far as I can see the lineages that survived till now would likely have met
and crossed many times.
Naturalism and Religious Experience 