First things first: Evolution

Hello Humans. Before I tackle race, I think I should tackle one really important concept going forward, evolution. If I can be biased for a moment, to anyone being rational and objective, there is no argument to the validity of evolution. Evolution is fact. Epistemological reasoning says that there's always, technically, uncertainty; however evolution has passed every scientific test thrown against it. It is fact. Now, don't let this view of mine put you off from reading forward. In this post, I want to explain the basic tenets of evolution, handle some misconceptions of it, and then apply evolution to the current and currently only human species Homo Sapien Sapiens.

Evolution, what is it and what does it do? Here it will be best to separate it from different but related ideas. There's evolution, natural selection, and speciation. Evolution is the change in frequency of a gene. Natural selection is the (unthinking) process that decides which genes undergo evolution. Speciation is when a group of related organisms undergo enough evolutionary change that they can no longer successfully mate (reproduce fertile offspring) with the species they arose from.

As said above, evolution is the change in frequency of a gene. Sound too simple? Well, that's what it is! Take gene B for "buffness." Gene B allows for an organism to be quite muscular. Imagine a species named Wimpoids. Wimpoids are skinny, humanlike creatures that are very unimposing. For some reason, an individual among the wimpoids carries the mutation of gene B. He is buff. The other male wimpoids are afraid of this abnormally large individual. The female wimpoids have never been more attracted to a male wimpoid than they have this very capable looking fellow. Our muscular friend finds himself with his pick of any female wimpoid he desires. He chooses the most beautiful wimpoid as his mate. He copulates and has offspring. Only his sons have gene B, because its on the Y-chromosome (in humans, only men have the Y-chromosome). His sons get the same benefit of buffness, so they copulate most successfully. This continues for generations. Before it's realized, gene B is now shared among a sizable percentage of the wimpoid population. Gene B has undergone a frequency change. That is evolution!


Next up is natural selection. Natural selection is the process by which certain genes are selected for or against. Let's go back to the wimpoids. Gene B for buffness is now shared among a sizable portion of the wimpoid population. It has allowed its hosts to successfully mate. However, gene B, while making an individual buff, causes that same individual to be rather slow and lumbering. Really large muscles make it hard to move quickly. This hasn't been a problem for the wimpoids, but now for some reason a new predator has arrived on the scene. This predator is quick and fast with very sharp teeth, and its favorite delicacy is wimpoid flesh. Unfortunately now for all the buff wimpoids, they have become an easy treat for this new predator. The buff wimpoids are too slow to evade their ferociously quick new nemesis. Gene B, over generations, finds itself a rare gene once more as many of the buff wimpoids become feces. The wimpoid environment is now situated in such a way that gene B is no longer an advantageous gene to have. This would be selection against. Selection for would be something such as being more likely to mate because of the gene like in the example of evolution above.


Some of the buff wimpoids have left this new environment in which they cannot survive. Along with a few females, they go off in search for a new place to live. They find a place where they can settle down and not have to worry about being eaten for being too slow. They are now completely seperated from the original wimpoid population. What happens is that over the generations, through the process of natural selection, this seperate group of wimpoids become so drastically different from the original population that they are actually something new and different. This once estranged group are now Jockoids. Their ancestors were once wimpoids who became separated from the original population. So much change had taken place that these Jockoids cannot produce fertile offspring with the wimpoids. The jockoids are a new species. This is called speciation.

Here are some common misconceptions about evolution. Evolution is not a chance process. There are chance mutations that are selected for or against by natural selection by which we see evolution, but evolution is deliberate. It is so much so that we can easily make predictions on the evolution of a creature if we know the environmental pressures acting upon it. Evolution does not and is not meant to explain the origin of life, it is meant to explain the diversity of life (which it does beautifully). Evolution does not explain the origin of the universe. Evolution explains why life takes so many different forms. Evolution is not "just a theory." It is more than a guess, in other words. It is called the theory of evolution, but "theory" means something quite specific in scientific jargon. In science a "theory" is a hypothesis that has been confirmed through scientific experimentation and explains a group of facts or phenomena. In science, a theory is a fact, unlike a conjecture in colloquial usage. Evolution does not equal speciation. Speciation may result from evolution but need not. Also, there is no such thing as "Darwinism," just like there is no such thing as Newtonism, Keplerianism, Einsteinism, or Hubbleism. I believe I've observed even the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins using this term.

Now, I do not have the drive to give a complete account of human evolution. I'll leave that for you to look up. What's important to me is that through the long process of human evolution there wound up one and only one human species: homo sapien sapiens. Each and every human being alive today is a member of this species of which there are no subspecies. We are all exactly the same creature. Many people look around and say, "but there are obviously different groups of people!" This is not so. The categorization of human beings into (usually) five different main groups has no scientific merit. Common sense fails us here, essentially. One may wonder, then, what accounts for these differences between people. It's evolution that accounts for these differences. Now understand that evolution does not equal speciation. Evolution has taken place in human beings, but has not separated us into what we can label as "races."

The reason that around the world people look different is due to evolution. The first members of our species had dark skin to protect from powerful solar radiation in the areas of Africa. White skin developed most likely to be receptive enough to the relatively weaker solar radiation in the areas of Europe, for example. All human traits were developed in response to environmental pressures. As our species dispersed across the planet we developed many traits. It came to the point that the closer you were to a certain group, the more genes you shared with them. The further you were away, the less genes you shared with a group. This is all due to the fact that we usually mate with people close to us. That's really it. This is why Europeans look different from Africans, why Asiatic peoples look different from Europeans and so on. The fact is that we never speciated. To prove this take an African and a Asian, have them mate, and see that if they can produce fertile offspring (barring some genetic or physical misfortune on the offspring's behalf). If they can, they are of the same species. All of our DNA is almost 100% similar. Every human being is basically a clone. If this is the case, then human "races" doesn't make sense.

Evolution has lead to different traits among human beings, more of which are shared to those in close proximity to each other and less for those who are further apart. We have not speciated from this process. The near perfect similarity of each person's genetic code makes the idea of race absurd.

The natural question to follow is, "then why do people treat race as real, and if it's not real why has it had so much of an impact on our society?"