"From an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't seem plausible that Mother Nature would have purposely allowed secretion of concentrated nitrate in the mouth if it were harmful to us."
While reading an article someone e-mailed me about nitrates and potential health benefits, I came across the above statement. It actually took me a while to figure out why exactly it was that this bothered me, but I finally came to it.
Here was someone who was not making wild claims about a 6000 year old earth or building strawmen about evolution and monkey or parroting on about some false micro/macro dichotomy, yet who was expressing an ignorance of evolution all the same.
Of course it is possible that this was simply someone engaging in poetic license, but still, I find myself as disturbed by the implication of this statement as I do in the ID/Creationism movement.
I wondered to myself why that was and low and behold, the angel of reason spoke down upon me...
The statement above speaks of some form of intent.... and misses the most basic of concepts inherent in the Theory of Evolution ... that evolution does not care about us... it has no design.
The statement above give the mental image of some format, some direction, when in fact, 'evolution' is nothing more than a label we give to a phenomenon that happens because one organism dies, while another lives.
Evolution... the change in genetic frequency over time.... whether or not an organism has a genetic makeup which gives that organism the ability to pass along its genes to the next generation, that is ALL that evolution (indulging my poetic fancy) 'cares' about.
From an 'evolutionary standpoint' it is completely plausible that we would have evolved with a secretion of something that was harmful to us... as long as it did not interfere with our ability to reproduce and pass those genes along, 'Mother Nature' would have nothing to say about it at all.
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