Evolution is Beautiful

I was talking to my roommate about evolution—mostly because I tend to spit out random facts about animals—and I told him how whales were originally land animals that went back to the water. And he told me that was beautiful.

And you know what? 

I agree. Evolution is fucking beautiful.

Just the idea that nature caused things to change through time to adapt to their environments, and that a primal need for survival has given us jellyfish, hummingbirds, tigers, lizards, and cockroaches is absolutely overwhelming—and beautiful.

Much more beautiful than an ark. A story that people—specially in the US—that people cling to. I always thought it curious that people in Brazil—who are mostly Catholic—don’t have any problems with evolution, but people in America get all uppity about it. Did you know there’s a creationist museum in Kentucky? And that they defend natural selection but don’t see it as evidence for evolution? I really love this country, but sometimes I think it has problems. 

So here’s the ending to The Origin of Species. Good ol’ Darwin kind of agrees with me:

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”