The Survival Machines.

                                   

Throughout chapter ten, I felt as if as though I was sitting in Dr.G’s Biology class.Your learn a lot, but then again you don understand a lot. I had to read paragraphs to or three times to process what Dawkins was talking about.

However, something I undisputedly learned was genes and DNA determine almost every single aspect of our lives. The other day in Biology class we were looking at genetic diseases such as Down Syndrome, Canavan disease and many others. People with these genetic diseases have numerous difficulties. As this chapter and these diseases made me realize, the difference between good and bad genes can mean the difference between a good and a bad life. I am not saying people with genetic diseases have a bad life, I am saying they have a harder life. I realize how much we owe to our genes and DNA .

I also want to talk about another thing. Dawkins defines living things as  “survival machines” through out the last chapter. These themes of survival machines, DNA and genes made me think about the movie Time. In Time each character of the movie is born and is given exactly 26 years of life. After they are 26 they die. So in the movie people work for Time. In other words time is there currency if they work all day they get 45 minutes and if they buy a coffee its worth two minutes. Each person has a personal clock that when they are born has exactly 26 years and it starts counting down when this clock reaches zero they die. People that are born poor have to work and live on a daily basis trying to figure out how not to die within the next two days “survival machines.” However people that are born rich, as their parents have about a million years in time, they don't have to worry because they can live as long as they want.

The Movie relates a lot to Chapter three of The Selfish Gene because it consists of survival machines. It relates even more, in the sense that your life time and quality, can be determined by whether you are born rich or poor. This can relate to the genes and the DNA. If you are born with good genes and DNA, you are destined to live a long and good life. On the other hand if you are born with bad genes and DNA, your life is destined to be harder and shorter.

Meet Dave

The Human structure is extremely complex. Reading chapter two made me realize exactly how complex it was. There was a certain point in chapter three were I really wasn't getting anything of what I was reading. It was really complex. However, as always Dawkins shows the complex as something simple. Dawkins used the following analogy to explain how the human being is composed by certain genes that act together each one with specific functions so that the body can function properly as a whole. “One oarsman on his own cannot win the Oxford Cambridge boat race. He needs eight colleagues. Each one is a specialist who always sits in a particular part of the boat - bow or stroke or cox etc. Rowing the boat is cooperative venture,but some men are nevertheless better than others.” After this analogy, I could finally understand what I had struggled to understand through the last three pages. I understood that the body can assemble a kind of dream team of genes to function the best he can. This again made me think of how the human is a “survival machine” as Dawkins calls it and how it will do its best he can to survive.

         Dawkins analogy reminded me of the movie Meet Dave. The movie is about some outer space aliens, which come to Earth to take over the whole water supply of planet. The aliens are all about the size of a finger, so in order for them to come to earth they assemble a human body that is their “ship.” They also assemble a dream crew to take command of the ship. Their objective is to go to Earth and try to take over the water supply of the world. Each crew member is given a specific number and a specific function just like in Dawkins analogy about the rowing boat. This is a perfect team that makes the human body function perfectly. There are several members working in the legs to make the ship move properly, several others working in the hands and fingers, and, finally, the captain of the ship is in the brain. This compares perfectly to Dawkins’ analogy.

Cultural Transmission

All through out his book I have learned so much about evolution. I have been learning about Darwin and about how the most stable and the strongest species evolved. However I had never considered thinking about evolution in any other subject apart from biology. Now that I have read chapter twelve I have discovered that absolutely  everything evolves. A great example was the experiment conducted by P.F Jenkins in New Zealand. It’s is clear how the different types of songs were born from trying to imitate that last song. It was even more to me when Dawkins gave the example “George Chaucer couldn't hold a conversation with a modern English men.” This chapter made me realize that truly as all living things all of the human inventions evolve.

I would like to start out talking about fashion. Fashion is a clear example of how human inventions evolve. Before, clothing was very different from the way it is today. Women were supposed to wear long dresses, dark dresses, and their hair had to be all tied up. Nowadays you can see plenty of women in bright orange tee shirts with white mini skirts. Another example that can be seen evidently is with the brand logos. Twenty years ago if you bought a Ralph Lauren Polo Shirt it would have a tiny bitty horse in the upper left side, which marks the difference between a normal Polo shirt and a Ralph Lauren shirt. Today that tiny bitty horse has evolved into a massive horse that now covers half of your shirt so that everybody can see that you are wearing is in deed Ralph Lauren. The same has happened with tennis rackets, purses, soccer balls, computers, chocolates, cellphones and lots of other products that used to have no logos and nowadays have giant logos so that people can differentiate them from not just any product.

Another clear case of evolution is language. Or, for this matter, specifically nicknames. I have various friends whose nicknames have evolved so much that it’s impressing. For example I have a friend whose nickname is Cheviosky. His nickname evolved from his name Sebastian, who then went to Sebas, who then went to Chevas who then went to Chevis, who then went to the now present Cheviosky. It has been the same with many other friends whose nicknames have evolved so much that we have no idea why we call them that way.

Cellphones, for example, evolve every now and then. They go from big to little to very little. It is the same with Ipods computers and other technological devices Food portions have also evolved a lot. 40 years ago McDonalds hamburgers were normally 1/4 of a pound and some had cheese some didn't. Today, hamburgers are 1/2 of a pound and come with lettuce, cheese, tomato, bacon, onions, peppers and about 5 to 6 different sauces. This is a clear example of how everyday common things evolve.

Did Darwin Really Kill God ?

  I wonder what Dawkins was thinking right before he sat down to write chapter two. I can’t imagine how many outlines, concept maps, lists and other things he did to organize his thinking. I can imagine him sitting down in his office saying to himself “OK, now I get to explain the most difficult and controversial topic ever known to man in one chapter.” Its own existence. All of us and all of the other people in the world have been kids. When we are kids there is a moment in our life in which we ask questions about everything. We walk around and asking mommy why is the sky blue? Mommy, why can horses eat grass? etc. As we continue to grow up we are given a correct and precise to all of our questions. All of them except two “Why am I here?” and “How was all this created?” For these questions we only get theories, like the one proposed to us by Dawkins in this chapter.

I always thought I understood Darwin's theory of evolution. After this chapter I realized that I was mistaken and that Darwin's theory  is extremely more complex that I thought. I really had no Idea that: “The precise thorn bush shape of a protein molecule such as Hemoglobin is stable in the sense that two chains consisting of the same sequences of amino acids will tend, like two springs to come to rest in exactly the same three dimensional pattern.”

I am Catholic. Therefore, I am expected to be in complete disagreement with both Dawkins and Darwin. However I am not. I don't believe that God created the world in seven days. I believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, or as Dawkins explains it, “the survival of the stable.” People say Darwin killed religion. I believe Darwin enhanced religion.The process that Dawkins explains in chapter two is by far the most complex that I have ever heard of. Now I ask myself how could anybody believe that such a complex process could occur out of pure luck? I agree with Dawkins in all of his process and I believe that as he himself said it, he is not to far away from the truth. However I can’t agree with him when he says things like “At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident. We call it the replicator. It may not necessarily have been the biggest or the most complex molecule around, but it had the extraordinary property of creating copies of itself.” Dawkins himself says his book isn't intended to question religion. But I do question Dawkins, do you really believe that the miracle of such a molecule like the replicator being formed is an accident? That the replicator,  having extraordinary property of creating copies of itself, was simply a coincidence? I simply cant believe that.