The top ten daily consequences of having evolved

(The Print Collector/Corbis)

Here's a great article in the Smithsonian about "The Top Ten Daily Consequences of Having Evolved" (rather than being planned by an intelligent designer):

Natural selection acts by winnowing the individuals of each generation, sometimes clumsily, as old parts and genes are co-opted for new roles. As a result, all species inhabit bodies imperfect for the lives they live. Our own bodies are worse off than most simply because of the many differences between the wilderness in which we evolved and the modern world in which we live. We feel the consequences every day.

Wonder why we can't consciously stop hiccuping? Or why wisdom teeth give us so much trouble? "Evolution has no foresight, no sense of where its work will go." There was no intelligent designer, no planning, not even a direction or a goal to evolution. (I must say that the above graphic, ubiquitous as it is, tends to give the wrong impression about that.)

Optimal designs could have resulted from either evolution or an intelligent designer (except, of course, that there's abundant evidence for the former and none for the latter). However, poor designs, suboptimal designs, can only be explained by evolution. Human beings - like all life on Earth - weren't planned. We evolved, step by step, from earlier creatures, so we carry a lot of baggage around with us.

This is a great article - short, informative, and hugely entertaining. It only scratches the surface of this topic, but for a layman, it's perfect. Check it out.

I have not even mentioned male nipples. I have said nothing of the blind spot in our eyes. Nor of the muscles some of use to wiggle our ears. We are full of the accumulated baggage of our idiosyncratic histories. The body is built on an old form, out of parts that once did very different things. So take a moment to pause and sit on your coccyx, the bone that was once a tail. Roll your ankles, each of which once connected a front leg to a paw. Revel not in who you are but who you were. It is, after all, amazing what evolution has made out of bits and pieces.