The A-Team and Evolution

No, these are not related topics.

First of all, I saw a trailer for the upcoming A-Team remake for the first time. It seems they kept the premise the same (a group going to jail for a crime they didn't commit, they escape and become guns for hire). They even found a Mr. T lookalike to play B.A. Barracus. I haven't been a fan of Hollywood lately because of the extreme lack of originality. All Hollywood's been good for has been remakes (and most of them have been just plain awful), reboots (and most of them have been just plain unneccessary -- I'm looking at you, Spider-Man), sequels, or movies based off an alternate medium (such as books). I feared the upcoming A-Team movie was going to be bad, but it looks as if my fears may be unfounded. It remains to be seen.

Besides having Mr. T, the original A-Team show also had Dwight Schultz (playing H.M. Murdoch), who went on to a recurring role as Lieutenant Reginald Barclay on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Just one more reason to love the show.

But my thoughts of been on Evolution lately. Now, there's a difference between micro- and macro-Evolution. Micro-Evolution is change within a species, such as how humanity at the beginning of civilization was not nearly advanced as humanity is now. Yet through learning about the world and the universe we have been able to create new and better technology.

However, macro-Evolution is what is more commonly thought of when mentioning the term. That is the change from one species into a brand-new species. Now, there's a lot more to it than that and I certainly don't have the room to go into everything about it. In fact, I don't even know a whole lot about the current nuances of Evolutionary theory. Now, for the most part it's not my fault. The problem is that Evolution theory is constantly changing. I've had to unlearn a lot about what I did learn in elementary and high schools about it. When I was growing up, the "missing link" was basically the holy grail of Evolutionary theory because scientists "knew" it was out there, yet they could never find it. Now I hear that the term "missing link" is outdated and they're not searching for one anymore. I even picked up a copy of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in an attempt to learn more about it, yet now I hear that most of what Darwin proposed has been thrown out in favor of new discoveries.

They say that macro-Evolution is observable. I'd like to ask how? If the process supposedly takes millions or billions of years, how on Earth can we observe it? Civilization, it is said, is only about six-thousand years old. There's no way we could observe an evolutionary change in our lifetime, or even since humanity has started keeping records. Perhaps it's because they'd claim there are some species in a transitionary stage. Well, how do you know they're in transition? Be honest. Isn't it just as possible that the species began life that way rather than in the course of Evolution?

It seems that at the heart of Evolution, which seems to be the very backbone of science (because if a scientist rejects Evolution as being false, he/she would be ostracized and would not be taken seriously as a scientist despite being otherwise qualified), is a very unscientific statement: "Given enough time, anything is possible." Yes, I've heard that one quite a few times. But I fail to see how a species can become something other than what its DNA makes it out to be. There's a difference between adapting and evolving.

Anyway, those were just some thoughts I've had on the subject. Feel free to leave a note and we can talk, but be respectful. Please keep it clean, as well.