Evolution and the Future of Mankind

"Evolution's Fatal Flaw" addresses, in a carefully researched book, two of the most perplexing questions ever asked: "What are our origins?" and "What is the fate of the human race?" The origins question is addressed first by noting that three mutually exclusive origins explanations exist: Creationism; Intelligent Design (ID); and Evolution, which immediately invokes the question "Why three incompatible explanations?" and Which is correct?" Author Lawrence Wood introduces a novel approach to address both questions by investigating the historical development of explanations of ourselves and our surroundings, revealing that early explanation development was made particularly difficult by the existence of illusions, particularly the apparently solid Earth, the apparent sun and stars around the Earth, and the apparently unchanging observable physical and biological features. These illusions led early humans to incorrectly believe that they inhabited a small universe, perceived to be fairly young, that revolved around them, which they explained as being created, inhabited and controlled by all powerful spirits of Gods, a belief system eventually termed Animism. Animism, the first religion, is found in all cultures and was the progenitor of most modern religions. The author carefully leads the reader through the historical unraveling of these illusions, beginning about 500 years ago, by many brilliant scientists, in a series of twelve succinct chapters, each of which has an ending summary, revealing the vastly improved knowledge about ourselves and our surroundings that has accumulated. Of particular interest to the "Which is correct?" question are twelve verifiable dating methods, which unequivocally establish the Earth's age at 4.5 billions of years, and conclusive proof that the Biblical flood never occurred. These two pieces of evidence irrefutably demonstrate Creationism's 10,000 year old Earth, formed largely by the Biblical flood, is impossible: Creationism is merely a lineal descendent of Animism and thus not a verifiable origins explanation. Earth's creation is explained in chapter 13, beginning 4.5 billion years ago, tracing physical developments such as the appearance of air and water and life's development from primitive single celled Cyanobacteria, to the first multi-celled animals, finally culminating with the appearance of humans. Throughout the exposition of Earth's development, no evidence of an Intelligent Designer appears. This, plus the inability of ID proponents to prove that ID is valid at a trial in Darby PA, excludes ID as an origins candidate, leaving Evolution the only verifiable explanation Having resolved the "Why three explanation" by established Evolution as the correct explanation of human origins, attention is now directed to the second question, humanities fate, beginning with the observation that species survival requires individual species members to reproduce themselves, since all species members, especially multi-celled species members, have finite lives. Multi-celled animals reproduce sexually by evolving two unique species members, males and females, each contributing a specialized sex cell, containing only one-half of the adult's DNA. When the sex cells fuse in fertilization, genetically new individuals are created, making possible the amazing array of life forms that have appeared on Earth.