Why do you find the evolution of life so fascinating?

So the up coming Wednesday, I will be holding a speech in front of my class. The theme is "Inner and outer journeys". I instantly came up with the Journey through evolution. So the deadline is near and I have written nada, it is not that I do not love the evolutionary theory, but it is because I do not know in what way to approach it. My teacher told me that I should pick an angel to work with and not just become angry and speak against religion (Because I am a very outspoken Anti Theist and I speak openly, and loudly about how horrible religion is. Also, she is a christian.). I will talk about the fascination I have of evolution, I will analyze a picture of nature with cows in it, I will take a piece from Richard Dawkins book "The greatest show on earth" (Probably the bit with the 44 percenters and how they are similar to the history deniers, but if you have a tip on a great chapter or a great pharagraph in this book, or another book, just tell me). I will then speak about my concern for the future of the human evolution and how people like these deniers, cause harm upon society. I will show my great disappointment with people who wastes their intelligence on drinking every weekend and not using their brains for intelligent matters.

 

I will also wear my "We are all Africans" T shirt during the speech, so when I bring this up, I can hit my chest with my fist and say loudly "WE are all Africans!".

 

I will try to place this small piece of opinionated text into the speech

"I don't give a damn for other peoples opinion, I only care about the facts. So I am not an enthusiast for diversity of opinion, where factual matters are concerned. I am against the propagation of outdated, rather unimaginative ideas about the world, which is so much less exciting, so much less enthralling, so much less thrilling than the truth. I am against religion that teaches people to be satisfied with nonexplanations for things, when in the 21th century we have extremely good explanations, and we are getting better ones. " The speech will be in Swedish by the way.

 

So if you have some great advise on what to write about this theme and the evolution of life (but mostly about the evolution of man).

 

And I would also like to ask you; What do you find fascinating about the evolution of life?

 

 

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Permalink Reply by ShashankA on November 5, 2011 at 10:41pm
The best thing is that it explains the most complex thing using what looks like 'pure common sense'. It raises hope about possible life forms elsewhere in the Universe and the variety of life on earth itself. Of course all other points are fascinating too!
Permalink Reply by PaleoAnthroEvo on November 8, 2011 at 4:58pm

Biological evolution is the most beautiful story of life, and its why i have spent the past 5 years studying it. I go to school to study paleoanthropology (human origins) and evolutionary biology. If you need advice, facts, fossil names, or anything really at all, just email me and i would be absolutely glad to help you out on this subject.

 

Paleoanthroevo@hotmail.com

Permalink Reply by Jimmy Hilli on November 8, 2011 at 5:15pm

I've written the speech and I will be speaking tomorrow. I just wrote how fascinating evolution really is and I shortly talked about how we are all related, all the animals, all the plants. And I shortly talked about the beginning of our evolution, thousands of millions of years ago. But I'm not sure how this will go, because I've had a hard time memorizing the speech for some strange reason, but I'm currently under a lot of distress (don't know why).

 

But I will surely contact you if I need any further help or information on the subject of evolution, thanks.

I will most definitively in the future, be holding more speeches or presentations of the glorious origins of humanity and life (when ever I get the opportunity). It amazes my how many people I've met that knows squat about our origins, not even the basics....  

Permalink Reply by PaleoAnthroEvo on November 8, 2011 at 5:17pm

Most people dont know about our origins! lol. I think i have met maybe 3 people that can describe to me how we are related to chimpanzees. 

 

I hope your speech goes awesome! 

Permalink Reply by Matt--Lukin on April 19, 2012 at 3:43am

It's funny you say that. That most people don't know "our origins." Have you ever heard Terence McKenna's Stoned Ape Hypothesis? If you haven't, it's an interesting listen and definitely not the mainstream view of "our origins." He expounds on this notion in the first hour of this talk here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-_70cv64FE

The first hour is sufficient to get the gist of it, as the entire video is about 8 hours long!

Permalink Reply by House on November 8, 2011 at 8:46pm

Maybe hook your audience with humor. Feel free to re-work any of this.

 

Just a suggestion, but bring a banana and a rock to the podium, and start your opinionated part like this:

 

"Who knows what these are? (long pause) What if I told you this banana was an edible mobile phone? Would you still value my opinion then? Obviously not, but what if I told you that it was the fruit of Intelligent Design, because it just happened to fit into my hand? Would that mean everything that fits into a human hand or mouth is divine? (pause) What if you can fit a rock into your hand and throw it at someone, does that make it a product of intent? The banana and the rock are not affected by your opinions or explanations. Natural selection, speciation, and every other biological, chemical, and physical mechanism that have been working relentlessly for the last 4.5 Billion years on Earth, certainly don't care what myths or ancient explanations we give them. Reality is reality. Opinions and beliefs are never to be respected; they are to be criticized or admired, made fun of, and validated or falsified with scientific method. Respect, as I've just shown, needs to be earned. No exceptions..."

Permalink Reply by Jimmy Hilli on November 11, 2011 at 3:28pm

I did it my way, with no humor. But it went really great. Not to sound smug or anything, but the people who were watching me speak were basically "amazed "by my "passion" and "deep dedication". I got a lot of positive enforcement after words of how great it was, my rhetorical skill, so I was able to present Science and evolution with great love and fascination.

 

So overall it all went truly great.

Permalink Reply by gillia tsai on November 13, 2011 at 2:56am

Good for u. Thumbs up!

Permalink Reply by Secular Forces 2013 on November 11, 2011 at 9:11pm

say what?

first of all it's kept from educators... by the hand of money making myth bs... c'mon now.

evolution is a heckuvah mind exercise and necessary (so-called) evil.

so funny "you're atheist you're evil" ok what did i do evil today...?

Permalink Reply by William Beason on April 20, 2012 at 1:41am

While you obviously don't have time to read it before the presentation, I'd recommend reading Dawkins's The Ancestor's Tale. It's a backwards journey through time that starts with modern day humans and talks about different evolutionary breakthroughs our very ancient ancestors had.

But the thing that fascinates me is that something like us can arise from a few set of fundamental rules. What we call "Physics" is a set of emergent processes of probability fields interacting. "Chemistry" is the emergent set of processes that arises from physics. "Biology" is the emergent set of processes that arises from chemistry. And then humanity is merely an emergent process from biology. From just the basic interactions between subatomic particles, it would be nigh-impossible to predict the emergence of life - let alone self-aware consciousnesses that called themselves "human beings".

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