this article is adapted from a lecture by riyad al-abd, which was given in london a few days ago. the subject of the ‘origin of species’, which was opposed by those who previously opposed the shape of the earth, refused to use the phone, forbid cinema, television and music, which have become universally accepted in our lives. but its opponents have later become postulates and part of our life. it is really sad to know that the turkish secondary stage curriculums for the current year are free from the subject of the origins of species after half a century of teaching it. whenever we suffer from a disease we surrender our bodies to the science where the doctors anesthetize us and start cutting and cleaning our wounds. we never hesitate to follow the advices of doctors and we always take the medicine they give us. we also commit to the lifestyle they defi ne for us. we do this without any fear or doubt because of our trust in science and the major advancement of science. when we decide to travel, we do not hesitate to put ourselves in metal bodies to take us thousands of miles away. this happens in other countless issues that we accept just because they are backed and supported by science. according to the same logic we trust what science says about the historical monuments and the age of the excavations in addition to the history of the previous civilizations, the distance of stars and planets and their movements and numbers. that perfect belief in science has become an axiom and it is accepted by everybody without any argument. nevertheless, as soon as science contrasts any of our religious beliefs, we reject science that we willingly surrender ourselves to in order to anesthetize and cut and then restore our organs better than they were before. since the publication of the charles darwin book on origins of species 158 years ago the entire world is struggling whether by defending the theory, criticizing or dismissing it. in his lecture, riyad abd said, darwin confi rmed that all living creatures that live on planet earth were created and evolved by natural factors over millions of years. and that all these beings have a common origin from much simpler beings. although darwin was not aware of the genes and dna or the way the characteristics are transferred from one generation to the other and although he did not know about the chains/series of the human races and the pre-human races that connects man and the primate, darwin managed to reach to a conclusion that science, through extensive studies, has demonstrated, over the next 150 years, its discoveries, its validity, with few minor and non-essential exceptions. scientifi cally, there are no longer any missing rings in human history. there are two types of evidence that show where we came from, the fossils that revealed a large number of human and pre-human species that lived millions of years ago and were extinct (also the genes and nucleic acids of humans and other primates (chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas). evidence derived from these two independent trends has proved beyond doubt that humans originated in africa about 7 million years ago and that the closest nonhuman species to us are the chimpanzees, of which we share nearly 98 percent of the genes. our current human group is only 200,000 to 300,000 years old, from which it was able to leave africa 60,000 to 80,000 years ago and spread to other continents. ninety-nine percent of the species of organisms that have been created on earth have become completely extinct and no longer exists, and had no opportunity to leave behind any offspring. in other words, 99 percent of the species were failed experiments, and many organisms, not extinct, also fail to reproduce in their native environment (this is what we mean by natural selection). this is all until we read further in tomorrow’s article

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