Natural Selection: Grilled Chicken with a Side of T-Rex

I went to the museum with my friend Lianne and learned something wicked cool.

That's Lianne

Dinosaurs are still alive!  They're not walking around like the big flesh-eating, lizard-monsters that they once were.  Rather, they're flying around in the sky, building nests, and laying eggs for human consumption. That's right, birds are the descendants of the great dinos!

You might say, "Travis, there is no way that my tasty grilled-chicken sandwich is the great, great....granddaughter of the T-Rex from Jurassic Park."  I'm here to tell you that this is the case!

When Dinosaurs first came on the scene some 230 million years ago, they were very different from other species.  They had holes in their hip bones that allowed their legs to extend under their bodies, not out to the side like crocodiles.  

Birds inherited this characteristic hip bone and other anatomical features from the Dinos, placing them in the same evolutionary family-tree.

In 1859, Darwin wrote a book called, On the Origin of Species, in which he outlined the theory of evolution by natural selection.  This theory explains how we get from a massive Godzilla-type creature to a Rhode Island Red.

That's The Guy 

Darwin's basic idea is this:

Creatures need to reproduce. When a creature reproduces, it passes along traits to its offspring.  (I've got blue eyes from my dad.) Traits that help the creature find a mate and copulate are passed along to the next generation.  Traits that make it difficult to  'get jiggy with it' are less likely to be passed along.

Over time traits change from one clearly distinguishable thing into something completely different.  There is an impressive body of evidence suggesting a link between the scale-like skin of the ancient dinos and the feathers of modern birds.

This means that feathers evolved from scales! It's as if one thing magically turned into an other.

Now, what's this got to do with "Mind, self, and belief..."?

The tree in your backyard, the squirrel climbing on the tree, the termites within the dead wood of the tree; your dog, your cat, your hamster, walruses and humpback wales were all shaped by natural selection.  Each living creature on this planet is the distant relative of every other living thing, and we all have one great, great....grandmother who lived over four billion years ago. The trick for us humans is to realize our place in the grand scheme of things and understand what the heck life is all about.    

The word Psychology means 'study of the soul.'  The best way to study the soul is to look at the soul's origin, look at the mind's origin.   There wasn't any mind 3 billion years ago, when life was just bacteria in a swamp, but now there is.  Why?

Attacking Psychological problems from an Evolutionary standpoint bears great fruit.  This is the bedrock perspective that I adopt in my research.  

In the next episode, I will talk about the Psychologist's Fallacy and tell you two stories about my life.  I am telling these stories because I need advice.  I need to know whether or not a significant life event that I had was caused by God, fate, chance, or something else.

In the episode after that, I will present the reader with a outline of my research project.

Keep it real, Everyone

Sources

This video is inappropriate.  Viewers beware.