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A violent gore filled video game and Ben Stein have something in common.

[Everyone say happy birthday to Rae.  I dedicate this post about zombies to her for her birthday.  In fact, if you ever need help in a zombie outbreak find Rae, Joel or myself and you might live.  Here is a link to a cool onion video about how video games prepare us for Armageddon.]

What do both Ben Stein and Resident Evil 5 have in common?  Well, they both get natural selection and evolution completely wrong.  Now, in defense of Resident Evil most people know it is science fiction.  Unfortunately, many people do not consider Ben Stein as science fiction.

Resident Evil 5 has fantastic game play, sound design, graphics, and is overall quite fun to play.   The lead enemy boss Wesker, a blond German, brags “Natural selection makes us stronger and better.”  Of course, it took much fighting, combing of herbs, and conserving ammo to get to that point.  What Wesker really should be talking about is artificial selection and bioengineering.  Actually, the way the T-Virus works is more bioengineering  than selection.

When one is bitten by a zombie (but not eaten) one will become a zombie in previous themed games and movies.  However, in this game the bad guys plant a bio-engineered parasite into the host and those turn into smart zombies who could even ride motorcycles.  In some cases, the host was injected and it became a bio mass monster.  That somehow meant rejection (according to the game) even though the host was alive and quite strong.  Now, how do these bio masses reproduce and change over time?  The goal of the virus and/or parasite is to reproduce.  They don’t get a chance to other than planting more of the bio engineered parasite. (Why do enemies bosses always leave a weak spot?   For that matter, if I was a enemy boss I would destroy all crates that were filled with ammo!)  The game also played on fears of evil corporations, pharmaceutical companies, and evil scientists who did experiments on poverty stricken Africans.  Again, all science fiction and it had a Nazi super race type of theme.

Evolution needs random genetic coding and successful reproduction over long periods of time.  Those most adapted to the environment reproduce.  (It does not always mean the strongest and most violent, it means those with the most reproductive success pass on their genes which often involves altruism).

Ben Stein in “Expelled” and other anti-evolutionists says science leads to death and destruction.  This is fiction too.  The vast majority of scientists are trying to help the world or worst case design weapons for national defense.  The idea that scientists try to design super humans or lead to awful Nazi type of experiments such as artificial selection is very wrong.  Most are working on vaccines, cleaning water, innovating tomorrow’s technology and studying the planet to make informed decisions, etc.  Ben Stein says we need Darwin for a Nazi type of experiments and race selection.  The truth is artificial selection was practiced on cattle, dogs, pigeons, and agriculture for thousands of years long before Charles Darwin and natural selection.  Oh and there was no shortage of death campaigns among our religious history.

Finally, the most important reason why I defend evolution is not because it uplifts us (it does in my opinion, we are all related and could you imagine a world where everyone finally admitted that?) but because that is where the evidence leads.  Scientists have  found yet another amazing transitional fossils recently!  The theory of evolution has long ago moved past Darwin and we know have DNA and pseudogenes and even the field of genomics.

[For the record, Rae and Joel's weapon of choice on zombies is the shot gun.  I like the rifle.  We all like the Magnum.]

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