The biologist, Randy Olson, accepts that there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth.
Up until then, the explanation for antibody diversity had been based on the theory that one gene provides the recipe for one protein, or polypeptide chain.
Benchmark: Knows how natural selection and its evolutionary consequences provide a scientific explanation for the diversity and unity of past and present life forms on Earth (CTSS – 'science', '9-12', '9') Science Standard 16- Understands the scientific enterprise.
Benchmark: Knows how natural selection and its evolutionary consequences provide a scientific explanation for the diversity and unity of past and present life forms on Earth Science Standard 14- Understands the nature of scientific knowledge.
The road trip came on the heels of a study that found that a biblical explanation for the diversity of life on Earth is still taught in many schools.
The explanation for such diversity is that the ancestor of Galapagos finches arrived in the islands before other kinds of birds and encountered an abundance of unoccupied ecological niches.
Second, this answer includes a supernatural cause in the explanation for the diversity of life on Earth.
One ground for reasonable citizens to be so tolerant, Rawls says, is that they accept a particular explanation for the diversity of worldviews in their society.
This mechanism, called negative frequency-dependent selection, is one explanation for how diversity is maintained in populations despite natural selection constantly filtering for the fittest set of traits.
