Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 440
NATURAL SELECTION AND SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST tall deep-rooted trees while all other species of grazing animals would be starving to death all around them. . There are also other factors which have to be brought to the focus of attention. There are animals which can run fast for long distances in search of whatever water holes remain available, and there are slow moving animals as well, at evident disadvantage. There are others better equipped with the sense of detecting water at long distances, and there are those who must find water right under their noses. We have also to include in the picture the role of the beasts of the jungle who must thrive on the flesh of grazing animals, and follow them wherever they go. . They too, in turn however, need water for their survival. It is painful to visualize at what tragic moment the curtain of this bizarre drama will fall at last. They must depart this stage fatigued and starved one after the other. Maybe the only spectators left behind will be some giraffes, some vermin, some meerkats, in the vast empty amphitheatre of this continent where this ghastly drama is playing its last act. Maybe the only applause that will be heard would be the tiny clapping of the meerkats, or the neighing of the giraffes if they have any neighing strength left in them applauding their own survival!. Is this the survival of the fittest? Is this what the scientists clamour about? Is this what they mean by natural selection at work? Do the qualities of the giraffes and the meerkats, not to mention those of a few species of vermin which survived, really represent the ultimate evolutionary preferences?. In a billion years, hundreds of such alternating waves of drastic fluctuations in the climate can be realistically estimated. There would have been times when life was threatened with excessive cold or with excessive heat. . There would have been times when life was threatened with 427