Thursday, January 19, 2006

Evolution of the SUV

I was just at the Auto Show in Detroit yesterday. Many of the new species appear to be related to each other and to previous forms, including 'retro' throwbacks to earlier forms. The evidence suggests that SUVs are evolved from less advanced forms. Indeed the brakes preceded engines. Shortly after four wheeled soap box derby creatures split from the two wheeled species of scooters and hobby horses that were extant at the time, breaks evolved due to survival pressures inherent at the bottoms of some environments, namely huge hills with short runoff areas. One may argue that simply adding more wheels involves no new functionality, just an aberration in design details. So too can early brake designs be considered aberrant wheels that happened to extend survival probability. Steam engines provided considerable survival advantage, as evident at the Henry Ford Museum, and made possible the expansion of environments that could be inhabited to include farms. That gasoline engines evolved from steam engines has been documented in a variety of areas, popularly the BBC show The Day The Universe Changed. These kinds of evidence and much, much more has pretty much refuted the theory that SUVs and their engines were created by God Last Thursday. If God also created the rest of the Universe at that time, including all the evidence of past automotive evolution, including the written, film, and fossil (museum) records of prior forms, then the theory that God created the Universe Last Thursday is non-falsifiable when God is defined as Omnipotent, Infallible and Devious. My claim is that such a God is unworthy of praise. Thus, the theory is also refutable on theological grounds.

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