The bacteria are dominant, not the humans

The late Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist, had frequently pointed out that humans were not the dominant life force on earth, bacteria was.

It is a medical and scientific fact our skin and digestive and respiratory tracts are teeming with bacteria. Many of them play a symbolic role — bacteria in the gut secretes enzymes that aid in digestion. Although we think of the bacteria as passengers, they outnumber our cells by about ten to one.

Even more impressive, the total number of microbial genes each of us harbours outnumbers our human genes by 100 to one.

It begs the question: what does it mean to be human? No wonder Darwinism implies that the only eternal life we can expect is the recycling of our atoms. That the molecules of which we are composed will, when our bodies have decayed, then be incorporated into other organisms.

At least it’s compatible with logic and common sense, unlike the various illogical religious utterances.

Gordon Cunningham

Donaghmede

Dublin 13