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The following quotation from James Watson will serve to illustrate the thinking of many evolutionary biologists:
"It may astonish those who think that evolutionary studies are carried out in the dusty rooms of museums amid all those specimens collected so many years ago, that the most impressive data supporting the laws of evolution come from the studies of the past 40 years in molecular genetics. The clearest evidence for the common ancestry of all living organisms comes from the universality of the genetic code, which provides the translation between the information in a gene and the protein encoded by that gene. With some variations, this code is the same for viruses, bacteria, worms, human beings, beetles, mice and slugs. The most extreme example is that bacteria can be given a human gene and they will make a human protein. What an extraordinary vindication of Darwin's ideas! Darwin would have been thrilled to learn that the same set of 25,000 to 30,000 genes is present in most animals. Almost every gene in our DNA has a homologous gene in the DNA of other mammals, such as the mouse. It is even more extraordinary when we look at more distantly related organisms: the invertebrate sea squirt, for example, has only half our number of genes, but as many as two thirds of these have homologues in human DNA......" James Watson, L.A. Times book review, Sept 18,2005 "Why Darwin's still a scientific hotshot".
Of course, having said that, I should point out that the evidence he cites is not evidence for evolution at all. Instead, it is completely consistent with origin by a single Creator who used consistent patterns to create a myriad of forms, exactly what one would expect from a very creative and clever Designer. The fact that Watson invokes this as the strongest argument for evolution betrays either profound ignorance or deliberate subterfuge. In either case, he recognizes as did Gould before him, that there is precious little evidence upon which to base molecules-to-man evolution.
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