Catastrophe

With the recent financial tsunami, you may say free market is not perfect. How could god allow this kind of thing happen ?

But yes. In the free market of evolution, god does allow catastrophe.

The one best known to us is the collapse of dinosaur.

You know what, from the Triassic period to the early Cretaceous period, the world enjoyed a warm weather for some millions of years. Rainfall was high and ferns (the major type of plant at that time) grew at great speed.

In such an environment, a huge body size is of course advantageous (to fight for food or mate). That's why those ancient reptiles got bigger and bigger ... until some bad day came.

(The problem was not only food. Although the climate remained warm, these cool-blood animals couldn't warm up their body and get going when the sunshine was short, which was the critical component of the hypothesis of Deccan Traps as well as the Chicxulub crater.)

It was, alas, probably the biggest bubble in the history of evolution.

Now you see, it was a catastrophe for the dinosaur, but we should be all too thankful because there were no CEOs of their various species who went to the White House of the heaven and asked for assistance or a change in weather policy. Otherwise there would only be those gigantic reptiles gasping on earth now, and Homo sapiens would have never appeared.

PS. Once I think of this, it seems sad to admit that this year is ill-timed to celebrate the bicentennial birthday of the giant on natural selection.