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Man, with about 4 billion nucleic acid pairs, does have the longest known DNA sequence, not because he has so many more genes encoding proteins, but because he has longer stretches of DNA of incompletely understood function. They probably control the when in development and the where in the body that specific genes become expressed to direct the synthesis of their functional protein. We will no doubt greatly expand sequence information in the future and thus extend our understanding of the workings of evolution.
To get a handle on the full scope of the biological world that has grown from evolution, take a look at the simplest creature on earth: an ocean going bacterium, Pelagibacter ubique.
figure 9 It gets along with only 1,354 genes and virtually no intervening "junk" DNA. It lives at all levels in the sea digesting organic matter and its bulk exceeds all of the fish in the sea, Man just discovered the organism in 1990. Another seagoing candidate for simplicity is Prochlorococcus discovered in 1986 with only 1700 genes. A cyanobacterium, it is one of the class of bacteria containing chlorophyll like pigments that use the sun's energy to convert CO2 into sugars and elemental oxygen. Some postulate that the cyanobacteria first flourished three or more billion years ago and are responsible for most of the oxygen in the atmosphere. Scientists are in discussion about which of these two is the most abundant organism on earth. These are as much a product of evolution as the "higher" animals and man. In their case evolution has gone in the direction of simplicity rather complication. The reward has been billions of years of existence and an abundance that exceeds all other creatures.
Why has Darwinian evolution been so controversial among religious believers? Not just because it seems to contradict the book of Genesis. The precision of that story has been in question since St. Augustine. More important, evolution's mechanistic explanations seem to many to leave God out of the creation process. Indeed, a number of scientists have based their agnosticism on the scientific story of evolution. For instance, Richard Dawkins, Oxford University professor, evolution scientist, and author of The Selfish Gene, eloquently took sides against the beliefs of organized religion in a public debate in Time magazine. On the other hand, just as many, if not more, scientists maintain their religious beliefs while accepting evolution as fact.
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