Thread: Evolution is a Fact - Not a Theory

They don't 'happen where animals need it most'. All sorts of things happen and the vast majority are incredibly bad for the animal, but the animals for which their mutation happens by chance to be an advantage in their environment will survive to pass on that mutation.

If you haven't understood that then I think you've missed the whole point of Darwin's theory.

Evolution is clearly observed to happen but Darwin's theory is the only one which explains it so perfectly. As soon as you understand what it actually means, as Thomas Huxley said, you'll be ashamed you hadn't thought of it before, it's so simple and obvious.

Ok, maybe I worded my statement wrong. I understand the point of Darwin's theory. Let me use his classic finches as an example. It is true, each finch gained the necessary mutation to get the varied beaks to help them in their enviroment, and the ones who didnt died out because they couldnt get enough food. Anyone can understand that.

Now using the finches for my point. How is it that just "by chance" some finches genes mutated in the proper way to fit the food they wanted? Surely there must be more to these mutations than blind chance? Not necessarily a higher power, but it seems to me there must be more to mutations then "oh, the genes just happened to mutate in a way that the beaks could fit in holes"

edit: I was typing this when photo made his response. This aspect of evolution I also appreciate and indeed we observe it happening. I just find it miraculous that on all the island every finch's genes just happened to gain the correct mutation for its particular food supply. Or maybe Im switching the order and due to these finch's beaks they adapted to the most ready food supply?

Now using the finches for my point. How is it that just "by chance" some finches genes mutated in the proper way to fit the food they wanted? Surely there must be more to these mutations than blind chance? Not neccessairily a higher power, but it seems to me there must be more to mutations then "oh, the genes just happened to mutate in a way that the beaks could fit in holes"

Evolution doesn't work on blind chance. See my keypad analogy on page 3 for more details.


Here's a suggested way that finches could evolve different beaks

There are 2 islands, A, and B. A has one kind of nut that is very small, B has trees with very large and tough nuts.

Introduce a population of generic finches to each island, which have beaks that are not well adapted to either nut, but can be used to get the nuts nevertheless.

There are variations in everyone and everything, small as they may be. Some birds are of different heights, have different wing spans, beak lengths, muscle mass, and more or less any other characteristic you care to mention. They are similar in most cases, but different nonetheless. We can see this in humans as well. There are slight differences between everyone, though most of us belong in a certain range.

On island A, finches that have smaller beaks find it easier to get the nuts, and so can collect more in a given time, and spend less energy/time collecting them. This means that the ones with smaller beaks are more likely to reproduce than those with larger beaks. Consequentially, the amount of smaller-beaked birds will increase, and the trend will be towards even smaller beaks until the optimum size is reached.

On a large time scale, the smaller beaked finches will win out over their larger beaked rivals. Instead of spending more time breaking into nuts, or whatever, they can be mating and fathering more offspring, and they're more likely to survive worse crops as they can get food more easily and efficiently.

On island B, the finches might struggle to open the nut but they can still do it. Again, variations in beak size and strength will occur, and those with stronger beaks will do better, and expend less energy/time collecting and breaking the nuts.

Again, it's important to understand that this can be a slow process and is about probabilities. Birds with one characteristic might have a 50% chance of surviving a bad situation. Birds with a better beak might have a 75% chance. Both can survive. None can, and so on, but on a large scale, you will expect to see these patterns emerge. In reality, the odds might be something closer to 50% and 51% for a generation, which is why evolution is usually slow and on large time scales.

In a similar way, if you toss a coin a few times, you might get all heads. If you do it an extremely large amount of times, the chances are that you'll get quite close to 50% heads, 50% tails.

The key to evolution is the slight variations that occur between one generation to the next, the corresponding differences in survival probabilities (as tiny as they are), and the large time scales that they can act out on.

Photolysis, I must say you have done a good job keeping the side of evolution in clarity and elaboration. I thought I would be the one delving into the details, but you have been doing well.

Thanks. I'm also grateful to those that are actually reading my posts and trying to understand the points I'm making instead of dismissing them. It's very refreshing to have someone that listens and discusses the points at hand rationally!

O'nus, the more i read your reply's the more i smell a monkey, excuse me for my expression, but thats the way we evolved did we?

read this litle article, and tell me your thoughts on it, now be carefull, the gouvernment is watching you, and i dont think they will pay you if you say its real will they?

http://www.outlawjournalism.com/news/?p=1997

Originally Posted by L

O'nus, the more i read your reply's the more i smell a monkey, excuse me for my expression, but thats the way we evolved did we?

read this litle article, and tell me your thoughts on it, now be carefull, the gouvernment is watching you, and i dont think they will pay you if you say its real will they?

http://www.outlawjournalism.com/news/?p=1997

What do you mean "monkey"? I am not sure what to think of that.

As for the article, I will give me response but first, may I ask you what you are trying to discuss/convince/persuade me of in regards to it..? An alternate explanation?

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