Thread: How Evolution Happens

Originally Posted by The Cusp

A group of lizards introduced a new island managed to evolve significantly in 30 generations.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...evolution.html

"That's just changes within kinds! They don't change into other kinds therefore its not evolution!"

Originally Posted by Alextanium

"That's just changes within kinds! They don't change into other kinds therefore its not evolution!"

What? Are people really using that as an argument against evolution? That's just ignorant...

I wish that were the case

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Created_kind

"Nearly all scientists consider baraminology, like all of creation science, to be a pseudoscience with no relationship to science proper."

Since when has that ever stopped them...

makes you think... my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great x 10000 grandfather was a dinosaur.

cool.

I think evolution happens much more through a life cycle itself than through darwinism. The organism absorbs all the information of its environnement, already changes and adapts through his life a little bit, and these changes are passed on through the genes. I believe it is naieve to believe evolution of such complicated organisms can happen through random mutations and natural selection (darwinism). Maybe they play a small role, but it is obvious to us all that organisms adept to their environnemt intelligently, and not randomly.

Now how does all the information gathered gets encoded to the genes? I believe this complicated process happens during our dreams. They are one the missing keys to the theory of evolution. That is the same thing indians and egyptians believed. The use of dreams to encode your genes... I don't know if this is true or false but science will point it out one day. Afterall, animals dream too..

^ That is called baseless speculation.

I maintain that the only people who don't accept evolution for what it is just don't comprehend how powerful a mechanism it is for driving the complexity of life. It's power and elegance is embedded in its simplicity - small changes over colossal periods of time result in observable changes.

I would LOVE to evolve through my sleep, but I'm not waking up with the ability to fly every other day, nor shoot red beams of energy out of my eyes. My genetics won't change just because I "want them to".

Originally Posted by Alextanium

I maintain that the only people who don't accept evolution for what it is just don't comprehend how powerful a mechanism it is for driving the complexity of life. It's power and elegance is embedded in its simplicity - small changes over colossal periods of time result in observable changes.

I would LOVE to evolve through my sleep, but I'm not waking up with the ability to fly every other day, nor shoot red beams of energy out of my eyes. My genetics won't change just because I "want them to".

I couldn't agree more with you. Many people think they've understood the theory of evolution, because essentially it's pretty simple, but somehow they don't seem to understand it's consequences. And most people forget one important factor in evolution: not mutation or selection, but chance. i.e. an earthquake or a volcanic eruption don't ask about adaptation, they simply kill everything within their reach. And the individuals that survive, mostly by pure chance, will form the new population, in which the genes can be distributed totally different compared to the original population. And those genes will be passed on to the next generation.

Originally Posted by zyna

I couldn't agree more with you. Many people think they've understood the theory of evolution, because essentially it's pretty simple, but somehow they don't seem to understand it's consequences. And most people forget one important factor in evolution: not mutation or selection, but chance. i.e. an earthquake or a volcanic eruption don't ask about adaptation, they simply kill everything within their reach. And the individuals that survive, mostly by pure chance, will form the new population, in which the genes can be distributed totally different compared to the original population. And those genes will be passed on to the next generation.

That's actually a really bad way of putting it - it's not by pure chance.

Natural selection doesn't work on chance. It works on the basis of survival of the fittest. Words like 'random' and 'chance' really shouldn't be used in conjunction with an explanation of natural selection because natural selection is anything but random, it's 'guided' towards the strong surviving and the weak dying. The only random part about any of it is the mutation in the genes to create variation.

It's not a bad way of putting it, because I wasn't referring to natural selection. I didn't disagree with you, I simply noted another fact that many people forget. I know this won't persuade you into "believing" me, but I'm a biology student and many of my professors cannot stress the factor of chance enough, because it's something that many people tend to forget, when they're teaching the theory of evolution. This does not contradict the mechanisms of natural selection, it adds an aspect to it, that cannot be predicted.

Random mutations, change of environment and natural selection are factors of evolution, but so is chance. As I said, chance is another important factor. There may be organisms that are perfectly adapted to their environment, but they still wouldn't survive a volcanic eruption or a meteor hitting the earth. And chance in the form of natural 'catastrophes' has contributed to the biodiversity that we know today.
Natural selection does not lead towards the strong surviving, but the best adapted surviving.