In discussions related to religion, the topic of evolution often arises, and theists sometimes state that they do not "believe in" evolution. It is curious how often the topic arises considering it does nothing to support a religious position (even if evolution were a load of made up nonsense it would not imply the existence of God or gods). But so much disinformation is spread by religions to discredit evolution that a worrying number of people seem content to be ignorant of it. I despair every time someone claims not to have been "descended from monkeys". Humans are not descended from monkeys, though we have a common ancestor. Comments like that betray a deep level of ignorance, and a desire to view humans as being essentially different to other animals, motivated by pride and flying in the face of all evidence.
There is no excuse for ignorance. Education is only a threat to your beliefs if your beliefs are wrong, in which case you'd be better off without them. So I'd like to offer a starting point to get people thinking about evolution. I doubt that I can do justice to the topic, but anything's better than nothing.
Is evolution mere hypothesis, or is it proven? The answer to that depends on how much evidence you want to consider something proven. Consider the force of gravity. Do we have complete proof that it exists? Every time I drop an object it falls to the floor, but what does that prove?
It could be, for example, that objects are moved by random forces, which have given the impression of the existence of gravity by an incredibly unlikely chance. Being random, they may not necessarily continue to do so, so don't be surprised if things start flying around the room. However, the huge improbability of this makes it a poor explanation.
Or it could be that whenever I drop an object, God pulls it to the floor because He wants to. In which case, similarly, there is no reason to assume that he should continue to do so. He may change his mind at any moment. Likewise, this is a highly unlikely explanation because if God was merely exercising free will to move objects around it is unlikely that this would manifest itself in a behaviour so consistent as to appear to be a universal force with clear mathematically defined magnitude and direction. The other problem with that hypothesis is that it requires the existence of a god, which makes it a very complicated hypothesis indeed, and raises all sorts of awkward questions about how such a god could come to exist, why such a god would be doing what he is doing, the mechanisms by which he operates and so on.
So, the existence of gravity is not the only explanation for what we observe, but it is astronomically more likely than either of the above ones.
Evolution is supported in the same way, in that our observations are completely consistent with the theory. It's a tall order to give reasons why evolution is consistent with observation. The problem is knowing where to begin (and the other problem is knowing when to stop as this could be a very long post). We could start with the fact that our DNA structure is incredibly similar to that of all animals on this planet, as are larger structures like cells. Our skeletal formation, bodily functions and internal organs are incredibly similar to that of all mammals, allowing for deformation. Either that's one heck of a coincidence, or there's a suggestion of a common origin there. Based on this much alone, to suggest that human beings are not animals (since we have more developed brains) makes no more sense than a claim that a peacock cannot be a bird because it has such elaborate tail feathers.
And then there is the grouping of species at various levels which have differing degrees of commonality. All birds, for example, share common traits that differ from all mammals. But both share sets of common traits with, for example, all vertebrates. This is a clear indication of lineage, but we can look a lot deeper. We can trace lineage at the level of individual genes, and throughout the entire spectrum of living species the family tree is consistent.
Like the force of gravity, we can infer the process of evolution from the consistency of its results. But, unlike gravity, we can also observe and even interact with the underlying mechanisms that cause the process.
The process of mutation and genetic inheritance is undeniable. Humans have manipulated it successfully over millennia with selective breeding of plants and animals (including human beings). Nowadays we understand the mechanisms that cause this, in minute detail. We have also studied natural selection in the wild and how species adapt to change, and even branch off into new species. Evolution is happening, right now, all around us. That much is fact, proven to the greatest extent that anything can be. Unless our whole experience of life is some kind of fake illusion, or the whole thing is a big conspiracy, evolution happens.
Ah, but how do we know that evolution happened in the past as well? Nobody has yet envisaged a reasonable explanation of how we could have come to this point otherwise. Then there is the aforementioned commonality of physical traits and genes that caused them, the huge, well-established genetic map of species, which corresponds both geographically and chronologically with an extensive fossil record, which in itself gives us an amazingly complete picture, enabling us to trace our ancestry back millions of years. It all ties in together. There is a huge amount of data and it all fits.
Darwin understood evolution from observing the process and its effects on a medium scale. In Darwin's time, the theory was accepted by the scientific community despite flying in the face of religious belief (no small feat in those days). It was elegant, simple, and self-evident. Almost a hundred and fifty years later nobody has been able to pick a hole in it, and not for lack of trying. In that time we have come to understand so much more, far more information has been unearthed about present species, fossils, and the mechanisms of genetics (which are now understood on a molecular level). A vast amount of new information has come to light. And it all still fits.
But does that prove that we came to be this way by means of evolution? Of course not! God could have planted all the fossil evidence, arranged every living thing so as to look like it evolved, and even put all the processes in place so that evolution would have gotten us to this point, were it not for the fact that God actually put us here instead. He may be trying to fool us, just as he may be pulling objects to the floor to make us think gravity exists. The complete consistency of the data may all be just a big trick. But it's not very likely, is it?
Here I'll appeal for help from other braindenners, to provide links to websites or books for those who wish to find out how evolution works.
Here's one which seems to do a good job of taking it from first principles.
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In discussions related to religion, the topic of evolution often arises, and theists sometimes state that they do not "believe in" evolution. It is curious how often the topic arises considering it does nothing to support a religious position (even if evolution were a load of made up nonsense it would not imply the existence of God or gods). But so much disinformation is spread by religions to discredit evolution that a worrying number of people seem content to be ignorant of it. I despair every time someone claims not to have been "descended from monkeys". Humans are not descended from monkeys, though we have a common ancestor. Comments like that betray a deep level of ignorance, and a desire to view humans as being essentially different to other animals, motivated by pride and flying in the face of all evidence.
There is no excuse for ignorance. Education is only a threat to your beliefs if your beliefs are wrong, in which case you'd be better off without them. So I'd like to offer a starting point to get people thinking about evolution. I doubt that I can do justice to the topic, but anything's better than nothing.
Is evolution mere hypothesis, or is it proven? The answer to that depends on how much evidence you want to consider something proven. Consider the force of gravity. Do we have complete proof that it exists? Every time I drop an object it falls to the floor, but what does that prove?
It could be, for example, that objects are moved by random forces, which have given the impression of the existence of gravity by an incredibly unlikely chance. Being random, they may not necessarily continue to do so, so don't be surprised if things start flying around the room. However, the huge improbability of this makes it a poor explanation.
Or it could be that whenever I drop an object, God pulls it to the floor because He wants to. In which case, similarly, there is no reason to assume that he should continue to do so. He may change his mind at any moment. Likewise, this is a highly unlikely explanation because if God was merely exercising free will to move objects around it is unlikely that this would manifest itself in a behaviour so consistent as to appear to be a universal force with clear mathematically defined magnitude and direction. The other problem with that hypothesis is that it requires the existence of a god, which makes it a very complicated hypothesis indeed, and raises all sorts of awkward questions about how such a god could come to exist, why such a god would be doing what he is doing, the mechanisms by which he operates and so on.
So, the existence of gravity is not the only explanation for what we observe, but it is astronomically more likely than either of the above ones.
Evolution is supported in the same way, in that our observations are completely consistent with the theory. It's a tall order to give reasons why evolution is consistent with observation. The problem is knowing where to begin (and the other problem is knowing when to stop as this could be a very long post). We could start with the fact that our DNA structure is incredibly similar to that of all animals on this planet, as are larger structures like cells. Our skeletal formation, bodily functions and internal organs are incredibly similar to that of all mammals, allowing for deformation. Either that's one heck of a coincidence, or there's a suggestion of a common origin there. Based on this much alone, to suggest that human beings are not animals (since we have more developed brains) makes no more sense than a claim that a peacock cannot be a bird because it has such elaborate tail feathers.
And then there is the grouping of species at various levels which have differing degrees of commonality. All birds, for example, share common traits that differ from all mammals. But both share sets of common traits with, for example, all vertebrates. This is a clear indication of lineage, but we can look a lot deeper. We can trace lineage at the level of individual genes, and throughout the entire spectrum of living species the family tree is consistent.
Like the force of gravity, we can infer the process of evolution from the consistency of its results. But, unlike gravity, we can also observe and even interact with the underlying mechanisms that cause the process.
The process of mutation and genetic inheritance is undeniable. Humans have manipulated it successfully over millennia with selective breeding of plants and animals (including human beings). Nowadays we understand the mechanisms that cause this, in minute detail. We have also studied natural selection in the wild and how species adapt to change, and even branch off into new species. Evolution is happening, right now, all around us. That much is fact, proven to the greatest extent that anything can be. Unless our whole experience of life is some kind of fake illusion, or the whole thing is a big conspiracy, evolution happens.
Ah, but how do we know that evolution happened in the past as well? Nobody has yet envisaged a reasonable explanation of how we could have come to this point otherwise. Then there is the aforementioned commonality of physical traits and genes that caused them, the huge, well-established genetic map of species, which corresponds both geographically and chronologically with an extensive fossil record, which in itself gives us an amazingly complete picture, enabling us to trace our ancestry back millions of years. It all ties in together. There is a huge amount of data and it all fits.
Darwin understood evolution from observing the process and its effects on a medium scale. In Darwin's time, the theory was accepted by the scientific community despite flying in the face of religious belief (no small feat in those days). It was elegant, simple, and self-evident. Almost a hundred and fifty years later nobody has been able to pick a hole in it, and not for lack of trying. In that time we have come to understand so much more, far more information has been unearthed about present species, fossils, and the mechanisms of genetics (which are now understood on a molecular level). A vast amount of new information has come to light. And it all still fits.
But does that prove that we came to be this way by means of evolution? Of course not! God could have planted all the fossil evidence, arranged every living thing so as to look like it evolved, and even put all the processes in place so that evolution would have gotten us to this point, were it not for the fact that God actually put us here instead. He may be trying to fool us, just as he may be pulling objects to the floor to make us think gravity exists. The complete consistency of the data may all be just a big trick. But it's not very likely, is it?
Here I'll appeal for help from other braindenners, to provide links to websites or books for those who wish to find out how evolution works.
Here's one which seems to do a good job of taking it from first principles.
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