Post by Fool of an Eriko on Mar 2, 2004 23:56:49 GMT -5
This coming from the person that thinks God and Satan were once a loving gay couple, well... a lot of religions piss me off, too. Especially the ones that seem to shout, "OMG I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG. BURN FOR ETERNITY."
Anyway, I've been doing a bit of research lately (well, actually, just paying minor attention in CP Biology), and I've found that Microevolution is, in fact, more believable than Macroevolution.
Microevolution is the small evolution, based mostly upon natural selection--that those with the most favorable traits will live on and reproduce, and those without will die. Perfectly logical. "Survival of the fittest", in short, and this really does apply in the animal kingdom. So, say a bird, through a small genetic mutation, got a SLIGHTLY longer beak than the others, and thus caught more food... those with shorter beaks died (well, not really--they just had a smaller survival rate). The longer-beaked bird reproduces and passes on the mutated gene to its offspring. Voila! More adapted birds.
Macroevolution is the major changing of species--ape becomes man, and so on. While there are evolutionary gaps in Macroevolution, I can understand why there would be--we can't expect to be lucky and have a fossil of EVERY SINGLE STAGE of a species' evolutionary development. The ones that ARE preserved offer a bit of evidence--enough to make a THEORY, not a law. Again with the theory thing. But anyway, the only thing that gets me about Macroevolution is the timespan--it would HAVE to be rapid at some points, or else life would cease to exist, altogether, wouldn't it?
There's punctuated equilibrium--where evolution takes place in rapid bursts depending on environmental pressures and change--but even that seems unlikely. I mean, some of this stuff would have to have happened in a shorter amount of time than a severe change in a species is said to take place--like the elephants, for example. Mammoths, African Elephants, and Indian Elephants all came around the same time, respectively, but developed rapidly from one species of elephant. As they migrated, they changed--the mammoth most dramatically because of the climate it inhabited.
Now, anyone can tell the difference between an elephant and a mammoth (I hope). But a mammoth evolved from an elephant VERY fast by evolutionary rates--this is one of the things that gives me the sense of an "evolutionary plothole". I've considered that perhaps the mammoth evolved from something else, but the evidence points to evolution from said elephant ancestor THINGIE.
Punctuated equilibrium is believable to the extent that evolution still takes a LONG TIME--the "bursts" it describes cannot take place so fast as the mammoths are said to have.
Granted, I still believe in evolution a thousand times more than Christianity--but both have their flaws. The timescale of evolution is certainly a prominant flaw of the Theory of Evolution.
Whoo, I'm feeling all scientific right now. *strikes a nerd pose*
Anyway, I've been doing a bit of research lately (well, actually, just paying minor attention in CP Biology), and I've found that Microevolution is, in fact, more believable than Macroevolution.
Microevolution is the small evolution, based mostly upon natural selection--that those with the most favorable traits will live on and reproduce, and those without will die. Perfectly logical. "Survival of the fittest", in short, and this really does apply in the animal kingdom. So, say a bird, through a small genetic mutation, got a SLIGHTLY longer beak than the others, and thus caught more food... those with shorter beaks died (well, not really--they just had a smaller survival rate). The longer-beaked bird reproduces and passes on the mutated gene to its offspring. Voila! More adapted birds.
Macroevolution is the major changing of species--ape becomes man, and so on. While there are evolutionary gaps in Macroevolution, I can understand why there would be--we can't expect to be lucky and have a fossil of EVERY SINGLE STAGE of a species' evolutionary development. The ones that ARE preserved offer a bit of evidence--enough to make a THEORY, not a law. Again with the theory thing. But anyway, the only thing that gets me about Macroevolution is the timespan--it would HAVE to be rapid at some points, or else life would cease to exist, altogether, wouldn't it?
There's punctuated equilibrium--where evolution takes place in rapid bursts depending on environmental pressures and change--but even that seems unlikely. I mean, some of this stuff would have to have happened in a shorter amount of time than a severe change in a species is said to take place--like the elephants, for example. Mammoths, African Elephants, and Indian Elephants all came around the same time, respectively, but developed rapidly from one species of elephant. As they migrated, they changed--the mammoth most dramatically because of the climate it inhabited.
Now, anyone can tell the difference between an elephant and a mammoth (I hope). But a mammoth evolved from an elephant VERY fast by evolutionary rates--this is one of the things that gives me the sense of an "evolutionary plothole". I've considered that perhaps the mammoth evolved from something else, but the evidence points to evolution from said elephant ancestor THINGIE.
Punctuated equilibrium is believable to the extent that evolution still takes a LONG TIME--the "bursts" it describes cannot take place so fast as the mammoths are said to have.
Granted, I still believe in evolution a thousand times more than Christianity--but both have their flaws. The timescale of evolution is certainly a prominant flaw of the Theory of Evolution.
Whoo, I'm feeling all scientific right now. *strikes a nerd pose*