doesn't always take thousands of years, just thousands of generations... depends on the life cycles and the number of times they reproduce....

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_16

False. Religion is not "all theory made by man to suppress others." It is one result of a number of different efforts of humans (so far as we know) to understand the universe, and make their way in it as best they can.

Science is actually an outgrowth of Philosophy. It was once referred to as "natural philosophy" for that reason.

Just as science is often used by one group of humans to oppress others, religion is used that way by some humans. The misuse of a tool, does not prove that the tool itself was created for the misuse purpose.

there's not any evidence to call any religion a "theory"

Thanks for the link. much easier to understand.

To me though I where it starts a beetle adapting from green to brown. I can see that many lizards and others will change colors depending on the environment around them. They do this very quickly.

or this statement

There are several ways such complex novelties may evolve:

•Advantageous intermediates: It's possible that those intermediate stages actually were advantageous, even if not in an obvious way. What good is "half an eye?" A simple eye with just a few of the components of a complex eye could still sense light and dark, like eyespots on simple flatworms do. This ability might have been advantageous for an organism with no vision at all and could have evolved through natural selection.

then feathers might grow?

Co-opting: The intermediate stages of a complex feature might have served a different purpose than the fully-fledged adaptation serves. What good is "half a wing?" Even if it's not good for flying, it might be good for something else. The evolution of the very first feathers might have had nothing to do with flight and everything to do with insulation or display. Natural selection is an excellent thief, taking features that evolved in one context and using them for new functions.

seems like a lot of faith.

I look at man why different races?

I have light skin I burn easily if I do not get sun slowly. I will never really tan. Yet others tan easily. Can handle the sun way easier than I can. Is this Evolution of Humans?

In a way yes. Naturally changing to our environment I would guess.

Take animals. They will shed hair in the summer time and grow a thick coat in the winter.

I wonder why all this is called scientific fact when its millions of years in progression.

Some peoples families have twins. a gene is passed on to a new generation when a non twin family has a baby with a twin family.

Is this Evolution?

(1) What is true or not true doesn't depend on the opinions of one person.

(2) There's no evidence that he recanted. From a pro-creationist website:


https://www.icr.org/article/2834/

Great post!

The problem with evolution education is that it takes years of study to properly understand evolution and the massive body of supportive evidence. Most people who are biased against evolution are not going to put the work in that is needed to really understand the issues. Most people who preach against evolution don't know what they are talking about.

OMG we found it! Proof that evolution is wrong!

i've noticed a general lack of knowledge from the bible thumpers...

You present this as if there was equal evidence for both sides, when this is not the case. Why do you so quickly jump to this conclusion, when you could instead have chosen to do a little research? Is it because you favor this conclusion? Is it possible that your favoring of this conclusion may bias you against actively learning more on the topic?


It turns out that several people interacted with him in his final weeks, and their stories are mutually consistent. Only _one_ person is the outlier who makes unlikely claims, without any evidence or any corroboration.

Of course, it doesn't matter what one person happened to believe at the time that they died. What _does_ matter is what processes we all use to arrive at our beliefs. Some processes favor arriving at more accurate beliefs, and other processes prevent us from arriving at accurate beliefs.

Ug, I know right? When I was a teenager I spent years enthusiastically and critically studying this topic to the absolute best of my ability, and I was _still_ 'learning' grotesquely over-simplified (and therefore, necessarily, somewhat wrong) presentations of evolution. Even many science 'textbooks' completely misrepresent evolution. I was an evolution skeptic for years because so many 'science educators' actually got evolution _wrong_.

This was before the internet. These days, a person can just start with wikipedia and get a much better education much faster!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

To answer your question:

I would not say that the picture you mention depicts 'evolution'. That picture depicts a few selected species from our ancestry, to give a very basic idea of what has happened. Evolution is the process by which this happened. Its like asking if the following pictures depict 'economics'



I do claim that its a fact that our great-great-great-great......great-great-grandparents were non-human primates, and also a fact that if you go back far enough our lineage includes fish-like creatures. But this claim is neither necessary nor sufficient for evolution to be true.

i would say so... any genetic change should be considered evolution, it's just that 99% of the changes don't pan out or are so minor that no one can see a change... 10,000 years later, and multiple genetic changes stemming from one change might show a difference...

Yes. When a chameleon changes color it is not 'undergoing evolution' in that moment. But the chameleons _ability_ to immediately change color was brought about via evolution.



Yes, no skeptical person believes in evolution solely on the basis of all of these "might have" speculations. We believe in evolution because of a massive body of evidence from over a dozen different fields. These 'might haves' are being discussed mostly because there are some closed minded people who ignorantly, illogically insist that evolution is impossible because *they* personally can't imagine how so called 'intermediate structures' might be useful. (I put that in quotes because they are 'intermediate' only from the point of view of assuming the final result was the ultimate purpose. Actually, what we call 'intermediate' was, at the time, the full structure. It wouldn't have existed if it wasn't somehow beneficial on its own.)

We do not know, with absolutely certainty, exactly which kinds of pressures caused each kind of structure to come into existence - but we do not need to. If you watch someone walk down the street, do you need to have precise knowledge of exactly where each of his footsteps landed, in order to believe that he did in fact walk down the street?

We talk about these hypothetical advantages for 'intermediate' structures in part to show that the "I can't imagine it, therefore it can't be" people are not being logical.



Yes. We have these different qualities because different groups were subject to different kinds of selective pressure, and we developed different qualities. This is easy to imagine, given the different amounts of sunlight that reaches different parts of the planet.

(Sorry to be pedantic, but some people might argue about whether 'evolution' is technically happening because homo sapiens have not branched off into two separate groups, which then change far enough over time and become two separate species. BUT these changes in our skin over thousands of years do illustrate the same mechanisms by which evolution, in the larger sense, occurs).



Yes, yes, all of these are advantages that evolution has brought to the species in question.



That's understandable. To make matters worse, we don't have every detail nailed down perfectly correct, and as we improve our understanding and change our models, evolution-deniers cry "See! The evolutionists were wrong!"

Some people would rather cling to one story that never changes - even it is wrong - rather than allow their outlook to change over time as they gain new information.

Just watching a pair of lips making "kissy face" is sufficient proof that we came from fishes in our distance past!

I would have to believe when science are growing pigs for organ transplants and not primates or fish that we r more closer to pigs

Well, there are different ways for things to be 'close'.

Think of sharks and dolphins. Dolphins are closer to us than they are to sharks, in terms of evolution and the family tree for all life on this planet. BUT they are 'closer in appearance' to sharks then to humans.

Pigs make great animals for organ transplants for a variety of reasons, but that by itself doesn't make them closer to humans on family tree. Other primates really are closer to us than pigs. One of the reasons we use pigs instead of monkeys is because monkeys are so close to us, that some people are not comfortable using them for research. But we are already eating pigs. That's not a scientific concern, its a cultural/political one.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/05/09/why-pigs-are-so-valuable-for-medical-research.html

Evolution is more noticeable than people realize. Everything on earth learns to adapt to its surroundings. Over long periods of time we change permanently. The amount of time that humans have been on earth seems like a long time but in fact it is only a blink of the eye to earth. In this time we have adapted differently depending on where we are from. This is the part where I said it's noticeable. Look at all the different races in the world. Africans live in a very hot and dry climate with very little protection from the sun. Over thousands and thousands of years they stay dark and hair is dry and tough. White people come from colder regions where you need to cover your skin to survive and stay in shelters for survival. Think about how close a race is to the equator (hottest point on earth) and the color of their skin. Then think of the ones farthest. We are all the same. We just evolved in a different part of the world. Its only more noticeable in the past 150 yrs since travel has gotten easier and easier. We will eventually be one color again.

by the radiations approching cells renew or regorow genine self-aoto-change sporting and foods then 'GOD'~~~~~~

Evolution is Scientific Fact.
Just look at the last 1000 years...in the middle ages people rarely reached over 5 feet in height and most were color-blind. Now colorblindness is becoming the exception rather then the rule and if you are now under 5ft you would be considered short.

For the religious fanatics who don't believe in evolution, regardless what ethnicity you believe Adam&Eve were..how did so many races "evolve" from just one couple?

god did it... the bible thumpers answer to everything....

That is not a logical explanation. They always use that "divine intervention" argument but that goes against everything they are suppose to believe.
IF God is perfect and never makes a mistake...why the need to intervene in anything?