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Hmmm, thoughts on evolution?(no, not vs religion)

D

Davidoc

Sep 2, 2000
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Northern VA and JMU
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#1
I've been thinking, I'm not sure if I totally buy the whole concept of natural-selection being the cause of evolution, which implies that all changes and development of lifeforms stems from the deaths of prvevious lifeforms with undesirable traits. There's gotta be something more. I have no ideas, and no suggestions as to what that something/somethings would be, but I kinda doubt that it's just natural-selection that causes evolution.

It just seems hard to believe that all the variety in life comes from traits that were already there. I've been reading that more and more people are being born without wisdom teeth. Does this mean that wisdom teeth were causing the death/inability to reproduce? No. It just seems that many adaptions we see in today's living world come from things that would not effect the organism's ability to reproduce or survive to be able to reproduce.

Something's fishy with that theory. I think there's something more going on. Does anyone here know what I'm talking about?
 
#6
This:

Toasted said:
Some people will always cut off their nose despite their face.
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Contradicts this:

Toasted said:
Nothing i say is funny
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I win. Where's my balloon?

Davidoc. I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. I am shamelessly using your thread to impress my not-so-witty remarks on the rest of the TB crowd. I'm sorry.

I do agree with the theory of evolution though. Just with less rolly eyes than Toasted.
 
#7
Davidoc said:
[..]
It just seems hard to believe that all the variety in life comes from traits that were already there. [..]
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It doesn't. There is a thing called mutation.

Davidoc said:
[..]
I've been reading that more and more people are being born without wisdom teeth. Does this mean that wisdom teeth were causing the death/inability to reproduce? No. It just seems that many adaptions we see in today's living world come from things that would not effect the organism's ability to reproduce or survive to be able to reproduce.
Click to expand...
Just to survive long enough and being able to reproduce isn't enough.
Good looks, for example, increase your attractiveness. This shows that you have "good" genetic material, which is what a potential mate would like to have for reproduction. Your chances of reproduction and to father/mother healthy offpring is better than of somebody who's not good-looking, or even has visible genetic defects.
 
#8
Evolution is based on more than just natural selection. It is also a product of the use and new uses of the body and its parts. Your use of molars as an example of evolution is flawed. Evolution, by definition, takes place over such a long time that it is impossible to tell it is happening. The apes that humans evolved from didn't just one day become hairless and stand up straight. It happened over many millions of years. It isn't just one day, people stop being born with molars. That is more of an adaptation than an evolution. An evolution would be that molars begin getting smaller and smaller in humans to the point that they stopped coming in. That would happen over the course of millenia, or eons. Slowly the same thing will happen to our fingernails and toenails. They are vestigial remnants of when we used to have claws. Our tailbone will slowly dissapear over the next few million as well. That is evolution.
 
#9
Or maybe we sill go back to being apes. :smug:
Like you said it is based on millions(+/-) of years. We don't know what we will be like in a couple eons.



Note: I do not think we will go back to apes. Just saying, we might get a biggertail bone, wisedome teeth might be gone, and finger nails might stay the same. we can't know. :)
 
#10
This is my opinion but i dont think that we came from apes. I think that apes and humans evolved differently. think about it, if we came from apes then why dident all of the apes evolve into humans? I think that they are more of our brothers then our great great great great great great great etc. grandparents.
 
#11
But even if they are our brothers, we had the same parents :D
I see your point, but there is quite a bit of evidense to say that is where we came from and it maybe that a few started to evolve and only those ones mated with each other, some were killed off by the nonunderstaning apes and so the other apes didn't evolve because they still needed to be how they were to kill off the "weird" less ape like creatures. TMO, of course.

I think I said what I mean :cool:
 
#12
It isn't just good traits are selected for, and bad traits are weeded out. There's all kinds of random events in there that mess things up. Mutations were pointed out, also, if something gets struck by lightning (or some freak accident) before it can reproduce it doesn't matter how good it's gene's are.

Thats not going into chromosomal (sp) aspects of it with genes crossing over, linked traits and all that kind of thing.

And someone correct me if I'm wrong about this, but isn't the current theory that usually there are long periods of little change, followed by "sudden" changes caused by some immediate stress (ice age, meteor, new predator). And that as a result of our changing the world to suit us, we change less as a result. (or just have different types of favorable traits -eg money)

Pretty much any theory stated really simply is easy to poke holes in.

(Not saying I'm right or evolution is a flawless theory, but its as sound as anything else out there. And sorry for a real long post)
 
#14
yeah wisedom teeth being removed does suck. I missed a bunch of school so that was a plus I guess. :hmm:

I am not sure if I would be mad if I was born with an extra finger and it got amputated. It might be cool. Yeah people would call you a freak, but there might be some cool benifits. Or just people calling you a freak, but you would never know. :scowl:

note it could only be cool if the finger actually worked :p
 
#15
Viviuos said:
This is my opinion but i dont think that we came from apes. I think that apes and humans evolved differently. think about it, if we came from apes then why dident all of the apes evolve into humans? I think that they are more of our brothers then our great great great great great great great etc. grandparents.
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No scientist would try to tell you man came from apes. That was what Darwin's adversaries tried to defame(?) him with.

Your argument is flawed anyway, though. As per definition, not all specimen of a certain type of animal or plant evolve, or evolve in the same direction.
 
#16
jucas said:
And someone correct me if I'm wrong about this, but isn't the current theory that usually there are long periods of little change, followed by "sudden" changes caused by some immediate stress (ice age, meteor, new predator).
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's called "punctuated equilibrium".

And that as a result of our changing the world to suit us, we change less as a result. (or just have different types of favorable traits -eg money)
Click to expand...

This is a separate thing. What you're referring to here is that the biggest factor in human evolution is now social, not environmental, and has been for some time. In other words, people in more developed countries have a lower birth rate, and even within developed countries, it's known that people with more education and higher intelligence levels tend to have fewer children; so the concept of the smartest and fastest being the most successful in evolutionary terms gets turned on it's ear. What it boils down to is that there are now very few places where it's neccessary to have 8 kids because only 3 are going to make it to adulthood. Disease and famine are largely under control, at least in comparison to a few thousand years ago. But there are still many places where this reality has not been integrated into the culture yet, so they're still pumping out kids like it was 700 BC; they are "succeeding" better in evolutionary terms, but they are not having this higher rate of survival because they are the "fittest" in the traditional evolutionary terms you would apply to any other species. In the timeline of our overall development, we're talking about a very, very recent development. It's only becoming really obvious within the past few generations.

Viviuos said:
This is my opinion but i dont think that we came from apes. I think that apes and humans evolved differently. think about it, if we came from apes then why dident all of the apes evolve into humans? I think that they are more of our brothers then our great great great great great great great etc. grandparents.
Click to expand...

Actually, that is not just your opinion; you have a better grasp of evolution than a whole lot of people.

The theory of evolution does not suggest that humans evolved from apes; it suggests that we have a common ancestor. Both humans and simians (apes) have evolved a lot since our family tree split millenia ago.

I don't want to get into religion, and this is not a rant against you, but the "we evolved from apes" idea is a strawman argument perpetuated by hard-core creationists. It's sole purpose is to introduce the exact argument you stated - "why didn't all apes evolve?" - as a legitimate question. No respectable scientist holds the view that we evolved from apes.

In a similar vein the statement "we evolved from monkeys", which is often used in an attempt to make evolution seem silly, is equally misinformed; monkeys are very, very different from apes. They have more in common with a dog or cat than a human.
 
#18
I think a lot of the people posting here dont understand what evolution and natural selection really entail.

By nature, our genetic makeup is prone to many mutations and abnormalities. Sometimes these mutations are harmful and sometimes they benefit us. The people who end up with harmful genetic mutations end up dying with out reproducing so their genes die with them. The people who end up with beneficial mutations reproduce more before dying and their genes make up a larger part of the population. Those people who dont change have stronger competition and so they end up having a harder time surviving and thus make up a smaller part of the population.

With time those with more beneficial traits end up breeding with themselves and others without the traits resultng in offspring with the benefits and eventually they take over the population.

Sometimes when there is not as much competition there is parallel evolution in which two groups live side by side; one with new traits and one without. Sometimes its that the new traits arent clearly advantageous, and sometimes its the the new traits are possesed by a group which moves to another location and doesnt breed with the old group so both populations are preserved and distinct.
 

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