If evolution is true, then why aren't we still evolving?

Question

Example: During 'evolution', did an eye just appear one day? I mean...did half an eye 'grow' first, then a little more, until we could see? and what about the optic nerve? was that evolving at the same time? and the part of our brain that translates images and helps us make sense of them? all of these things happened to be evolving at the same time? come on. if we are going to have three eyes 10 million years from now (ha), shouldn't we be seing the very beginning effects of that?

Answer 1

Truth is, we are still Evolving, but evolution is a slow process barring environmental disasters (think Chernobyl or the meteor impact that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs).

The last two big DNA changes with humanity occurred 10,000 and 4,000 years ago, if _Science News_ articles are to be believed. They were mainly dietary, involved changes to the digestive system so that mannose (tree nut sugars), lactose (milk sugars) and other plant and animal simple sugars could be digested by the human digestive system.

And this was in the absence of either civilization (which may or may not slow down pro-survival pressures) or pollution (which may speed them up).

Before that? You have to look at some of the dietary and bloodstream changes between ancestral Africans (bitter-taster versus non-taster, and the platelet changes responsible for sickle-cell anemia) and others that occurred in part to confer extra resistance to malaria.

Not that any of this matters if you refuse to believe in physical evidence gathered by genetic research or paleontology....if you willfully refuse to heed reason nothing *will* convince you. Not a flame, a statement of human nature, really, sad as it is.

Answer 2

If evolution is true, then why aren't we still evolving?

Uh. It is. and uh, we are.

example.

Yesterday I woke up at 9AM. Today I woke up at 9:05AM. Tomorrow is sunday so maybe I'll wake up at 8:00AM.

Then there is Monday. I'll wake up at maybe 8:15AM. I don't know though. It all depends on what my body needs Monday morning.

That's how evolution works. Every little event that happens to me will have an impact on the way my children grow, their children, and so on and so forth. But it may take a thousand years until my great-great --- grandchildren can live on the air they'll be breathing on some distant planet perhaps 10 light years away or so. And they may too Wake up at 8:00AM on a Sunday morning just in time to catch a glimpse at the three moons on the horizon.

. . and then there is the example that yesterday I touched a hot plate and burned my pinky. Today I stayed away from the hot plate. I learned something. That's evolution. If I learn something and apply the knowledge, I survive. If I don't learn anything, and don't apply any knowledge, I may not survive.

This is your brain on reality.

Answer 3

Evolution isn't just somebody waking up with another arm. It starts with a small, beneficial mutation, say a cell sensitive to light. That trait is passed on because it is beneficial through natural selection- more creatures with that cell survive to reproduce, so more offspring have the cell. The cell mutates again, maybe a lens-like object, also beneficial. And so on, and so on... At the same time, mutations that aren't necessarily beneficial are cast aside by the lack of reproduction.

You have to remember the large time scale that evolution operates on- far larger than recorded human history. We are, in all probability, still evolving. The changes we have undergone as a species can't be seen from day to day.

Answer 4

How did evolution evolve? - One creature did not die the position yet another did so it became waiting to reproduce the position the single which died, did not. extremely straight forward. information, desire, conception or all 3? - What have they to do with no matter if one creature reproduces or no longer. If genuine information became used outdoors of birds that look jointly - lookup ring species. assume that I actually have genuinely study Darwin's "The foundation of Species - try growing a member of the twenty first century. Now in case you could teach how evolution developed, how did the evolution of evolution evolve? - that theory is ludicrous. One creature did not die and reproduced the position yet another died. The genes that allowed it to no longer die were propagated to the subsequent era. do any of those motives teach evolution is real? - all of those that I actually have given you. if you're saying evolution is 'got here across' & no longer formulated, then it may have some mathematical accuracy in contact - existence that became waiting to reproduce the position different existence did not is what we "call" evolution. Make up any philosophical argument you want, it does no longer replace the actual incontrovertible reality that one creature extra efficient waiting to live to inform the tale will propagate their genes the position the different would not. tens of millions or billions in years isn't a measurable volume..that is a really gross estimate that extremely skill..."we are no longer certain, and we use that because all of us comprehend no accessible verify it." - You study too many fundie captions. we may be able to verify it. i don't think of maximum atheists have. - likely no longer in view that atheism is the interest that you, jointly, have not in any respect produced any information of a deity. Evolution is biology. lookup the diverse words.

Answer 5

We are still evolving. Remeber that evolution takes place over several thousands of years. For instance, at some point in time humans will not have an appendix or muscles to wiggle their ears. Due to the overwhelming pollution, are lungs are currently have to evolve to deal with this issue. We will not see its results for many lifetimes to come.

Answer 6

evolution means the survival of the fittest. the individual with the most ad adaptive features is selected and he reproduces more than others. and more importantly the evolution occurs rapidly only when there is an environmental change for instance cold age.however in the case of humans all the environmental changes are not allowed to impact their phenotype as humans have devised artificial means to escape it.so in future human evolution seems scarce with respect to the physiology but perhaps the evolution may occur with respect to intelligence and other related qualities

Answer 7

As other answeres have pointed out, we are still evolving.

But much of our social evolving has reduced our rate of biological evolvement.

For example, in many species, carriers of deadly genetic diseases die early and don't breed. In our species, we often treat such diseases giving people better longer lives, including the opportunity to pass the disease to another generation.

Human evolving is necessarily taking a different path than that of other animals.

Answer 8

We are still evolving, but the process is quite long. A noticable change could take a million years.

Answer 9

Who told you we are not still evolving? That's silly.

As for the eye, no it did not suddenly appear one day! It appeared in stages, each stage working slightly better than the previous one. And each of these intermediate stages can still be found in organisms living today. So you mock the 'half an eye' concept, but that's basically how it works ... a long, long, long series of 'partial eyes', each one useful, and each one a slight improvement over the last.

The following may *seem* like a long explanation ... but evolution is a *very* long and gradual process, so the following is just a summary of what I mean by 'partial eyes':

1. There are many simple gene mutations that can cause a protein to have light sensitivity. Light-sensitive proteins are fairly common and are called 'pigments' (chlorophyll in plants, hemoglobin in blood, melanin in skin are all examples). These genes producing these pigments may have existed for millions of generations without strong advantage or disadvantage, but those individuals who had these pigments concentrated in certain spots, were able to detect changes in light, and survived slightly better, and produced slightly more offspring.

2. Millions of generations of this produced individuals with distinct eyespots (places on the body where cells containing these pigments are concentrated).

3. The same process led to the slight improvement of eyespots located on the top of the body to detect light from above in an aquatic environment.

4. Then further and further concentration of the cells in the eyespots.

5. Then slight indentations which produced better detection of the direction of light, leading to more cup-shaped eyespots.

6. Then cup-shaped eyespots with a smaller opening for better directionality, with the light-cells concentrated on the back of the cup (a primitive retina).

7. Then secreting some mucusoid fluid at the opening of the cup that is slightly denser than the surrounding water producing better focus of the light on the light-sensitive cells in the back, all produced the ability to not only sense the direction of light, but movement as well.

8. Then membranes that help keep the fluids at the opening and in the cup.

9. Then slightly better and better control of the membrane-bound fluid in the opening using controlled secretions, leading to primitive lens.

10. Then primitive muscles to adjust the aperture of the opening, or the focal length of the lens. All at the same time the retina is improving, sharpening, developing edge-detection capabilities.

And so on, and so on. Ever more complex features over thousands of generations, each change a *slight* improvement. All that matters is the basic fact of nature ... SLIGHTLY BETTER EYESIGHT PRODUCES SLIGHTLY BETTER SURVIVAL AND THEREFORE SLIGHTLY MORE OFFSPRING. That's fact is all that's needed to explain a constant incremental improvement over millions and millions of years.

Turn that basic law of nature loose for that long, and you can have all sorts of complex eye 'designs' that we see today in nature ... complete with examples of al these primitive intermediate stages (such as eyespots in flatworms and jellyfish, to cup-shaped narrow-opening eyes in molluscs like the chambered nautilus ... all the way up to focusing camera-style eyes we find in ourselves).

And yes, of course, as the eye itself is developing, so too is the neural aparatus processing that slowly increasing set of information ... the optic nerves, and brain centers dealing with optical information all get gradually more and more complex as the eye gets better and better. It's not that mysterious.

Why do creationists find this all so hard to fathom?

Answer 10

Of couse we're evolving!!! You can see it comparing us with our ancestors like the homo erectus, homo habilis or the australopitecus. Our kind has existed for about 40,000 years, time that is not enough to see a relevant change, because that kind of change takes millions of years.

I can assure you that human kind is evolving, very slow, but evolving.