What is evolution, Many questions here about it,with no explanation of what it is?

Question

No I didn't go to school I was homeschooled by my fundamentalist Christian parents who told me it was a blasphemous concept frowned upon by God.

Answer 1

Evolution is the change that successive generations of living things undergo due to mutation of the genetic information by radiation, chemicals, or just plain happenstance. Some such changes will be beneficial, and the organism will preferably survive and transmit its genes to offspring, which, having the same advantage, are also more likely to survive. Sex insures that any beneficial change will become widely distributed in a short time. From this, we can see that there are two essential elements to evolution:
- There must be variation. This is observed (as any doctor at a hospital is all too well aware), and is thus an established fact. Indeed, every commercially important plant or animal is a variant of the original wild type.
- There must be a selection mechanism. We see that survival suffices in nature. Of course, mankind has been doing artificial selection since agriculture began.

These are the two essential elements, and both of these are proved. Therefore, the theory of evolution is proved to be correct. Among scientific theories, evolution is an odd duck because most such theories are not provable.

Answer 2

Nature abhors a vacuum. Evolution is the process by which vacuums are filled.
If you were to provide a brand new source of energy, one that no form of life on earth was capable of utilizing, and then came back in a million years, you could be assured that some new life forms would have emerged that would thrive on your energy source. How does this happen? Some random bug wanders into your source, or maybe a bird, or a flowering plant, or a platypus; whatever it is, it can't use the source, so nothing happens. The same thing happens again and again, 999,999 times, with no results. Then one time, the platypus has a weird mutation which helps it use just access the energy - it's bill is a little too long, it is able to stick it into whatever you've got, it gets a little extra boost. It's offspring, if they inherit the mutation, will be just a little better. It's a really slow process, which is why all macroevolutionary changes take vast amounts of time, but it will happen.
There is no crisply defined point at which the descendents of that platypus become a "new species", so if you're watching for something miraculous to happen, it isn't going to. One generation is a little bit less platypus-like than it's parents. The whole concept of "species" is temporal - it only makes sense in a single snapshot of the world. Everything is evolving, all the time.

Answer 3

Simply put, evolution is the term used to describe the change of organisms over generations. In a general way, evolution is described as the changes that have transformed life from its earliest origins into the diverse forms of life represented today. More specifically, the "Scientific Theory of Evolution" states that all living things share, at some point in their evolutionary history, a common ancestor. Evolution depicts life as a tree, with many branches arising from a single trunk. The tips of the branches represent present-day life forms. Each fork in the branch represents ancestors common to all lines arising after the split.


Check out these sites for a more detailed examination:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/

Answer 4

just curious' response: "That everything you know to be true and real happened by chance..."

Evolution has two parts: Mutation and Natural Selection. The former is random. The latter is non-random (hence the word "selection).

Evolution is the very opposite of chance. Indeed, it is a non-random process. It is a fact and a theory - the fact being that is HAS occurred and still is. The theory being how and why it happened.

Answer 5

Evolution is scientific belief that the world was not created by God, but instead the result of the "big bang" which was suppose to have happened millions of years ago.
The truth is, is that the world WAS created by God and is only 6000 years old.

Your parents were very smart to home school you. Alot of corruption is taught in schools today.

Answer 6

Evolution is the change of living creatures, by action of mutation, over time sometimes creating a new species.

By the gods............ I apologize. I don't even know what to say to how terrible that is. I've editted my post.

A link to help you begin to learn about evolution...

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

Answer 7

Evolution is a scientific theory that explains facts. The facts include how one species changes over time.

Answer 8

Evolution is a theory which says that there is no creator, and that everything started as a chance, in the form of very simple animal or living thing, like amoeba, and then they keep on evolving, and after billions of years some of them became human beings.
Here is the theory of Darwin in summary:
Summary of Darwin's Theory of Evolution
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A species is a population of organisms that interbreeds and has fertile offspring.
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Living organisms have descended with modifications from species that lived before them.
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Natural selection explains how this evolution has happened:
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More organisms are produced than can survive because of limited resources.
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Organisms struggle for the necessities of life; there is competition for resources.
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Individuals within a population vary in their traits; some of these traits are heritable -- passed on to offspring.
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Some variants are better adapted to survive and reproduce under local conditions than others.
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Better-adapted individuals (the "fit enough") are more likely to survive and reproduce, thereby passing on copies of their genes to the next generation.
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Species whose individuals are best adapted survive; others become extinct.

On the other hand the theory of creation is, that God as a Master Designer and Creator with super natural powers, in wisdom and love designed, planned and created everything by speaking it out,
as written in Psalm 33:6,9, HeBy the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.
For He spoke, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood fast.

Both are theories because none of us were there when God created everything, or when the Big Bang started billions of years ago.
To me it needs greater faith to believe the Theory of Evolution than to believe the Theory of Creation.

Answer 9

Evolution is the process in which things adapt over a period of time due to their environment they are in.

example...it's gets cold...your grow more hair

example...your being hunted...your skin turns colors in order to blend in the natural surroundings. Or in some cases you adapt to look like a stick (walking sticks (bug)) and butterflies can look like leaves and other bugs.

Answer 10

Basically, the change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.