Can you answer my questions involving evolution?

Question

Well I am just beginning to learn about evolution. It fascinates me and I have a few questions. Why have we begun to loose hair? And turn in to the current species we are now. How would more hair hinder us? Maybe mating choices were influenced by how much or how little an animal had? And were the dinosaurs are ancestors. Or are they ancestors of our ancestor. For some reason I just realized that is probably true haha. I just proposed the question to myself a few minutes ago without thinking.

And my last question is. What are some books I should read to study evolution. I am a fan of Richard Dawkins would you recommend his older books. Are they more about evolution then atheism I am not really sure. Thanks for taking time to answer.

I understand it is a theory. And was actually going to add to my question. Asking for someone with evidence disproving the theory of evolution. And why evolution is not a reliable scientific theory. Thank you for voicing your opinion and exposing me to critical thinking objectives. Such as seeing other sides of the argument.

Sorry about the bad grammar and punctuation but I could really care less at the moment haha.

LOL you dispel evolution by using Adam and Eve. A story all people of faith acknowledge to be symbolic and not true.
It saddens me to see such destruction the bible can cause to the mind. I bet your going to come kill me because Abraham said so. Oh you didn’t read that part of the bible did you. Just the peace and love one.

Answer 1

Try A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill bryson,
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution Richard Dawkins (you probably have it), Evolution by Douglas Futuyma, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong,by Jonathan Wells.

If you read those you will be pretty much an expert.

Answer 2

You have asked some valid questions, and unfortunately, I don't have an answer for all of them. I will tell you what my thoughts are on evolution though and you can do with them what you'd like.

Personally, I'm more spiritual than I am religious. I do believe in God, but I question the validity of the bible only because of the numerous translations. If you search the bible, there is not one place you'll find the mention of the ice age, yet we know for a fact that it did exist. We know that there were prehistoric animals, that the caveman was real, yet there is nothing in writing to back it up. Well, here's my thought on it all. God is almighty, right? Who's to say that when he created the dinosaurs and all those other ferocious creatures that evolution didn't actually take place? Perhaps we did evolve, but we never would have gone beyond the caveman. Maybe God didn't like what he saw and felt that there was greater potential, so he made the ice age, wiped out everything and started all over again. This time with Adam and Eve and because he made it so that they could procreate there was no further need for evolution.

Not sure about you, but I think that this theory actually holds some water! Afterall, we don't know for sure that the bible holds everything that went on, but scientifically, we know for a fact that there were some rather odd creatures that one time roamed the earth.

This is the only logical explanation I can come up with. I hope it helps you in some way. I have nothing to back up my thought process other than common sense and deduction of information.

Answer 3

There are many theories about the lack of hair on humans, most of which incorrectly associate it with wearing clothes. If this were the case all of the aboriginal tribes would still be hairy, no? The reality is we don't know exactly what was the selection pressure was that drove the loss of body hair. One theory was described above, that excess hair impeded hunting and tracking (although plenty of hairy animals move far more efficiently than humans do). Another theory is that humans developed as acquatic primates at some point, spending significant amounts of time in the water. As such they lost hair much like whales and hippos did. But again, otters swim just fine don't they? Mating choices? If everyone is hairy, the bald guy looks like a wierdo...

Who knows? We're all just guessing.

I encourage you to read up, just like you are planning to do. Think and question. It's a fascinating field to work in.

Answer 4

One thing to mention here: evolution is a fact, evolutionism is a theory that states we all animals evolved from one common ancestor.

It all started when two asteroids or other spacial objects smashed into each other, creating a huge pack of gas. These gasses combined, forming the early earth. At the beginning the earth was so hot that volcanoes were erupting gasses that would form the atmosphere. The gasses cooled down and started falling as rain. It continued to rain and rain until the oceans were filled.

At the beginning there was little to no oxygen in the air. Somehow amino acids were formed or they came from an asteroid that smacked into the oceans. Then the amino acids and water molecules together combined. Continuously there were trillions of errors and trails to form proteins, which would later form DNA structures.

After at least a billion of years, the first animal and plant cells were born. The bacteria existed as a result,with two other siblings, having a common, yet still unknown ancestor. All life would evolve from this single species: the bacteria.

Later, the oceans were crawled with yellyfish, fish and crustacea (crab and lobster-like species). The crustacea were one of the first invertebrates (having no spine). They came to land and would evolve into insects and arachnids (spiders, scorpions, ...).
Later, the fish came to land by moving into swamps. As they were forced to escape larger predator fishes and got stuck between vegetation in swamps, they grew fingers to paddle faster.

They were now able to get to land. Hence, the amphibia were born. They developed legs, and their 8 fingers were reduced to 5, more powerful, firm fingers. The amphibia developed in reptiles, known as the dinosaurs. Unfortunately, milliongs of years later, a comet smacked into the earth. There was so much dust in the atmosphere that the sun could not reach through. The earth was now circulating in the Ice Age. Only small mammals survived.

These mammals would evolve into any other mammal you see today. So the aboreal animals existed (animals that climb into threes), which would evolve into apes and men. The chimp, gorilla and man are believed to have the same ancestor (I am not certain about the gorilla).

That is the evolution theory in short. I do not know much about evolution myself, especially about genetic mutations, chemical reactions and complex scientific concepts.

To answer your question about the hair loss, read this article:
http://www.mathiasen.com/texts/why_humans_lost_fur.html
OR
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=why+humans+lost+hair&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

Answer 5

You should definately read more Dawkins, the Blind Watchmaker is a real eye-opener. He's a prominent Atheist, but so what? That suggests that we only can rely on Christian scientists.

As others have said, Dinosaurs are lizards while we are mammals. So Dinosaurs (and birds) are more like our distant (VERY distant) cousins.

As for hair loss, one theory is that humans started fishing and therefore spent a lot of time in the water, swimming for fish. In the water, having fur is a disadvantage since it will slow you down.

Others here have said there are two sides to every story. There is in fact an infinite amount of theories regarding our origin, and it is entirely possible that any one of them can be completely wrong.

Answer 6

Hair is DEFINITELY a mate selection trait that has gone down with our evolution - imagine mating with a gross hairy guy! EW! Lol. The problem is now that everyone can do stuff to change their own appearance which doesn't help much with natural selection. No one looks like what they're supposed to look like anymore!
As with the dinosaurs, most of the dinosaurs died out but some are still around such as alligators/crocodiles, turtles and sharks. Also, I'm pretty sure (though maybe you should investigate this) that there were mammals around during the dinosaur time, so those would be our ancestors!

Answer 7

1st of there is no debate that evolution does happen. Having said that, it depends on what you mean by evolution. If by evolution you mean how the world was created then you are not going to find the answer anywhere...including the bible. Both theories of that "evolution" comes into nothingness. Scientists will say that the Big Bang was the beginning of the formation of the universe..but where did the Big Bang Matter come from? Science wont' be able to answer you that. From a religious prospective people will say God created the universe. When you ask them where God came from their answer will be that God has always been there. If thats the case then why can't the Big Bang have also always been there? You see both of those dont' really have a beginning.

Now if evolution to you is the modification of species or changes in species for the advance of its race, then indeed evolution does happen all around us.

To answer your original question: we began to lose hair when we started wearing clothing. Hair or "human fur" was used to keep us warm during the cold weather. However, once clothing appeared, the amount of hair necessary for individuals started to decrease since clothing protected us from the cold.

Our direct ansistors are APE LIKE creatures. They are NOT apes nor are they MONKIES. A lot of people say that we decended from monkies. That is when you know don't know a think about evolution. Nowhere in the evolutionary process stated by science does it say that we came from monkies. It states that we came from the same ANCESTORS as monkies. At one point a long time ago dinosaurs were part of the ancestory process before they diverged.

All organisms started off from single cells organisms called amobeas. These amobeas evolved based on the nature of their surroundings and then started to have seperate functions. After some time they started to trap one another and become multicellular. Far down the evolutionary pathway, dinosaurs diverged from pre-historic ape/monkey like creatures and thus although everything that exists today are have ameoba as their common ancestors, dinosaurs are much much further down the list of ancestory.

Think of the evolutionary pathway as a tree. The tree starts off at the base with a huge trunk (amobeas) then it starts to branch of and each branch then branches off some more. Somewhere in one of those earlier branches, dinosaurs broke off from the other organisms at that time.

Textbooks are a good sources of reference on evolution since they tell you about expertiments that are conducted to prove evolution. Here is a website that is also very good at learning about evolution: http://www.talkorigins.org

And to everyone that says evolution doesn't happen, riddle me this: why do people have differnt skin, hair, eye color if it all started with 2 individuals. Why are there all these differnt types of birds of the same species if there could be just one? Why is it that when you seperate the same species for long periods of time with differnt environmental factors..they are unable to mate together. I wont' read this often so if you really want to talk feel free to send me an e-mail at [e-mail] and i'll be more than willing to talk about evolution vs creationism with you.

One more thing: people argue that evolution is a THEORY. These people dont' know jack about science. A SCIENTIFIC THEORY is something that has been proven repetedly.

here is a truer definition of scientific theory:

An explanation of why and how a specific natural phenomenon occurs. A lot of hypotheses are based on theories. In turn, theories may be redefined as new hypotheses are tested. Examples of theories: Newton’s Theory of Gravitation, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, Mendel’s theory of Inheritance, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

gravity is a theory...dosent' mean gravity isnt' there its PROVEN.

Non-scientific individuals really need to stop arguing the point about theory cause it makes them look rather foolish.

Answer 8

According to evolution, we do not have as much hair anymore to help us with the cooling (via sweat) process. More hair would not likely hinder us, because we have created ways to adapt to our environmet. Unlike it is commonly thought, evolution does not say that our "great great great.....great great...great grandparents were apes", or even dinosaurs. We did have a common ancestor with the apes many many years ago (and with dinosaurs many years before that), but evolution is not really the typical representation that you see with the ape, the hunched over man, present day man,etc.

Answer 9

It is not necessary to include atheism in the discussion. Strangely, some people who push a biblical interpretation of creation want to frame the discussion as though you have to chose between God the evolution.

Sexual selection is a powerful force in evolution. It may account for our hair. I do not think there is a correlation between hairy back and survival.

Answer 10

We began to lose hair when we began to wear clothing. Most (but not all) mammals have hair as a form of insulation against cold and heat, but humans no longer need it. More hair would not hinder us as a species, except for those "home run dates" that may not occur due to excess hair on either the man or the woman.

The dinosaurs were not our ancestors in any way. Birds, however, can claim the dinosaurs as ancestors.

As for which books to study, I can't give you a specific answer. If you want a wide range try searching "evolution" at your favorite bookseller website, or ask your favorite science teacher for his/her suggestion(s).