About evolution?

Question

okay i believe in evolution, i know the basis of it but dont know all the facts. ive heard about how the human body isnt that perfect since we waste most of our energy and its not really designed very well since we use the same hole for breathing eating and talking and if there was a god wouldnt he be smart enough to give us seperate holes for that so we wouldnt choke on our food and die. but i think its just really weird our genitals like fit together, sry that sounds kind of strange and gross but yeah, i just dont get how that could have happened, didnt the very very very 1st organisms just start out by splitting in half, wutever that is called, like in the movie evolution if uve ever seen it lol. plz i dont want to hear ne answers about intelligent design and God, ive heard it, not buying it. never have never will, so dont try to persuade me, only looking for scientific answers here.

dolphins dont eat and breathe thru the same hole :)

Answer 1

The short answer is that the sexes had to evolve at every stage to "fit" together that way ... because any development in either sex that did not "fit", would not produce any offspring, and so that development would not last very long in the population.

The longer answer should give you a general way of answering these questions. There are many many questions of how two parts fit or work so well together whether it is the genitals of the two sexes, or two parts of the eye (the retina and the optic nerve), or two parts of the digestive system (the liver and the pancreas), etc. etc. ... Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates *love* to come up with lots and lots of these questions as if they are very clever and impossible for evolution advocates to answer (they're not). A key phrase you often hear in all these questions is "WHICH CAME FIRST?" Basically, these are all variations on the old "chicken vs. egg" question, but these creationists seem to think these questions are all original, and all stumpers for the 'evolutionists'.

The fact is that these questions all have pretty much the same answer: THEY EVOLVED TOGETHER. They started as a differentiated *function*, not a *part*, and successive generations just produced small improvements in the specialized cells, tissues, parts, or organs that perform these functions. After millions of years, the body has *very* specialized parts or organs for doing these functions.

In the case of sexual organs, you have to realize that sexual reproduction did not *start* with two sexes. There are many organisms (in fact most plants still work this way) that reproduce sexually, but all individuals have both male and female parts. Once this is in place, then it is not such a big leap for individuals to switch between roles in their lifetimes, or to go through female phases followed by male phases, or for some individuals to spend *most* of their time as females or as males. And from there it is not a big leap for some individuals to specialize in either the male or the female role for their entire lifetime ... sometimes with the difference determined by what the individual is fed during a critical part of its development (that's how bees determine males and females, for example). And in many cases the differences are encoded in the genes ... and there an individual is preprogrammed by genetics to be either male or female.

And in all cases, all stages, the male and female organs had to fit together ... or the development didn't last very long.

The point is that there are *many* different forms and stages of sexual reproduction still evident in nature today. So there is no reason to believe that we ever jumped directly from organisms that reproduced completely asexually, to one with completely different males and femals with parts that "fit" together.

I hope that answers your question (and many like it).

Answer 2

In spite of your request, I notice some creationists intruding in the biology questions again.

To understand evolution, you need to look at a lot more organisms than humans. Humans are just one of many mammals. Interestingly, your question about choking on food has some to do with our language ability. Our throats are different than other animals because of that ability, or maybe I should say, because of the ability to talk, our throats are different.

The human body isn't perfect. No organism is perfect for everything. But, it doesn't need to be. Evolution doesn't neccesarily result in perfection, just which organisms can better cope with a particular environment. Those that cope the best reproduce more offspring and that is what evolution is all about. The offspring of the most productive inherit whatever the parents had that made them so successful in their environment - often to the exclusion of other less successful creatures.

As for genitals fitting together, that is true for all sexually reproducing organisms, not just humans. That feature came about a very long time ago, as soon as sexual reproduction started in some very primitive life forms.

Answer 3

There is a long road from fissioning single cell organisms, to species with two sexes. Go here for a start.

PS Or, read secretsauses answer.

http:/www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Evolution_of_sex

Answer 4

There are so many things like that, and many far more convincing. So many animals defy evolution. How about the one fish (I can't remember its name) that cleans the other fishs' teeth. They had to both develop the same habit at exactly the same time. Also, check out the human eye. Way better than any technology than we have. I'm not trying to persuade you, but look at the material that's out there.

Answer 5

I'm not sure if you've noticed but pretty much all animals eat, breathe and communicate through the same hole.

Answer 6

This is a bit of a difficult question to answer because it is very complex, and in science a lot of what we know is just our "best theory" and not absolute truth, since no one was there to see it happen. This being said, you are right in saying that the very first organisms started out by splitting in half. Several hundred million years ago there were prokaryotes, simple, single celled organisms that replicated asexually, not needing to have sex with another organism (or animal, more simply) to reproduce. We know this because fossils of these animals have been found in rock that once lay at the bottom of ancient oceans. In later fossils, we find the first eukaryotes, made of the same type of cells we are, although in the beginning each animal was only the size of one cell. Some of these cells can also reproduce asexually, while others need a partner in order to have babies. So why did this happen? No one really knows, it was long before any humans were around. However, there is a theory in the science of evolution, I don't know how familiar you are with it so I'll give you the basic rundown. Charles Darwin thought of this while studying different species on his travels, the theory of natural selection. All animals have to have babies in order for a species to carry on. When an animal has babies, lets take a rabbit for an example, some of those babies will probably be a little better at surviving than others. Say mama rabbit has four babies, and one is an average rabbit, one is a little slow, but clever, one is very fast and one has a birth defect, a back leg that never grew quite right and doesn't work very well. If you think about it, once these four babies have to go out into the world, average rabbit will probably be okay, but if he and fast rabbit are sitting next to each other and a fox pops out of the bushes, chances are fast rabbit is more likely to survive than average rabbit. Likewise, if clever rabbit and sad little hurt leg rabbit are next to the river and a hawk appears, chances are clever rabbit may think to crouch next to a tree while sad rabbit is more likely to die. So clever rabbit and fast rabbit are more likely to survive. Since they are more likely to survive, they are more likely to be able to find mates, reproduce and have offspring who can later find mates and reproduce. So nature "selects" animals who are better adapted to survive. This isn't always the case; sometimes animals with injuries or inherited problems do reproduce. But overall, they are less likely to be able to. This doesn't indicate some supreme control making these decisions, either; selection is just the term used. Observation of the way of the world (or nature) makes it clear that some animals survive better than others. So Darwin basically said that natural selection serves to favor some genes being carried on while others don't survive because the animal who has those genes doesn't get to reproduce, or is less likely to be able to help its offspring survive. So does this have to do with cells having to have sex or not? Mutations, or random changes in an organism's genes, happen regularly. We can observe them arising in short lived animals, like fruit flies. Nothing is always perfect; sometimes when a copy is being made, an embryo created, something goes wrong and a new gene pops up. Often these mutations are bad; take sad little rabbit's hurt leg. Sometimes, they're good; they actually make an organism better able to survive. So theory is at some point a cell arose that had a mutation; maybe when it divided it split into two parts that needed to come back together in order to make more. Over time, these were better at surviving than those that couldn't have sex; so there were more and more of them and less and less animals that could reproduce asexually (as there are today). Why did they survive better? When an animal reproduces asexually, it makes a copy of itself (kind of like a clone). This copy has the exact same genes as its maker (or mother); the maker only has access to its own genes. When an animal reproduces sexually, it gives its offspring 50% of its genes and 50% of the other parents genes. This means it has a higher variety of genes than the "clone" does. Sometimes this can cause problems; more often it means that this animal has greater adaptability, because it has a greater diversity of genes. So since offspring reproduced by sex has a better ability to adapt, it is more likely to survive than those produced asexually. Now, finally, to your question about why our sex organs fit together so well. This is also about natural selection. The better your sex organs fit together, the more likely you are to be able to reproduce. Without going into too much detail, you can imagine if something is too big to fit, or too small to get sperm where they need to go, that person is unlikely to be able to have children (before modern medical technology, anyway). So those genes are less likely to be carried on; people whose sex organs fit well with others are more likely to successfully have children and so their genes are more likely to carry on. That's as simple as I feel I can make it and still have it make sense. Evolution is very complex; that makes sense because life is very complex, so for something like us to arise, for instance, a lot of different things must have happened over a lot of time.This is stuff you should spend months learning, so its hard to put it all in a few hundred words. I hope this helps you; if you have more questions related to this, or need me to explain this more, please let me know.

Answer 7

If anything the human body is a marvelous peice of work. If you think about the physiology and anatomy then it will be clear that it is truly ingenious.

Answer 8

Eh, by the way, splitting in half is called asexual reproduction.

Answer 9

Did you forget about the emotions of love, childbirth, seeing in color, taste of food, water, seasons, intelligence......, God said that 'you will know Me by my works.' Are you sure you need another hole in your body?