Da Mick: What is the Theory of Evolution?

Question

What does macro-evolution mean? What are the gaps in the theory?

This was actually to "Da Mick." He hasn't described evolution accurately in any of his answers. It's amazing that people, with access to the internet, cannot look up a simple definition.

Answer 1

....... Well, it's how we, um, "came to be".

If you really want to know about evolution, I have a few links I'm sure you'll appreciate:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_evolution
http://members.aol.com/darwinpage/hominid.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
http://nationalacademies.org/evolution/
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF

Answer 2

A theory is an educated guess that has been tested and found to be a reasonable conclusion to a question. A theory is what makes the most sense given the data. The Theory of Evolution basically says that all living organisms came from non-living chemicals that over time reacted and changed to become living. Changes that take effect over a small number of generations is called Microevolution. Macroevolution is changes that take centuries, millennia, or longer to be completed. The fossil record documents macroevolution changes among organisms. Many of these changes are dramatic. Gaps in the theory are layers of soil showing that multicellular organisms coexisted with single celled organisms at a time when there should only have been single celled organisms. Layers of soil below the find show no life and then suddenly life appears as single and multicelled organisms. This does not make sense from an evolutionary point of view. They should have only found single celled organisms. This has brought up much debate among scientists on how evolution works. Now, most agree that evolution can either be small changes that happen over a long period of time or large changes that happen very quickly. Why this is so is not known.

Answer 3

"evolution" is the idea that living things in our world have come into being through unguided naturalistic processes starting from a primeval mass of subatomic particles and radiation, over approximately 20 billion years.

Microevolution refers to any evolutionary change below the level of species, and refers to changes in the frequency within a population or a species of its alleles (alternative genes) and their effects on the form, or phenotype, of organisms that make up that population or species. It can also apply to changes within species that are not genetic.

What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types.

Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion ...it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. ...Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational intermediates between documented fossil species.

For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology.

Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find.

We are faced more with a great leap of faith . . . that gradual progressive adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks . . . than any hard evidence

Answer 4

For ToE take a look at

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

macro evolution is a phrase used by some to describe the evolution of seperate species. Micro evolution being the evolution within a species.

Some would have you believe that while micro evolution is possible (It is difficult to argue this as you can see it happening) micro evolution is totally impossible.

They utterly fail to say WHY it is totally impossible.

This is like saying it is possible for you to walk around your town to find the sunniest spot, but it is utterly impossible for you to walk across the country to another town doing exactly the same thing.

Answer 5

Evolution is the change in a population's inherited traits from generation to generation. These traits are encoded as genes that are copied and passed on to offspring during reproduction. Mutations and other random changes in these genes can produce new or altered traits, resulting in heritable differences.

Macroevolution refers to evolutionary changes at or above the level of species. It means at least the splitting of two species into two or the change of a species over time into another. Any changes that occur at higher levels such as evolution of families, phyla or genera are also macroevolution.

Microevolution, on the other hand, is an evolutionary change below the level of species, and refers to changes in the frequency within a population or a species of its allelles (alternative genes) and their effects on the form, or phenotype of organisms that make up that population or species.

Much of the debate encircling the validity of macroevolution as a distinct evolutionary process involves two factors (1) species stasis (a pattern in which species show no net morphological change over millions of years) and (2) species selection (selection at the species level where the individuals experiencing differential reproduction or death are species rather than organisms as is typically the case in Neo-Darwinism).

Answer 6

Macro-evolution is a last ditch effort by Creationists to deny evolution. They use the excuse that thousand year processes have not been observed directly in 150 years. It's simply a way to preserve their ignorance and leave their children to apologize for their lies.

Answer 7

If you REALLY want to know then read the information at this website. It's written by scientists for the general public to learn about Evolution. It's better to read it from actual scientists than it is to listen to the majority of people who come to the Yahoo Answers site.

Good Luck.

Talk Origins
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html

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Answer 8

I think the theory of evolution is that the human came from something much smaller and primitive. It's not that different from the theory of creation.

We humans supposedly came from the dirt (in creation theory).

We came from the dirt, and we shall return to the dirt.

Which do you believe?

Cheers

Answer 9

SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS WITH MACROEVOLUTION:


1. OBSERVATION -steps of evolution have never been observed (Stebbins )

In the fossil recordwe view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.(Gould )

2. EXPERIMENTATION -The processes would exceed the lifetime of any

human experimenter (Dobzhansky )

3. REPRODUCTION impossible to reproduce in the laboratory. (Dobshansky )

4. FALSIFICATION -cannot be refuted thus outside empirical science. (Ehrlich )



RESEARCH PROBLEMS WITH MACROEVOLUTION:

1. ORIGINS -the chance of life originating from inorganic chemical elements by natural means is beyond the realm of possibility (Hoyle )

2. DEVELOPMENT -to produce a new organism from an existing life-form requires alterations in the genetic material which are lethal to the organism (Maddox )

3. STASIS -enzymes in the cell nucleus repair errors in the DNA (Barton )

4. GEOLOGIC COLUMN -out-of-place artifacts have been found in earth's sedimentary layers which disrupt the supposed evolutionary order (Corliss )

5. DESIGN -irreducible complexity within the structure of the cell requires design (Denton, Behe ).


(DNA REPAIR: The genome is reproduced very faithfully and there are enzymes

which repair the DNA, where errors have been made or when the DNA is

damaged. - D.H.R. Barton, Professor of Chemistry, Texas A&M University,

Nobel Prize for Chemistry )


(CHANGE WITHIN GENETIC BOUNDARIES: Microevolution does not lead beyond the confines of the species, and the typical products of microevolution,

the geographic races, are not incipient species. There is no such category as

incipient species. Richard B. Goldschmidt )


(MUTATION ACCUMULATIONS RELENTLESSLY FATAL: Any random change

in a complex, specific, functioning system wrecks that system. And living things

are the most complex functioning systems in the universe.Science has now

quantitated that a genetic mutation of as little as 1 billionth (0.0000001%) of an

animal's genome is relentlessly fatal.The genetic difference between human and

his nearest relative, the chimpanzee, is at least 1.6% Calculated out that is a

gap of at least 48 million nucleotide differences that must be bridged by random

changes. And a random change of only 3 nucleotides is fatal to an animal.

Answer 10

"Macro"-evolution is when one species evolves into another different species. Like a T-Rex turning into a mocking bird.
The gap is that there are no links-except artist conceptions in the textbooks.