What is evolution in simple terms?

Question

It's for my biology projuct. Where I have to choose between evolution or creationism.

Answer 1

The change in allele frequency in a population over time.

An allele can be understood as a trait, such as purple or white flowers in a pea plant. It you have a sample of pea plants, such as 10000 pea plants, and they ALL have purple flowers one year, and the next year they have 2500 with white flowers and 7500 with purple flowers, and the bees decide they likes white flowers only, and the next year the only ones that bloom are white, you've just witnessed the allele frequency (% of flowers expressing white) in a population (your field of peas) change over time (three years) because of selection (bee that is prejudiced against purple flowers.)

Answer 2

Great classic debate. Creationism versus Evolution. Religion versus Science.

Here's the best way I could figure out which one to stand behind is simply, "What do I believe?" To me, I stand behind the theory of evolution because just about everyone within New York City has seen it too.

It's no big news that New York City has it's share of Rats. There have been many attempts to eliminate the rat problem of New York City. Multiple poisons have been tried on the Rat population, and none have eliminated the problem. The reason for this back's Andrew's statement above, evolution is a process that occurs through "natural selection". The rats that are resistant to the poisons live, while those that do not die. The resistances are passed off to the young of the survivors through generations, thus the Rat population gains a poison immunity.

Now consider that a wild Rat suffers from a 95% mortality rate, and has an average lifespan of one year. With the resistances built within the population, how does one not see evidence of natural selection, hence supporting evolution?

Now look at the other side of the coin. Every being in existance was created by God in the Garden of Eden. Have you seen evidence of this before you? Could you give enough support to back this, or could you only give scripture? When I think about it, I'd be writing a pretty weak paper if the only material I was able to site would be religious books such as the Bible, Torah, and Quran. This is where the idea of creationism has it's roots. You could cite non-Abrahamic faiths too, but all have different beliefs as to the creation of man, and to believe in creationism, you can only believe one of those to be the absolute truth, and would have to argue it to be true. Considering people of different faiths can never agree... I just see a big old fork stuck in that one.

Answer 3

Wow! I would definitely challenge for the right not to choose one or the other.

I believe that our Creator uses the process of evolution (slow change over time) as the tool for creation. So, you see, you don't have to deny a higher Intelligence who is orchestrating the process, and you also don't have to deny scientific evidence. Science and God can walk hand in hand.

Remember that God's understanding of time doesn't revolve around our 24 hour time period. The 24 hour day was created because of our solar system. What was there before that? A week, in our perspective, could have been millions of years in God's perspective.

Of course, this requires a move from literal Biblical interpretation. But would provide for quite an interesting and provocative paper. Good luck!

Answer 4

Evolution is the change in allele frequencies in a population over time.

Chosing between evolution or creationism is a false choice. Creationism is a more expansive subject than evolution, because it covers the origin and change of things other than life.

A more appropriate choice is science vs creationism.

Answer 5

ok, first establish the difference..

Evolutionism = Man evolved by the same gradual process as other creatures did... So, the same laws of nature apply to man as to the rest of the physical world.

Evolutionists believe that ancestral "ape-man" could have evolved an upright stance and humanlike physiology. Therefore explaining the gradual process of ape to man.

Creationism = A belief that man was created instantaneously by a cosmic powered super-being from another dimension.

Creationists believe this based on ancient, heavily retranslated writings taken from badly decomposed fragments of scroll found in a series of caves in the middle-east.

Therefore, Evolution is the process of change over time and its change in the traits of living organisms over generations, including the emergence of new species.

Although u can delve deeper, i think this simple term explains it best.

good luck x

Answer 6

In simple terms evolution is the end result of natural selection. The genes contained within animals will mutate or change in response to varitations in their environment such as weather changes or the introduction of new predators or food shortages or even loss of habitat.

If these changes help the animal survive then they are passed down through standard breeding into the next generation, where the process can happen again. If not than the animal will most likely not survive to pass on those new genes.

This is a simple explanation of evolution, hope it helps.

Answer 7

Evolution is a broad term that often is reduced or conflated according to the user; but generally speaking, it is the theory that the process of natural selection over long periods of time will allow one species to separate into two species.

[Strictly speaking, this is "divergent evolution"; "convergent evolution" is where different species become very similar over long periods of time because of natural selection]

Natural selection is the name given to the fact that creatures who die before having offspring do not pass on their genes, while creatures that are well suited to the environment they live in will not die off.
For example, a pair of mosquitos that have a gene that makes them resistant to pesticides in the pond they live in will have babies, and their babies will have the resistant gene.
Suppose all the other mosquitos are killed by the pesticide. The children of the single resistant pair will continue to reproduce and repopulate the swamp.


For natural selection to lead to evolution, some external influence is required to change the genetic code or the creatures in question, e.g. random mutation, radioactive mutation, God.

Answer 8

Evolution is driven by the survival of the children of two successful parents. No kids are exacyly the same as their parents and over time these differences accumulate to create new species. It might take a million generations to accomplish this.

Evolution does not explain the origin of the first living thing or the creation of the universe.

Answer 9

Evolution:

"evolution is the change in a population's inherited traits from generation to generation. These traits are the expression of 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 (genetic variation) between organisms. New traits can also come from transfer of genes between populations, as in migration or horizontal gene transfer. Evolution occurs when these differences become more common or rare in a population, either nonrandomly through natural selection or randomly through genetic drift."

Creationism:

"God did it"

Answer 10

Darwin claims that life evolved from a single cell found in the ocean ... the sea life ... sea life left the sea for land ... then land creatures evolved into what we currently are.

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Bible:
" ... Then God said, "Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures, and on the earth let birds fly beneath the dome of the sky." An so it happened. God created the great sea monsters and all kinds of swimming creatures with which the water teems, and all kinds of winged birds. God saw how good it was ... Then God said, "Let the Earth bring forth all kinds of living creatures; cattle, creeping things, and wild animals of all kinds" And so it happened God made all kinds of wild animals, all kinds of cattle, and all kinds of creeeping things of the earth. God saw how good it was. ... Then GOD SAID "LET US MAKE MAN IN OUR OWN IMAGE, AFTER OUR LIKENESS" Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and vegitation of the earth.
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I can't really see where the Bible denies or concludes existance of Evolution ... but rather leaves the possiblity for evolution. Some where in the Bible ( Ihave to refind it) it says that we (mankind) should stay away from making images of heaven, hell, and what's beneth the sea ... I think this is God's way of saying, "You're not smart enought to articulate my comprehension yet, so don't try".