Can someone show me proof of evolution? I have yet to believe in it...?

Question

Ok, so whatever people say you know we look like monkeys, etc. there's no proof that we were 'evolved' from them. Nothing from evolution makes sense. Please give resources!

Ok, but there's no proof that lizards came from dinosaurs, I mean yeah they were around when the dinosaurs were, but that doesn't mean they evolved from them....help?

Ok, Black Gallagher (however you spell it) I am on here to find answers to my questions, not to be bitched at by you. Don't answer my question if you have nothing to say. And actually, Evolution is a theory, where as creation has been found proven right many times by people...and by the way those people are scientists.

ok guys sorry for using the 'wrong' words. You pretty much know what I mean. Yes, I breed rabbits, but it's not like rabbits evolved from anything or anything evolved from rabbits. Yeah there's different breeds, but that's just from breeding one breed to another. They're not 'evolving' into a different creature or anything. Sorry if I misunderstood what you were talking about. Say that a black person and a white person had a baby. The babies gonna be half black-half white. Is it gonna change it's skin color if it moves, to 'adapt' to it's new climate? Of course not, that's just the way of life. No, I don't know barely anything about evolution, and that's why I'm here! I'm trying to learn more about it, so help!

There's no proof of the transition of species, just that they're genetically the same....???

Answer 1

How can you not see that humans look more like monkeys and apes than any other organism? Do humans look more like bees, or oak trees, or octopi? If you can go from that assumption (that humans look more like apes than they do like any other organism), and then look at the DNA makeup of all living organsims (which uses the same building blocks--4 nitrogen bases called adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine--no matter what type of organism you are), it doesn't take much more deduction that at one point in time, all living species of all organisms originated from the same ancestor.

Anyway, theories in science don't require proof, they require evidence, over a period of many years, from varying disciplines, that fall in line with an overarching idea or set of principles. The fact that *all* evidence (whether it is deduced or physical) related to natural selection and mutations continues to support the theory of evolution and no other theory. Not only are intelligent designers/creationists bad at "disproving" the theory, but they also lack in any evidence for their own theory.

So, I guess to get to your actual question...no, I won't show you "proof" of evolution...I'll give you evidence that supports it, though:

1) All life shows a fundamental unity in the mechanisms of replication, heritability, catalysis, and metabolism.

2) Common descent predicts a nested hierarchy pattern, or groups within groups. We see just such an arrangement in a unique, consistent, well-defined hierarchy, the so-called tree of life.

3) Different lines of evidence give the same arrangement of the tree of life. We get essentially the same results whether we look at morphological, biochemical, or genetic traits.

4) Fossil animals fit in the same tree of life. We find several cases of transitional forms in the fossil record.

5) The fossils appear in a chronological order, showing change consistent with common descent over hundreds of millions of years and inconsistent with sudden creation.

6) Many organisms show rudimentary, vestigial characters, such as sightless eyes or wings useless for flight.

7) Atavisms sometimes occur. An atavism is the reappearance of a character present in a distant ancestor but lost in the organism's immediate ancestors. We only see atavisms consistent with organisms' evolutionary histories.

8) Ontogeny (embryology and developmental biology) gives information about the historical pathway of an organism's evolution. For example, as embryos whales and many snakes develop hind limbs that are reabsorbed before birth.

9) The distribution of species is consistent with their evolutionary history. For example, marsupials are mostly limited to Australia, and the exceptions are explained by continental drift. Remote islands often have species groups that are highly diverse in habits and general appearance but closely related genetically. Squirrel diversity coincides with tectonic and sea level changes (Mercer and Roth 2003).

10) Such consistency still holds when the distribution of fossil species is included.

11) Evolution predicts that new structures are adapted from other structures that already exist, and thus similarity in structures should reflect evolutionary history rather than function. We see this frequently. For example, human hands, bat wings, horse legs, whale flippers, and mole forelimbs all have similar bone structure despite their different functions.

12) The same principle applies on a molecular level. Humans share a large percentage of their genes, probably more than 70 percent, with a fruit fly or a nematode worm.

13) When two organisms evolve the same function independently, different structures are often recruited. For example, wings of birds, bats, pterosaurs, and insects all have different structures. Gliding has been implemented in many additional ways. Again, this applies on a molecular level, too.

14) The constraints of evolutionary history sometimes lead to suboptimal structures and functions. For example, the human throat and respiratory system make it impossible to breathe and swallow at the same time and make us susceptible to choking.

15) Suboptimality appears also on the molecular level. For example, much DNA is nonfunctional.

16) Some nonfunctional DNA, such as certain transposons, pseudogenes, and endogenous viruses, show a pattern of inheritance indicating common ancestry.

17) Speciation has been observed.

18) The day-to-day aspects of evolution -- heritable genetic change, morphological variation and change, functional change, and natural selection -- are seen to occur at rates consistent with common descent.

Again, go to TalkOrigins.org. There you can get this information, along with all the source citations.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, thanks Tsumego...I nearly forgot. The theory of evolution doesn't claim we evolved from monkeys. It simply states that humans and apes have a more recent common ancestor than humans and any other species alive today.

EDIT: >>"And actually, Evolution is a theory, where as creation has been found proven right many times by people...and by the way those people are scientists."

Creationism has *NOT* been proven right by scientists.

EDIT:>>"ok guys sorry for using the 'wrong' words. You pretty much know what I mean. Yes, I breed rabbits, but it's not like rabbits evolved from anything or anything evolved from rabbits. Yeah there's different breeds, but that's just from breeding one breed to another. They're not 'evolving' into a different creature or anything. Sorry if I misunderstood what you were talking about. Say that a black person and a white person had a baby. The babies gonna be half black-half white. Is it gonna change it's skin color if it moves, to 'adapt' to it's new climate? Of course not, that's just the way of life. "

As I said before, theories don't rely on proof, they rely on evidence. There is a fundamental difference there, and it is important to get the terminology right. Proof and evidence do not mean the same thing in science.

And just because you haven't seen one species change into another doesn't mean that humans, or your rabbits, or any other organism hasn't evovled in the past. The evolution of a species into a new species (especially animal species) does not occur overnight, or even within the span of a human lifetime. It takes thousands of generations, building up a variety of different mutations, and has to be affected by environmental factors. It is unreasonable to think you can see a female rabbit have babies that are not rabbits.

Answer 2

Perhaps it is true that evolution and religion could work together, but let's not get into that. There's a segment PBS did once on Darwin, and you can go on their website to see if it's still there. Lizards are also evidence of evolution, and well as killer whales. Lizards were originally evolved from dinosaurs. Life all began under the sea, in the form of microorganisms similar to zooplankton and such. Originally, oxygen was poisonous to these organisms, and most could not go above the surface. Cyanobacteria also produced oxygen, and eventually organisms started to adapt and crawl to shore. Some continued on shore, while others, like the killer whale, went back into the ocean. This is why the killer whale still has hind "feet" in their bone structure, but it is buried in their skin.
You need to understand that Darwin was famous for going to galapagos islands and observing finches on the island. Looking at the Geography of the islands (go ahead, get a map) there is a mainland, and all the finches started there. Then, one by one, the finches flew off to different islands surrounding it, and each adapted to the local climates. Some had longer beaks, others ate seeds instead of insects, some even had purple plumes. Darwin looks at these birds and realized that their characteristics all traced back to the mainland finch, which seemed to be the ancestor, and it was. Evolution is not instantaneous nor observable with the human eye; what you're thinking about is adaptation. Evolution takes millions of years to happen, and the changes are very slow. Genetic mutations (even in humans) are slowing changing our planet.
Hoped that helped!

Answer 3

Actually there is no evidence at all to directly support the creationist viewpoint. There can never be, because it is not directly testable. It makes few predictions that can be verified experimentally. One large problem that relates to this is that the idea is not even generally agreed upon in terms of the details (age of earth, order of creation of man and animals, etc.) by those who propose it as "fact". However, there is a large volume of evidence that refutes many of the different creationist viewpoints and predictions that they make (age of the earth, fossil record, conservation of protein-coding and regulatory regions in the genome etc.). I could give resources, the easiest one being your local library. Many textbooks with references to acutal peer-reviewed literature. Also might be good to read Darwin's Origin of Species. Look up Sean Caroll, he's a very famous professor (HHMI) who has written several very accessible books on the subject. Also Richard Dawkins is good. These are just for theoretical frameworks, if you want to read the science good luck, but just to let you know it's likely too much for the average biology doctoral student. Here's a good question, why does a species of fish off the artic coast contain the globin gene cluster but does not use it. In fact they don't use hemoglobin or myoglobin, and the genes are actually non-functional due to various mutation that disrupt the genes being made on multiple levels. Where did they get this gene cluster, why do they have it? Answer this question with and without the benefit of evolution. It should be a good educational exercise to help you in your quest for knowledge.

Answer 4

Before you ask questions you should actually research the subject a bit. First off Monkeys and humans are RELATED, Monkeys are not the ancestors of men. And another point, humans are more related to Apes (Gorillas, chimps, etc) than monkeys. The idea is that we both derived from a common ancestor, if you want prove compare the genetic code of a chimp with that of a human. I believe humans and chimps share 98-99% of their DNA. Since DNA is the foundation for ALL organisms this similiarity is no coincidence. If you want more examples of how they are similar you should study anthropology and archeology. Evolution makes perfect sense, you just have not had a valid explaination (based on the ignorance of your question).

Answer 5

There is absolutely no point in asking someone to "prove" something if (as you say) "nothing from evolution makes sense." You should at least get to the point where it kinda makes sense to you, even if you don't believe it at all. In other rords, something can be logical, and have no evidence. But until you can see some basic logic in it, don't even bother with the evidence ... it will make even *less* sense. Why? Because you need to understand what it is they are "proving" ... otherwise, you won't know where all the pieces fit ... why certain facts point to certain conclusions. It will just be a bigger mess in your mind.

So along the lines of understanding it better, three important points:

1. Science doesn't deal in "proof" ... it deals in *evidence*. This is vitally important.

2. No scientist says we evolved *from* monkeys. This is the CARTOON version of evolution that many people seen stuck on, and creationism sites LOVE to encourage (they *want* people to have the completely wrong understanding of evolution because it makes it easier to ridicule).

3. Based you made the the above two *fundamental* misunderstandings in just a couple of sentences ... it is no wonder that "nothing from evolution makes sense." Someone taught it to you really really badly (not your fault) ... and/or you have been reading too many creationist sources that are giving you bad information. Would you trust an anti-religion source to give you accurate information about religion? If not, then don't trust anti-evolution sources to give you accurate information about evolution.

If you can honestly evaluate my points 1, 2, and 3 ... then you are ready to actually *understand* evolution (and please note, I'm NOT saying *believe* evolution ... whether you believe it or not is up to you ... but you should give it a fair chance to at least *understand* it correctly). It's actually really simple ... I could explain it in a paragraph ... but it's not as simple (or as stupid) as "we evolved from monkeys."

If not, and you have no real interest in understanding it, then there's no point in trying to explain it to you, much less "prove" it to you. If your mind is closed, then you will *never* understand evolution, much less accept anything as "proof." Ever.

Your choice.

If you choose to open your mind, then see my answer to this question (another person with the "show me proof of evolution" question):
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AmS1Ev0D1WjpF8HZ2HbQGwvty6IX?qid=20061114162706AAJ3vs9

Answer 6

Let's clear up some misconceptions:

- We did not evolve from monkeys, monkeys and man are two different species, but we and them descended from a distant common ancestor millions of years ago. That is why there are monkeys today who cannot reproduce with man - we are reproductively isolated - separate and distinct.
- Proof is more of a mathematical term - you can prove beyond doubt what x is in algebra by solving it. Evidence and observations are more appropriate terms - together they support the scientific theory of evolution.

Let's do a short run through of what evolution says using rabbits:
- There are a group of rabbits living in the snowy mountains
- Some rabbits have white fur, whilst others have black due to the genes they have.
- The rabbits are hunted by snow foxes.
- Now the white rabbits can cameoflage in the snow and hide from the foxes, but the black ones are easy target.
- Hence over time, the number of black rabbits reduces and the white increases, because they are more likely to survive and reproduce.
- Eventually every rabbit in the group has white fur - it is more advantageous to have white fur than black.

So, predation was a selection pressure, which forced the group to undergo natural selection - the ones with the most advantageous genes survive and reproduce. This is the mechanism of evolution.

For more information visit:
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/outline.html

Answer 7

To answer this question, I surf through some sites, searching for some scientific explanation about this.
Went to http://www.ecotao.com/holism/huevo.htm and read some stuff - not interesting.

The good one should be from here
http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/

There come 2 opinions -
1. People who believe in human evolution
2. People who believe that human is created by God, not through so-called evolution from monkey.

As a Muslim, I believe the second opinion.

But as to answer this question in the spirit of so-called scientific explanation, I believe that putting the both case under an observation, we can simply see that Darwin Theory of evolution is wrong.

There's too much proof
1. What Darwin said was actually 'variation', not evolution as scientist show that one species can never lead to the emergence of another new species*
2. I read somewhere saying that there is a huge different between human's heart structure and monkey's. The quite similar one is actually to the pig. So human evolved from a pig?
3. And lot of other explanation. Read it from the web.

Now we try to argue the second views. I have my own reason but I guess it will be a very long one. So, we use the same method. Can any scientist deny the the second views using the empirical data and research? Until now, no (I say, not ever).

So, we should say that there is no such thing as human evolution from monkey/ape/whatever and human was created by God in the form we are now


*From the web below

(P.S: I should also stated that I am not denying the theory of evolution in all case. Just the human case)

Answer 8

I can not see how a person who raises modern breeds of rabbits does not know something of evolution. Evolution is merely the change in allele frequency over time in a population. Look at your rabbits, have they not changed over time? They have been subjected to artificial selection. Stretch your mind. You have some good answers here and some good sites. Here is another.

http://www.aboutdarwin.com

Answer 9

I once did not beleive in evolution.....my main hang up of course was the human part!!!! However after being at university and seeing example after example of evolution I eneded up studying it!!!

Its hard to see it happening on a human lifetime scale!! It happens over a looooonnnnggg period of time!
If you think that ALL dogs came from a wolf ancestor ( luckilu we still have the ancestor to compare with!) ....all dogs...by human hand.....humans make things happen much faster ( by artificial selection).......what abotu when you see strange animals or plants on tv, that have something unsual about them????? albinos are often shown, as are things with 2 heads and off things like that...but if you can get these changes, couldn't a change occur to make sometinhg else....it could be just as minor, but have massive rammifications! WE can hybridise things to produce new species/varieities ( and it happens in nature eg mule)...sometimes plants spontanously produce a new species by having strange chromosome abnormalities ( eg have an extra set)....the result is it can't breed with any other plant of it parernts species and is now called a new species.
THere are NUMEROUS examples of that.

Contrary to what you say abotu being no prrof about humans evolveing from an ancestor of apes ( not monkeys...they have tails...we don't anymore....ok we have a tiny one and we can still see it in our devloping embyro...along with our gills!!)
WEll there are quite a few fossils from human-like ancestors.
While there are not "transition" fossils..or many....we can see definate TRENDS....patterns of change that are seen and continue to change..like the forehead going form sloping back to being more straight, our brow ridges being less distinct now ( even compared with early humans (Homo sapiens this is very distinct).....getting taller ( we can see this in less than 100years in our time too!) and the list does go on.

Our DNA....in fact ALL DNA, form bacteria to fungi, plants, and other animals is EXACTLY the same ( eg the structure of DNA.) we have 50% DNA in common with a banana! Why do we all have the same thing??? Its more logical to say we came from a common ancestor.
Our DNA is most similar to apes than to anything else....they are more similar to us than to monkeys!! Baby chimps are very similar to humans ( compared to the adults) in the face in particular and its thought we have kept these "juvinile" features into adulthood, while a chimp develops differently later on.
Evolution explains a lot of stuff...remember normally we are talking about millions of years...this is hard for us to comprehend in reality and lots of things can happen in that time period.
THe more evidence we have, helps us fill in blanks and technically we know more about evolution than we do about how the brain works!!

Answer 10

It took me 45 years to overcome my early indoctrination into creationism. Sounds like you are still under that prejudice.

I started asking questions about the natural world on the old YAHOO boards. After more than 200 questions, the great majority were answered by evolutionists. Not a SINGLE creationist was ever able to give a correct or logical explanation. I can only conclude that belief in creationism requires ignorance of biology.