Natural Selection and Evolution?

Question

I wonder why so many people are so confused about the difference between Natural Selection and Evolution?

NS is an observed fact as everyone agrees. Examples are Darwin's finches, lions/tigers (which despite being different species, can interbreed and are the same 'kind').

E (goo-to-you) is the hypothesis that animals can change into different kinds of animals by means of natural selection working on genetic mutations.
These alleged mutations need to have added vast amounts of genetic information. However no such genetic mutation has ever been observed. Mutations are information neutral or lossy.
'But E is too slow to see' protest the Eists. Well then it's not observable and not worthy of being even called a theory. In any case, time is the enemy - mutations are resulting in the degradation of the gene pool - that is observable.

Many evolutionists (deliberately?) mislead people by calling NS evolution and then claiming E is proved.

You don't find Creationists being so sloppy :)

Answer 1

How can a Creationists be sloppy when they have absolutely no evidence to back up their claims?

If you have nothing offer, you don't have to worry about being sloppy.

All Creationism has is the argument.

Answer 2

Evolution doesn't demand anything. Evolution is just change in genetic makeup and gene frequencies over time. This could be a reduction in gene number, an increase in gene number, or a change in the proportion of genes in one population compared to another, among other things. Natural selection is a single agent of evolution. It is a very powerful agent, and usually what we think of when we think about evolution, but it isn't the only evolutionary force at work. Others include gene flow, genetic drift, sexual selection, artificial selection, and mutation. Natural selection does actually work to reduce variation. In a population with large amounts of diversity, those individuals that are the best adapted to their particular environment will be selected for, and those least adapted will be weeded out. Remember, though, that some of the other evolutionary forces actively increase variation at the same time. New mutations and sexual reproduction both generate variation. Gene flow (movement of genes between populations) can also produce increased variation. If you have two very different populations that come to interbreed, variation will go up as foreign genes are introduced into each population from the other. Again, evolution has no requirements. It is just a process of change. It is the individual forces of evolution that can either work in unison or work in opposition to produce different types of change. Evolution as a whole is powerless because it is just the term for a process.

Answer 3

No, idiot, its not. You have it completely wrong.

Natural Selection is exactly what it says it is. Its the environment gradually causing changing in a local population. Sometimes those changes result in Speciation as the genes are more beneficial to living in that particular environment.

Evolution is NOT A hypothesis. The Theory of Evolution is the entire body of FACTUAL evidence pertaining to the subject. Evolution in fact contains all information about Natural Selection, Genetic Drift, Gene Flow, Mutation, Adaptation, and Speciation.

Its like Musical Theory. Are you really dumb enough to think Musical Theory means its a hypothesis? or do you understand that Musical Theory deals with all things musical, including tone, rhythm, harmony, melody, structure, and texture and all topics within them.

No wonder you people don't understand it, you really don't have the education to make sense of what you're attempting to argue against.

Get an education. Please. I'm begging you. You should never be this stupid.

Answer 4

evolution and natural selection are two totally different things. Anyone who's gone to school knows that. I wouldn't say that they 'change into different animals' becauase that makes you sound like a 6 year old.

'alleged'? You say no one has observed a genetic mutation?

It IS too slow to see. But there is the fossil record, in case you've never heard of it.

'degradation of the gene pool'. Interesting.

of course I don't find creationists being this sloppy. Because this isn't sloppy. You just don't understand evolution. I find creationists..er....kind of depressing...and totally wrong.

Answer 5

Actually I hear many creationists say "if evolution says we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

Evolution and natural selection are not the same. But evolution works through natural selection. If you don't believe in evolution, how do you explain the genetic variation between different species and evidence for common ancestry? Truly, what is the alternative? (hint: supernatural intervention does not count: the "irreducibly complex" is an appeal to ignorance and does not actually explain the phenomenon).

Some people dislike evolution by pointing to small debates on punctuated equilibrium, but that's not a reason to toss the theory, which is supported by monumental amounts of evidence. Let me put this in perspective:

Intelligent design (not creationism, but it's washed-down version) is the equivalent of the following:

Doctors find out that women respond differently to cardiac medication than men. This could have something to do with hormones in women, but they are not sure. They debate.

I.D. is the equivalent of pointing to this small debate and throwing away knowledge about cholesterol, heart valves, open heart surgery, and heart medication, then claiming that the heart muscle is "irreducibly complex" and can only be described as the design of an intelligent creator.

See the problem with this kind of thinking?

Answer 6

I don't know , I stopped caring about it when I was 18 and got my first real job.
I'll make it real simple for you
Evolution is fact, plain and simple - and that makes bible thumping Jesus freaks so crazy they get delirious

Even the POPE has said so!!- its only the fundamentalist protestants that are totally obsessed with it- they are so threatened by it- its just silly - they somehow view it as an attack on them personally or the end of the world for some weird reason.
Worry about the Muslims eat want to wipe Christians all off the earth, they are real!

Answer 7

There is no such thing as an evolutionist.

No one could possibly confuse Natural Selection and Evolution! If they do, they should go back to school....

And evolution is worthy of being called a theory. There's more proof than for creationism.

Answer 8

To go from that first single celled organism to a human means finding a way to generate enormous amounts of new information. You need the recipes to build eyes, nerves, skin, bones, muscles, blood, etc. Without a way to increase information, natural selection will not work as a mechanism for evolution. Evolutionists agree with this and so they point to mutations (copying errors in the genetic code) to provide the new information for natural selection to act upon. This is called “neo-Darwinian evolution.” So, the question is, can random mutations produce new creative information?

Obviously the evolutionists try to argue against this, but listen to what some scientists have said:

Dr. Lee Spetner (a biophysicist who taught at John Hopkins University) in his book Not By Chance analyzes examples of mutations that evolutionists have claimed to have been increases in information, and shows that they are actually examples of loss of specificity, which means they involved loss of information. He concluded, “All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it.” He also said, “The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of them. But if these events all lose information they can’t be the steps in the kind of evolution the NDT [Neo-Darwinian theory] is supposed to explain, no matter how many mutations there are. Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up in volume.”

Dr. Ray Bohlin (who has a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology) said, “We see the apparent inability of mutations truly to contribute to the origin of new structures. The theory of gene duplication in its present form is unable to account for the origin of new genetic information—a must for any theory of evolutionary mechanism.”

And Dr. Warner Gitt (an information scientist who was a director and professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology), in answering the question (Can new information originate through mutations?) said, “...this idea is central in representations of evolution, but mutations can only cause changes in existing information. There can be no increase in information, and in general the results are injurious. New blueprints for new functions or new organs cannot arise; mutations cannot be the source of new (creative) information.”

Mutations can cause an increase in amount of DNA, but not an increase in the amount of functional genetic information. Even the somewhat beneficial mutations they point to like antibiotic resistance in bacteria are always a rearrangement or loss of information, never a gain.

For instance, a mutation that causes the pumps in its cell membrane not to work in a certain way so it doesn’t suck in the antibiotics we try to kill it with. You see, it is resistant because of a loss of an ability. Another mutation might change a binding site used by the antibiotic within the bacteria, rendering it unable to kill the bacteria. In no known case is antibiotic resistance the result of new genetic information.

Sickle-cell anemia is often used as an example to support evolution, but the mutation causes a loss of normal function with no new ability or information.

Wingless beetles on a windy island and blind cave fish may have a survival advantage, but it comes from a loss of information.

This kind of stuff is used as evidence for evolution, but in every mutation (even the beneficial ones), this seems to always be the case. All we see is a downhill change that fits with the fall in Genesis 3, headed in the wrong direction. Evolution requires new creative information, not a loss of information. Mutation, which evolutionists frequently hide behind, is not a magic wand that transforms living organisms into more advanced forms.

People love www.talkorigins.org, but they never get the other side of the story: http://www.trueorigin.org

Answer 9

No, evolution IS a theory. You don't have to directly observe it to be a theory. We can't actually see electron, yet we do know they are there through molecular and atomic theories. There is so much evidence to support the theory of evolution, it is among the most widely accepted theories. 100% of those I have met that didn't accept it were ignorant to the science behind it.

Answer 10

The problem with Eist is that their own evidence does not support their own conclusions. The fossil record has way too many missing pieces.

An example is this... if evolution occurs as the Eist claim, where are all the fossils of creatures with no eyeballs? The eye has 1000's of requirements for it to work and there is no way it would have evolved in one iteration so there must be a fossil record somewhere with only one eyeball socket etc. You see no such fossils.

I don't deny that evolution occurs, we see it daily in the human species (people getting taller with each generation) as does natural selection (the pending demise of the red heads). However evolution is simply not possible using the arguments of the Eist as the evidence in their own fossil records contains too many gaps nor does NS explain our current state of "evolvment"

Answer 11

Evolution is the change of a population after many successive generations by way of natural selection. It's the MAIN mechanism behind evolution.
It's like taking Jesus out of Christianity. I'm sure your "brain" can understand that analogy.