Do you believe in evolution, why or why not?

Answer 1

it is reasonable to believe that we might never the exact details of our creation. How does the acorn become a tree?

If you found an camera on distant planet would you assume it came to be from formed over millions of years by nature? Is not your own eye much more complex? Millions of times more complex then that of the camera.

Just because it is comfortable to assume does not make it so. I just say that there is more to all of it than we currently understand.

Let us not hide behind religion or behind what is comfortable science. Let us continue to explore all sides of this story, even if it is something that goes against what you believe in. Darwin was anti-God, it took his daughter. This is well known. He wanted to take God out of the world. At the same time, many people hide behind religious beliefs and will not even consider what science has to offer to the argument.

Answer 2

I think you will find there a some variations to the theory, but the general principle that genetic mutation can produce variation in a species that may confer improved fecundity is a sound one in my view.

However, when a variation occurs, how successful it is in establishing itself in a population depends on how much pressure the species is under.

An example might be the Giraffe. If a creature that eats leaves is born with a longer neck because of mutation it can reach further into a tree to graze. However, that will only provide a health and therefore breeding advantage if there arn't lots of leaves available low down on the tree. If there are a lot of leaves and a few grazers it may be an encumberance to have a long neck.

So whether a species evolves or not depends to a large extent on the pressure on that species.

Some folk believe that evolution occurs continously, others that it occurs in large jumps due to enviromental factors.

Either way its easily the best theory around.

Answer 3

When I was growing up, no one ever heard of MRSA, a staff bacteria resistant to most antibiotics. Where did it come from?

Every year I get a different flu shot because the strains of flu likely to hit this year have changed. How does that happen?

When I was a kid, my father was selective in which bull he allowed with which cows, in an effort to control the size, hardiness, and growth rates of the calves.

My neighbor has a bizarre looking but absolutely lovable dog whose mother was a poodle and father a mongrel dog. Why is the pup so much sweeter than the mother and cuter than the father?

Evolution isn't something that "stopped" when man arrived on the scene. It not only happened before we became a distinct species, but it continues to this day. To not believe in evolution is to misunderstand and refuse to understand the natural world at its most basic nature.

Answer 4

Evolution is one of the top 5 best supported FACTS in science. The Theory of Evolution is to explain how it happens, since it is already established that it happens. At this point, anyone who does not accept evolution is mentally deficient.

Answer 5

I believe evolution is well established (and please note that "theory" is a well-established and body of scientific interpretation, supported by solid evidence, and not to be confused with a "hypothesis").

But I don't "believe IN" evolution. That is, I don't trust it to produce dependable results that have nothing to do with the collected evidence. Many people, including some who claim to be scientists, do just that: the old fight between "evolutionists" and religious leaders was largely driven by these purported scientists claiming to have disproved the religion. (Oddly enough, the religious leaders were fighting back because they agreed that only one or the other could be true, which is the silliest possible combination of positions.)

Evolution, restricted to its basic assertion, is about the common descent of species of life on earth. It was propounded by Darwin after extensive observations of many species; he was a naturalist. Most of the fossil record (paleontology) came later, and refined the details but unequivocally supported that central assertion. That's one powerful, independent body of supporting evidence.

The understanding of DNA and the ability to analyze it came along even later. Again, we have another, entirely separate, body of supporting evidence.

The details have been refined many times. Darwin emphasized the mechanism he could best conceptualize: natural selection (that is, by competition and elimination). Thomas Huxley (one of those pseudoscientific believers IN evolution) pressured him into consenting to calling this "survival of the fittest" to eliminate the notion of a Selector.

Actually, according to my source, genetic drift seems to be a more significant factor, except for obvious cases of uncontrolled invasion. (Rabbits have destroyed large parts of many ecosystems, for example.) Genetic drift probably fits well with Stephen Jay Gould's points about "punctuated evolution" as well.

But these refinements don't change the central assertion of common descent, and no evidence has ever turned up which casts reasonable doubt on it.

Answer 6

This question has no place in the philosophy section. Evolution is not a philosophy, nor is the theory of evolution a "theory" as is used in common non-scientist conversation. In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it can in everyday speech. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of phenomena. It originates from or is supported by experimental EVIDENCE.

Answer 7

Yes, I believe in evolution because, while not a perfect theory, it is backed by lots research and its definitely more plausible than any of the magic sky daddy theories.

Answer 8

Yes. There is a huge amount of evidence in favour of it. For example, resistance to antibiotics appears because of the appearance of genes in bacteria which enable them to break down, eject or fail to absorb antibiotics, which then become successful, resistance of rodents to rat poison appears for similar reasons, hedgehogs which run rather than rolling up when they perceive a threat are not squashed by road vehicles and go on to have offspring with the same trait, people nowadays are less likely to have wisdom teeth because those who do are more susceptible to the fatal disease Ludwig's angina and fail to have children, tabby cats living in Europe tend to have mottled coats because they blended into the background in mediaeval cities and were more able to catch mice. Then there's fossil evidence. If you walk up the cliff at Dover, you may find fossils of a particular sea urchin which at the bottom has a mouth near the centre and as you go up, its mouth shifts towards the edge. Similar changes can be found in other fossils of different ages. The DNA of similar species is similar and changes as they become less similar.

There are also spiritual reasons for believing in evolution. If one is a Christian, for example, it encourages humility in the face of creation and other morals can be understood. It is anti-Christian to be a creationist, because true Christianity is about humility before God, and this requires one to reject any suggestion that God created the Earth purely for human benefit, as creationists claim.

Answer 9

For Hindu, the theory of evolution do not contradict the religion. Upanishads speaks about the theory of evolution, what is more!

Answer 10

it's the only theory I believe in, though it's not perfect at all and doesn't explain everything. But I think that Darwin theory of evolution has much more sense than that old fairy tales about god.