Evolution a hoax?

Question

I have been thinking of this for quite a while and I believe that evolution is a hoax. There is no proof that we have evolved, just that we are related. Also, if we evolved rom single celled organisms, why then are they still around today? I would like to hear opinions on both sides of this topic.

Answer 1

You are correct. There is no dead-bang evidence. What's more, even if we completely accept evolution as a process, there will always be a certain amount of guesswork in determining what arose from what and when. Nor will it ever be easy to detect outside meddling in the process unless we witness it.

BUT evolution explains a lot. Perhaps more than you may think. Evidence for it falls into four main categories:

BIOCHEMICAL AND ANATOMICAL SIMILARITIES: All creatures are similar... even to the degree that there seem to be a few genes shared by virtually every lifeform in existence. Unless many of these creatures are related, there is little reason for them to look and be as much like one another as they do (a LOT more than is necessary for their survival!). Most of us would expect to be able to tell the difference between a group of five family members and a group of five randomly picked individuals. It's the same kind of thing.

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: Groups of related, similar organisms tend to clump together inside geographic boundaries. For example, Australia has a lot of marsupials, but other regions - even those with identical climates - do not. Further, we can also find examples of very closely related species separated by relatively new barriers, while those separated by old barriers are wildly different.

RECORDED CHANGES IN EXISTING SPECIES: We can observe instances of natural selection in action in species with very short generation times. Bacteria can be shown to develop novel genes to survive in new environments. We can also see how one characteristic has been favoured in one environment and not in another.

FOSSIL RECORD: Best of all, as far as we can tell all the above things have been occurring as long as there has been life. Nor does all life of all complexities seem to have sprung up simultaneously. There is no evidence of modern life at the oldest of times and almost no examples of ancient life that is still present in modern times. 99% of all species we know about came into and left existence before any human was around to see them.

Now, it's quite possible that our descriptions for some of these things are off. Our view of the universe is being refined all the time. But I hope you can see that anything that is going to replace evolution has a LOT of explaining to do... so much so that I know no biologists who can even imagine what such a thing might be.

Hope that helps! Peace.

Answer 2

It's good that you are *thinking* about these things - but evolution is not a hoax.

The statement "There is no proof that we have evolved, just that we are related" ... what does this mean? If we are related to (for example) chimpanzees (sharing ~99% of our DNA with them), then it must mean that, at some point in history, we had a common ancestor. Just like your grandfather is a common ancestor between you and your cousins.
Now, since we don't look like chimpanzees, that means that either we have changed, chimpanzees have changed, or both of us have changed since the time of having a common ancestor: and this change *is* evolution.
That's all evolution means - that populations of organisms change over time, as generations proceed.

Following the same logic, since we share many genes in common with *all* organisms, and they all share many genes in common with each other, then we are *all* "related" at some, distant past. Therefore, we all had a common ancestor that we all evolved from.

The reason there are still single-celled organisms around is because these organisms went down a *different* evolutionary pathway from us. When natural selection results in evolution, it does so because the traits selected are those that result in the individual posessing them being able to survive and breed a little bit better than others. Since there are *many* different environments, there are many different selective pressures, and there are just as many (if not more) possible traits that could be advantageous. So it is *not* the case that all organisms will evolve towards multicellularity, or towards having a large brain and opposable digits: in some environments, these are not advantageous, and even where they are, they are not the *only* advantageous trait. So other traits will be selected for, resulting in branching of the evolutionary tree.
Darwin's Finches of the galapagos are an excellent example of this: a population of finches somehow made it to the galapagos, and spread across the islands there: it is difficult for finches to make it from island-to-island, so once they were on one island, they were pretty much isolated there. Each island has a slightly different environment: some have large, tough seeds, while other have small, fiddly seeds. This means that the selective pressures on each island are different.
Now, say that the finches that made it there had a mixture of different traits: some had big beaks, some had small beaks. Now it turns out that big seeds require big beaks to crack them efficiently, while small beaks are better at picking up small seeds.
This means that, over the generations, the islands with big seeds had more and more of the big-beaked finches, and the islands with small seeds had more small-beaked finches. This would happen because the finches with the correctly-sized beaks would be better at food gathering, and would therefore have more offspring. Eventually, the islands would have finches with *radically* different beak sizes: evolution.

Answer 3

Well, you say "I believe that evolution is a hoax", which means you really don't know. More than likely you have never studied biology or ecology or anything that has evolution in it. You and anyone can believe anything they wish to. You repeat the often stated misconceptions about evolution that people repeat or believe all the time when the really don't know anything about evolution.

Then you say you'd like to "hear" (which should be see), opinions on both sides of this topic. What does that mean? Evolution the hoax? Or evolution verse Creation/Intelligent Design?

There is plenty of proof for life having evolved on Earth. Not just humans, but all life. The thing is you have to seek and want to be educated and enlighten. You cant learn anything by just thinking.

Answer 4

Umm, if you're actually interested in learning about evolution, then maybe you should do so. The only things you're going to hear here are "Evolution is true, moron" or "It was magic". There is quite a bit of proof. You can see it in drug resistant bacteria, in the peppered moth population in England, even if you walk into a house that's a few hundred years old (you'll see you are much taller than the original inhabitants were). Your question shows quite a lack of knowledge in evolution.
Evolution is not a ladder where one new species replaces an old one. It's more like a branching tree, like a family, Just because you were born, you're parents, siblings, and cousins didn't stop existing, did they? Evolution involves organisms adapting to fill different niches, or environments; not trying to become the one that survives.

Answer 5

Evolution is a very well supported theory. It is no more a hoax then other theories like gravity, cells, or germs. And the organisms we evolved from aren't the ones around today. Evolution is like a tree. Every leaf is a current species, and the stump is the first life.

Answer 6

You don't mention Intelligent Design in your question and so I don't know what your feelings are on that but there was a recent court case titled Kitzmiller v. Dover in which the two sides argued the validity of evolution as a science and Intelligent Design as a science.

There are many web sites with the entire court transcript posted and some include all slide presentations. There is also a Nova episode that summarizes the court case.

If you would like to see how biologists argued (successfully) that evolution is a well proved theory in court to lay people, you can read those transcripts.

Answer 7

Each organism currently existing fills a specific niche. So long as the niche exists, there will be organisms to fill it. Evolution enables life to fill the niche and compete for its resources (food.)

As far as proof, please look at changes in height and build over the past thousand years. Also explain the changes to features formed as adaptations to different environments such as the fleshy eyes of asians, and the fair skin, eyes, and hair of those who migrated to northern climates.

Evolution is not a hoax, it simply happens in such small increments over such unimaginable huge expanses of time that it's difficult for us to really comprehend, let alone see.

However, we do have real evolutionary changes visible to us. Think of the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria which have developed as a forced evolutionary change, or pesticide resistant insects. Even now there is a species of bird which are separated by a mountain range in their habitat which are going through speciation because they developed two separate mating songs making them incapable of cross-mating which will eventually result in the development of two separate species. This change seems miniscule and hardly worth noticing now, but over centuries and millennia, these separate populations will form different adaptations and will become quite distinct from one another.

There is proof, there are records of it going on now. The only hoax is being brought by people trying to claim it's an attack against religion. It's a scientific theory (which in this case means explanation) supported by millions of facts. It is not a statement supporting or denying any religion.

Answer 8

Oh boy...peppered moths, bacteria....weren't they moths and bacteria before they evolved. Sure we've seen this kind of micro evolution, variation within a species.

But there is not a single shred of proof for one species evolving into another species. Don't be fooled by examples like the ones given above. Nobody has seen monkeys turn into men, dinosaurs become birds, or swamp gas into fish.

Answer 9

When we evolve we BRANCH off which is why they still exist.

Answer 10

If you exist, why do your parents still exist?
your premise is silly,as is my question, and for the same reason. no one says you have to eliminate your predecessor to exist.