Question for all you evolutionists., page 2

This is something I wrote on the subject from another thread:

Evolution is NOT a form of adaption, it is a description of how adaption occurs. That is all, only a description.

There used to be other descriptions as well, most notibly the Lamarkian theory with held that if say you cut a female rats tail off at 2 inches, then her offspring would have 2 inch long tails as well. i.e we pass on aquired traits.

Lamark predated Darwin by 50 years, I think, and he was on to something but it was not the most accurate or elegant of theories. Darwin comes along and says instead that yes life forms (plants, animals and humans) pass on traits but incrementally based on their advantage to survival and reproduction. So if there is an avantage for a rat to have a shorter tail; then the rats with naturally shorter tails will have a better chance at survival and breeding. Consequently each generation will pass on genes for shorter and shorter tails until the most advantageous length is reached, and a new species of short tailed rats is born. And if at the same time the original long tailed rats survive you will eventually have two distinct species of rat.

To broaden the the analogy as it were look at the native human populations in both the Andies and the Himalyas thousands of miles apart. They share two distinct characterisitics that set them apart from their fellow humans, short squat frames and barrel chests. Such physical differences from your average human form are an adaption to life at high altitudes and little oxygen... the barrel chests are needed to grab as much oxygen from the thin air as possible and the short squat compact frames are needed so that the oxygen in their blood is utilized more effectively by having less distance to travel throughout the body.

These traits appeared over thousands of years, and they appeared because they are needed in order to survive at high altitudes. If these communities had remained separate from the rest of their fellow humans long enough (the longer the breeding cycle the slower the evolutionary process) they would have eventually become a separate species.

Then there are the water gypsies of the Bay of Bengal region. They have been living on their boats for centuries and already they have developed traits that help them survive on and in the water including the ability to see better underwater than your average humans, and the ability to hold their breath far far longer than average as well...

... this is how evolution works.

We humans use the evolutionary principles to our advantage all the time. We do not call what we do evolution but the principles are the same. Take what breeders have done to the domestic turkey for example. It's breast is so large that the animal cannot normally reproduce and has to be artifically inseminated. Why? Because we like white breast meat for thanksgiving. Those breeders chose birds with larger and larger breasts for breeding until we reached this travesty; one that could not reproduce in the wild. We adapted that species to get what we want. Fundamentally the same thing as the evolutionay process except that animals in the wild do not have to deal with marketing pressures. The same is true with most of our livestock and agricultural products. Wild corn is about the size of a small finger... look at it today. It is also another product that would not reproduce in the wild because it has been bred so that its kernals don't drop. Dogs are the ultimate example... from the wolf to the poodle was entirely done by the picking and chosing of traits we wanted to survive. Same thing as evolution except we chose what traits bred.

And so it goes.

Darwin never mentions God in his books nor does evolutionary theory try to disprove God, an impossiblity (either way) because that is not the focus of his work. Nor does he claim man evolved from apes; what he says is that at one point we shared a common ancestor from which both apes and humans evolved.

Look at it this way, which is more elegant, a God that goes POOF you're an ape... POOF you're a man... POOF you're a short tailed rat, all as if by magic; or a God that may set the parimeters but beyond that lets things unfold like the blossoming of a flower in oder to better enjoy the show?