I hope I don't sound too arrogant. I'm a biology major, and have read several books on evolution and have taken genetics classes, so I think I have a pretty decent idea how it works. And it's incredibly simple. So my questions are:

1. How on earth did it take humanity so long to figure out evolution is the reason we are all here? I know people thought about it a little before Darwin, but he made the first solid explanation of it.

2. Why do people today still not accept it (I think more than 50% in the US don't)?

Here is how simple evolution really is. Let's say we have 103,208 colorblind people in the world. Colorblind is heritable btw. One colorblind person dies. Now we have 103,207 colorblind people in the world. That's it. That's evolution. That's the same thing that turned a one celled organism into humans over several billion years.

If traits are heritable, traits affect survival, and more organisms are born that survive to reproduce, then it's impossible for evolution not to occur. It's not magical or anything, it's extremely simple. So why do people reject it? IMO, it must be either extreme ignorance or extreme denial. But why do these same people easily accept other theories, like the theory of gravity and the theory that planets revolve around the sun?

Maybe, since I'm a bio major, it's so easy for me to grasp, but do you non-biology people here also grasp it? It's extremely easy for me to imagine one cell evolving to what we see today over a long time.

Also, why did it take so long to figure evolution out? Did people before Darwin not notice that traits are heritable and mutations can happen? Did not a single person stop and say, "hey, I had curly hair and my wife has curly hair, and all our children have curly hair! There must be some kind of link here" or "it must suck to be an animal. Most of them die in nature pretty easily". We figured out much more complex things before evolution, like physics from Newton...

Honestly, I think I could have gone my whole life NEVER hearing the term evolution or Darwin, then taken a genetics class (in which the professor never mentions evolution), then used common sense to conclude that evolution occurs. Also, a common misconception that anti-macroevolutions say is it's impossible to add information to a genome. This is 100% false and shows they don't know the basics of genetics. Addition mutations in the DNA occur all the time. Nucleotides are added, which results in a potentially longer coding for a protein and therefore more complex proteins. Also, mutations in meiosis can result in larger numbers of chromosomes being added. This is seen in people w/ down syndrome who have an extra (or part of) the 21st chromosome. They have more genetic information than their parents.

I just don't care that much, once I'm dead I'm ****ing dead & this **** allegedly happens over millions/billions of yeas. It's just not particularly relevant to a lone human just trying to get by in one life. Fitting in & being liked socially is more important in that context (including for reproduction and access to sex), hence the religious nuts.

Remember even if evolution is "true", evolution also spawned religion (and skepticism over evolution). So that stuff is there for some sort of evolutionary purpose.

This is purely US phenomena. In the rest of the civilized world evolution deniers are both rare and treated as loons by rest of public debate.

I think it's even easier to grasp for computer scientists and mathematicians, especially after you implemented some genetic algorithms yourself

As to your question about reasons. As Europe is different than US it can't be anything about human nature but something about culture/politics specific to USA.

You seem to be confusing natural selection with the theory of evolution. Nobody disputes natural selection.

No, natural selection is what causes the one colorblind person to die in my example. If a human killed him, then it's artificial selection. If the colorblind person was taking a walk in the woods, saw a snake and wasn't able to notice it's bright yellow color (representing it's poisonous), then it's natural selection.

The colorblind person dying changes earth's gene pool, which is evolution.

teleological language when talking about the ToE..

Maybe you should define what you think "evolution" is. I think it's "incredibly simple" because you're using a trivial definition of it.

Let's say that there is one bacterium in the world and that bacterium has *some* heritable trait. The bacterium dies and now there's no more bacteria.

That's evolution?

Sure, here's two pretty good definitions. They are slightly different, but not enough to cause any problems I think.

1. Any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations (taken from wikipedia)

2. Change in the allele frequency in a population.

When one colorblind person is removed from the population, he can't have any more colorblind children, therefore his own colorblind gene stops passing into the future the moment he dies. His death changes future human populations because he makes colorblindness a little less common (maybe .0000000000001% less common).

This fits both definitions. And no, your single bacteria example is not evolution because that's a change in an individual, not a population. Let's say we have two bacteria, one blue and one red. Color is heritable. Bacteria can reproduce assexually btw. If one bacteria dies, say the blue one, then evolution has occurred. The bacteria population has evolved from 50% red, 50% blue to 100% red.

You also don't have a population after that happens. What does that mean for the gene pool of your bacteria population?

By the way, I'm just playing around as devil's advocate here. You're really kind of arguing against a strawman and thinking that you're making some salient point that is actually relevant to those who don't accept "evolution" (which means different things to different people in the general population). As far as I can tell, you really aren't. Maybe in this conversation, you'll see why.

Let's take a different example:

Let's say you have a large population (to avoid the problem of "not a population") of red and blue bacteria. And let's say that the population naturally cycles between 60/40 and 40/60 red/blue ratios, but otherwise stay GENETICALLY IDENTICAL.

Under the first definition:

I would say that this actually isn't evolution under this definition. The heritable characteristics (the colors red and blue) have not actually changed. What do you say?

Under the second definition:

Indeed, we would have evolution.

But under this concept, if you were to take some random person who accepts "evolution" (not giving any particular definition -- just someone who doesn't reject it), and told them that the genetic makeup of both bacteria have not changed ever, would that person think that you're talking about "evolution"? I would think not, because the way that evolution is portrayed, you're seeing some sort of change from one individual of one generation to another (the beaks of the next generation are "slightly longer"), and not talking about population ratios.

I don't think it's quite as trivial as you want it to be, or that the observation you're making is trivial and it's the implication that you're trying to get to is not.

The presumed devastation to the structure of the society, as predicted by the prophets of the religions, and the fear of an eternity burning and being torn to shreds over and over keeps them involved. This core belief shared by many Americans was engrained from their birth. Indoctrination comes from all sources of media and is linked to almost every holiday or otherwise functional dictates for society. Daniel Quinn calls it the "hum" of "mother culture," but regardless it's there and it's virtually inescapable. The message defending religion had been molded, shaped and justified for hundreds of years, such that every aspect of life can be detailed and defined by it's congruence with the program of the god (Like the idea that lightning bolts come from Zeus, etc...). The voice speaking the fact of evolution is just one more voice like the thousands of blasphemers of history that have been silenced by the power of sewn-in belief. This is why education is so very important going forward, especially physics and quantum physics, which should be made an integral part of education in elementary schools nationwide imo.

Alternatively, let's say you have two blue bacteria and they both die out. It's a certainly a change in the heritable characteristics (the number of heritable characteristics changes... to zero), and in some sense it's a change in the allele frequency (there's no more blue, although there's a division by zero error).

Is that evolution?

Its not remotely hard to accept. Some people are just very determined

My point was evolution can't happen if you have just one individual and it dies out, that's extinction. In my red/blue bacteria example, although after one of them dies only one individual remains, he can keep reproducing assexually and produce future generations.

And I would say there's a correct definition of evolution and that's it. If you don't understand how changing just one allele in a gene pool is evolution, then you don't understand how evolution actually works. There are some people out there who argue strongly against evolution, and it turns out they believe that in one organism there was no eye, and in just one lucky mutation an eye formed. And some think evolution occurs when two different species mate and produce an intermediate new species.

As for stable fluctuations in evolution, I don't think that is that common. There are species that don't evolve at all for a very long time, such as the coelacanth because there's no selective pressures for it. Anyway, if something like your example happened, I would say it is evolving. If you look at generation 1 compared to generation 2, there's a change in the gene pool. Also, if you happened to compare generation 1 with say generation 10, then evolution has occurred by both definitions.

Another misconception is evolution has to advance, which isn't true. An example is fish living in dark caves evolving from eyes to eyeless.

Religion is the answer here (as it is everywhere...). Nearly all, if not all, anti-evolutionists feel as they do due to their religious beliefs, no matter how much they insist their objections are based in science.

Evolution took a while to be thought of for 2 reasons, imo. First is that there was no need for evolution when religion was much more prevalent -- the origin of species was known to be God, so who would look for another explanation?

The second reason is that it isn't as easy to come up with this idea as you think. It's easy for you to sit here knowing what you know and saying that it's obvious. We know so much more than they did back then, and with our education system, tv, zoos, internet, etc, you can be exposed to so much of this information. It's not fair to judge these old people based on what you do know and how smart you think you are.

The second sentence is probably true. The first sentence might be true, but it's questionable from the perspective of how the science actually developed.

Let's go back to the 40/60 red/blue bacteria situation. What reason would there be to introduce "evolution" to describe this system, where "evolution" is defined as you've presented it. It's trivially true that the population is changing. But what sort of (Edit: evolutionary) biological study of interest would it be if the genetic code of these bacteria happened to be static for all time?

That's not the point. It's not about whether it's common or uncommon, it's a matter of trying to parse what you're talking about.

Methinks you're already starting to conflate ideas here. Do all the coelacanth share completely identical heritable traits? (Edit: Would this imply that their genetic codes are 100% identical? It seems like it, but I don't know.) If not, then the death of ANY ONE of them is evolution, right?

Edit: So what do you mean that they don't evolve "at all for a very long time" and the introduction of "selective pressures" to try to explain something?

This is a random observation that is not relevant to the point I'm making.

It took until 600 BC. Anaximander (or maybe Xenophanes) is credited with the idea though it probably wasn't new even then.

I accidentally deleted this in my first response.

The first definition makes no observation about the gene pool (as a collective object).

The "heritable characteristics" are the traits themselves, expressed in an individual, NOT an observation of the frequency with which the trait occurs over a population.

I thought for a long time that people on boards nearby defending that evolution never existed were leveling.

Another example to hopefully illustrate my point to you:

Take as a fact that two people die every second somewhere on this planet. According to the "change in allele frequency" definition, humanity evolves twice per second.

Does that sound right to you?

Aaron, for your 40/60 example, it's questionable I guess whether that is evolution. If you are only looking at generations 1 and 9, then they will have the exact same phenotype (physical appearance) frequency. The entire time the species is changing though, so I would personally say they are evolving but I can see how you might argue they aren't evolving using definition 1.

"The "heritable characteristics" are the traits themselves, expressed in an individual, NOT an observation of the frequency with which the trait occurs over a population."

No, it is the frequency with which traits appear in the population. "Heritable characteristics" means the traits and the frequency of those traits in the population.

Let's say the 40/60 alternating population is NOT evolving. So what? There's no reason a species has to evolve. For example, in the lab if we have a species of sexually reproducing animals in which each female gives birth to exactly one son and one daughter, and the scientists make sure the animals are given enough resources, we can expect this species to never evolve (except for random mutations). The coelecanths are likely in a safe area with few competitors and predators, maybe isolated, so their are no natural selection forces to evolve them.

Anyway, what was the point of your 40/60 example again? If someone says, "look, this species over here isn't evolving! Darwin was wrong!" then that means they don't actually understand evolution.

Yeah that sounds right to me. We are constantly evolving. Take my colorblind example. What if instead of just one colorblind person dying, all of them died. In the future, no humans will have colorblindness. You can't disagree that that is evolution, right? It might seem like "no big deal". So what, colorblindness isn't important. Or, so what, so two people died on the planet, they have such a tiny effect on the gene pool. But these types of changes, occuring one after the other for billions of years are exactly what have turned bacteria to humans.

By the way, I should also mention that we humans are probably evolving at a slow rate because, if we take the colorblind example, we can prevent colorblind people from dying by telling them "don't go near snakes, yellow ones are poisonous but you can't tell, so don't go near them!". Among less intelligent species, this can't happen so natural selection (poisonous snakes in this example) kills off all the colorblind individuals, which rapidly evolves the species.

The general public, who know almost nothing about science, just think of evolution as simply "past species turns into new different species" and they don't know anything else about evolution except that. They would agree w/ what you said (that two people dying isn't evolution), but with this way of thinking it's impossible to imagine or believe evolution could turn bacteria into humans.

First, you should know that "generation" isn't a well defined term that allows you to "count" in a particularly discrete manner (edit: in this example). Second, if you stick with your "one death is evolution" position, then it's quite clear that unless you're really, really lucky, it won't be the exact same phenotype frequency.

I have extreme doubts that you're correct about this. If it were true, then "50% red" is a heritable characteristic. Do you have any reference that can support your claim?

Then your definition is wrong.

The more I read, the less I think you understand evolution and the more I think you're just trying to be dogmatic about it so that you feel smarter than the evolution-deniers. This has nothing to do with Darwin. You even said so yourself! You would have concluded that evolution has to happen even without Darwin.

It has everything to do with how you've defined evolution.

Then what can you possibly mean by

Forget the whole selective pressures thing for a moment:

The only reasons humans can be constantly evolving, but the coelacanth not be evolving must be either:

1) All of the heritable traits of the coelacanth are identical

or

2) The coelacanth don't die very often, and don't spawn very often.

Which is it?

I wanted to make this observation a separate post. Both these statements cannot be true at the same time under the same concept of evolution.

Edit:

LOL. Like this is why people are dying at a rate of two people per second.

More I read your replies, the more I think YOU don't understand evolution. Or maybe you are just misunderstanding some of the things I said. The coelecanth have evolved to their current phenotype which is close to optimally suited to their environment. After that happened, little to no selective pressures (change in their environment, introduction of new predators, loss of food source, ect) happened. They were probably very isolated to, so little interaction with other species. This means there's no need for them to evolve. They are probably technically "evolving" though because almost all genes are junk genes in all species. Most genes do nothing. So their can be huge mutations in these coelacanths, but no visible change in their appearance.

The reason we humans are so diverse is because we don't have natural selection acting strongly on us. Weak humans (if we were as intelligent as monkeys and living in the forest) would die by natural selection. They would get sick early in life and die. But we humans put them in hospitals so they don't die, and they spread their genes on.

This is the reason **** sapiens are diverse. Some of us have black hair, some blonde, some brown skin, some peach, some fat, some slender, ect. In other animals, in nature, individuals in their species look mostly the same because there have been extremely powerful natural selection forces shaping them to the optimal phenotype.

Another example is dogs. There's huge genetic diversity in dogs because we humans will care for a poodle or pug when it would die if it were in nature.

So since humans genes are so diverse, there's more genetic shuffling possible than in the coelecanths, which is why I said we are slowly evolving while they are not evolving.