theory of evolution, a big mistake.

[umair]

i have been having a few questions in my mind which i would like to put up, regarding the theory of evolution.


as according to the theory, evolution takes place wherever it is needed or required, then what i was thinking was that what was the need for life to originate at all, in this virtually dead universe, and henceforth what was the need for such complicated life forms to evolve.

and the second thing which i wanted to discuss was , that as we know, we as humans have the tendency to use only a little percentage of our brain, then why has our brain evolved to into such a complicated mass,when the need possibly never existed?

these are amongst the questions which defy the theory.

[nygreenguy]

so possibly what was the need for life to evolve?

To survive.

[JoeyKnothead]

Evolution comes about through mutations that provide a benefit in the survival of a species. It only fills a need in that the benefit can then be described as a need. The only need a species has is to survive. Survive through eating to stay alive, and mating to continue the species, and moving or hiding to stay away from predators.

As to the bird's beaks, the need to eat is already there. What happens though is there is a greater ability to fulfill the need to eat. If the food gets bigger or harder to open, then that bigger beak fulfills that need. If the food gets smaller or easier to open, then the need becomes one of using less energy to create a beak, and more to provide this energy in other areas.

Just like with fish. The need to move around in the water is fulfilled with fins. As fins become finer tuned for moving left and right, and up and down, they fill the need for better control of movement. As the fish starts moving onto land, these fins become finer tuned to moving on land, and on and on until these fins have become arms and legs.

The 'need' does not necessarily have to exist, what has to happen is for a mutation to occur. If this mutation is then better able to help the animal survive, then it fills whatever need it now useful for.

Look at giraffes. The need to eat has always been there, but why the need for a long neck? As giraffes developed, it was beneficial to those who could reach leaves higher in trees, where other species could not. So that where all these other species where eating the leaves at say 10 feet, this animal was stretching, stretching, and making it to 10 feet 6 inches. Now this ain't much, but it's now everything at 10 feet, and everything at 10 feet 6. And so on until the animal can now feed to some twenty feet in height. Of course there was a trade off. Now the animal can't eat at 10 feet (comfortably anyway), but he's got all this food at 20 feet to himself. Now he has little to no competition at that height, and is better able to survive.

Some adaptations can actually come about by a shift in needs. Whales come from animals that once walked on land. Now its all great to have legs to move around on land, but no so great in water. So what happens? The need to better move around in the water favors legs that become more and more like the fins of fish, and that is exactly what we find, progressive steps toward fins.

So evolution fills needs. It doesn't really create them, but it has been wonderfully able to fulfill them.

well partially to your correction that even the giraffe had to stretch its neck and the so said whale had to develop its fins, due to some or other need, because without need nothing would make an effort to evolve, or lets frame it like this:

why will the giraffe extend his neck it he could easily get its food in the lower branches,
why will the whale jump to water if it was happy on the land,
or the most important, why did the monkeys started walking if they were happy on the trees.

well possibly because they felt the need to do so,
ie:from any of the possible example of evolution you can find that changes occur only when the need exists,

so possibly what was the need for life to evolve?

Life evolves out of the need to survive, to procreate, to spread it's genetic material. Life 'needs' to evolve so it is better adapted to its surroundings, thereby being better able to eat, procreate, and spread.

Life does not exist to amuse an invisible being up in the sky who would condemn you to hell for using your 'god given' intelligence to realize he doesn't exist.

In the end, life has no 'need' it just is. Evolution could be said to have no 'need' it just 'does'. You are trying to square your human notion of need with that of nature, and it can't really be done. The 'needs' that have been explained to you here have been done out of the 'need' to free you from your silly superstitious beliefs.

I think though that you have a 'need' to prove to us that your religious beliefs are superior to others beliefs. Unfortunately we have the 'need' of evidence, of proof. You will never accept our valid proofs of some of the needs of life, but will continue to disregard the evidence, and keep asking, "But what of this need, or that need."

These needs are somewhat artificial constructs, developed in a somewhat human perception. Life is not all about us humans, it does not answer to humans, it doesn't care if humans stopped existing today. Life is mysterious, it can be scary, it can even be illogical. But what life is not is it is not required to conform itself to what humans ask of it.

[daedalus 2.0]

I found this, just to add more science to the thread when it lowers because of religionism.

A Natural Selection
(The fourth part in a series celebrating Charles Darwin.)
Last week, I discussed how evolutionary biology has changed since 1859, the year Darwin first published “On the Origin of Species.� But the subject of evolution isn’t the only thing that’s changed since then. There’s been plenty of actual evolution, too. For although we tend to think of evolutionary change as being something that only takes place over the course of millions of years, it isn’t. It’s going on here, now, all around us. So, this week, I thought I’d round up some examples of recent evolutionary change in nature. (What do I mean by recent? Within the last 40 years.)
I’m not intending to be comprehensive — that would take a book or two. Instead, I want to sketch a few examples of natural selection that have caught my fancy, and through them consider different aspects of evolutionary change, and what it takes to show it.
Galápagos finches. No discussion of evolution in nature would be complete without mention of the evolution of beak size in finches in the Galápagos archipelago.
Every year since 1973, large numbers of medium ground finches (Geospiza fortis) living on the island of Daphne Major have been marked, weighed and measured, and so have their chicks. In these finches, survival largely depends on the ability to open seeds; this depends on beak size. Bigger beaks allow the opening of larger seeds. How many seeds there are depends on the weather; some years seeds of all sizes are abundant, and the finches thrive. In other years, most seeds are scarce, and many birds die. Large-scale death affects the genetic make-up of the population, because both beak size and body size has a large genetic component. If all the birds with smaller than average beaks die in a given year, they take their genes with them.
Over the course of 30 years, annual measurement of finches shows that both body size and beak size evolved significantly. But they didn’t do so in a smooth, consistent fashion. Instead, natural selection jittered about, often changing direction from one season to the next.
As the abundance of different seeds fluctuated, so too did the beak sizes. One year, larger beaks were more successful; then it was smaller beaks. Over time, the average shape of the beak kept shifting, but it did so in an unpredictable, erratic sort of way, like a drunk man staggering about. Thus, some of the most dramatic changes were later reversed, and if beaks had only been measured at the beginning and at the end of the thirty years, the total amount of evolutionary change would have been underestimated. (Beak size has continued to evolve: the arrival on the island of a competitor for large seeds has subsequently favored small beak sizes in Geospiza fortis. Many individuals with larger beaks starved to death.)
Field mustard. Between 2000 and 2004, southern California had a severe drought. For many plants, including field mustard (a scrawny annual plant with little yellow flowers), a drought means a shorter growing season. A shorter growing season means that plants that flower earlier are more likely to leave seeds than plants that flower later — which are in danger of dying before they’ve finished reproducing. Since flowering time has a large genetic component, a drought — by favoring plants that flower earlier — could cause an evolutionary shift towards early flowering.
Has it?
Yes. The beauty of plants is that they make seeds — small packets of genes that can be stored for a period. This means that the genes of the past can, in principle, be compared directly with the genes of today. And an experiment in which field mustard plants grown from seeds collected in 1997 and in 2004 were planted together, under controlled conditions, showed clear differences in flowering times: the plants from 2004 flowered significantly earlier.
Moreover, in both years, seeds were collected from two sites, one where the soil is sandy and doesn’t hold water well, and the other where the soil stays wet for longer. As you’d expect, plants from the dry site showed a more dramatic shift than plants from the wet site. In the course of just 7 years, then, natural selection caused the plants to evolve an earlier flowering time.
Croatian lizards. In 1971, five pairs of adult wall lizards (Podarcis sicula) were brought to the tiny Croatian island of Pod Mr�aru from the nearby island of Pod Kopište. These five pairs have since given rise to a thriving lizard population — and one that has developed some interesting differences from the lizards that live on Kopište.
Lizards on Mr�aru now have larger heads and stronger bites than those living on Kopište, and they eat far more in the way of leaves and other plant material. Whereas the diet of native Kopište lizards is only about 7 percent plant matter, Mr�aru lizards are much more prone to a vegetarian habit. In spring, their diet is about 34 percent from plants; in summer that almost doubles, to 61 percent.
Plants are hard for animals to digest, and most plant-eaters rely on micro-organisms to help them. They also, typically, have complicated stomachs — think of the fermentation chambers in a cow, or the enlarged crop of that strange leaf-eating bird, the hoatzin. Intriguingly, the Mr�aru lizards appear to have evolved something similar. Their stomachs now have cecal valves, which divide the stomach into compartments, allowing for slower digestion and fermentation. Cecal valves are rare among lizards and snakes: fewer than 1 percent of species have them. At the same time, the Mr�aru lizards have acquired some novel micro-organisms in their guts (but whether these are helping break down plant fibers, or are some sort of sinister parasite, remains to be seen).
This study is one of the most intriguing I’ve come across. It suggests that arrival in a new environment can result in dramatic changes to an organism within fewer than 40 lifetimes. But so far, the basis of these various changes remains unknown: there’s an outside possibility that they are induced by leaf eating, and are thus due to the environment rather than genetics. (This seems unlikely — even lizards that are just hatched, and haven’t had a chance to do much eating, have the valves. But without doing the genetics, we can’t be sure; until that has been looked at, the changes cannot definitely be attributed to natural selection.) For now, natural selection for efficient plant-eating is the main suspect for this whole suite of changes, but the case is not yet closed.
Other examples. I don’t have space to go into other examples in detail, but to give a sense of what else is out there, here’s a partial list.
The fruit fly Drosophila subobscura has been evolving bigger wings in higher latitudes in North and South America; mosquitoes that live in pitcher plants hunker down for the winter later in the year than they used to; in a forest in southern England, great tits have been shrinking (great tits are songbirds).
Double the time frame to the past 80 years, and I’d have to add many more; of these, my favorite is the decline in head size of Australian frog-eating snakes in response to the arrival of poisonous toads in 1935 (a smaller head makes it harder to eat a deadly toad). And I haven’t even begun to mention the countless examples of pests that have evolved resistance to pesticides and bacteria that have evolved resistance to antibiotics, nor the thousands of laboratory experiments showing evolution in the simple environments of test tubes and petri dishes. Also omitted: several examples of new species that are in the process of forming (I want to look at these in a future column).
In short, evolution never takes a vacation: it’s going on all the time.
Yet we tend not to notice it. Why? The finches can help us here. That study tells us two things. First, from one year to the next, even the most dramatic changes are, to our eyes, small — which is to say, you have to measure them to detect them. The reason is that although birds differ from one another in their abilities to handle the various seeds, the differences are subtle. It’s not as if one bird has a beak 100 times mightier than another’s. When you add to this the tendency of natural selection to jerk around, it’s no surprise that we often don’t notice evolution as it happens. It also sheds light on why changes in the fossil record often appear to be slow: these studies show that change can be continual without really getting far from the starting point. Second, getting data as good as that is hard work. Most datasets are not so complete or robust.
At least one other lesson can be drawn from all these studies. Natural selection has its most dramatic effects when an organism’s environment is perturbed in some sustained way — prolonged droughts, the arrival of species that compete for food, warmer winters, the use of pesticides. If we humans continue to increase our impact on the globe, we’re likely to see lots more evolution. And soon.
**********
NOTES:
For beak size in Galápagos finches, see Grant, P. R. and Grant, B. R. 2002. “Unpredictable evolution in a 30-year study of Darwin’s finches.� Science 296: 707-711 and Grant, P. R. and Grant, B. R. 2006. “Evolution of character displacement in Darwin’s finches.� Science 313: 224-226. For evolution of flowering time in field mustard, and for its genetic basis, see Franks, S. J., Sim, S. and Weis, A. E. 2007. “Rapid evolution of flowering time by an annual plant in response to a climate fluctuation.� Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104: 1278-1282. For the evolution of cecal valves in Croatian lizards, see Herrel, A. et al 2008. “Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource.� Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105: 4792-4795.
For wing size in fruit flies, see Huey, R. B. et al 2000. “Rapid evolution of a geographic cline in size in an introduced fly.� Science 287: 308-309 and Gilchrist, G. W. et al 2004. “A time series of evolution in action: a latitudinal cline in wing size in South American Drosophila subobscura.� Evolution 58: 768-780. For hunkering down time in mosquitoes, see Bradshaw, W. E. and Holzapfel, C. M. 2001. “Genetic shift in photoperiodic response correlated with global warming.� Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98: 14509-14511. For body size in great tits, see Garant, D. et al 2005. “Evolution driven by differential dispersal within a wild bird population.� Nature 433: 60-65. For head size in Australian snakes, see Phillips, B. L. and Shine, R. 2004. “Adapting to an invasive species: toxic cane toads induce morphological change in Australian snakes.� Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101: 17150-17155.
Many thanks to Dan Haydon, Gideon Lichfield and Jonathan Swire for insights, comments and suggestions.

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07 ... selection/

[olavisjo]

...in southern England, great tits have been shrinking...

Strange, in Beverly Hills they seem to be getting larger, much larger.
Seems that we have more of the logical fallacy, if (a->b) then (A->B), for us to ponder.

[daedalus 2.0]

...in southern England, great tits have been shrinking...

Strange, in Beverly Hills they seem to be getting larger, much larger.
Seems that we have more of the logical fallacy, if (a->b) then (A->B), for us to ponder.

Insert your own jokes to the following (this could keep us entertained for years):

Family: PARIDAE

* Genus Poecile - formerly included in Parus
o Sombre Tit Poecile lugubris
o Caspian Tit Poecile hyrcanus (often included in P. lugubris)
o Marsh Tit Poecile palustris
o Willow Tit Poecile montanus
o Songar Tit Poecile songarus (often included in P. montanus)
o Carolina Chickadee Poecile carolinensis
o Black-capped Chickadee Poecile atricapillus
o Mountain Chickadee Poecile gambeli
o Mexican Chickadee Poecile sclateri
o White-browed Tit Poecile superciliosus
o Père David's Tit Poecile davidi
o Siberian Tit or Gray-headed Chickadee Poecile cinctus
o Boreal Chickadee Poecile hudsonicus
o Chestnut-backed Chickadee Poecile rufescens
o Varied Tit Poecile varius - sometimes separated in Sittiparus

* Genus Periparus - formerly included in Parus
o Black-breasted Tit or Rufous-naped Tit Periparus rufonuchalis
o Rufous-vented Tit Periparus rubidiventris
o Spot-winged Tit or Black-crested Tit Periparus melanolophus
o Coal Tit Periparus ater - possibly paraphyletic
o Yellow-bellied Tit Periparus venustulus - sometimes separated in Pardaliparus
o Elegant Tit Periparus elegans - probably paraphyletic; sometimes separated in Pardaliparus
o Palawan Tit Periparus amabilis - sometimes separated in Pardaliparus

* Genus Lophophanes - formerly included in Parus
o Crested Tit Lophophanes cristatus
o Grey-crested Tit Lophophanes dichrous

* Genus Baeolophus - formerly included in Parus
o Bridled Titmouse Baeolophus wollweberi
o Oak Titmouse Baeolophus inornatus
o Juniper Titmouse Baeolophus ridgwayi
o Tufted Titmouse Baeolophus bicolor
o Black-crested Titmouse Baeolophus atricristatus

* Genus Parus
o White-shouldered Tit Parus guineensis - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o White-winged Black Tit Parus leucomelas - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Southern Black Tit Parus niger - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Carp's Tit Parus carpi - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o White-bellied Tit Parus albiventris - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o White-backed Tit Parus leuconotus - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Dusky Tit Parus funereus - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Rufous-bellied Tit Parus rufiventris - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Cinnamon-breasted Tit Parus pallidiventris - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Red-throated Tit Parus fringillinus - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Stripe-breasted Tit Parus fasciiventer - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Somali Tit or Acacia Tit Parus thruppi - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Miombo Tit Parus griseiventris - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Ashy Tit Parus cinerascens - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Southern Grey Tit Parus afer - sometimes separated in Melaniparus
o Great Tit Parus major
o Japanese Tit Parus minor (often included in P. major)
o Turkestan Tit Parus bokharensis
o Green-backed Tit Parus monticolus
o White-winged Tit Parus nuchalis
o Black-lored Tit Parus xanthogenys - sometimes separated in Macholophus
o Yellow-cheeked Tit Parus spilonotus
o Yellow Tit Parus holsti - sometimes separated in Macholophus
o White-fronted Tit Parus semilarvatus - sometimes separated in Sittiparus

* Genus Pseudopodoces
o Hume's Ground Tit Pseudopodoces humilis (previously "Hume's Ground Jay") - this species has only recently been removed from the crow family Corvidae and placed here.[3]

* Genus Cyanistes - formerly included in Parus
o Blue Tit Cyanistes caeruleus
o Canary Blue Tit Cyanistes teneriffae
o Azure Tit Cyanistes cyanus
o Yellow-breasted Tit(Gold) Cyanistes flavipectus (often included in C. cyanus)

* Genus Sylviparus
o Yellow-browed Tit Sylviparus modestus

* Genus Melanochlora
o Sultan Tit Melanochlora sultanea

These two monotypic genera are possibly less close to titmice than are the penduline tits.

Also:

The penduline tits are a family of small passerine birds, related to the true tits

Who ever said science wasn't fun!!!?!?!?!!?

[Homicidal_Cherry53]

well, i still do not have the answers ,specially to my first point

You have no answers because you completely misinterpreted the theory. Evolution occurring where needed isn't describing its beginnings (in fact, evolution is altogether silent on that issue, other than the fact that the first life forms on earth were bacteria). It's saying that a niche within an ecosystem will inevitably filled through evolution. That is it. You can't fill a niche in the ecosystem if there is no ecosystem to speak of so it isn't talking about the beginnings of life.

The reason why complex life occurred is explained by the very part of the theory of evolution that you posted. Organisms constantly compete for limited resources so those who find new ways to exploit their environment for food are more likely to survive. Because of this, specialization occurs which creates more niches to be exploited (because the ecosystem has frown more complex), which in turn creates a more complex ecosystem, which creates more niches to be exploited, etc. Eventually, a niche is created in which intelligence is required so an organism becomes more intelligent to gain an advantage over its prey, or predator.

As for your second point, we have to remember that a brain formed only containing the part of our brain that is functioning would be disastrous. Every time a sudden movement is made, our brain would rattle around in our now mostly empty skulls until it hemorrhaged and the person died. There is a perfectly logical evolutionary explanation for dead areas of your brain. The brain of any animal isn't created based only on what mental faculties are needed. It also has to fit the skull of an animal so if the animal's skull were to grow for some other evolutionary reason, the brain would also have to grow, but the animal's mental faculties may not necessarily increase.

[msmcneal]

I'm not much into biology, but I'll give it a go. First, we have to realize that there is a difference between evolution, which is the process in which life changed and adapted, and abiogenesis, which is how life started in the first place.

as according to the theory, evolution takes place wherever it is needed or required, then what i was thinking was that what was the need for life to originate at all, in this virtually dead universe, and henceforth what was the need for such complicated life forms to evolve.

I've never heard this.

and the second thing which i wanted to discuss was , that as we know, we as humans have the tendency to use only a little percentage of our brain, then why has our brain evolved to into such a complicated mass,when the need possibly never existed?

Debunked. Neurologists can point to each part of the brain, and tell you what it's used for. We use all of our brains, not just a small percentage.

if we are using hundered percentage of our brain, then from where did einstien got that extra brain?

Sorry, but I laughed at this. Einstein, like everyone else, only had one brain. Just because he was smarter doesn't mean he had more than one, or even a bigger one.

if in your context god will not give pain , then whom do you expect to do that job.
the truth is that god, is the one who gives pain and he himself gives the remedies.

Our neurological system tells our brain when we are in pain, and the science of medicine gives us the cure.

[Enemy Anemone]

Is there a need for life to exist at all, if evolution is simply the survival of the fittest?

There is no "need" for life to exist. Under certain conditions, abiogenesis occurs, which means "life" spontaneously arises from non-life. However, this life is merely extremely basic molecules following the laws of thermodynamics. Organic molecules were present on the pre-biotic earth, and obeyed physical rules to create self-replicating genetic patterns. A very good layperson's summary of the specifics of this process can be seen here:


Obviously, of all the ones that formed, only the ones who happened to be best suited for successful reproduction successfully reproduced. This happened on and on, and now it is the present, and we have complex proteins and deep thought and self-awareness to aid our successful reproduction. The only purpose to anything is what you give it. Did God create everything just so good people could chill with him in heaven after proving their worth on earth? Was he lonely? How could mortals entertain someone who is omniscient? Wouldn't it have been simpler to just not create anything? What role would giant squids play in all of this? Conversely, are we here just so we can reproduce? The answer is no. We reproduce because we are here. The earth itself revolves around a mortal sun, which will one day die. We are a factor of our circumstances. However, with our intellect, we can devise all sorts of purposes...or not.