MR. BEN
Pearl:
I have been going to a Baptist Church all my life. I still want to know what is evolution? I believe in Creation but when some of the teachers at school talk about evolution I don't know what to say or how to defend Creation because I don't understand evolution? Do I need to or should I stick with quoting Gen. 1:1.
Ben:
It is important to understand what evolution is before you argue against it. Your arguments will be more intelligent, and are more likely to make sense to those you are arguing against.
Put simply, evolution to most people is the theory that all life on earth came from a single common ancestor. That every living thing can trace it's ancestry back to primitive cells living many hundreds of millions of years ago.
Evolution works through the processes of mutation, where small changes naturally occur in the genes of animals and plants which make them different from their parents, and selection, in which the plants and animals which survive better have more children or offspring.
We know that mutations happen over time in creatures. In fact you have about 2-5 muttions yourself probably, and your children will carry these mutations with them as well as add their own new mutations. Most mutations don't do anything.. they're harmless, of those that 'do' change something, many are fatal, many more are slightly harmful, but some of them just change something.. for instance the size of your foot, or the color of your eyes, or how your blood clotting works.
We also know that in the natural world, more animals and plants are born than can possibly survive, and the difference between the ones that survive and have children and the ones that die are often small differences in how they are shaped, behave, and live such as caused by mutations.
When mutations make an individual less likely to survive, that individual doesn't have many children, and the mutations aren't passed on. But when some of these naturally occuring mutations change these differences for the better, those individuals have more children, and the mutations (changes) tend to be passed on to new generations.
Charles Darwin did not invent the idea of evolution, but he was one of the first persons to describe exactly how it worked. His idea of "mutations plus natural selection" that I've described above is simple and explains how species of plants and animals change over time. Darwin didn't even know about DNA when he thought of his theory, but later when genes were discovered, and then DNA, we learned exactly how evolution works in animals.
Obviously the idea that all animals were related, and that human beings evolved from more primitive primates, was not very popular at the time, even with scientists. There were many people who simply refused to even think about the idea. It made people feel less special, and made them feel like they were just like the animals. Most Christians at the time even stated that it went against the Bible and God's teachings. Even today this is why most people still don't even want to think about the idea.
It is important to remember that evolution doesn't say that existing animals turn into each other. That a crocodile will turn into a horse. Evolution simply says that in the past, there was an animal that was the "common anscestor" of both horses and crocodiles, and that this species split into two species long ago.. one of them leading to mammals (horses, dogs, etc.) and one of them leading to reptiles (crocodiles, lizards, snakes). Evolution never crosses the branches, it always starts at the root and branches out. In fact, the common anscestor of mammals (horses), and crocodiles (reptiles) had some of the characteristics of both horses and lizards. It reproduced with eggs, it had four legs, a skull, vertebrae, and other common aspects that all mammals and all reptiles have.
In the future it's possible that regular horses might be the anscestor of a wide variety of species that are very different from the species that are descended from donkeys or zebras. These species are very similar today, but as time passes, the descendents of each of these species will probably change and become quite different just like the ancient reptiles that gradually became mammals and crocodiles. They will, however, still be "equines" (horses), and like mammals and crocodiles, still have the basic characteristics of their common anscestor as horses and crocodiles do (i.e. primitive reptiles).
Scientists think that evolution is true because of some very important evidence:
1. The fossil record: The most important evidence is that we see in the ground fossils of life in a very specific order from simple animals and plants to more complex. We only see certain animals in certain layers in the ground from bottom to top, and it is the same everywhere in the world. The order of the fossils in the ground matches perfectly the order of evolution, and also the similarity of animals to each other. The fossil record is the record of how life on the planet changed over a very long time, and it shows very clearly how the animals and plants in the past evolved and branched into the animals and plants we see today.
2. Transitional fossils: The fossil record is full of fossils of animals that have characteristics of two or more species found later in the fossil record. We have early reptiles which show the primitive characteristics of later reptiles, early dinosaur birds which show the characteristics of birds as well as dinosaurs, and many others. These fossils are snapshots of evolution in action.
3. Nested hierchy of animals: If evolution were false, we would expect there to be no real relationships between animals. Different kinds of animals should not show any patterns of being more similar or less similar to any other. Instead, we find that animals are related in what is called a 'nested hierarchy', or a tree. All animals are closely related to many other animals because they share basic body forms and characteristics, they are less closely related to a set of other animals that share more broad characteristics and forms, etc. This tree like nature of all animals is good indication that they are part of one family, and that they have evolved over time.
4. Genetic similarities: Recently scientists have found that not only do animals 'look' similar to each other, but that their DNA is also similar the more closely related by evolution they are. This means that we have 98% of the same genes that chimpanzes do. And that all animals have genes that are similar to each other in proportion to how long ago they shared a common ancestor.
5. Evidence of Human Evolution: There are a large set of human fossils that have been found over the world. These fossils show a progression in time from primitive primates which walked, to primates with better hands and larger brians, to tool using human like primates that still were not human, to primitive and modern humans. These fossils are found in layers in the last 2 million years, and are found in order of closeness to human beings, with more primitive fossils found lower and more human like found higher. This is clear evidence that these fossils are part of our own evolutionary history, and may be 'cousin' species, or even species that are our direct ancestors.
If you would like to know more about evolution, the arguments for it, as well as the arguments against it, I would recommend you visit the
www.talkorigins.org web site. There are also many creationists web sites on the internet such as
www.answersingenesis.com, and the
www.icr.com you can find the arguments for and against evolution there.
However, you should know that as far as biology and paleontology are concerned, the question of whether evolution happened has been settled long ago. Science accepts that the evidences for evolution are sufficient and overwhelming. There is no debate in science on evolution and hasn't been for some time. The debate is with certain types of Christians and with other religious faiths (Islam in particular) who accept a literal interpretation of their scriptures or faith as stating that evolution can not have happened.
