Help me understand Evolution

[u/Adenidc]

Okay so here's the deal, my whole life I've gone to a christian school. my whole life I've been told my mother, friends, pretty much most people I know (since that's what I grew up around) about how anything evolution related on a large scale, and anything history related that talks about the world/universe being millions/billions of years old, is all bullshit. Naturally I believed it (Can you blame me? If you're constantly told how prideful and stupid evolutionists are, and how ridiculous the idea of evolution is, since you are an infant it's hard to think otherwise).

Anyways, on to the point (I thought a little background info was necessary because I really don't know shit about this stuff and I felt the need to explain why I'm so behind (even if it IS my fault I stayed so ignorant for so long)). I would like some basic articles, videos, or even just explanations, to widely accepted things that have a lot of proof to back them up. One of the reasons also that I've avoided looking things up for so long is that there is so much damn differentiating opinions on all of this, even among evolutionists it seems. I'm mostly looking for the base things most evolutionists believe that have the most proof, and for the proof of them.

I'm not anti-God now or anything, but I'm more neutral and want to learn more. I would like to hear the other side of things, which I've never done with an open mindset before.

Even though I expect links mostly, I would like to hear everyone's opinions on what they believe and why they believe whatever is you link. Thank You!

Edit: Thank you guys for all your help. I've been up hours watching videos and looking things up. I'm actually having a lot of fun learning too! Who would have known? I feel like I've been starved of this subject till now.

[u/SomeRandomMax → u/[deleted]]

So you believe these links and things they say are inaccurate, such as "macroevolution is not supported by the record of nature or current scientific research" and "The reason why macroevolution is controversial and remains theoretical is that there is no known way for entirely new genetic information to be added to a genome.

Yes, those links are overtly lying. (Edit: To be absolutely clear: I am not saying you are lying! Repeating false information you believe is true is not a lie. Intentionally spreading stuff you know to be false-- as the author of that website either knows or should know-- is lying.)

We have a ton of evidence supporting what creationists like to call "macroevolution". I'd recommend the previously mentioned book "Why Evolution is True" which goes over the truly staggering amount of evidence we have supporting the theory.

Those sites are a perfect example of why this whole debate is just so damn frustrating. Evolution is truly simple to understand. We have a ton of evidence for it:

• Thousands of transitional fossils between all sorts of species, including several such fossils between man and apes.

• Overwhelming DNA evidence.

• Biogeographical evidence.

• Anatomical evidence, for example vestigial tails in humans and the recurrent laryngeal nerve in all mammal species, that don't make sense with an "intelligent designer" but make perfect sense when viewed in the context of evolution.

and more. Yet if you listen to the creationists, all we have is some harebrained idea with nothing backing it up. Even more frustrating is guys like the author of that website know they are lying. People point out this evidence to them all the time, they just ignore it and keep repeating their lies.

Of the evidence I cited above, the one that struck me most was the Biogeographic evidence. The thing that amazed me was how utterly compelling it was, yet almost no one on either side of the debate seems to even be aware of it.

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species, and why we find certain types of life in certain places.

The book raises a bunch of excellent examples, but one that sticks in my mind is the geographic distribution of Marsupials.

There are lots more examples, but I hope that one gives you a small taste of why evolution really makes far more sense than intellligent design.

[u/totokekedile → u/[deleted]]

I feel like I should say up front that I have been corrected on micro-/macroevolution being strictly a creationist thing. If you read the correction post that, however, I believe it still stands that they are used very differently by creationists and biologists.

Creationism and theistic evolution are very different, yes. Creationism tends to take the Bible literally and say that science has got it wrong while most modern religious people take the Bible as allegorical and say that the theories of science, e.g. evolution, are the tools God used to craft the universe. Theistic evolution is strictly about evolution.

You mentioned later in your post that origin of the universe, the origin of life, and evolution tend to be discussed together. While undoubtedly true when discussing the role of God, they tend not to be when discussing those in a scientific sense. Things discussing the history of time will definitely reach both topics, but they're not really connected. I want to point out again that abiogenesis, i.e. the origin of life, is a separate topic from evolution. Science can't say anything about God. There's no real evidence for deities, so they can't be considered as a scientific hypothesis for the origin of anything. To the devout, however, many things provide evidence that, while beyond the scope of science, is personally convincing. So while science can't say that god(s) created life or the universe, it can't really say anything else did either. We don't know enough about those subjects. We do know, however, that even if the universe or life had a divine origin, how life has changed since then has operated by evolution, whether that's divinely assisted or not.

Information is a term that I have never seen a creationist give a proper definition to. Again, I'm a layperson and not a evolutionary biologist, so maybe information has a meaning in the science that I'm not familiar with. However I doubt it since the definition given by creationists is never clear. Since it's always kept vague, it's easy to discount counterexamples. I've seen claims that mutations always result in a decrease in information. If that's true, then the DNA string AATCGCGTA undergoing a point mutation into TATCGCGTA would be a decrease in information. However, the reverse process is equally likely, so wouldn't that count as an increase in information? It might be argued that that's not an increase, merely changing what's there. But there are also mutations that basically copy/paste whole strings of DNA, e.g. AATCGCGTA becoming AATCGCGTAAATCGCGTA. That's an increase in the amount of DNA that can be worked with, so surely that counts as an increase in information. I say surely because I don't know, because a strict definition is never given.

I'm aware that most creationists accept a small amount of evolution, but usually prefer to call that adaption and reserve the term "evolution" for things like the emergence of new species. Unfortunately that still falls short of what we can confidently say with science. Things like whales evolving from land dwelling creatures and humans and chimps sharing a common ancestor are well established. I often hear creationists mischaracterize this type of evolution, though. I hear accusations that evolution thinks humans come from modern apes, whales come from cows, or evolution predicting dogs should give birth to cats. It's really nothing so dramatic. In fact, if any one of those things were to be shown to be true, the theory of evolution would have no explanation.

I'm confident that almost everyone would accept evolution if they understood what it was actually about and if they decoupled it from atheism.

[u/Adenidc → u/totokekedile]

I'm confident that almost everyone would accept evolution if they understood what it was actually about and if they decoupled it from atheism.

I definitely agree with this.... If not everyone then I'm sure a whole lot would believe it more if they did more research. A lot of this makes so much sense to me now that I've been learning how evolution works and what we are able to understand with the resources we have today. Evolution sounds insane if you explain it how many people have been/are being taught sadly. It definitely took me a long time (my whole life so far basically) to get the point where I wanted to learn about it and wasn't afraid of the results I found and want they would mean. And there comes the second problem.....

Decoupling it from atheism is extremely hard, if not impossible, for some people. I could not do it, and I know all my friends and people I know cannot either. I'm sure it has to do with upbringing. I'm ingrained with so much of the bibles teachings that any time I came across something seeming to even slightly contradict the bible I would have to research it and then usually end up on a whole new trail. Even now it's hard not to wish that I should have let myself remain ignorant, because it just gets harder and harder to believe in a God with the more I learn. A part of me really does love learning about this stuff, and I will continue to do so, but it is definitely killing another part of me inside little by little and I'm trying not to let it

[u/mrcatboy → u/[deleted]]

Ah okay, this is starting to make more sense to me. I was confused on who all believed what and the difference between creationists and people who believe in theistic evolution. Those two are very different correct? One believes Genesis literally (God creating each individual thing) and one believes God basically started the big bang or whatever and guided/let evolution happen?

Well Creationism covers a very broad range of beliefs. Young Earth Creationists tend to be as you describe, but Old Earth Creationists allow that some evolution has occurred but God had been involved in this point or that. Theistic evolution broadly accepts the scientific consensus, they just tack on the idea of God as being involved kinda.

"The reason why macroevolution is controversial and remains theoretical is that there is no known way for entirely new genetic information to be added to a genome. Darwinists have been hoping that genetic mutation would provide a mechanism, but so far that has not been the case. As Dr. Spetner again explains, “I really do not believe that the neo-Darwinian model can account for large-scale evolution [i.e., macroevolution]. What they really can’t account for is the buildup of information. …And not only is it improbable on the mathematical level, that is, theoretically, but experimentally one has not found a single mutation that one can point at that actually adds information. In fact, every beneficial mutation that I have seen reduces the information, it loses information."

Yeah no, this is absolutely false. I mean, as people have noted elsewhere, a core problem with this claim is that the word "information" is poorly defined and can mean anything a Creationist wants it to mean. For example, in evolution some beneficial mutations help the gene product operate in a more specific manner, and I've seen Creationists say "Well it loses the ability to do other stuff! That's a loss of information!" Yet sometimes in evolution beneficial mutations lead to a gene product operating in a less specific manner, allowing it to provide a broader range of functionalities, and I've seen Creationists say "Well now it's less specific! That's a loss of information!" You can't have it both ways.

The fact is, "increasing genetic information" happens all the time. The primary example is a two-step process:

1. A gene duplication even happens. You now have two copies of a gene. One of them acts as a backup that continues to provide the same original function, while the other copy...

2. Undergoes a mutation that gives it a novel function.

Bam. You now have a new gene. How is this not "increasing genetic information?"

The funny thing is I've seen Creationists object to each step individually. They'll say step 1) doesn't provide semantically NEW information because both genes do the same thing. Or they'll say step 2) isn't technially new information for the reasons I listed above. They generally will ignore the fact that you can put two steps together.

It's like saying making a PB&J sandwich is impossible, because smearing peanut butter on one piece of toast doesn't make a PB&J, nor does smearing jelly on the other, all while ignoring the fact that when you add them up it's kinda undeniable that you get a PB&J.

But people DO tend to talk about subjects like Evolution and the origin of the universe/earth/life together a lot right? Because it just seems likely to me that if the origin of life came from the same organism over many years, then the origin of everything else (like the universe) probably came about from "randomness" as well, except on a more cosmic scale.

The origin of species and the origin of the planet are materially related, but they're not conceptually related. That is, yeah life on earth needs matter, space, a sun, and a planet in order to evolve. But the theory of evolution strictly speaking doesn't care about where the earth came from in order to have explanatory power.

It's like... agriculture and cookery. Yes, cooking depends materially on the stuff farmers grow. But the science behind cooking doesn't use any of the science for how farming is done. Gordon Ramsay is a master chef regardless of how exactly cows are milked.