@SRMChoppermon:
About the holes in evolution. Why didn't all apes evolve into humans? I realise that this isn't really a hole, just something I don't know.
The short answer: Evolving doesn't mean everything changes into something else. It means a few apes evolved into humans, and the rest of the apes stayed the same, or evolved into other apes, or other humanoids, or died out.
The long answer: Apes did evolve into humans. It is just that not all of them did. A subset did. Geographic isolation or simple genetic drift (ie coincidence) are why this happened. Especially since recombination of genetic material (= two sexes) evolved as a means to counter the threat of parasites*, it became increasingly easy to evolve if you split off a certain subset of your population, or like I said through simple genetic drift**. You don't even need to wait for the occasional mutation anymore, simple selective mating is enough to evolve. (like how a fruit fly twice the size of a normal one was bred by having the biggest ones in each generation mate)
- if all you do is clone, one parasite that perfectly exploits your weaknesses can wipe out your entire cloned population. This environmental pressure gave rise to two sexes to recombine genetic material and make it somewhat different each generation. This was necessary when organisms became more and more complex.
(or to be precise: this splitting into two sexes happened by accident (a mutation or series of mutations) and it lived on because it was such a splendid survival tool, while the complex organisms that stuck to cloning all got wiped out eventually)
** A good example of genetic drift is the rapid evolution of the human-sized brain. In evolutionary terms, this happened at light speed. The reason why this happened and happened so fast is that when a subset of a humanoid population started favoring 'smarter' mates, this resulted in an explosion of cranial capacity. (just like in the previous example of the biggest fruit flies mating and making a species twice as big as normal in a couple of generations, but here there was no selective mating by researchers, but rather a change is mate selection)
Subsequently these smarter humanoids exterminated their less intelligent cousins, which is why there is only one human race, but that's another story.
Generally geographic isolation will create a new species.. let's say part of a species gets isolated from the rest through an earthquake or something, then it'll probably evolve into a different species as it adapts to its new surroundings. But geographic isolation isn't even necessary, another fine example of genetic drift is one that was observed in a certain species of birds. Female birds choose their mates based on the attractiveness of the mating call of the males. But this species of birds kinda split up in two groups, let's call them A and B. The mating calls of group A began to differ from those of group B. So while they kept living at the same location, the females of group A simply didn't find the males of group B attractive, and vice versa.. so since there was no interbreeding anymore, both groups were free to 'drift' away and change, regardless of what happened to the other group, and possibly even evolve into a different species. Genetic drift.
But what did apes evolve from? And what did that come from? I believe that we evolved from apes or something very similar to apes but somewhere down the line there had to be an original.
At one point in time, long ago, through mere chance, something started to replicate. Duplicate itself. Then some of them became more complex. Then some of those more complex ones split into two sexes. Then these dual sexual beings evolved into a whole bunch of different species, one of which were the apes. And some of the apes evolved into humans. Actually they evolved into a whole bunch of humanoids, and some of the humanoids evolved into different humanoids, but all of them except for the humans got wiped out.
Which is what Science is about, no?
Sigh.. maybe it'll be clearer what I meant if I rephrase it like this: "he's simply making a comparison".
The observations in science are not of the kind 'wow it's almost as if' but rather they require evidence.
Then this entire debate is pointless.
Science is the reason why you can watch TV in a nicely warmed room and call your friends on the phone. It's far from pointless.
We're "basing" all our "facts" on things that could possibly be false,
Yep, there can be no absolute truth since it's all observations of reality, not reality itself. That is what science is all about. Science makes no claims otherwise either. It's just that when evidence starts to pile up and, most importantly, your scientific theories provide reproducable predictive value, that the likelihood you're wrong grows increasingly smaller and smaller. So much that at a certain point it is safe to say "ok this is about as much a 'fact' as we're gonna get one".
At the most you'll discover that your scientific theory is a very good approximation lateron, which needs a refinement in certain special cases. Pretty much like how newtonian mechanics is a very good explanation of reality.. just as long as speeds don't start approaching light speed and the masses of the objects involved don't become too small. Likewise, evolutionary theory being disproved as a whole is infathomable. At the very most some details need to be ironed out.
and this is referring to both sides (though that doesn't change my beliefs).
Except for the fact that there's tons of evidence and reproduceable predictive value in scientific theories and nothing but blind faith in religion.
I mean, there's tons of religions, even lots of variations within one religion.. each of them being just about as likely or unlikely as the next. And there's one comprehensive evolutionary theory with all the scientific (ie logical) tools supporting it. That should say enough.
Btw.. I'm not trying to convince you into my views.. if I would want that I'd have to attack your debating tactics, but I'll just play nice lol. Not that someone whose whole life revolves around religion could be convinced by mere words on the internet ofcourse. But I'm just kinda giving the scientific viewpoint on these matters here for those who are interested in that.