Do You Believe in the Theory of Evolution?

That we evolved from monkey's, or single-celled organisms?

Of course. However, I wouldn't be rock solid in saying that humans are direct descendants of monkeys, but we damn sure come from the same whatever that created them. Human beings and apes/monkeys are too much alike.

I don't. After all, aren't ALL things supposed to evolve? Well then I would love to know how sharks have had hundreds of millions of years to evolve and STILL their brains are LITERALLY the size of a peanut, and 3/4 of it all go to its nose.


And besides, you take a look around at mankind, if we had started out as monkeys, we would STILL be monkeys. "Monkeys with really tall grass!" If anything, mankind seems to be doing instead a backwards march, as if attempting to return to the apes or the facsimile thereof descendents from which they came.

Evolution is supposed to be an everlasting, on going, never ending event...but I don't think anybody really believes in another hundred million years we'll all have evolved into something new, some kind of maybe super human improvement over what we are right now. I think we're pretty much stuck as we are from now to when time ends.

^^^^^^ (shaking my head)

I couldn't resist:

Supernova wrote:I don't. After all, aren't ALL things supposed to evolve? Well then I would love to know how sharks have had hundreds of millions of years to evolve and STILL their brains are LITERALLY the size of a peanut, and 3/4 of it all go to its nose.

LOL, one single species of animal huh? First of all, this planet is 4.5 BILLION years old. Hundred of millions of years is like an a week in geological time. And it's projected to continue orbiting around the sun, same pace and all, for another 5 BILLION years. It might take another billion for a shark's brain to get bigger. Who knows? All life comes from the ocean. A shark is a fish. It can't breathe outside of water, doesn't have legs to walk and basically doesn't have to adapt to anything outside of it's natural environment. All it needs to do is hunt and eat to survive. Which it does well. So if it's brain isn't any bigger, that's because it doesn't need to be. Evolution has been proven to not only come about biochemically but also from the need for something. How exactly do you think human beings evolved? I would love to hear this.

And besides, you take a look around at mankind, if we had started out as monkeys, we would STILL be monkeys. "Monkeys with really tall grass!" If anything, mankind seems to be doing instead a backwards march, as if attempting to return to the apes or the facsimile thereof descendents from which they came.

If you take a human today (especially a white man) and put him in a cave for 3 months, when he walks out...he'll resemble a gorilla. You fail to see it now because we as humans groom ourselves. The traditional homo sapien didn't look too much different that an ape. Now, I won't be rock solid in saying we come directly from apes but they are the only species other than humans who have opposable thumbs. We have the same territorial characteristics. Our characteristics are too uncanny. We definitely have a common denominator.

Evolution is supposed to be an everlasting, on going, never ending event...

Who says it's not? Who says humans and other creatures aren't evolving right now as we speak? Gimme a break.

but I don't think anybody really believes in another hundred million years we'll all have evolved into something new, some kind of maybe super human improvement over what we are right now. I think we're pretty much stuck as we are from now to when time ends.

Due to your limited thinking. For someone who supposedly 'reads' so much, I find that very interesting to believe. First of all, the modern human is only 200,000 years old. If you were to calculate the time that this Earth has existed into one calendar year, humans didn't walk on this Earth until 11:59 p.m. on December 31st. Of course we're going to evolve into something else. Science proves that. Another hundred million years, prob. not, but like I said, this Earth has another 5 BILLION years to rotate. That's a pretty long time dear. And I'm pretty sure you won't be hear to witness it.

Of course I believe in evolution. And it doesn't say that humans evolved from monkeys. The science of human evolution asserts that apes and humans share a common ancestor.

What does belief have to do with anything? Certainly, what we believe has all of zero impact on reality.
The fundamental precept of evolution is that over time organisms have diverged in response to environmental stimuli, eventually diverging so dramatically as to no longer be able to interbreed amongst each other.
This is an empirical question. It is being observed as we speak in the darwinian finches, as well as some hookbills. Just watch a population of fruit flies for a month. You'll see speciation on multiple levels.
On the other hand, what people think of as evolution, man coming from monkeys, is just silly. Humans are monkeys by the very phenotypic, and now, genotypic definition that WE MADE UP. It's all an arbitrary unit of measure that we made so that we can classify animals by shared traits, and now, by similar genetics.
See, no belief required, no debate.
We can debate the implications if we want, though.

Supernova wrote:
And besides, you take a look around at mankind, if we had started out as monkeys, we would STILL be monkeys.

Um...we are still monkeys, by the very definition. Well, apes, in particular. We made up the definition, and we fall squarely into it.

Supernova wrote:If anything, mankind seems to be doing instead a backwards march, as if attempting to return to the apes or the facsimile thereof descendents from which they came.

lol I couldn't agree more there!

Supernova wrote:Evolution is supposed to be an everlasting, on going, never ending event...but I don't think anybody really believes in another hundred million years we'll all have evolved into something new, some kind of maybe super human improvement over what we are right now. I think we're pretty much stuck as we are from now to when time ends.

Humans are constantly changing, as are all living things. Humans have extremely long lives, relatively, so it isn't as obvious, but our physiological structure is significantly different today than it was even a few hundred years ago. Animals with shorter lifespans, however, such as birds and insects, we can watch changing as a population, even within a single human lifespan in some cases.

I'm more in favor of creation (the Bible) over evolution.

I find evolution to be scientific guesswork at best, at least the Darwinian 'theory of evolution' that makes the "common ancestor" claims. It frankly strikes me as something requiring much more faith than "Adam and Eve" and seems to be much more in line with "seeing what you want to see" than any Biblical belief.

So no, I don't believe in evolution. I stick to science and reason.

No. Because if humans evolved from monkeys or apes, then why are there still monkeys and apes around? Shouldn't they all be humans too? It doesn't make any sense.

The idea behind human evolution is that humans, apes and various primates all shared a common ancestor, and that they evolved along different evolutionary paths. That is logical when you look at the similarity in our chromosomes and DNA. But every living thing on earth also shares DNA in common, so if we just went by that the we should also assume that evolved from a single celled organism. But if that's the case, then what spawned these vastly different paths of evolution?

What chain of events was significant enough to cause us to evolve so far ahead of all the other apes? And if these events were so significant, then why did the other apes survive? Evolution is a response to random mutations and adaptations to the environment. When animals evolve, the mutations allow certain animals to survive conditions other members of the species cannot. In such cases, only the animals with the adaptations survive to pass their genes along to the next generation and the others die out. This is how a species "evoloves" in theory. In the case of humans and apes, if we evolved from them into the dominant species on the planet, there must have been some reason for that evolution that would have also wiped out the apes that were unable to adapt to the conditions that humans could adapt to. Opposable thumbs, a larger brain, the ability to speak, the ability to walk completely upright, etc. We "evolved" these things because they must have been necessary at some point, otherwise we would still be apes.

Shale wrote:And the improving species does not mean that the norm species it came from has to die out. It means that it now has the skills to survive better in a changing environment. Then we get into all the suppositions of why we humans as a species came to be the way we are with our improvements - standing erect on two legs, opposable thumb for better hand dexterity and a larger brain. These set us on the path to do things that our forebears could not, but some of that forebear species would go on in there limited environment somewhere on this big planet of ours.

Humans are more "evolved" than the Neanderthals were and we survived but they (all of them everywhere on the planet) went extinct! But if they went extinct, then why did other less evolved great apes survive?

The theory of evolution is of course very interesting and as always very inflammatory. It may be true, then again it may not! I think the truth lies somewhere inbetween the facts that we do know and many more unknowns that we'll never have the answers to. I enjoy debating about contraversial topics because I always tend to learn things I never considered before. In any case, I don't put much stock into theories in general because until there are no reasonable doubts left (and theory becomes fact) its likely not going to change my perspective on life.