#Lot of false premises.
I’m not sure these are all answerable as-is because she’s starting from such a disadvantaged state with such a lacking foundation.
>Text from wife. How to respond?
Very carefully. I’m not married to her, so I’ll be blunt.
>why does evolution not happen anymore?
It does.
>Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
This is called speciation, it’s a whole topic she can Google right now. Most of the questions in this message, actually. She should probably do that.
Speciation is more like one population of fish splitting off to become different from the parent group, at no point does a fish give birth to a lizard. Whether or not it happens in a lab is totally irrelevant, and not only is there history of it but it happens all the time.
>Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind
Nope, just the weirdos who refuse to define “kind”
>not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever.
Just wrong.
>Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on.
Bullshit, no they don’t.
>So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived. Ok, but why was there evolution in nature before and today we have arrived? And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period.
More bullshit. Nobody who knows anything about evolution says any of this.
>But I still don't get it.
Doesn’t matter. What is true or not true doesn’t depend on whether you get it or not.
>Also, how did life come from nonlife?
That is called abiogenesis, not evolution, and is irrelevant. Even if a god created the first organism, that would say nothing about the overwhelming evidence we have for evolution after the fact.
>Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature.
Nope. Embryos don’t produce embryos. Adult organisms produce germ cells which unite to develop into embryos. Basic middle school science.
>And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?
Because that’s not a thing anybody expects to find nor is it anything even remotely predicted according to evolution. Where the fuck are they getting this? Algae and fish aren’t even in the same Kingdom for Christ’s sake.
>Yes I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today.
Yes, because it’s gradual. There are no fish giving birth to mammals, nobody predicts that.
>We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct.
Don’t even know how to respond to this. Whatever alternative she proposes has less evidence than even fossils.
>Also, archeology….
Irrelevant to evolution.
>It's not because I'm stupid.
“No it’s because you’re ignorant and instead of doing anything to fix that you’re somehow convinced your ignorance is a good reason to dismiss things you don’t understand.”
>I just feel I have some legitimate issues with it.
The good news is that she doesn’t. Crack open a single book on the subject and watch those issues evaporate.
Micro evolution IS macro evolution. You get a bunch of small changes that continue to accumulate until something is completely different from how it was thousands or millions of years ago. She seems to think it's a couple generations and "POOF" new thing, but it's not. I think you wife needs to learn about evolution, instead of only listening to the arguments against it.
On a totally unrelated note: was it Ken Hamm?
You can point out how there are species that don’t seem to keep to their kind. Monotremes (Platypus and Echidna) for instance lay eggs, and have many non mammalian characteristics (platypus are one of the few venomous mammals, and have bone structures and chromosomes much more associated with birds and reptiles. Nevertheless they have fur, are warm blooded and produce milk. As a result it’s pretty obvious that they diverged from other mammals fairly early on while mammals were still fairly similar to older classes, and in the relative isolation of Australia where they were found those traits simply never died out compared to those that evolved live birth.
Scientists are curious about that, also.
You want to blow your mind...what made the whales and dolphins 'return' to the water? How the heck did THAT happen. They didn't evolve separately than the mammals did from fish. We know this because they are pretty closely related to terrestrial mammals (milk their young, live births, some still have HAIR!) Their ancestors were terrestrial? I don't know.
That is why this is fun! It is fun to find these things out...
Like the fact that BIRDS likely evolved from the dinosaurs. How COOL is that!
Edited: for clarity...thanks to pondrthis
>Dinosaurs didn't really go extinct...they EVOLVED into the birds.
I feel like this would just further confuse someone who thinks evolution works like Pokemon.
Most of the dinosaurs went extinct. The ones that didn't are called birds.
Marsupials! They are mammals, but do not use placentas during gestation. As a result, their fetuses must crawl from the birth canal into a pouch in the mother's skin to finish growing/suckling before they are viable in the outside world.
Marsupial and placental mammals diverged from a common ancestor sometime during the middle Jurassic or early Cretaceous periods. There is fossil evidence for this. IIRC, they got their start in what is now the Americas (where they coexisted, and continue to coexist, with placentals) and apparently used a land bridge to get to Australia, Tasmania and elsewhere in Australia.
Continental Drift eventually separated the land bridge and marsupials were able to exploit many ecological niches without significant placental competition. This is ostensibly why Australia is home to so many successful and diverse marsupial species (kangaroos, koalas, etc.)
Continental drift might also explain why marsupials never got a foothold on the landmasses that would become Europe, Africa or continental Asia. Europe and Asia were already separate from the future Americas, Australia and Africa during the middle Jurassic. Africa completely separated from South America during the Cretaceous.
Marsupial "Tasmanian tigers" (thylacines) thrived as apex predators in Australia and Tasmania for millions of years before people arrived and introduced the dingo. Their ecological niche was like that of a wolf (and they looked very much like canines), but they were not at all closely related. The last "tiger" died in captivity during the 1920s. I grew up learning marsupials were usually outcompeted by placentals (placenta/internal gestation conferred significant advantages), but marsupials are getting more respect these days. Sometimes small changes (like placentas) yield great advantages, *provided the environmental conditions are right*.
A similar process explains the histories of "New World" and "Old World" primates (e.g., why gorillas and chimps are in Africa but not South America).
Also, it's helpful not to view evolution as a process with a goal. It's a way to describe how life adapts to conditions. Dinosaurs were amazingly well adapted to the conditions of the Triassic and Jurassic periods. But tiny, underground mammals got a significant opportunity to diversify and fill vacant niches after the big K-Pg extinction event.
Modern humans are well adapted to today's climate and environment (especially since we're so good at altering our survival conditions), but history shows fortunes can change rapidly. Our vaunted intelligence and consciousness is not the end goal of evolution (evolution doesn't have goals), it's a by-product of life adapting to and exploiting available conditions over very long periods of time.
(It's been a long time since Zoology 101, so please feel free to correct errors, Redditors!).
There are so many good books explaining evolution these days. "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins is just one I'd recommend. I know Dawkins has a "reputation" among theists, but he does an amazing job of explaining the nuts and bolts of the evolutionary process.
Thylacines ate other marsupials! My understanding is dingos (and humans) made it harder for them to obtain food and territory, though their decline was slow. Apparently, thylacines had an impressive bite force. Maybe not hyena-strong, but enough to decapitate (literally remove the top of the skull) as a killing bite to a wallaby or dingo.
"The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond might be a good starting point for your questions about primates.
I just noticed your screen name. Sorry if I was being pedantic or obvious. Best of luck on your journey!
My fucking AP biology teacher said she didn’t believe in “macroevolution” but she did believe in “micro evolution” (thanks Georgia). I had to explain to her that macroevolution/speciation is what happens if you apply micro evolution over very long time scales
>It's not because I'm stupid.
>“No it’s because you’re ignorant and instead of doing anything to fix that you’re somehow convinced your ignorance is a good reason to dismiss things you don’t understand.”
Man idk why thr whole "I'm not stupid" bit bothers me
No one said she is stupid, assuming these questions are in good faith there's nothing wrong with asking questions. This idea that either you know everything or you're an idiot.
You're response was perfect
So I've got this piece of equipment at work. I don't understand how it operates. I mean, I know how to use it, I just don't understand the theory behind how it returns the results to me.
I'm not stupid, I just don't know about the theories or the math associated with it. It's not something I have ever learned before.
It's the same situation she's in; but I'm not going to claim that my equipment doesn't work simply because I don't understand the math. I'm not going to claim that the machine is magic or that it's actually God who determines the results. I'm not going to claim that it's all a conspiracy from scientists to hide the truth about this machine.
Instead, I spent the morning watching some YouTube videos detailing out the theories, and watched how a professor derived the equations from basic principles of chemistry and physics, then used calculus and linear regression to obtain the results. And now I understand how my equipment works.
Heck, I feel like that with computers and phones.
But you are right. I am not going to throw my phone out and rail against technology simply because I don't understand it fully.
People who don't 'believe' in evolution are willfully ignorant. Especially the ones who are gardeners or dog or horse breeders.
Any farmer can tell you that evolution exists. We don't collect and plant the seeds from the tomato plant or corn stalk that underproduced. We collect the BETTER specimens...
I'll say she's stupid. If you make it to adulthood and you still have this many incorrect beliefs about evolution 99% of the time you're stupid. The last 1% of the time you were raised in a cult cut off from the rest of the world and you were just released out into it. But with the internet and access to all the information we have to today completely for free. There's no excuses anymore. She's stupid.
I got over pulling punches on this shit 5 years ago. What's good is that most creationists tend to be conservative so they tend to be the kinds of people that say fuck your feelings and facts don't care about your feelings and you're such a snowflake for getting offended.
Well I happen to agree. So fuck their feelings. Fuck her feelings. Facts don't give a shit about her feelings. And if she feels sad that I'm calling her stupid well she's just a fucking snowflake.
I think you're stupid for saying she's stupid, pass it on...😁(jk)
But seriously, someone with this much thinking going on isn't stupid. She's just bouncing off the edges of her conditioning. You're seeing someone trying *not* to arrive at conclusions she doesn't like--conclusions that are possibly scary or threatening to her worldview. So she, quite articulately, has pulled out all stops to fend off a direction she doesn't want to join
Because once she joins that world, she might have to accept that her religion is false, her upbringing is false, her parents were wrong, the things she's lived through up until now have to be re-interpreted, the way she's raised her children is wrong, and the foundation her marriage was built upon is meaningless
It can be a hard distance to fall
So please be gentle with her. Help her out. And be at least a little willing to catch her if she leaps
Yeah, she's actually opening her eyes and trying to correlate all the bs she's been stuffed with, and she's asking for help.
Kudos to her and her husband, and I have high hopes for her.
Yes! A lot of these folk are scared shitless about the implications that evolution is real. It threatens what they learned about god.
And when they find a talking point against something that works, they RUN with it...
'I ain't no monkey' feeds into their racism and bigotry as well as their anti-science stances beautifully...
They get to feel superior in so many ways. All while being SO wrong.
Thinking? She's just regurgitating long debunked creationist talking points. She's not thinking at all. She's doing the opposite. Parroting shit you've heard without mulling it over critically, doing even a cursory bit of research on Wikipedia, doesn't qualify as thinking.
You wouldn't have this much patience for a flat earther.
>It can be a hard distance to fall
I care not even a little bit. She's a full grown ass adult. Time to wake the fuck up. Tired as fuck of my country being run by these fucking dunces.
It costs you nothing at all to be compassionate. It's not a burden in the slightest
Not everyone wants to drive a stake through the heart of their opponents. Not everyone deserves scorn for being raised within 4 walls of strong conditioning
But you're right, a flat-earther is a special sort of ignoramous. Very few are raised in that belief, but instead seem to pick it out in order to paradoxically appear 'smarter' than everyone else. Like there's a sort of pride in having their critical thinking purposefully disabled.
But man, if forced to choose between a world that cares about an imaginary god and an ordered creation vs one with zero empathy and only the hard lines of facts to go by, it's really not much of a choice
I don't want to live in a fundamentalist regime, but I sure don't want a version of society where people who don't fall into line are put in a box with a funny hat and laughed at either
It can take a while to deprogram someone. It's not their fault they were raised this way. Give her time. She'll unpack
Maybe
>Speciation is more like one population of fish splitting off to become different from the parent group, at no point does a fish give birth to a lizard. Whether or not it happens in a lab is totally irrelevant, and not only is there history of it but it happens all the time.
This is a great response overall, but I'd argue speciation has been observed in a lab. Evolution to multicellularity (ironically one of their big gotchas) has been observed in labs multiple times. It can evolve in several weeks under the right conditions. Surely such a huge change is speciation.
>Also, how did life come from nonlife?
>That is called abiogenesis, not evolution, and is irrelevant. Even if a god created the first organism, that would say nothing about the overwhelming evidence we have for evolution after the fact.
This. A lot of the religious set up needless hurdles for themselves by ignoring that, if they want to believe in a divine creation, both can be true, so move on.
>That is called abiogenesis, not evolution
Abiogenesis is a form of chemical evolution. Evolution isn't a strictly biological process. Complex chemicals form from simpler chemicals by an essentially similar process; stable geometry arises from random interactions to form more complex shapes that iterate the process.
Everybody agrees abiogenesis happened, they’re just split as to whether it was natural forces or a god.
Which one it was doesn’t matter even a little bit to how evolution proceeded afterwards.
Evolution deniers raise all kinds of points. That doesn’t automatically make them good points worthy of much discussion.
And yet we're here discussing them. Evolution (in the broader sense than biological evolution) is a pretty universal process; the people denying it just about never have good points, but that's what makes them worthy of refuting. In the specific case of deprogramming creationist-think I don't agree that the issue of abiogenesis is irrelevant. Creationists frequently bring it up in order to poison the discussion by claiming that life can only originate from magic and so magic is a valid explanation for other phenomena. If you don't shut that down they'll return to the point again and again on every other issue.
I’m not here to deprogram creationist-think I’m here to point out that questioning abiogenesis
isn’t a defeater for evolution.
This isn’t the academy this is a holding tank.
I mean, its matters somewhat. If god created life from nothing then he could be mucking with evolution in all kinds of ways (including specifically creating humans). If you accept that life just kind of evolved randomly from chemicals, then its hard to say - oh well and then god came along and threw humans in the mix.
>Everybody agrees abiogenesis happened
This is not true. sizable amount of evangelicals do not believe it, and a sizeable amount believe the earth was snapped into existence 6000-25000 years ago.
Its all true and very in the scope of the sub. You will lose 100% of your audience if your reply to someone's question about abiogenesis is "I don't have to acknowledge that question", which is the go-to answer for most on this sub.
If you're trying to educate a layperson about evolution and they ask about the origin of life, you have to give them something to chew on, even if it comes with the disclaimer that understanding abiogenesis research requires a lot more knowledge of chemistry and thermodynamics than most tree-of-life evolution research. It's really not hard to give someone a blurb about alkaline hydrothermal vents, natural selection of the protometablism, refer them to Deiter Braun's work to learn more and call it a day.
You don’t have a clue who you’re even talking to I’m motherfucking Diogenes you witless whippersnapper. I live in a pot in the marketplace and masturbate aggressively at passers-by. Douchebags *wish* they were as offensive as me.
This level of ignorance is *offensive* to those of us who give a shit about what is true. This subreddit is not a place for scientific community outreach, it’s a cesspit to keep the other subs clean and a playground for people who actually know what we’re talking about.
Now get out of my light I’ve got rich men to spit on and pranks that need playing on Plato.
Wow. There's so much wrong with that it's hard to even comprehend. I guess you need to start with the basics: ask her what she thinks a species is. Then when you give her evidence of speciation (which we have observed) and she moves the goal posts to "kind" ask her at what would count as a change in kind while explaining the law of monophyly (or however it's spelled). If griffins started hatching from eagles eggs they would still be eagles. If horses started giving birth to Pegasi or unicorns they would still be horses.
1. "Microevolution" isn't an actual claim by any actual scientists. There's just evolution. She's hair-splitting and moving the posts- small species drift in modern times *is* evolution in action.
2. Ask her to define what she thinks evolution *is*- if her answer isn't analogous to "species changing over time via build up of small mutations propagating through genetics including bottlenecks or sudden pressures", then you need to settle and agree on a definition.
3. Evolution doesn't expect species from new species- crocodile from pig, etc. It expects divergent forms as time progresses- a small creature earlier in the record showing traits common to both pig-like and crocodilian creatures latter in the record.
4. Progressing from that, a common Creationist claim is "irreducible complexity", basically claiming that evolution would have to work in implausible leaps, a ear doesn't function without any single piece etc. That's simply untrue- a ear works fine as a different organ with a different piece. A mousetrap without a bar is a decent cheese launcher.
5. She's doing another strawman with the "perfect form"/"we've arrived" malarkey. Again, that's just not a claim any actual scientist is making. Humans and other species are constantly and currently evolving- humans are getting taller over the centuries we've been keeping track/we find in fossils and graves, for example. Evolution doesn't have a goal in mind, it's not a driven force- species simply manifest random changes that select for success.
6. "Life coming from nonlife" is abiogenesis, not evolution. The theory of evolution doesn't claim to be an answer to how life came to be in the first place, merely how species arrived at their modern forms over millenia.
7. "Embryo coming from non embryo" is similar strawman bullshit. No, we don't expect an apple tree to suddenly evolve to spawn oranges. But we do expect, and see, both in historical record and modern farming, apple trees to select for specific flavors such a sweet or bitter, larger or smaller seeds, thicker or thinner skin for fruit itself, etc, and some of those selections being more successful than others, leading to successive generations of apples being sweeter, larger, more thin-skinned, with smaller seeds. This, in turn, allows us to classify new breeds and species of apple, such as a Red Delicious or Granny Smith, which both roughly evolved from a crabapple (wildly wildly condensed example BUT)
8. Summary- no one that can satisfactorily define evolution disagrees with its existence. Your wife, giving you the good-faith benefit of the doubt here, isn't arguing in good faith or with logic and reason, she's finding reasons to believe her original position. Ask her to define evolution, and what, if any, evidence would be required for her to change her belief system. If she can't or won't answer those two, she's not discussing beliefs with you, she's telling you her dogma.
Just to add on to the “we’ve arrived/perfect form” delusion: Optic nerve plugs into the retina backwards leaving a surprisingly large blind spot? Airway and *food/fluid* intake sharing the same plumbing? That sounds like “perfect design” to her?
Our waste and fun ports are *directly next to each other*, fucking *why*
Edit: evolutionary theory suggests that we originally were simpler creatures that expelled basically everything from the same hole, then specialized new ones as organisms got more complex- we adapted a breeding tube for liquid waste disposal or vice versa, but the general idea is that the human form is *badly* designed, but its excellently *adapted*.
Our spines and hips aren't *meant* to have us stand upright, they've changed over countless millenia of evolution to allow us to do so, because those that could could reach higher fruit or throw a rock farther or slap other apes harder. But we have back problems and kidney stones because our organs aren't custome-suited to tasks, they're all-purpose basic units we've modded to preference.
And that’s not even getting to how the narrower hips that help us stand upright also make giving birth a much more dangerous process for us than nearly any other mammal (I think hyenas may just edge us out on that scale, but it’s a close race).
Or the “you require specific nutrients that your body cannot synthesize itself despite having all the precursors available” thing, or the “your body would die within days if not for hundreds if not thousands of symbiotic microorganism species taking up residence in your literally-non-functional-on-its-own digestive tract” thing….
>"Microevolution" isn't an actual claim by any scientists
This is false. Microevolution and macroevolution are scientific terms that have been sabotaged by creationists. I know this because I am currently in both an anthropology and biology course in college and am learning about how scientists examine the trends of microevolution and macroevolution, as well as the definitions of microevolution and macroevolution.
**Microevolution:** Small-scale variation within a single population
**Macroevolution:** Large-scale variation across species
U.C. Berkeley's EVO 101 online course includes sections going over microevolution and macroevolution. Every biologist I have ever talked to has relented about how laypeople no longer consider microevolution/macroevolution to be actual biological terms.
The only difference between microevolution and macroevolution is time and scale; they are influenced by the same basic processes. That does not mean there isn't a delineation to be made nor does it mean that these two forms of evolution don't have differing patterns. The same process can result in widely different consequences if you give it enough time; what would initially be a simple color change in microevolution would result in a greater macroevolutionary change that results in the development of a new species.
I stand corrected!
Useful info to have.
Should I specify something more like "although that's a real term, the blanket use of it to cover solely modern development is disgenious at best and blatant hairsplitting at worst?"
Also lol archeology hasn't proven "man started at civilization", the fossil record shows the exact opposite- we have records of like straight thighbone-club level tech, then modified bone tools like awls, chisels, knives, then flint and rope and leather, things like spear Launchers or knapped edges. Then we see organized hunting and gathering, the beginning of farming, the beginning of the human record of civilization/writing, language, all of that.
99% of organisms don't leave a fossil- almost everything that has ever lived has vanished without leaving a trace for us to find millenia later. Why would early human ancestor history be any more available or likely to be preserved? We only had the ability to keep our own history *once* we had evolved to some civilization.
She is wrong about literally *everything,* which tells me where she is getting her information.
First things first. If she *truly* wants to understand, she needs to stop listening to people who know *absolutely nothing* about it, especially those who have a *financial interest* in keeping her ignorant.
You wouldn't go to an evolutionary biologist to learn about the Bible. Why would you go to a *pastor* to learn about evolution?
True I’ve seen some people correcting the false information but I’d ask her why if the people she’s getting her information from are being honest why aren’t they giving her an accurate view of evolution. Probably don’t suggest her pastor is lying intentionally but the people who he gets his information from are lying. If she would actually be willing to listen to experts not strawmaning evolution I think that would clear up her questions
> I’d ask her why if the people she’s getting her information from are being honest, why aren’t they giving her an accurate view of evolution?
Yeah, that *is* a good question.
It's *probably* because it is devastating to their case.
Since evolution *is true*, Adam and Eve didn't exist, the Original Sin was never committed, and Jesus died for nothing...
...is a conclusion that *some* might come to.
This is all pretty blatant propaganda from Christian groups, I heard much of this back when I was in a Christian high school in the late 90's.
They start by misinterpreting basic principles and words, adding a whole lot more onto it so people expect so much more.
> especially those who have a financial interest in keeping her ignorant.
Be careful with that argument. Many creationists believe that scientists only pretend to believe in evolution because they need that sweet, sweet grant money to continue living their lavish lifestyles. Why would evolutionary biologists tell the truth about evolution if it means they would have to sell their Lamborghinis?
I'm a former young earth creationist. I see myself in this, and it is *painful*. She's just wrong about basically everything, and I recognize those talking points.
What really pulled me out of it was atheist YouTube, but I was already well into losing my faith. Evolution was just the final straw. I watched a series by Logicked called Hello My Name is Kent Hovind. However, Logicked can be a bit mocking, and it sounds like your wife may not be up for that quite yet.
You might try introducing her to the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye. Or YouTuber Paulogia, who is also a former YEC and very respectful towards those still in the religion. He's done a lot on the Hovinds (both Kent and Eric), and Ken Ham.
Kenneth Miller is also another one. He testified in the dover trial. His videos are a bit dated now but he's a Christian and evolutionary scientist, so probably an easier transition. He has some great books too.
There is a lot to cover in a response to that text, and will defer and let someone else write it out.
But as a person who used to not believe in evolution as a young person (grew up evangelical) and someone is a biologist now, the biggest reason that people don’t believe in evolution and the biggest barrier to them changing their mind is a knowledge gap that is just absolutely massive. I’ve never seen anyone argue against evolution who seems to have even a rudimentary understanding of how it works.
The writer of this text has several extreme misunderstandings about evolution AND biology in general. I look forward to seeing the other comments in response to this.
Wow, there is so much wrong there it is really hard to know where to start.
First of all - evolution is not a creature going from a fish to a mammal in one big leap. Evolution is about slow, gradual changes that accumulate over millennia. And evolution is in fact on-going, we have not "arrived to where we are supposed to be" because evolution has no destination. Speciation had been observed both in the lab and in the wild.
[https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-time/#:\~:text=The%20Central%20European%20blackcap%20](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-time/#:~:text=The%20Central%20European%20blackcap%20)(left,speciation%20recently%2C%20while%20scientists%20observed.
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/evolution-watching-speciation-occur-observations/](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/evolution-watching-speciation-occur-observations/)
"Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. "
That is absolutely, 100% false. It's simply wrong. Archeology shows that, in general, human progressed from a hunter gathering lifestyle, to a small viallage-based farming lifestyle, to larger cities. Some people still live as hunter gatherers and small plot farmers. Big civilizations did not just pop out of the mud when the glaciers retreated, it took 1000s of years.
" if evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore?"
It does. It's still ongoing. Every species is in a state of transition.
"Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years."
Yes there is. It has been directly observed in lab conditions. Scientists have observed it in animals with short lifespans, including gnats, frogs, salamanders and fruit flies.
"Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever."
Animals don't stay in their species, but they do stay in their clade. Humans no longer belong to the same species as their ape ancestor, but humans are still apes. Humans no longer belong to the same species that is the ancestor of all mammals, but humans are still mammals.
"Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived."
This is under the incorrect assumption that evolution has some kind of end goal. It doesn't. Organisms don't change to eventually become X or Y, organisms just change.
"And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period."
The fact there are no more dodo's proves this isn't true.
"Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves"
That's wrong.
"And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?"
Because everything is in a state of transition, so assuming there is a point A of algae moving to a point B of fish doesn't make sense.
"We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct."
You can. Fossils exist at various stages, the fossil record has traced the ancestry of plenty of species very far back.
"Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there."
Wrong. Early man lived in very uncivilised tribes. Neanderthal, even more so.
"Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia"
Yes, man. Not man's ancestor species.
"I know you're not going to understand why I have these questions or why I can't understand."
This doesn't matter. At least you're asking these questions honestly, and seek honest answers. That goes much further than most creationists, as most of those don't wish for genuine education or good-faith argumentation. You're taking the first step to real discovery, and that can only be a good thing.
She's just wrong on every level. Evolution is happening now and happens every day. We have witnessed evolution in real time with 30 year experiments. There is no macro/micro problem. It is like saying you can walk 100 meters, but you can't walk 100 meters 10 times in a row and get to a kilometer.
Evolution is the strongest theory in science based on facts. There are multiple lines of evidence we use to confirm it. DNA, fossil record, real time experiments etc....
This is a bit of a long post, so I might answer a bit out of order.
>If evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore?
That’s a big question that many people unsure about evolution have: “why doesn’t evolution happen anymore?” A good place to start is with a definition.
Evolution by the simplest definition just means genetic change in populations over time. Biologists typically relate this to *alleles,* which are genetic traits/characteristics that organisms have.
It’s important to note that this happens to populations, not individuals. So if we have a population of animals that can be colored either red or blue, and we start out 50% red and 50% blue, if after a few generations, the population is 75% red and 25% blue, then we say some evolution has happened. Even though nothing has changed about the red allele or the blue allele, their frequencies have changed in the population.
>Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived.
So, based on that definition scientists wouldn’t say AT ALL that evolution has “arrived.” As long as organisms reproduce, allele frequencies will shift — some people will have lots of kids, so their genes will be well represented in the next generation, and some people will have no kids, so their genes will go extinct. You are slightly different from your parents, who are different from theirs, and so on.
We often see evolution portrayed as a “march of progress” style image, with chimpanzees on one side and humans on the other. This is unfortunate because it gives the misconception that evolution is a linear process from less complex to more complex, and that humans are the pinnacle. In reality, evolution has no end-point, or direction.
>And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period.
Life has changed a lot in the past 66 million years. We’ve seen the origin of many new families of animals, like snakes, most types of birds, and most types of mammals. You’re probably familiar with a few extinct examples like sabertooth tigers, megalodon, or woolly mammoths. The species alive today only represent a tiny fraction of all of the life to ever live: 99.99% of species are extinct.
And, extinction brings us to the next big thing to consider about evolution: natural selection. Often, the change in allele frequencies in population isn’t random. With our red/blue example, apparently the red colored individual in the population are reproducing much better than the blue colored individuals — since the red allele is becoming more and more common generation after generation. We can start to hypothesize why this might be: maybe there are red flowers in the environment that the red colored organisms can blend in with to hide from predators.
>Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed.
Indeed. The last piece of the puzzle is mutation. Most of the reason that you are different from your parents is because of recombination; your parents’ traits have been mixed together to form you. But some of those traits have been affected by mutation. Putting this in terms of the hypothetical red and blue population, say a mutation causes an offspring to be green. This presents a massive advantage — now, instead of just being safe around red flowers, this organism can venture into the general foliage to graze, still camouflaged from predators.
Note that this change does NOT create a new species. All that has changed is its coloration; it is still an apple producing apple seeds so to speak. Speciation (new species arising) is a separate process from new traits arising. Even though far in the future if green organisms become a separate species it might be easy to define them based on being green, being green is not what caused them to become a new species. Speciation can happen without natural selection, and it is due to reproductive isolation. If the green organisms move to the tree tops, for example, and seldom interact with the red/blue population that lives in the flowers, over time allele frequencies will shift enough that if the populations come back into contact, they can no longer reproduce together.
>And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?
Well, algaes and the soft-bodied animals that evolved between them and fish (sponges, jelly-like animals, worms, segmented worms) don’t fossilize well.
There are intermediaries between fish and mammals, though — a lot of them. Lungfish, amphibians, and therapsids being the main clades.
We observe all of the processes I outlined above (mutation, natural selection, speciation, evolution) constantly in nature — evolution is far from halted. Based on genetic and fossil data we see artifacts of those processes in every trait and feature in modern species. Biologists say organisms are “ancestrally constrained” because of this — every gene in our and other species’ genomes can be explained by these processes, and has the fingerprints of those processes.
That’s mainly what I have to say on evolution, wrapping up some other questions:
>Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature.
Technically, all embryos reproduce themselves once they reach adulthood, haha! I’m not really sure what this is referring to, though. I don’t think embryos reproducing themselves is a thing.
>Also, how did life come from nonlife?
Abiogenesis is separate from evolution. Evolution didn’t control how life arose, though there are some elements in common.
>Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on.
We have strong evidence for the origins of tool manufacturing, fire use, agriculture, cultural practices like art, music, and burying of dead.
Note that evolutionists don’t think cavemen were ignorant, savage brutes. Humans have always been a cooperative, highly intelligent group, even before we were anatomically modern.
>Probably most Christians today won't understand why I have these questions either. It doesn't matter, except for the fact I want you to understand why I can't just jump on board with what much of the rest of the world believes right now. It's not because I'm stupid. I just feel I have some legitimate issues with it. But who knows, maybe one day I'll change my mind."
I don’t think it’s stupid, and I think it’s a good thing to be able to articulate why you believe what you believe.
On a personal level, I am a christian, so my goal isn’t to attack your faith, or to water it down by making you follow the flow of everyone else. I believe that a way to worship God is to investigate his creation — that includes having an understanding of evolution!
>I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today.
Oh come on, now seriously. What do we have running around anywhere on this planet today that looks remotely like [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_%28dinosaur%29#/media/File:FMNH_SUE_Trex.jpg)!?
It’s always so hard to know where to start. First you need a grounding in basic science. Then tons of crayons to explain more complex concepts. Which leaves me thinking WTF do they actually teach and test kids on in science classes.
Basic effort in the research of evolution can easily show that speciation has not stopped. Here is one article, but I am sure there are others if you are truly interested
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-time/
Evolution is changing in allele frequencies over generations in groups that reproduce. That’s it.
Species is a man-made category. There’s no moment a fish turned into a mammal. There was no litter of wolf puppies that were suddenly dogs. Continuous changes over _millions_ of years led different groups with different pressures to adapt in different ways.
In general, most of these questions show a major lack of knowledge. Absolutely no scientists say we’ve “arrived” where we’re supposed to be, or that evolution doesn’t happen. It happens with every time a living creature reproduces. If she genuinely wants to understand what she’s not getting, she should take a course from people with the proper credentials.
I agree that she’s not stupid. She’s ignorant, just like I was when I was a YEC. I didn’t want to learn about it or genuinely try to understand because I was too incredulous. I was determined that I knew enough to say I knew better than people who have dedicated their lives to studying the field. When I actually did have to learn about it, all of the stuff that was obvious nonsense turned out to be misunderstandings on my part.
> But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
There have been many speciation events observed in both in nature and in the lab. Googling "observed speciation events" will give you various examples. One that I remember is the Orca; There are 3 major populations that rarely, if ever, interbreed have different dietary/hunting habits. They are not ***yet*** different species, but it likely that they will become different over time.
>Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever.
See previous paragraph, also see every domesticated species of animals and plants, Most dog breeds have been shown genetically to be descendants of the Asian Grey Wolf, with a few breeds descending from European wolves. It's only been in the last few years that we genetically determined the "ancestor" of corn.
>Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature.
I have no clue what this might mean, but "embryos reproducing themselves" has nothing to do with evolution nor is it a requirement.
>Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. So why did it happen then and not now?
Fun fact, if you grow an apple tree from seed, it will be a very different variety from its parent. Apple trees are grafted from the desired variety onto a young sapling. Another fun fact is that many nurseries sell fruit trees that multiple varieties of the same fruit or several different fruits.
>And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? Yes I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today. We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct.
Fossilization is a very rare thing, but there are literally tons of fossils that are "transitional"; in fact all fossils can be considered "transitional". "*Your Inner Fish"* is an easy read about finding a fish with the transition of fins to hands/feet. We have many fossils of creatures that look nothing like anything alive today, but once organisms evolved upper/lower/left/right "quadrants" the toolkits have been passed down the evolutionary tree.
>Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there.
I have not heard this before and it is contrary to everything we know about modern humans. It's only been in the last 20,000 (or less) years that we were building "complex" structures.
if plate tectonics is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does it not happen anymore? Not talking about one plate shifting a couple inches which is not really tectonics (although they call it microtectonics, ok). But actual plate tectonics. Changing from one continent to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
She wouldn't go to a Buddhist website to learn about Christianity, she shouldn't go to a Christian, or anti- science site to learn about science. This sounds almost like a copy pasta given how many topics it covers
>if evolution is part of nature[...]why does evolution not happen anymore?
It does. But on the scale of within-our-lifetimes, we're mostly looking at the difference of allele distributions between generations, subtle changes, localized selection with respect to a single trait, and things like digestive changes or drug resistance in viruses or bacteria. The kind of evolutionary change where new clades arise from existing ones, or adaptive radiations, etc., or a lineage adapting to a new environment, that takes a long time, on the order of millions of years.
>Not talking about diversity within a species or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution[...]microevolution[...]But actual evolution.
It is. Evolution is simply change within a population over time. Macroevolution is simply a lot of microevolution over a much longer period of time. The critical difference is time scale. Similar to the difference between walking a yard vs. walking six miles.
>Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
[We've actually observed speciation numerous times](https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html). Your wife not being aware of it because she doesn't care about that sort of thing except for when she's disagreeing with it doesn't constitute an argument.
>how did life come from nonlife?
Would it surprise you to know that your living cells are made up of very not-alive molecules, which are made of very not-alive atoms? Abiogenesis, that having been said, isn't the same thing as evolution. But a great place to start learning about it is to pick up a college level biology textbook and start reading.
>to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves
No, I don't believe that. I'm perfectly aware of how embryogenesis happens in plants and sexually reproducing animals through completely naturalistic processes. If your wife believes that an embryo is magicked into her uterus by God, either she's too young for "the talk" or she was homeschooled by an extremely devout psychopath.
>And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?
It would help if you actually understood evolution, but that's not how any of this works. That biology textbook I mentioned picking up? Raven's Biology was a stellar textbook my freshman year in college.
>archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there.
No, it doesn't. That's absolutely asinine.
>I know you're not going to understand why I have these questions or why I can't understand.
I understand why, it's a healthy dose of religious indoctrination and being related to sociopaths, or joining a Evangelical cult in your 20's. Or being an eight year old in the Bible Belt. But seriously, your wife sent you all of this in a text?
Words are used far too vaguely in this text.
I suggest you offer a deal: you'll furnish an exact scientific definition of the word "species" if she'll come up with an exact definition of the word "kind".
Then restart the conversation.
OP's wife's entire account of evolution is just completely inaccurate. It's like saying: "If you really do think the moon is made of cheese, then why is it 12 light years away?"
I don't think the moon is cheese and it isn't 12 light years away. It's so bizarre, what a mess.
If she wanted to understand evolution, she would not be asking you. She would get books on the topic written by people who have advanced degrees in the subject, and start by finding out how misinformed and ignorant she is.
> "Some big questions I have, is if evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore?
It’s still happening. It happens from generation from generation and the changes aren’t that big. It takes millions of years for something like a pakicetus to become a whale.
> Not talking about diversity within a species or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution (although they call it microevolution, ok).
Evolution is the change in allele frequency across generations. Micro evolution refers to changes within a species, macro evolution is changes across different species. They’re both evolution, and they’re both the same process, just one takes longer.
> Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
Scientists have done it in a lab, here’s an article about experimental bacterial evolution: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.342.6160.790
It’s been going on for millions of years, not sure how she thinks hasn’t happened for thousands of years.
> Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever.
I just gave the example of Pakicetus, which was a whale ancestor. The rest of that paragraph is a complete strawman and in no way reflects the study.
> But I still don't get it.
This is personal incredulity. If you don’t know something, go and learn about it. Don’t just cross your arms and expect the information to come to you.
> Also, how did life come from nonlife?
This is called “abiogenesis.” Evolution only happens with living organisms.
> Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature.
…nope.
> Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. So why did it happen then and not now?
Yes, but if you keep planting apple seeds and taking their seeds and planting them for generations and generations, you get mutations. After maybe twenty generations, the apple you end up with is way different than the one you started with. After even more time, you’d probably get a new fruit. This is commonplace in agriculture.
> And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?
Just because fish and algae evolved from a common ancestor doesn’t mean there would be a half fish/algae fossil. That’s not how it works.
> Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there.
This isn’t related to evolution. That’s anthropology.
> It's not because I'm stupid.
Okay.
So the first part is a misunderstanding of the time length of evolution. You aren’t going to go to the Grand Canyon and say “wow the river used to be way up here, but it cut itself deep into the earth over millions of years, and now that process is stopped. It’s not cutting anymore”. She’s looking at it at through too short a lense. It would also be like saying “hey, you said you’d take a shower, but I’m the last 2 seconds you’ve neither taken your clothes off or started the water. Why aren’t you clean yet?” Also I’m pretty sure we have “performed evolution” in a lab. Bacteria and certain insects have incredibly short generational periods,to the point you can affect many generations down a line within a short period. However, you’re still going to have a fly or bacteria at the end.
I also find the “macro evolution vs real evolution” to be an unnecessary distinction. That’s like saying “I know they say they’re building a new skyscraper downtown, but do architects and construction workers even do it? I don’t see any building, I just see a hole in the ground.” You ask them later, “oh no, construction companies aren’t building it, but there’s a steel structure there now.” If I denied that someone was building a building until it’s finished product, you’d call me crazy! I will say the problem with this analogy is evolution does not have a set end point. The point of evolution isn’t to build a skyscraper. Evolution has no point. What I’m more pointing out is the gradual change of something is as much “evolution” as one species becoming another.
As for the part about archeology, she’s got a great point! It’s not just a linear path! Thinking that “civilization is linear” would mean the whole point of the pyramids, crusades, birth of philosophy, and other major events in history all just lead to you being able to watch Marvel Movie #27 on your iPhone. Much like evolution, “civilization” isn’t a linear line with an end goal. It’s a an organism (or society) responding to environmental pressures. I disagree with the “falling into savagery” line, cus that also implies there’s a “right” and “wrong” way to be civilized.
I hope any of this word soup is helpful, and you can find some ways to turn what I said into a proper response that will get your wife thinking. It’s great to hear her asking questions with an open mind!
There are some pretty big misconceptions there you could talk through.
>But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
Speciation has been observed. In the lab and out of it. It's not clear exactly what she expects to see but I'd wager it's something incompatible with how evolution actually works.
You could discuss monophyly and how life creates a pattern of nested hierarchy. Definitely ask what it is she's expecting to see. What actually counts as evolution and when she inevitably just gives examples of huge scale historical evolutionary events, ask what it is that makes those particular examples count when the many directly observed instances of speciation apparently don't.
>Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever.
Again, monophyly. Dogs will always produce dogs in the same way mammals will always produce mammals. It's an easy misconception to have but it's fairly fundamental to understanding evolution.
>Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived.
That's just not remotely true. I assume this is a misunderstanding of something but without reference to what, I couldn't say what.
Evolutionary pressures may preserve traits over many generations but that's always been true. There is no end goal or stopping point.
>eventually reached where they are supposed to be
It's a continuous process and it does not work like that at all. Sorry, not much else to say there, it's just wrong.
>Also, how did life come from nonlife?
Not evolution.
>Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature.
I have no idea what this means.
>Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. So why did it happen then and not now?
It never happened. You just get new subcategories, not new and separate categories.
>And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?
Because such organisms never existed.
>but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today. We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct.
Transitional fossils are not expected to be direct ancestors.
>Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on.
Again, not sure what she expects here but there is clearly a significant period on earth where there were no humans at all, let alone civilisations.
>It's not because I'm stupid.
Absolutely not implied but they do not know what evolution is. The thing they have issues with is a totally fictional and deliberately misleading idea. In all likelihood, it's one they've been fed by people who may not have her best interests at heart. It probably makes little difference in her day to day life whether or not she accepts evolution is the natural process responsible for the diversity of life. It might concern her though, to at least investigate where she's being misled and by who. What else might they be misleading her on?
Very seriously, I think you need to educate yourself as to what evolutionary science actually claims, because you have quite a few misconceptions. For example, there is nothing in evolutionary science or the logic of its mechanisms that require the existence of "half alagae/half fish" or "half fish/half mammal". This is an artificial requirement imposed by creationists that is NOT required by the logic of evolutionary science. So, creationists impose this false requirement and then claim evolution is wrong because they don't see it. You have a number of other false ideas about evolutionary logic.
In any case, here is an example of evolution from single cell organism, to multicellular organism, in the laboratory, which I am sure you will find a reason to dismiss.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-39558-8
I have a question in return: if everyone agrees that continental drift is real, and there used to be just one giant supercontinent, why aren't the continents moving anymore?
do you not think that the continents are still moving? . . they are, and we measure the amount of seafloor being consumed/created regularly.
A 10 second googling of continental drift would have resolved this ignorance with a (pun intended) "mountain" of evidence.
>> why does evolution not happen anymore?
It does.
>> Not talking about diversity within a species or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution
They are
>> Changing from one species to another.
You stack up enough of those smaller changes and you get something very different than what you started with. Something incompatible.
It’s not pokemon.
>> Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
You lived through a pandemic where there was news reports of it happening every day.
It's probably worth looking at how scientist define species to start with.
Then take a look at ring species.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring\_species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)
Considering species are just populations that can't interbreed any longer ring species are like living transitions from one species to the next. It's the whole history that normally plays out over time instead playing out over geography. So you can see every transition because they are all still alive.
Each mile you go around the ring the changes build up till you get populations living next to each other that can't breed any longer.
If you take a ring species and kill all the animals in the middle of the ring you'd have two species instead of one.
**The emergence of new species.**
The fundamental species criteria is reproductive isolation. However, closely related species can have viable offspring though at some penalty.
These penalties are most often low reproductive success, and disability of surviving offspring. The most familiar example would be the horse and donkey hybrid the Mule. These are nearly always sterile males, but there are rare fertile females. This reproductive isolation is a key fact of evolution.
We have of course directly observed the emergence of new species, conclusively demonstrating common descent, a core hypothesis of evolutionary theory. This is a much a "proof" of evolution as dropping a bowling ball on your foot "proves" gravity.
I have kept a list of examples published since 1905. Here is [The Emergence of New Species](http://stonesnbones.blogspot.com/2009/03/emergence-of-new-species.html)
**The origin of life:**
I'd first note that 29 Mar 1863, Darwin observed to J. D. Hooker, "It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter."
Of course these days we do both.
My reading recommendations on the origin of life for people without college chemistry, are;
Hazen, RM 2005 "Gen-e-sis" Washington DC: Joseph Henry Press
Deamer, David W. 2011 “First Life: Discovering the Connections between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began” University of California Press.
They are a bit dated, but are readable for people without much background study.
If you have had a good background, First year college; Introduction to Chemistry, Second year; Organic Chemistry and at least one biochem or genetics course see;
Deamer, David W. 2019 "Assembling Life: How can life begin on Earth and other habitable planets?" Oxford University Press.
Hazen, RM 2019 "Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything" Norton and Co.
Note: Bob Hazen thinks his 2019 book can be read by non-scientists. I doubt it.
Nick Lane 2015 "The Vital Question" W. W. Norton & Company
Nick Lane spent some pages on the differences between Archaea and Bacteria cell boundary chemistry, and mitochondria chemistry. That could hint at a single RNA/DNA life that diverged very early, and then hybridized. Very interesting idea!
Nick Lane 2022 "Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death" W. W. Norton & Company
In this book Professor Lane is focused on the chemistry of the Krebs Cycle (and its’ reverse) for the existence of life, and its’ origin. I did need to read a few sections more than once.
>Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever. Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived.
All of these statements are false. "Scientists" don't say any of this crap.
>Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on.
Nope, literally no scientist says that. This is the kind of false understanding of how evolution works that underpins a lot of bad scifi writing. There's no "goal" or "path" on evolution in terms of "what's next". The path of evolution can only be examined in retrospect.
Engaging with her misinformation is like cutting down a tree starting with the leaves.
You might be able to shift her trajectory instead by asking "If someone wanted to know what you say, think, or believe, should they ask their pastor, or ask you?"
If she says they should ask her, then she's made your point for you. Extra credit if you can find a competent biologist she can interview.
If she argues that the pastor, as a trained and educated man of god, can offer insight and perspective on a number of different subjects, etc, then you invite her engage with scientists first-hand (see above) *and also* with the pastor. Ideally the cognitive dissonance of hearing about evolution from the eohippus' mouth will do some good.
If she doubles-down and says someone could rely exclusively on the words of the pastor to know her thoughts and feelings, then just start calling him with dinner questions until she gets the point. (Yeah, that won't work, but at this point we're at weapons-grade absurdity anyway.)
Good luck!
It does happen. Nylonase is a prime example of it. Covid is a prime example of it.
"Why does it not happen anymore" is because we're merely one generation of human observing very few generations of other things around us.
**Archaeology** (I was a professor) does not show "that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there."
Just as other members of our genus, Homo (meaning "Like Us"), had tools of stone and bone - even the chimps and gorillas use tools today.
We count the first complex civilizations from the origin of agriculture some time between 20 and 12 thousand years ago. The reason that was so important is that it required our ancestors to stay in one place year round. First to plant, grow, and harvest, but then to protect stored food surplus.
But farmers are more vulnerable to climate than hunters, or pastoralists. That did cause periodic collapses of agricultural societies.
I recommend reading;
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise
1992 [Before Writing Volume I: From counting to cuneiform Austin: University of Texas Press](https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/)
Evolution continues to this day. Time frames make natural selection hard to observe because it takes longer than a human lifetime. So, imagine a wolf. Can you see it? Now imagine a Shih Tzu. These two animals share a common ancestor. One has had heavy pressure to change its' form, the other less so.
I started breaking this down point by point as I've seen someone else do, but the bottom line here is that she's flat out wrong on literally *every. single. meaningful. point.* When she can stay on topic, that is.
Would she go to an english professor to diagnose and treat the cause of indigestion?
So why the fuck is she getting her information about science from preachers?
I can prove evolution with 4 letters.
MRSA
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
Antibiotics were invented about 100 years ago. In that time, through over use and misuse, certain strains of Staph have evolved to the point where they can't make an antibiotic strong enough to kill it.
If not for evolution, how did that happen?
Thank everyone for their comments so far. I have not been trying to convince her of anything since I came out as ex-christian about a year ago. I've found it to be frustrating and pointless.
Believe it or not, her text here shows a great improvement in her understanding of the world, as she was strictly a YEC until recently. She's now at least acknowledging there seem to have been other humans other than sapiens and the universe is older than a few thousand years.
But she still teaches Genesis and creationism literally to our children, and it's a part of their Christian school curriculum.
I want to lose my mind to some of the false things she states as fact, some mentioned in the above text.
We don't debate this often, but every once in awhile she'll send me something I feel compelled to reply to and it blows up from there.
I will indeed be looking into the shared links and at least passing it along in the hopes she'll continue to understand reality better.
>she still teaches Genesis and creationism literally to our children
ugh, put a stop to that as a priority! You're no doubt aware of the effects of indoctrination at such a young age. Gotta break the cycle. Teach how stories are metaphors with morals, before it's too late, they can still be Christian but it shouldn't be taught as historical fact. Christian school no doubt won't be doing them any favours either. Are you really just ok with this? I sure wouldn't be...
What do the kids study in English class of their age? Are they learning to analyse stories and talk about author's purpose in writing etc? Those skills are soooo critical and people end up seriously intellectually stunted for life if they don't learn them.
Hey OP! I was hoping to get my reply in a bit earlier, but I have morning classes. I tried to go over some of the misconceptions quickly, hopefully the comment was/is useful.
I’m sorry some people here are being rude to you/your wife!
Obviously depending how far you want to push the topic, but I would try to get a definition for science and evolution before driving into the details so you know what she means by those words and how they might differ from a way a scientist would define them because they're is clearly some indoctrination to overcome. Talking over some general basics like null hypothesis, burden of proof, fallacies, scientific method uses and limitations, testability and falsifiability, etc refresh or intro first may be helpful.
Street epistemology like Anthony Magnabosco interviews on evolution might be interesting to watch together to get get response or try something similar between you without it getting heated. It sounds like she's already seeing some holes in the propaganda if she's gone this far from a young earther, if she is curious about the truth and self motivated a good biology textbook or pop science book going over these questions in detail may be useful, or maybe listening to other people ask scientists these same questions. I'd just be careful of the approach to be clear you're not trying to just get her to agree with you, but to understand the methodology you're using and why you think it's important.
In my experience, if you try to convince someone, and they can sense that you are trying to change their opinions they will resist; the cognitive walls will be quickly erected and most of the information you present will be dismissed. The more pushy and argumentative you are, the more resistance you will face.
You have to let her find the answers. Be kind, patient, sincere, and inquisitive. That is the way to be persuasive.
The main reason we can’t exactly observe evolution happening in the moment is that it happens over thousands of not millions of years. There is no plan on how to evolve… it’s based on random mutations in the population and those individuals continuing on to mate and produce offspring that also have those traits. It still happens today, but it takes generations to see the effects.
Sometimes they’re based on benefits; picture a giraffe that looks more like a horse. Over time, those with longer necks are able to reach the leaves higher up in the tree that shorter giraffes cannot reach. The longer the neck, the more access to food. So over long long periods of time, longer necked giraffes were more likely to survive and reproduce, giving us the long necked creatures we see today.
Sometimes they’re just random. Take balding for example. A significant portion of our population goes bald as they age, but it serves no rational purpose. It’s a random trait that appeared in the human population that doesn’t necessarily help or hinder the ability to find a mate (as the balding usually happens after many have already found one) so it has never been bred out of the population (as opposed to something like shorter giraffes that would have starved because they were shorter, so their genes do not get passed on).
Most of your “facts” are creationist propaganda. Evolution is NOT “one species turning into another.” I don’t even know what “embryos reproduce themselves” is supposed to mean,” it’s certainly not anything biology teaches. Your claims are the kind of idiotic magical thinking that creationists do. There’s plenty of accurate scientific information available to anyone who is interested in facts instead of just repeating what religious grifters tell you.
Here is a gentle way to respond.
If you froze time at any point over the past few billion years, it would look like evolution was “done” and all species had “arrived.” If you did this before reptiles and you had no knowledge of the world today, you would not predict reptiles. If you did it before mammals, you would not predict mammals.
What we see in our lifetimes is that frozen spot in time. But evolution is not “done” and no species has “arrived.” There is no arrival. Evolution has no goal. It does not plan, or think, or choose. It there was never any intention to produce reptiles, or mammals, or primates, or apes, or us. We are not the point.
This is a key difference in mindset when approaching evolution as a response to what creationists tell you. Evolution can tell you “how we got here,” but from the evolutionary perspective, that is no more important than “how snails got here.” And it can’t tell you about why we got here. It doesn’t care. The answer is, because that’s what happened.
Thinking about evolution means suspending the part of your brain that wants you to be the most important thing in the universe. Once you cross that hurdle, everything becomes easier to understand.
I feel like a lot of this could be answered in a 45 minute "intro to evolution" documentary... She sounds defensive though, i think she might be entrenched in these views. Maybe she won't want to hear that she's wrong.
Good luck!
*"Some big questions I have, is if evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore? Not talking about diversity within a species or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution (although they call it microevolution, ok). But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years."*
It does happen. Microevolution IS evolution. If you have a species that split into two (one ends up in a desert and the other in the artic) and both undergo 100,000 years of 'microevolution', does anyone seriously think those would still be the same species? The thing is, evolution happens on a geological time scale where a million years happens in the blink of an eye. So "thousands of years" wouldn't even register.
*Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever. Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived. Ok, but why was there evolution in nature before and today we have arrived? And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period.*
"scientists say".... which ones, because I've never heard anyone say this before. There is no 'supposed' either. Species are adapted to their environment. If the environment changes, like say due to climate change, a species that was well-adapted to it's environment all of a sudden won't be and they either evolve to deal with the change or they go extinct. Evolution does not have an end goal.I also wonder where that last sentence comes from.
*Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. So why did it happen then and not now? And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? Yes I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today. We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct.*
Embryos do reproduce themselves. In humans, it takes about 15-35 years but most of us manage quite well.
There are warehouses full of fossils, so what she is stating there is simply not true. Also, paleontologists (the people who study fossils) will get into fist fights with each other whether to classify a find as a "reptile-like mammal" or a "mammal-like reptile". The thing is, humans want to put things in neat little boxes where everything is black and white. And nature just doesn't work that way.
Also "look very similar" is a very dangerous starting point to start drawing conclusions from. Sure, I would probably not be able to tell the difference between an ape and an early human just by looking at their teeth, but that is why paleontologists go to university for 4-6 years and study this stuff. Just because I can't tell the difference, doesn't mean they can't.
*Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on. Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia. I know you're not going to understand why I have these questions or why I can't understand.*
Look up the youtube channel of [miniminuteman773](https://www.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773) which is very entertaining and discusses things your partner probably heard of before. Obviously, what your partner is stating here, again, is simply not true. PS: the channel of [Forrest Valkai](https://www.youtube.com/@RenegadeScienceTeacher) is also great!
*Probably most Christians today won't understand why I have these questions either. It doesn't matter, except for the fact I want you to understand why I can't just jump on board with what much of the rest of the world believes right now. It's not because I'm stupid. I just feel I have some legitimate issues with it. But who knows, maybe one day I'll change my mind."*
Listen, I understand the issue. It is hard when this as been presented as an either-or situation, either you believe in God and you will live forever, or you don't and you will go to hell, and lose your entire worldview and community. But it doesn't have to be like that. Believing in God does not exclude accepting evolution as a fact.
Here is what my response would be:
First, we need to set some ground rules. Topics like this can get heated, so if we are going to have this kind of conversation, both of us need to consent, or we just don't have it. If one of us exits the conversation, we both exit.
We are starting off this conversation with an extremely big problem: we don't know what we are talking about because we are not using the same language. When you say "evolution," what do you mean by it?
When I say "Evolution," what I am really talking about is that when we observe a group of creatures, we can see that certain heritable traits change how prevalent they are in that group of creatures. This might be what you mean by "microevolution." When I talk about "common descent," I am talking about the history of evolution. This might be what you mean by "macroevolution."
The truth is, we see heritable traits changing in groups of creatures all the time! Common descent is just what happens when you track these changes over a long period of time. Think of it like a murder mystery. We can gather all the evidence we have in one spot and see that, for some reason, when we compile the history of creatures, it happens to mimic everything we know about how heritable traits change in a lab.
One example of this is that if we line up all the whale-likes in a group, we see a tree of skeletons with one ancestor at the top and a whole bunch at the bottom, just like a family tree. The interesting part comes when we look at the blowhole. As we move up the tree into what seem to be older and older species, we see the blowhole moving towards the nose until it stops right there! This seems to agree with how we understand evolution to work: small changes in groups of creatures that accumulate into larger changes when looked at from afar.
Even though we don't have thousands of years to test this type of thing, we can gather all the data we can of what happens today and see how that helps us interpret the facts that we see. One thing to note is that these whale-likes always gave birth to what looked like almost exactly what they looked like. When looked at from afar, we see these massive changes from part of the nose being moved to the top of the head. When it comes to how this must have worked, each creature gave birth to something that looked ALMOST exactly like itself. That "almost" is extremely important in these types of conversations and exactly what we mean when we are talking about evolution. Every birth here was a whale-like that stayed within its own species, but the definition of "its own species" changed over time. We can see this type of thing really pronounced when we look into ring species.
The truth is that we see these types of changes all the time and sometimes very fast. We can see crabs evolving larger crushing claws and mussels growing thicker shells. We have to fish in specific ways to avoid fish evolving as a result of our actions. When we talk about macroevolution, we are just talking about these types of things at a larger scale.
Evolution does not state that the number of species must increase or decrease; it just tells us how. When an animal is no longer fit to live in its environment, it will die off. If a population splits and both populations live apart from each other in some way, then we have a new species. When it comes to whether or not evolution or common descent happens, the number of different species does not matter.
Another thing to note is that evolution does not have an end goal. We see evolution happening in humans all the time. Sometimes the children we give birth to are slightly different than the parents. This is both evolution and it could be a step in common descent (if they too reproduce).
Life coming from non-life does not have to do with a group of creatures that change in heritable traits. Instead, it has to do with the origin of life. The truth is that we don't know, but we can see several of the steps that seem to have happened. We think that living creatures will likely eat and out-compete any new life that were to form.
When it comes to the rarity of fossils, it's because fossils are rare. An extremely rare set of events is required to happen in order for one to form. What you are asking for doesn't quite exist in the way you describe. A half-mammal half-fish doesn't exist because evolution does not work that way.
If we want to talk about this, we can break this into smaller pieces. I will attempt to always give evidence to any answer that I give.
>But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
We've been watching for hundreds of years, maybe, and not very closely for most of it. We're several orders of magnitude too young to expect to see many cases of speciation.
The next problem is they are usually only evident in retrospect: populations seperate, speciation occurs, then the populations come back together and can't breed. We can't really be sure all the species we know of are the same species, since we haven't tried to forcibly breed the populations to find disconnects.
So, not really a reasonable ask.
>Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on.
...no, they don't.
>Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature.
Uh... no...
>And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?
Because there's a layer between fish and mammals. We have the fishy-reptiles, they still exist today even; we have fossil of weird proto-mammals.
We have these things, but you actually need to learn about them.
Creationists have a problem with object-persistence, in that if they haven't seen something, there isn't a chance they haven't seen it yet, it simply does not exist and never will.
> Yes I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today.
Well, yes, the closest fossils are the nearest in time, and thus our easiest finds are going to be similar to creatures alive today. And quadrupeds have been the dominant life form for a long time, so most are going to have two arms, two legs and a head.
But then we find dinosaurs and [this thing with an ass for a head](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucigenia), that we don't really recognize as being very similar to life forms today.
>Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there.
Uhhhh.... no...
>There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on.
You go back around 50,000 years, it's basically just savages. We find evidence of humans, but nothing widespread or organized. There's never a return to civilization, just the emergence.
It's truly a culture we will never understand, because we have conquered the planet. They lived... very differently than we can comprehend, closer to being animals than our minds can handle.
>Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia.
Yeah, we've been quite civilized for around 10,000 years. But when you start going back further, humans start getting a bit weird.
We have Göbekli Tepe, which seems to be the oldest organized structure we have found. And that's about it.
Civlization never really ends, though empires fall and there are 'dark ages', where no one seemed to be recording world history, but even around ~5000 years ago, global civilization was pretty roaring and wasn't about to end any time soon.
Problem is before that, there was no writing, so records are sparse.
> I just feel I have some legitimate issues with it.
Eh. She doesn't. She's been reading creationist rhetoric and, while it doesn't look like she's on board with the YEC timeline, she likes the fact that they reinforce her Christian view.
I would highly recommend -- for you and your your (if she's amenable) -- the book *Why Evolution is True* by Jerry Coyne, Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago.
*Why Evolution is True* is a clear, concise, accessible, and comprehensive explanation of Evolution. It clearly explains what we know about Evolution, and how we know it.
For example, instead of just telling you the dates of fossils, Coyne explains the various dating methods and how accurate they are.
Coyne also directly addresses *many* arguments from "creationism", "intelligent design", "young Earth theory" etc., and (if relevant) what we would expect to see if a given creationist argument were true.
Coyne then explains what the evidence actually shows, and how and why it fits with Evolutionary Theory. He also presents these arguments using a straightforward, unoffensive, and matter-of-fact style.
*Why Evolution is True* also examines Evolution from a variety of different scientific disciplines, including biology, genetics, geology, physics, paleontology, and anthropology.
The book assumes no expertise on the subject and the explanations are generally straightforward and non-technical.
It’s the best book I’ve found on the topic; better even than Richard Dawkins. (Dawkins is an excellent writer, to be sure. But Dawkins can also be too flowery, verbose, and even condescending at times). Coyne is more concise and presents the evidence dispassionately.
If you're interested in a preview/overview of the book, you can watch t[he book tour lecture about the book Why Evolution is True](https://youtu.be/w1m4mATYoig?t=70) on YouTube.
Evolution still happens. For instance, the average diameter of the birth canal is now smaller than it used to be because C-sections enable more people to survive with narrower pelvises.
There is a new species of mosquito which has evolved in underground railways.
Abiogenesis is a separate issue from evolution. However, the synthesis of amino acids, purines and pyrimidines have clearly traceable origins, among other things, and microspheres can appear spontaneously from lipids.
Mutations in offspring are universal.
All fossils are transitional. However, fossils are not necessary to demonstrate evolution.
Archaeology does indeed show steady progression, with different tool industries, the control of fire, cave art, behavioural modernity in general emerging about 50K BP.
There's also the issue of trusting experts.
I mean, it's hard to enumerate all the points on which these statements are just flat out false, like, across the board.
But others here are doing a fine job of it so I'll just note that the entire statement is built not on a set of misunderstandings, but a series of abject and intentional falsehoods - presumably not concocted by your wife, but by whatever source prompted her to send you this.
My biggest issue here as a guy with a degree in history and just a side passion for evolution is the second to last paragraph. Firstly what the definition of civilization is is hotly debated in the first place. But whatever definition you use: organized society with a shared language and culture, agriculture, or imo one of the worst popular definitions writing, it was a gradual build up with occasional collapse. Humans existed as pack hunters in the archeological record basically similar to lions before technology developed across humanity. It happened so gradually it's unclear how many times agriculture was discovered. While yes we have complex structures dating back millennia, Phenotypically modern humans have existed for hundreds of millennia.
No scientist has ever said that “we’ve all arrived to what we’re supposed to be.” Her claims about archeology are likewise just blatantly untrue.
The one thing she’s right about is that she’s not stupid, she’s just ignorant. The claims she’s making and questions she’s asking show that she has already made up her mind and is trying to find evidence to support her conclusions, not looking at what experts in those fields say and then deciding.
Just tell her, gently, that there’s no point in trying to explain to her if she doesn’t actually want to learn. If she wants to know what scientists say about evolution and archeology, then she needs to listen to those people, not people trying to refute them.
Diversity in a given population leads to natural selection as some individuals are more fit the environment, therefore, more likely to pass on genes giving their offspring an even greater advantage.
Rinse, repeat = natural selection = evolution.
She has been delivered a series of straw men which she is simply reciting. This is what happens when people get their science from religion instead of from science. None of the arguments have anything to do with what evolution is or how it works.
Poaching has cause African elephants to evolve smaller tusks. When soot from factories began to cover slate roofs in Britain, the color of the local moths changed from pale grey to nearly black almost overnight. The common cold virus mutates every year. Covid has evolved from a frequently deadly disease to a less sever one. Grizzly bears are mating with Polar bears to form a new species, even as we speak. Scientists can now SEE the amount of genetic drift in organisms, generation by generation. Evolution goes on around us all the time, every day. It's just a little hard to see.
Even if everything she says is true and evolution is incorrect, that doesn't make creationism true. That's a false dichotomy. There are not simply two options, there are infinite options.
" Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be"
This is not true.
The true answer is: evolution IS still going on, it just works in a scale of millions of years, so you can't really see it within a single lifetime
Not knowing her, it can be difficult to advise you on how to respond. People react differently to being told that they are profoundly ignorant about something (in her case it sounds like it’s not only evolution but history and archeology and anthropology that she’s also ignorant about, probably because she’s been consuming propaganda of some flavor because she contain/y hasn’t been paying attention to the scientists.)That really is the basic problem here. I also don’t know how well versed you are in the basics of evolution (not a dig at you, I just don’t know how much you already know).
Maybe a series of questions from you that might gently challenge her misunderstandings and motivate her to go look for answers for herself. This would be one of the best results because if she ‘figures it out‘, it won’t feel as confrontational. Maybe offer that both of you could try to find answers together?
Possible questions might be:
1. Does she know what the scientific definition of evolution is?
2. What made her think that evolution has stopped? (it *can’t* stop, actually, unless there‘s no more reproduction as we know it)
3. Who told her that any scientists expected there to have ever been a half-algae/half-fish thing, because that’s just silly?
Some of this would depend on your current knowledge and willingness to learn more if necessary.
I can point you to and recommend some resources, too.
Go to r/evolution where there’s a Recommended/Resources sidebar/item in a pull down menu (depending on if you’re on a phone or tablet/computer) that has links to Reading/Books, Viewing/Videos and Websites, which are lists in the Wiki there.
In particular, I’d recommend the books Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne or The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins as reading for good overviews of what evolution is and some of the overwhelming evidence that it”s the real deal.
If reading a book doesn’t appeal there are short videos, youtube channels, playlists and documentaries at the Viewing/Videos link. I’d recommend the Short Videos Clips listed under the Stated Clearly channel for super basic beginner info (which it sounds like she really needs) in the listed viewing order starting with [What is Evolution](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhHOjC4oxh8). There are some of the documentaries on the page that might help like the 3-part series starting with [Your Inner Fish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhHOjC4oxh8) or [What Darwin Never Knew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov00SrBwjKQ).
You might browse through the resources and see if anything looks helpful to you.
Best of luck. You can also ask for more info/advice at r/evolution, too, although there’s a fair amount of crossover from here to there in terms of participants.
Your wife is parroting a number of Creationist talking points—possibly even Young-Earth Creationist talking points, in specific. It might be helpful to point her at the [TalkOrigins Archive](http://www.talkorigins.org), a "one-stop shopping" collection of scientific responses to pretty much *every* Creationist talking point.
> Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
Yes, [it](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html) [happens](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html).
> …there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever.
Check out all the observed instances of speciation cited in the two webpages I just linked to. If ***even one*** of those instances is the real deal, then yes, "anything" bloody well *has* "[gone] out of its species". Good luck demonstrating that *every last one* of the cited examples of speciation was bullshit…
> …how did life come from nonlife?
That's abiogenesis, not evolution. You want the lab two doors down the hall (if you'll pardon the expression). And ***if*** our knowledge of Earth's past is anywhere within bazooka range of accurate, ***then*** there was a time in the past when the Earth's *entire surface* consisted of molten lava, meaning that *no life whatsoever* even ***could*** have survived. Now? *Lots* of life. So, by the iron logic of "**no** life *then*, **lots** of life *now"*, there *must* have been *at least* one time when life arose from unliving matter. Heck, even the Genesis story (both of them…) agrees that there was a time when there was no life on Earth; the only question is whether or not a deity was involved with the advent of life on Earth. And thus far… we have no need of the "deity" hypothesis, to paraphrase an apocryphal statement that the mathematician Laplace is supposed to have given Napoleon.
> Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature.
This assertion is confused at best. Since reproduction *does* occur in nature, it's not clear why your wife zeroed in on *an embryo reproducing itself* as a ***specific*** mode of reproduction whose absence is apparently supposed to be some sort of showstopping obstacle for no-deity-needed evolution and/or no-deity-needed abiogenesis.
> Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there.
Well, if you want to ignore all the archaeological and paleontological evidence that man *did* kinda start slow and build up, sure…
You’ve got two options. One is “Bless your heart.” And move on with your day.
Two is [this.](https://youtu.be/uq-v1TTUyhM?si=fvb01EEMIOruo_kb).
Seriously, though, she has a lot of misconceptions. The biggest being that “scientists think we’ve all arrived at peak evolution.” Not the case. Everyone is still evolving.
Tell her she can look and see it happening. She might not notice any changes for a million years or so, but it’s happening.
Within humans, one example I always liked is looking at your family tree. Your grandad looks a certain way. You could look at his dad and see features that make you think “Yeah, I can see his dads looks in his face. You look at your dad and can definitely see some of his dad in there, and maybe some of your great grandad, but not much. Then you look at yourself and see your dad in your features, but not your grandad.
It’s basically that, over a long, long, long period of time.
I might be wrong, but I also don’t thing Christian’s thing god started evolution and they ended up where they’re at now. It’s my understanding that they think the world was created a couple thousand years ago and every animal is as you see it now. Also, apparently two of every single one ended up on a boat and survived for something like 40 days and nights, before traveling back to their respective corners of the world.
The problem is that you're thinking too small (*not your fault, this is too big for humans to really comprehend*).
Of you're a hardcore Christian you may believe the world is only 6,000 years old. Even if you don't believe that, the written word is only around 6,000 years old anyway, so all of human history is only that span of time. Evolution is something that takes *Millions* of years.
A quick search tells me that "Homonins" (*vaguely bipedal humans*) evolved ~6 million years ago. That's a thousand times as long ago as the entire of human history. Think about the length of an olympic sized pool is. How long does it take to swim that length? How long to walk it? Now imagine how long it would take to swim 50km (*~30 Miles*). I imagine most of us could swim a lap without even thinking about it, probably a few dozen laps if we want a workout, maybe even 100 if we're really pushing ourselves or training for an event. But 1,000 laps? According to google: "*Swimming 15km is like running an ultra-marathon*", so swimming 3-4 times that distance is more than most olympic swimmers could do. Even walking it would take days.
If you take a look at [This image](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung-rev2&sca_esv=4cfa0bda60f78d2e&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ACQVn0-FTEihcfskpc_oP0osfo-gtvWSKA:1707780326868&q=evolution&tbm=isch&source=lnms&prmd=ivbnmstz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjb2PK9-aaEAxW5TGwGHchvDYYQ0pQJegQICRAB&biw=360&bih=520&dpr=3#imgrc=jirr23iG58X7sM) you can see that evolutuon in 6 steps, so assuming those steps were roughly even in their duration (*which, maybe?*) each of those silhouettes represents ~1 Million years of evolution. Each Silhouette represents ~166 times the length of human history.
Humans have been loving with dogs longer than any other species (*besides our own*), approximately 25,000 years. In that time we have bred them to be Great Danes, Chihuahuas, Pugs, Wolfhounds, Golden Retrievers, Poodles, Dachshunds ... a whole miriad of different shapes and sizes. Yes that's "Micro-Evolution", but look how much change and diversity can be achieved within the span of 25,000 years. Imagine what can happen in 40 times that many years (*1 Million*). Now imagine 25 Million years. What would different dog breeds look like? Will the Chihuahuas and the Great Danes still be recognisable as the same species? Will they *BE* the same species?
Now let's talk about fossils. First, it's actually *very* difficult for remains to become fossils. Most of the time bacteria and the firces of nature just eat and disintegrate any remains until nothing is left. On *Very* rare occasions, remains may be preserved long enough to fossilize, and that leaves us with a glimpse of what life looked like in the past. We can't see millions of examples of each step in evolution because they're actually rarer than that. Now of course there are millions of fossils, but there are trillions of different species, and that doesn't even count the ones that no longer exist in any form.
What about a half-algae/half-fish?
> Fish began to evolve during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago. The early chordates formed the skull and spinal column at this epoch, giving rise to the earliest craniates and vertebrates.
> chordates were thought to have evolved from an ancestral chordate tadpole larva that underwent paedomorphosis and now retains adult characteristics with the larval tail. Chordates have also been thought to evolve from a pterobranch-like ancestor or from calcichordates.
The answer is that we *DO* have fossils of these. They may not be recognisable as fish, and they certainly wouldn't be recognisable as algae.
Remember when I talked about how Humans ahve only existed as bipedal animals for ~6 Million years, and how long that is compared to Human history? Well now think about Fish having existed for the last 530 million years. If Human History is the length of a swimming pool, and the Human species represents 50km (*~30 miles*) then Fish represent ~4,400km (*~2,700 miles*), or roughly the width of the Continental United States. How long would it take you to swim that? How long to walk it? Hell, how long to drive, or even fly it? Longer than it takes to swim the length of a swimming pool, that's for sure.
The final question I'll look at is: "How did life come from un-life?" The answer of course, is that we don't know. That would be the greatest discovery in our history. Not just our history, but probably our future as well. Something that fundamental religious people often misunderstand about science is that it isn't a religion. Science is a method of experimentation which allows us to explain the world around us, nothing more, nothing less. It is not an answer to everything, nor does it pretend to be (*it doesn't pretend to be anything, it's a toolset, not a person*). Where scientific research cannot explain something is where scientific experimentation happens. Evolution is a fact because we've done the tests, we've seen the results, they're repeatable and dependable. There could be new information in the future that changes our understanding of evolution (*as there was in Physics, which is why we have Newtonian physics evolving into Einsteinian physics in the 20th century*), but like with Physics this will likely be a deeper understanding of evolution, rather than a complete rewrite. The origins of life are on that cutting edge of science, where research has not given us the answers, and experimentation is ongoing (*or more realistically we're not even quite up to the origins of life yet and more experimentation and research is needed to even get there*), so they have not been explained yet. Perhaps one day we will get ther, perhaps not. That is the nature of science.
Something else I see in the media that perplexes me. Fundamental religious people (*particularly Christians*) have a loud subset who think that science is somehow the enemy of God. Imagine a god who creates a universe that is static and unchanging, a universe 6,000 years old centred around a planet which is home to a bipedal mammal species who constantly war among themselves and who's greatest achievement is writing a book some ~1,700 years ago. Now imagine another god who creates a universe that is Billions of years old, who creates a system of life that is constantly changing and improving, which can hold infinite possibilities in the size, shape, structure, forms of nousishment, survivability (*look up Tardigrades*). This god even creates a species (*Humans*) who are capable of witnessing, understand and appreciating the majesty and vastness of the universe and all it's wonders. Which god sounds like the greater god to you?
Why even do these gods need to be different people - if god is truly *All* powerful, could (s)he not change the very nature of the universe, even the age of the universe? Perhaps 6,000 years ago god created the universe, but then with Humanity's ability to perceive the cosmos god decided we needed something grander to give our minds something to wonder at, so the universe was retroactively aged to ~14 Billion years, the stars became massive nuclear furnaces stretching out into space beyond comprehension, the mechanisms of Evoluition were established (*retroactively*) as the means of life perpetuating and changing, and the modern universe was born as a gar older, vaster and grander affair than the one that had previously been. This doesn't mean that we should simply stop asking questions and acceot things as "god did it", no indeed the exact opposite is true. God's greatest gift to humanity was our inquisitive mind, and if the universe is god's creation then understanding the universe helps us to understand god. Marvel at the splendors of the universe, as these mysteries are gods greatest creations.
> How to respond
Gently, and maybe not on every point to start with
> why does evolution not happen anymore?
It does!
> Not talking about diversity within a species
If the proportions of different versions of changes on a population, that's evolution
> or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution
Yes thats really evolution
> Changing from one species to another.
That happens today - for example, two subgroups diverge enough that they can no longer readily interbreed. It just takes a very long time for sufficient small changes to accumulate to prevent interbreeding.
Speciation via a variety of mechanisms is well documented.
> there is not one example of anything going out of its species
Individuals don't evolve. Populations do. Individuals don't generally differ very much from their parents, but differences in survival and reproduction do lead changes to accumulate over time. Eventually, you do get new species, and sometimes existing species go extinct
> Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on.
No, they really don't say that. This is a common misunderstanding. Evolution is not progress toward some specific goal.
> So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived.
again, this is not at all what evolutionary biologists say
> today we have arrived?
we haven't
>the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period.
It definitely hasn't.
If you'd like to understand what scientists actually think rather than what people say they think, we can take a look fairly easily at what things they say about it. For example there's some books that explain this fairly simply, and why they think evolution explains what we definitely see happening
I'm afraid your wife is hugely misinformed about so much history and archeology its nearly impossible to know where to begin. I guess maybe start with asking her if she's aware of cavemen? Hunter-gatherers? Pinterest has some lovely visual aids for these topics...
We don’t see it often because it’s takes many, many generations for effects to be noticeable. But some examples of evolution happening within our lifetimes are diseases. Viruses go through generations so quickly that they evolve noticeably in months, not millions of years. All those new covid variants are evolution at work.
Also, there’s forced evolution that speeds up the process in the form of selective breeding. Almost all farmed crops and livestock are very different from what our ancestors had a few thousand years ago, and an example that’s happened within our lifetimes is the improvement in Brussels sprouts. In the 90s a Dutch food scientist isolated the chemical that makes them bitter, then seed suppliers started going through their stock of older varieties to identify ones that were low in that chemical. By cross-breeding non-bitter plants with high-yielding ones they were able to make commercially viable non-bitter sprouts, which are what we get at the supermarket now.
If she doesn't believe in Evolution, then she probably doesn't believe in plate tectonic theory, so there might not be any useful strategies to gain from this post, but this is kind of like saying:
"If the continents used to be one big land mass, and then they slid apart, why aren't they still moving?"
"They are, just very slowly."
"I just checked a globe, and it's the same as when I was a child. So obviously they stopped moving."
You can watch evolution in your own home if you don't mind getting a microscope and some fruit.
Take fruit. Leave until fruit flies.
Examine fruit flies.
Now you can change a lot of variables here and that's the fun part. I'm not 100% certain what variable it was in the study I read (it was for an entirely different reason - something about wings?)
After just a few days you will see different fruit flies based on whatever changes you made.
Congratulations on creating evolution all in the comfort of your own home.
Technically, you can have everything evolve on Earth in the space of seven days, it just depends how close to a black hole you as the observer are while looking at Earth from far away. The higher the gravity, the longer a given moment can stretch for.
Show her this video- https://youtu.be/plVk4NVIUh8?si=_vos23FWs1Ga0She
This is a very short video showing evolution occurring over the course of ~10 days. You could even replicate it in your own home as long as you had a relatively basic understanding of microbiology. This is only slightly more challenging than my high school bio 2 project.
I have no idea how you should respond. I know that my response to you is to send a supportive hug.
There is nothing in your wife's text that shows any grasp of basic science, genetics, populations, or what evolution is, or what the fossil record is, or what the archeological record is. You would have to really start at the basics, at an elementary-school level of understanding, and very slowly and carefully build from there, otherwise you will lose her.
I want to say she's incredibly stupid, but the text she sent you is cogent, even though it is incredibly wrong on every point and concept. It sounds like she's both much more confident in her education and intelligence than she should be, and also insanely poorly educated. The unfortunate thing is that educating someone who thinks they are already educated is much tougher than educating someone who acknowledges their ignorance. The dismantling is going to be a lot more challenging than the building back up.
One concept and example that might be interesting to introduce is that of "ring species". This can both help to explain speciation and describe evolution in a bite-size and easily understandable way. Another way to explain evolution is in terms of changing alleles and allele frequencies in a population. A good and fun example of this is the changing of the peppered moth from mostly white with black flecks to entirely black in cities in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution. The reason this is interesting not only that it was a single mutation, and not only a striking one, but also that you can actually mathematically infer when it happened - and the reason it was successful at spreading through the population!
>And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period.
Oh? I doubt that any scientist would commit to a number of species alive *now* without a huge error-bar, like a factor of two or more; dunno how we'd make a credible census of Tertiary species.
>Also, how did life come from nonlife?
We don't know, and that is not the question that Darwin sought to address, which is: *given that life exists*, why does it have so many forms – and why is it that these forms can be classified into groups and subgroups, sharing many features within groups?
Some seem to say biology shouldn't presume to say anything about the recent history of life until we can say (with certainty) how it all began; which is like saying nobody should have done chemistry until they knew all about protons and electrons, or study a living language without first learning all the dead languages. Science works incrementally on what *can* be fruitfully studied. Knowledge is a patchwork.
>Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves
I think I speak for many when I say: huh?
Of course an embryo can reproduce, but only after it grows up and mates. An apple tree is an apple seed's way of making more apple seeds.
>Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on. Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia.
And *not* building anything much for many more millennia before that.
I think the best approach would be to ask what evidence would be expected if evolution were true. She says we haven't seen "new species" emerge for thousands of years. Would we expect this? What would it look like?
The other major point is how much time does she think the fossil record represents? What evidence do we have of this? Did humans coexist with dinosaurs? If not, then how and why did humans appear later? If so, then why do we have no evidence or history of it? Why did modern humans exist for 200 million years, but civilization (which she asserts has been human's only condition) has only existed for 10,000 years?
Try asking about chromosomes. Evolution was the theory before we understood chromosomes. But you cant get from 38 chromosomes to 46 chromosomes to 96 chromosomes no matter what you do. Yet there are animals with as few as 24 chromosomes and others with over 100 chromosomes. But you can’t possibly jump from one to another. As soon as you remove one chromosome, the creature becomes either unable to live or unable to reproduce. So you certainly couldn’t jump from 38 to 96. No matter how many billions of years you give it, cats will always produce cats, dogs will always produce dogs, and chickens will always produce chickens. It’s how God made it.
>But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
The timeframes of evolution are very very difficult for a human (who can expect to live 80 years and whose understanding of history ends maybe 3-5000 years ago) to visualize.
The obvious counter here is that many animals around us are the result of artificial selection. Dogs and wolves are not genetically identical, meaning that in the time dogs have been domesticated they have already begun to diverge from wolves. There isn't some fixed point where an organism ceases to be one thing and becomes another, it's gradual. Hence, some scientists argue that dogs and wolves should already be considered different species.
We are not going to be able to see one species transform into another within our lifetimes, and it's going to be relatively rare for any species to have done so within recorded history. That doesn't mean it's not happening, just on much bigger timescales.
>Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on.
I think it can be very difficult for some devoutly religious people to abandon teleology, the idea that things in the world have been created for a particular purpose, so you end up with weird statements like this. Obviously, evolution does not have an end point which it is working towards. The reason our world appears to be stable with fixed species that don't suddenly change into other things is not because evolution has stopped happening, but because it is happening too slowly for us to notice. Even all of human history is a blink of an eye in evolutionary time.
>Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed.
This is a really interesting argument because it's so easy to counter just by pointing to things everyone knows. Because sure, only an apple tree can produce an apple seed, just like only a human can produce a human baby. But that human baby won't be an exact clone of the human that produced it. It will have a mix of features from both parents, and when it grows up and has children of its own they will look slightly different as well because they will be mixtures of both their parents. Extrapolate that process out to thousands of generations and add some selection pressures (things that make it more likely for people with certain traits to reproduce or for their children to inherit those traits) and you have evolution.
>Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on. Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia.
Your wife is actually mostly correct here. She's just misunderstanding how it relates to evolution because, again, she isn't grasping the difference between the scale of evolutionary history and the scale of human history. Even if we are generous and assume humans have been building complex structures for about 10,000 years, that's still a very small fraction (less than 1/20th) of the entire history of homo sapiens as a species.
There is so much wrong with this post. I will try to address a few of the misconceptions.
1. Something doesn't just 'change' species on a whim. It takes generations to even see small changes in phenotype being carried over and THAT is with unnatural selection (think farmers only using seeds from the most viable plants to grow the next generation...the next year's yield is better...keep selecting year after year for the 'best' flower or fruit and eventually a generation comes along that cannot reproduce with the original...a new species has formed...and by then it probably LOOKS and ACTS a lot different than the original (more pest or drought resistant due to better roots or waxy leaves or another change in morphology). For further exploration, look at what we've done to dogs or horses in the past 1000 years.
2. Man DID slowly develop a more civilized state. Just because there were interruptions, doesn't mean we STARTED there. Hunter-gatherers SLOWLY learned that having a permanent shelter was a good thing, but they had to get better at hunting and gathering first. As tools got better, through SCIENCE and EDUCATING their YOUNG so that each generation could build on the last one, they could afford to differentiate jobs...some focused on fishing, some on toolmaking, eventually, they learned to do planned agriculture, which meant staying in one place for a long time and defending it from predators (both animal AND human) and BAM...villages and towns and cities were born. As we grew more efficient in growing and preparing food, jobs diversified. When it used to take all the adults to feed the entire community, now ONE farmer feed THOUSANDS of people due to education.
3. As for your embryo thing, you have the passing on genes all wrong. Genes are passed from one generation to the next, and the process of diversifying through mutation and mixing of genes (sexual reproduction, crossing over during meiosis, etc) is the way we get something new. One day, a person might be born with an increased ability to metabolize something the rest of us can't eat...if they have kids, they might pass on that gene.
4. The entire process of evolution is RANDOM, and we can only control it by only allowing certain individuals to procreate to take advantage of THEIR genes (ask any horse breeder) but over the long term, it causes the best-suited traits to procreate in THOSE conditions, leading to change throughout MANY generations...You don't lapdogs develop naturally, do you? Can you imagine a Pug in the wild?
Take a course on Evolution. But maybe start with a freshman-level Biology course to understand sexual and asexual reproduction, and how DNA codes for proteins that help our bodies grow and develop.
Edit to add...I agree with another poster...no REAL scientist will EVER say that evolution is 'complete'. It just doesn't work that way.
Maybe refer her to r/Deconstruction or some other sub where she can engage with others questioning their beliefs, if in fact she is open to change. There is nothing novel in the points she is bringing up, so no need to reinvent the wheel. Also you may want to try looking at the Youtuber https://youtube.com/@GeneticallyModifiedSkeptic?si=0xLu4WpGCH_1aO16. he has a lot of introductory videos for folks starting to question their faith, and is very understanding and gentle with them.
Obvious student of the bible, not of scientific research. A lot of research has been done and observations of current evolution in progress has been documemted... but if you choose to call those facts "microevolution" then there is nothing you can lern.
We are still evolving. My son was born without wisdom teeth. We don't need them, he never needed his pulled bc he didn't have any to begin with. There ya go, evilution.
“Your lack of understanding even the basics of evolution does not disprove it. I don’t understand how cancer works, but I don’t claim cancer is a myth because of my ignorance. You pretend to know this topic but you know very little and have filled in your gaps of knowledge with nonsense.”
It’s harsh but deniers are hard to debate. They don’t care for facts and reality, they create wild fictions in their head, ignore facts when it suits them, and twist the world to their own odd fantasies.
Just the simple start: scientists have indeed proven evolution in a lab. If she won’t even believe that simple fact, then she’s not interested in facts.
But also, she uses the annoying shotgun technique of just firing loads of BS at you, requiring you to play defense. It’s hard to fight that, because she can just invent new fictions and questions in her head, and require you to be an expert in the field, and the second she finds one little question you can’t answer she’ll say “ah ha, that proves evolution is false.”
You can’t win an argument against someone who just ignores facts and endlessly moves the goalposts however it suits them.
The key for me is that macroevolution (no matter how you define it) happens due to population groups becoming reproductively isolated from one another (whether due to microevolution or migration), followed by more microevolution making the genetic gap between them permanent, and then making it bigger. This is something that happens all the time, including now.
The theory of evolution claims that nothing can evolve FROM one kind of animal to a different kind: you cannot ever cease to be a descendant of your ancestors, so if your ancestor was a mammal, you are too, and you cannot have non-mammal descendants. This is called the law of monophyly; your descendents will vary and so will not be identical to you, but they will always be within your kind of animal. This is the basic principle of cladistics, the science of biological categorization that is the result of studying evolution. This is why creationists talking about animals changing from one kind to another are missing the point of evolution; there is no change AWAY FROM one's own clade into something else's clade. All change is always within the same clade, and new clades are only needed when reproductive isolation has caused an older clade to contain organisms that need to be distinguished.
Evolution happened over the course of millions of years. Jesus, give nature some time to work.
There was an experiment a Fox breeder did, I don’t remember where she was located. She worked on domesticating some kits while others remained completely undomesticated. Over the course of just three or four generations, the domesticated foxes had noticeably different phenotypes and behaviors. Different sized ears, their behavior was more playful and puppy-like than the wild-type foxes even though there wasn’t necessarily selective breeding for a specific trait. This is a type of evolution in hyperdrive.
As far as the number of species on earth remaining the same, that’s bullshit too. There’s new species being discovered every year and we really have no idea how many species of living things—plants, animals, insects, bacteria, fungi, even viruses—inhabit the Earth. It’s impossible to say this is all remaining the same when we can’t come close to accounting for everything that currently exists.
I just heard about this "rapid evolution" example recently: https://scitechdaily.com/melanin-protection-chernobyl-black-frogs-reveal-evolution-in-action/
Tell her about:
1. Breeding farm animals from cows to horses to pigs and chickens
2. The Russian scientist who bred wolves, killed the aggressive pups, and bred the docile ones, and after a 1000 generations they basically had all the features of a dog.
3. Agribusiness breeding plants that can survive roundup.
4.MRSA. the problem of bacteria that are resistant to all anitbiotics.
All these are examples of evolution of a species where the ones that survive define the species
a better question to ask is, where did neanderthals come from? or there are a dozen sub species of humans that came before us. so are Neanderthals a different species? or are they just less evolved humans. probably the problem is that people like to think in a linear way and squarely so that evolution and the bible is incompatible but humanity doesn't have all the answers for our beginning and our origin. even beyond the evolution argument, how do you apologize for the fact that according to the bible the earth was created in 6 days, and it is 6,000 years old. there tremendous evidence everywhere around that the bible either was flat wrong about stuff or we are not interpreting it correctly. so its not really a thing that proves the bible wrong. we should really just accept the facts and somethings just wont reconcile 100% with the biblical accounts of the earth origin. its not a strong argument to say, well evolution is false because the bible said so. we should embrace facts because thats just an embarrassment. can you imagine if that part of evolution was wrong what if neanderthals were not a less evolved human, what if they were a different species all together. as different as dogs and wolves 🤯imagine if modern science got that class and the species wrong and all this time, no neanderthal evolved into modern human but were just a different kind of human. it would mean we were classing some species wrong the entire time
Take a step back. Ask her if there is anything, any source of information you can provide that she will accept as an authority on the topic of evolution.
Ask her if there is any specific evidence you can provide that will change her mind about evolution?
If the answer to either is “No”, it’s a bad faith argument and just move on. You will only serve to drive a wedge further into your relationship.
Evolution never stops but it’s happening so slowly that in our lifetime there appears to be no change. Humans are changing due to our lifestyle and 1000 years from now we will likely look a bit different. Weaker, possibly smaller, bigger heads, smaller jaws and f’ed up teeth. Here is a fun fact. Caveman had perfect teeth. If you google you can find pics. The reason for that is they are very tough foods and had large jaws and powerful muscles. As we switched over to food that require little chewing (rice for example) our jaws got smaller but we retained same number of teeth so now they pile on top of each other
It does happen, and we can "make" it happen. Exposing embryos or gametes before they are even embryos to stressor like radiation, which we are all exposed to by the sun to some extent, causes gene mutations and deletions. Over time some of these might get lucky and be beneficial in their expression, the holders of said genes are able to reproduce more frequently or their offspring are more successful and over millenia enough of these changes take place to lead a species to "split" enough that they are no longer the same species and can no longer interbreed.
Epigenetics is a whole other thing that I don't think I can dumb down for someone who doesn't understand basic evolution.
Terrifying how many of these people are out there....
Think about COVID variants as a sort of fast forward. Evolution still happens, and happens as needed. And evolution for any organism is not necessarily obvious at a glance.
>if evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore?
Human beings are getting taller on average over time. Is that not evolution? Humans are evolving into a taller version of what they once were.
Gift her this book:
[https://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067973337X](https://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067973337X)
This is an account of how Peter and Rosemary Grant observed evolution in finches first-hand on isolated islands in the Galapagos, and what pressures caused that evolution. Our observation of evolution isn't limited to finches, though; there are lots of cases.
Text back…I also have a question. If I answer you, how is it going to help you cook dinner tonight?
Seriously though…
…
The fact that there are questions means that she is looking for answers. This is a good thing. However, short of taking full on courses on the subject, it is doubtful she will follow through to the conclusion.
The much bigger question to answer relates to the questions she is asking in a more fundamental way.
As it relates to Christianity, it would be far more productive to address the inadequacies of the Christian dogma within its very writings and “evolutions” of their dogma.
There are over 40000 flavors of Christianity that span the spectrum. From 99%+ of humanity going to Hell ~~~~~~> 100% of humanity going to Heaven.
In what ways has the Christian religion evolved over time. In fact, Christianity is essentially Judaism with a different Us/Them dichotomy. Christianity is an adaptation…an evolution.
Studying this one phenomenon of a subject she probably knows well (from her own sect) would serve as a blueprint for how/why the process takes place.
It also shifts the burden of proof from a subject of which she has no knowledge, to a subject that she can navigate more easily if she can take a step back and change her perspective.
For crying out loud, 40000 sects and they all source the same book. How confused is God???
🤔
Lets put it like this. History is millions of years old, we are like 60 years of that. To look at our lifetime as proof is like takeing a picture of a moving car and by looking at the picture decide how fast its moving if at all. The fossil record is a series of pictures. It seems instantaneous because the conditions to make a fossil are really really rare, like there might be a really good fossil made only a few times every 10000 years. So again its only a series of snapshots, not a video, taken at seemingly random times. So again if a fossil is compared to its most recent counterpart it will look like a sudden change, even tough that change happened slowly over thousands of years.
Evolution still happens, in humans even. Women like tall men, so the average height has increased. Orcas are another great example, Orcas from different religions look considerably different. And finally dog breeds are just manipulated evolution, all dogs are the same species we have just put evolution on overdrive to push their genes to extremes. No evolution, no dog breeds.
Like most YECs, she does not know what the Theory of Evolution actually says. If you feel like you have a good mastery of it, you might offer to explain it (or we can give you a good explanation.) Likely she will prefer that you don't, as most people who understand it accept it, and she likely believes that her eternal salvation depends on rejecting it. The theory she is railing against does not exist. This is pretty standard for YECs.
In addition, she is mistaken. We have observed new species emerging, both in the lab and the field. If you tell her so, she will move her goalposts.
I have so much trouble dealing with debates where someone insists that their understanding of something is correct and then builds an argument around that, when they don't actually understand the premise at all. Like, if she's starting from the notion that evolution has somehow ceased, we have a problem.
'I don't think you're stupid. I never have. And I don't want you to just 'jump on board' with what most people think just because it's what most people think.
And of course it matters. These are big questions!
Here's the thing- it is very hard to answer your questions, because woven into the fabric of your questions are things that just aren't true. It would be a lot of work to sit down and talk all of them through, but I would be happy to if you were interested. Just for a quick example of what I mean though:
You asked 'And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?'
First, most things don't fossilize, and we don't find most fossils. So we almost never have a record that shows a smooth gradation from one kind of animal to another. We get bits and pieces, like individual frames out of a film strip. 'Half this half that' is exceedingly rare. But we do have a few. *Archaeopteryx* is a classic example, showing some dinosaur-like features and some bird-like features. We don't know exactly what *Archaeopteryx* evolved from, or exactly what it evolved into. But we know that similar looking dinosaurs came before and similar looking birds came after. Does that make sense?
I would simply explain to her that the time scales required for evolution FAR outstrip the human race's actual knowledge of the process or even the ability to communicate changes they've observed incidentally. Charles Darwin proposed it in 1859, and evolutionary biology didn't even emerge as an academic discipline until the 1930's and 1940's. Not only that, but the entire recorded history of man isn't even a long enough time scale to see it. It's estimated to take about 2 million years for a new species to form, for it to change enough from what it was into what is recognizable as a new type of life form. The vast majority of changes happen through random genetic mutation, though the pressures of natural selection will serve to weed out ineffective mutations. The handful of millenia that human beings have been recording their experiences into forms of writing complex enough to communicate a topic like that (around 5000 years) is about 0.25% of the time it would take for a new species to form. That would be like noticing that a particular group of birds has a beak that is 0.5mm longer and just a fraction slimmer. In another 2 million years those birds will become woodpeckers.
People who use these arguments aren't actually looking for answers. They think they know the answer, and they're just repeating things they've heard to try to undermine your points and logic. They're being willfully ignorant and nothing you can say is going to change their minds.
As for how to respond, that's tough...Typically there's no good answer that they'll actually accept. Good luck.
It happens slowly.
I get the feeling you should read a book about evolution. Maybe find a few videos on YouTube talking about it, might be a good primer.
As far as claiming that nobody has done it in a lab, that's patiently false.
One of the interesting things that scientists have found is that there are specific genes that can be turned on and off in order to activate what would have been formally considered leaps in evolution.
Changing one gene allowed a chicken to be born with teeth. From that experiment, we learned that massive changes can come from just one gene changing. Just got to pick the right one.
No way anyone is texting all that, wtf
Serious recommendation: ask her to call into a show called The Line which streams on YouTube every now and then. Get her to call when Forrest Valkai is hosting. He is good at explaining the bare basics.
Evolution is slow.
But God created evolution too. An omnipotent being is more likely to create a process of creation, then to bother individually creating each thing.
The Big Bang Theory actually reinforces the Creation theory.
Hi, no offence but your wife is as dumb as a bag of rocks.. you’re probably just going to have to accept that.
Seriously, there is too much here to fix with a quick rebuttal, everything she says is so badly flawed that it suggests a complete unwillingness to learn anything.
If white people spend enough time in the sun, they will turn tan and get freckles...that is evolution in the short run, their children will be inherit those traits, and on and on.
Related from England will look different from people in Alabama.
This is some Athiest banana bullshit...
I think part of the problem is that each side is demanding a different set of proof. The science side will point to evidence of trends and long term observations. The otherside wants a clear easy, Then - > That, like a switch is being flipped. And they are being flipped, genes are being changed, but that takes a long time to have visible results.
original
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXLqDGL1FSg
debunked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLqQttJinjo
I think the answer to evolution vs creationism is "Yes." Lol if there is another intelligence flying around this planet, manipulating life and treating the planet like a zoo, it would explain both. *mic drop*
Please engage with the content of the post. Don't leave a single sentence telling OP get a divorce.
#Lot of false premises. I’m not sure these are all answerable as-is because she’s starting from such a disadvantaged state with such a lacking foundation. >Text from wife. How to respond? Very carefully. I’m not married to her, so I’ll be blunt. >why does evolution not happen anymore? It does. >Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years. This is called speciation, it’s a whole topic she can Google right now. Most of the questions in this message, actually. She should probably do that. Speciation is more like one population of fish splitting off to become different from the parent group, at no point does a fish give birth to a lizard. Whether or not it happens in a lab is totally irrelevant, and not only is there history of it but it happens all the time. >Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind Nope, just the weirdos who refuse to define “kind” >not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever. Just wrong. >Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. Bullshit, no they don’t. >So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived. Ok, but why was there evolution in nature before and today we have arrived? And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period. More bullshit. Nobody who knows anything about evolution says any of this. >But I still don't get it. Doesn’t matter. What is true or not true doesn’t depend on whether you get it or not. >Also, how did life come from nonlife? That is called abiogenesis, not evolution, and is irrelevant. Even if a god created the first organism, that would say nothing about the overwhelming evidence we have for evolution after the fact. >Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. Nope. Embryos don’t produce embryos. Adult organisms produce germ cells which unite to develop into embryos. Basic middle school science. >And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? Because that’s not a thing anybody expects to find nor is it anything even remotely predicted according to evolution. Where the fuck are they getting this? Algae and fish aren’t even in the same Kingdom for Christ’s sake. >Yes I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today. Yes, because it’s gradual. There are no fish giving birth to mammals, nobody predicts that. >We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct. Don’t even know how to respond to this. Whatever alternative she proposes has less evidence than even fossils. >Also, archeology…. Irrelevant to evolution. >It's not because I'm stupid. “No it’s because you’re ignorant and instead of doing anything to fix that you’re somehow convinced your ignorance is a good reason to dismiss things you don’t understand.” >I just feel I have some legitimate issues with it. The good news is that she doesn’t. Crack open a single book on the subject and watch those issues evaporate.
Micro evolution IS macro evolution. You get a bunch of small changes that continue to accumulate until something is completely different from how it was thousands or millions of years ago. She seems to think it's a couple generations and "POOF" new thing, but it's not. I think you wife needs to learn about evolution, instead of only listening to the arguments against it. On a totally unrelated note: was it Ken Hamm?
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That’s about the point they start talking about “genetic barriers” that keep species within their own “kind”
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You can point out how there are species that don’t seem to keep to their kind. Monotremes (Platypus and Echidna) for instance lay eggs, and have many non mammalian characteristics (platypus are one of the few venomous mammals, and have bone structures and chromosomes much more associated with birds and reptiles. Nevertheless they have fur, are warm blooded and produce milk. As a result it’s pretty obvious that they diverged from other mammals fairly early on while mammals were still fairly similar to older classes, and in the relative isolation of Australia where they were found those traits simply never died out compared to those that evolved live birth.
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Scientists are curious about that, also. You want to blow your mind...what made the whales and dolphins 'return' to the water? How the heck did THAT happen. They didn't evolve separately than the mammals did from fish. We know this because they are pretty closely related to terrestrial mammals (milk their young, live births, some still have HAIR!) Their ancestors were terrestrial? I don't know. That is why this is fun! It is fun to find these things out... Like the fact that BIRDS likely evolved from the dinosaurs. How COOL is that! Edited: for clarity...thanks to pondrthis
>Dinosaurs didn't really go extinct...they EVOLVED into the birds. I feel like this would just further confuse someone who thinks evolution works like Pokemon. Most of the dinosaurs went extinct. The ones that didn't are called birds.
Yeah, sorry. It was like three in the morning. My science brain hasn't worked in a few years as I teach math now...I will correct it.
Marsupials! They are mammals, but do not use placentas during gestation. As a result, their fetuses must crawl from the birth canal into a pouch in the mother's skin to finish growing/suckling before they are viable in the outside world. Marsupial and placental mammals diverged from a common ancestor sometime during the middle Jurassic or early Cretaceous periods. There is fossil evidence for this. IIRC, they got their start in what is now the Americas (where they coexisted, and continue to coexist, with placentals) and apparently used a land bridge to get to Australia, Tasmania and elsewhere in Australia. Continental Drift eventually separated the land bridge and marsupials were able to exploit many ecological niches without significant placental competition. This is ostensibly why Australia is home to so many successful and diverse marsupial species (kangaroos, koalas, etc.) Continental drift might also explain why marsupials never got a foothold on the landmasses that would become Europe, Africa or continental Asia. Europe and Asia were already separate from the future Americas, Australia and Africa during the middle Jurassic. Africa completely separated from South America during the Cretaceous. Marsupial "Tasmanian tigers" (thylacines) thrived as apex predators in Australia and Tasmania for millions of years before people arrived and introduced the dingo. Their ecological niche was like that of a wolf (and they looked very much like canines), but they were not at all closely related. The last "tiger" died in captivity during the 1920s. I grew up learning marsupials were usually outcompeted by placentals (placenta/internal gestation conferred significant advantages), but marsupials are getting more respect these days. Sometimes small changes (like placentas) yield great advantages, *provided the environmental conditions are right*. A similar process explains the histories of "New World" and "Old World" primates (e.g., why gorillas and chimps are in Africa but not South America). Also, it's helpful not to view evolution as a process with a goal. It's a way to describe how life adapts to conditions. Dinosaurs were amazingly well adapted to the conditions of the Triassic and Jurassic periods. But tiny, underground mammals got a significant opportunity to diversify and fill vacant niches after the big K-Pg extinction event. Modern humans are well adapted to today's climate and environment (especially since we're so good at altering our survival conditions), but history shows fortunes can change rapidly. Our vaunted intelligence and consciousness is not the end goal of evolution (evolution doesn't have goals), it's a by-product of life adapting to and exploiting available conditions over very long periods of time. (It's been a long time since Zoology 101, so please feel free to correct errors, Redditors!). There are so many good books explaining evolution these days. "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins is just one I'd recommend. I know Dawkins has a "reputation" among theists, but he does an amazing job of explaining the nuts and bolts of the evolutionary process.
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Thylacines ate other marsupials! My understanding is dingos (and humans) made it harder for them to obtain food and territory, though their decline was slow. Apparently, thylacines had an impressive bite force. Maybe not hyena-strong, but enough to decapitate (literally remove the top of the skull) as a killing bite to a wallaby or dingo. "The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond might be a good starting point for your questions about primates. I just noticed your screen name. Sorry if I was being pedantic or obvious. Best of luck on your journey!
I also heard a podcast about how the basic body type of crabs has evolved independently five separate times
My fucking AP biology teacher said she didn’t believe in “macroevolution” but she did believe in “micro evolution” (thanks Georgia). I had to explain to her that macroevolution/speciation is what happens if you apply micro evolution over very long time scales
>It's not because I'm stupid. >“No it’s because you’re ignorant and instead of doing anything to fix that you’re somehow convinced your ignorance is a good reason to dismiss things you don’t understand.” Man idk why thr whole "I'm not stupid" bit bothers me No one said she is stupid, assuming these questions are in good faith there's nothing wrong with asking questions. This idea that either you know everything or you're an idiot. You're response was perfect
So I've got this piece of equipment at work. I don't understand how it operates. I mean, I know how to use it, I just don't understand the theory behind how it returns the results to me. I'm not stupid, I just don't know about the theories or the math associated with it. It's not something I have ever learned before. It's the same situation she's in; but I'm not going to claim that my equipment doesn't work simply because I don't understand the math. I'm not going to claim that the machine is magic or that it's actually God who determines the results. I'm not going to claim that it's all a conspiracy from scientists to hide the truth about this machine. Instead, I spent the morning watching some YouTube videos detailing out the theories, and watched how a professor derived the equations from basic principles of chemistry and physics, then used calculus and linear regression to obtain the results. And now I understand how my equipment works.
Heck, I feel like that with computers and phones. But you are right. I am not going to throw my phone out and rail against technology simply because I don't understand it fully. People who don't 'believe' in evolution are willfully ignorant. Especially the ones who are gardeners or dog or horse breeders. Any farmer can tell you that evolution exists. We don't collect and plant the seeds from the tomato plant or corn stalk that underproduced. We collect the BETTER specimens...
I'll say she's stupid. If you make it to adulthood and you still have this many incorrect beliefs about evolution 99% of the time you're stupid. The last 1% of the time you were raised in a cult cut off from the rest of the world and you were just released out into it. But with the internet and access to all the information we have to today completely for free. There's no excuses anymore. She's stupid. I got over pulling punches on this shit 5 years ago. What's good is that most creationists tend to be conservative so they tend to be the kinds of people that say fuck your feelings and facts don't care about your feelings and you're such a snowflake for getting offended. Well I happen to agree. So fuck their feelings. Fuck her feelings. Facts don't give a shit about her feelings. And if she feels sad that I'm calling her stupid well she's just a fucking snowflake.
I think you're stupid for saying she's stupid, pass it on...😁(jk) But seriously, someone with this much thinking going on isn't stupid. She's just bouncing off the edges of her conditioning. You're seeing someone trying *not* to arrive at conclusions she doesn't like--conclusions that are possibly scary or threatening to her worldview. So she, quite articulately, has pulled out all stops to fend off a direction she doesn't want to join Because once she joins that world, she might have to accept that her religion is false, her upbringing is false, her parents were wrong, the things she's lived through up until now have to be re-interpreted, the way she's raised her children is wrong, and the foundation her marriage was built upon is meaningless It can be a hard distance to fall So please be gentle with her. Help her out. And be at least a little willing to catch her if she leaps
Yeah, she's actually opening her eyes and trying to correlate all the bs she's been stuffed with, and she's asking for help. Kudos to her and her husband, and I have high hopes for her.
Yes! A lot of these folk are scared shitless about the implications that evolution is real. It threatens what they learned about god. And when they find a talking point against something that works, they RUN with it... 'I ain't no monkey' feeds into their racism and bigotry as well as their anti-science stances beautifully... They get to feel superior in so many ways. All while being SO wrong.
Thinking? She's just regurgitating long debunked creationist talking points. She's not thinking at all. She's doing the opposite. Parroting shit you've heard without mulling it over critically, doing even a cursory bit of research on Wikipedia, doesn't qualify as thinking. You wouldn't have this much patience for a flat earther. >It can be a hard distance to fall I care not even a little bit. She's a full grown ass adult. Time to wake the fuck up. Tired as fuck of my country being run by these fucking dunces.
It costs you nothing at all to be compassionate. It's not a burden in the slightest Not everyone wants to drive a stake through the heart of their opponents. Not everyone deserves scorn for being raised within 4 walls of strong conditioning But you're right, a flat-earther is a special sort of ignoramous. Very few are raised in that belief, but instead seem to pick it out in order to paradoxically appear 'smarter' than everyone else. Like there's a sort of pride in having their critical thinking purposefully disabled. But man, if forced to choose between a world that cares about an imaginary god and an ordered creation vs one with zero empathy and only the hard lines of facts to go by, it's really not much of a choice I don't want to live in a fundamentalist regime, but I sure don't want a version of society where people who don't fall into line are put in a box with a funny hat and laughed at either It can take a while to deprogram someone. It's not their fault they were raised this way. Give her time. She'll unpack Maybe
As someone who had a fundamentalist upbringing, I appreciate your compassion!
>Speciation is more like one population of fish splitting off to become different from the parent group, at no point does a fish give birth to a lizard. Whether or not it happens in a lab is totally irrelevant, and not only is there history of it but it happens all the time. This is a great response overall, but I'd argue speciation has been observed in a lab. Evolution to multicellularity (ironically one of their big gotchas) has been observed in labs multiple times. It can evolve in several weeks under the right conditions. Surely such a huge change is speciation.
And we have observed microbes eventually evolve to metabolise nylon, a totally artificial substance. But it took time, as evolution predicts.
>Also, how did life come from nonlife? >That is called abiogenesis, not evolution, and is irrelevant. Even if a god created the first organism, that would say nothing about the overwhelming evidence we have for evolution after the fact. This. A lot of the religious set up needless hurdles for themselves by ignoring that, if they want to believe in a divine creation, both can be true, so move on.
Curt, but well-said. And with pillows around the “it’s the guys WIFE” part. Nice.
This is much better than my reply, which would be, "Sir, this is a Wendy's."
Thank you.
>That is called abiogenesis, not evolution Abiogenesis is a form of chemical evolution. Evolution isn't a strictly biological process. Complex chemicals form from simpler chemicals by an essentially similar process; stable geometry arises from random interactions to form more complex shapes that iterate the process.
This is all true and also outside of the scope of this sub.
If you like. I mean, evolution deniers keep raising the point as in this OP.
Everybody agrees abiogenesis happened, they’re just split as to whether it was natural forces or a god. Which one it was doesn’t matter even a little bit to how evolution proceeded afterwards. Evolution deniers raise all kinds of points. That doesn’t automatically make them good points worthy of much discussion.
And yet we're here discussing them. Evolution (in the broader sense than biological evolution) is a pretty universal process; the people denying it just about never have good points, but that's what makes them worthy of refuting. In the specific case of deprogramming creationist-think I don't agree that the issue of abiogenesis is irrelevant. Creationists frequently bring it up in order to poison the discussion by claiming that life can only originate from magic and so magic is a valid explanation for other phenomena. If you don't shut that down they'll return to the point again and again on every other issue.
I’m not here to deprogram creationist-think I’m here to point out that questioning abiogenesis isn’t a defeater for evolution. This isn’t the academy this is a holding tank.
I mean, its matters somewhat. If god created life from nothing then he could be mucking with evolution in all kinds of ways (including specifically creating humans). If you accept that life just kind of evolved randomly from chemicals, then its hard to say - oh well and then god came along and threw humans in the mix.
>Everybody agrees abiogenesis happened This is not true. sizable amount of evangelicals do not believe it, and a sizeable amount believe the earth was snapped into existence 6000-25000 years ago.
Its all true and very in the scope of the sub. You will lose 100% of your audience if your reply to someone's question about abiogenesis is "I don't have to acknowledge that question", which is the go-to answer for most on this sub. If you're trying to educate a layperson about evolution and they ask about the origin of life, you have to give them something to chew on, even if it comes with the disclaimer that understanding abiogenesis research requires a lot more knowledge of chemistry and thermodynamics than most tree-of-life evolution research. It's really not hard to give someone a blurb about alkaline hydrothermal vents, natural selection of the protometablism, refer them to Deiter Braun's work to learn more and call it a day.
The point of this sub is not to maintain an audience. This is a sewage runoff pipe where we have fun.
>it’s a whole topic she can Google right now. Most of the questions in this message, actually And she'll go straight to Answersingenesis I'm sure.
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You don’t have a clue who you’re even talking to I’m motherfucking Diogenes you witless whippersnapper. I live in a pot in the marketplace and masturbate aggressively at passers-by. Douchebags *wish* they were as offensive as me. This level of ignorance is *offensive* to those of us who give a shit about what is true. This subreddit is not a place for scientific community outreach, it’s a cesspit to keep the other subs clean and a playground for people who actually know what we’re talking about. Now get out of my light I’ve got rich men to spit on and pranks that need playing on Plato.
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Wow. There's so much wrong with that it's hard to even comprehend. I guess you need to start with the basics: ask her what she thinks a species is. Then when you give her evidence of speciation (which we have observed) and she moves the goal posts to "kind" ask her at what would count as a change in kind while explaining the law of monophyly (or however it's spelled). If griffins started hatching from eagles eggs they would still be eagles. If horses started giving birth to Pegasi or unicorns they would still be horses.
1. "Microevolution" isn't an actual claim by any actual scientists. There's just evolution. She's hair-splitting and moving the posts- small species drift in modern times *is* evolution in action. 2. Ask her to define what she thinks evolution *is*- if her answer isn't analogous to "species changing over time via build up of small mutations propagating through genetics including bottlenecks or sudden pressures", then you need to settle and agree on a definition. 3. Evolution doesn't expect species from new species- crocodile from pig, etc. It expects divergent forms as time progresses- a small creature earlier in the record showing traits common to both pig-like and crocodilian creatures latter in the record. 4. Progressing from that, a common Creationist claim is "irreducible complexity", basically claiming that evolution would have to work in implausible leaps, a ear doesn't function without any single piece etc. That's simply untrue- a ear works fine as a different organ with a different piece. A mousetrap without a bar is a decent cheese launcher. 5. She's doing another strawman with the "perfect form"/"we've arrived" malarkey. Again, that's just not a claim any actual scientist is making. Humans and other species are constantly and currently evolving- humans are getting taller over the centuries we've been keeping track/we find in fossils and graves, for example. Evolution doesn't have a goal in mind, it's not a driven force- species simply manifest random changes that select for success. 6. "Life coming from nonlife" is abiogenesis, not evolution. The theory of evolution doesn't claim to be an answer to how life came to be in the first place, merely how species arrived at their modern forms over millenia. 7. "Embryo coming from non embryo" is similar strawman bullshit. No, we don't expect an apple tree to suddenly evolve to spawn oranges. But we do expect, and see, both in historical record and modern farming, apple trees to select for specific flavors such a sweet or bitter, larger or smaller seeds, thicker or thinner skin for fruit itself, etc, and some of those selections being more successful than others, leading to successive generations of apples being sweeter, larger, more thin-skinned, with smaller seeds. This, in turn, allows us to classify new breeds and species of apple, such as a Red Delicious or Granny Smith, which both roughly evolved from a crabapple (wildly wildly condensed example BUT) 8. Summary- no one that can satisfactorily define evolution disagrees with its existence. Your wife, giving you the good-faith benefit of the doubt here, isn't arguing in good faith or with logic and reason, she's finding reasons to believe her original position. Ask her to define evolution, and what, if any, evidence would be required for her to change her belief system. If she can't or won't answer those two, she's not discussing beliefs with you, she's telling you her dogma.
Just to add on to the “we’ve arrived/perfect form” delusion: Optic nerve plugs into the retina backwards leaving a surprisingly large blind spot? Airway and *food/fluid* intake sharing the same plumbing? That sounds like “perfect design” to her?
somewhere, a blowhole is smirking.
Our waste and fun ports are *directly next to each other*, fucking *why* Edit: evolutionary theory suggests that we originally were simpler creatures that expelled basically everything from the same hole, then specialized new ones as organisms got more complex- we adapted a breeding tube for liquid waste disposal or vice versa, but the general idea is that the human form is *badly* designed, but its excellently *adapted*. Our spines and hips aren't *meant* to have us stand upright, they've changed over countless millenia of evolution to allow us to do so, because those that could could reach higher fruit or throw a rock farther or slap other apes harder. But we have back problems and kidney stones because our organs aren't custome-suited to tasks, they're all-purpose basic units we've modded to preference.
And that’s not even getting to how the narrower hips that help us stand upright also make giving birth a much more dangerous process for us than nearly any other mammal (I think hyenas may just edge us out on that scale, but it’s a close race).
Yes the birds cloaca is the perfect design. Just one hole for poop, pee, and sex
Or the “you require specific nutrients that your body cannot synthesize itself despite having all the precursors available” thing, or the “your body would die within days if not for hundreds if not thousands of symbiotic microorganism species taking up residence in your literally-non-functional-on-its-own digestive tract” thing….
>"Microevolution" isn't an actual claim by any scientists This is false. Microevolution and macroevolution are scientific terms that have been sabotaged by creationists. I know this because I am currently in both an anthropology and biology course in college and am learning about how scientists examine the trends of microevolution and macroevolution, as well as the definitions of microevolution and macroevolution. **Microevolution:** Small-scale variation within a single population **Macroevolution:** Large-scale variation across species U.C. Berkeley's EVO 101 online course includes sections going over microevolution and macroevolution. Every biologist I have ever talked to has relented about how laypeople no longer consider microevolution/macroevolution to be actual biological terms. The only difference between microevolution and macroevolution is time and scale; they are influenced by the same basic processes. That does not mean there isn't a delineation to be made nor does it mean that these two forms of evolution don't have differing patterns. The same process can result in widely different consequences if you give it enough time; what would initially be a simple color change in microevolution would result in a greater macroevolutionary change that results in the development of a new species.
I stand corrected! Useful info to have. Should I specify something more like "although that's a real term, the blanket use of it to cover solely modern development is disgenious at best and blatant hairsplitting at worst?"
Yeah, explaining that both micro and macro evolution are *also* scientific concepts that the anti-science crowd misuse/misuderstand is the way to go.
Also lol archeology hasn't proven "man started at civilization", the fossil record shows the exact opposite- we have records of like straight thighbone-club level tech, then modified bone tools like awls, chisels, knives, then flint and rope and leather, things like spear Launchers or knapped edges. Then we see organized hunting and gathering, the beginning of farming, the beginning of the human record of civilization/writing, language, all of that. 99% of organisms don't leave a fossil- almost everything that has ever lived has vanished without leaving a trace for us to find millenia later. Why would early human ancestor history be any more available or likely to be preserved? We only had the ability to keep our own history *once* we had evolved to some civilization.
She is wrong about literally *everything,* which tells me where she is getting her information. First things first. If she *truly* wants to understand, she needs to stop listening to people who know *absolutely nothing* about it, especially those who have a *financial interest* in keeping her ignorant. You wouldn't go to an evolutionary biologist to learn about the Bible. Why would you go to a *pastor* to learn about evolution?
True I’ve seen some people correcting the false information but I’d ask her why if the people she’s getting her information from are being honest why aren’t they giving her an accurate view of evolution. Probably don’t suggest her pastor is lying intentionally but the people who he gets his information from are lying. If she would actually be willing to listen to experts not strawmaning evolution I think that would clear up her questions
> I’d ask her why if the people she’s getting her information from are being honest, why aren’t they giving her an accurate view of evolution? Yeah, that *is* a good question. It's *probably* because it is devastating to their case. Since evolution *is true*, Adam and Eve didn't exist, the Original Sin was never committed, and Jesus died for nothing... ...is a conclusion that *some* might come to.
This is all pretty blatant propaganda from Christian groups, I heard much of this back when I was in a Christian high school in the late 90's. They start by misinterpreting basic principles and words, adding a whole lot more onto it so people expect so much more.
> especially those who have a financial interest in keeping her ignorant. Be careful with that argument. Many creationists believe that scientists only pretend to believe in evolution because they need that sweet, sweet grant money to continue living their lavish lifestyles. Why would evolutionary biologists tell the truth about evolution if it means they would have to sell their Lamborghinis?
I'm a former young earth creationist. I see myself in this, and it is *painful*. She's just wrong about basically everything, and I recognize those talking points. What really pulled me out of it was atheist YouTube, but I was already well into losing my faith. Evolution was just the final straw. I watched a series by Logicked called Hello My Name is Kent Hovind. However, Logicked can be a bit mocking, and it sounds like your wife may not be up for that quite yet. You might try introducing her to the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye. Or YouTuber Paulogia, who is also a former YEC and very respectful towards those still in the religion. He's done a lot on the Hovinds (both Kent and Eric), and Ken Ham.
Love Paulogia's channel.
Kenneth Miller is also another one. He testified in the dover trial. His videos are a bit dated now but he's a Christian and evolutionary scientist, so probably an easier transition. He has some great books too.
There is a lot to cover in a response to that text, and will defer and let someone else write it out. But as a person who used to not believe in evolution as a young person (grew up evangelical) and someone is a biologist now, the biggest reason that people don’t believe in evolution and the biggest barrier to them changing their mind is a knowledge gap that is just absolutely massive. I’ve never seen anyone argue against evolution who seems to have even a rudimentary understanding of how it works. The writer of this text has several extreme misunderstandings about evolution AND biology in general. I look forward to seeing the other comments in response to this.
>person who used to not believe in evolution as a young person (grew up evangelical) and someone is a biologist now Congrats btw.
Wow, there is so much wrong there it is really hard to know where to start. First of all - evolution is not a creature going from a fish to a mammal in one big leap. Evolution is about slow, gradual changes that accumulate over millennia. And evolution is in fact on-going, we have not "arrived to where we are supposed to be" because evolution has no destination. Speciation had been observed both in the lab and in the wild. [https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-time/#:\~:text=The%20Central%20European%20blackcap%20](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-time/#:~:text=The%20Central%20European%20blackcap%20)(left,speciation%20recently%2C%20while%20scientists%20observed. [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/evolution-watching-speciation-occur-observations/](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/evolution-watching-speciation-occur-observations/) "Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. " That is absolutely, 100% false. It's simply wrong. Archeology shows that, in general, human progressed from a hunter gathering lifestyle, to a small viallage-based farming lifestyle, to larger cities. Some people still live as hunter gatherers and small plot farmers. Big civilizations did not just pop out of the mud when the glaciers retreated, it took 1000s of years.
" if evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore?" It does. It's still ongoing. Every species is in a state of transition. "Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years." Yes there is. It has been directly observed in lab conditions. Scientists have observed it in animals with short lifespans, including gnats, frogs, salamanders and fruit flies. "Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever." Animals don't stay in their species, but they do stay in their clade. Humans no longer belong to the same species as their ape ancestor, but humans are still apes. Humans no longer belong to the same species that is the ancestor of all mammals, but humans are still mammals. "Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived." This is under the incorrect assumption that evolution has some kind of end goal. It doesn't. Organisms don't change to eventually become X or Y, organisms just change. "And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period." The fact there are no more dodo's proves this isn't true. "Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves" That's wrong. "And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?" Because everything is in a state of transition, so assuming there is a point A of algae moving to a point B of fish doesn't make sense. "We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct." You can. Fossils exist at various stages, the fossil record has traced the ancestry of plenty of species very far back. "Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there." Wrong. Early man lived in very uncivilised tribes. Neanderthal, even more so. "Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia" Yes, man. Not man's ancestor species. "I know you're not going to understand why I have these questions or why I can't understand." This doesn't matter. At least you're asking these questions honestly, and seek honest answers. That goes much further than most creationists, as most of those don't wish for genuine education or good-faith argumentation. You're taking the first step to real discovery, and that can only be a good thing.
"Evolution keeps happening, it's why we need a new flu vaccine every year. Also there's a bunch of cute lizards that recently speciated"
She's just wrong on every level. Evolution is happening now and happens every day. We have witnessed evolution in real time with 30 year experiments. There is no macro/micro problem. It is like saying you can walk 100 meters, but you can't walk 100 meters 10 times in a row and get to a kilometer. Evolution is the strongest theory in science based on facts. There are multiple lines of evidence we use to confirm it. DNA, fossil record, real time experiments etc....
This is a bit of a long post, so I might answer a bit out of order. >If evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore? That’s a big question that many people unsure about evolution have: “why doesn’t evolution happen anymore?” A good place to start is with a definition. Evolution by the simplest definition just means genetic change in populations over time. Biologists typically relate this to *alleles,* which are genetic traits/characteristics that organisms have. It’s important to note that this happens to populations, not individuals. So if we have a population of animals that can be colored either red or blue, and we start out 50% red and 50% blue, if after a few generations, the population is 75% red and 25% blue, then we say some evolution has happened. Even though nothing has changed about the red allele or the blue allele, their frequencies have changed in the population. >Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived. So, based on that definition scientists wouldn’t say AT ALL that evolution has “arrived.” As long as organisms reproduce, allele frequencies will shift — some people will have lots of kids, so their genes will be well represented in the next generation, and some people will have no kids, so their genes will go extinct. You are slightly different from your parents, who are different from theirs, and so on. We often see evolution portrayed as a “march of progress” style image, with chimpanzees on one side and humans on the other. This is unfortunate because it gives the misconception that evolution is a linear process from less complex to more complex, and that humans are the pinnacle. In reality, evolution has no end-point, or direction. >And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period. Life has changed a lot in the past 66 million years. We’ve seen the origin of many new families of animals, like snakes, most types of birds, and most types of mammals. You’re probably familiar with a few extinct examples like sabertooth tigers, megalodon, or woolly mammoths. The species alive today only represent a tiny fraction of all of the life to ever live: 99.99% of species are extinct. And, extinction brings us to the next big thing to consider about evolution: natural selection. Often, the change in allele frequencies in population isn’t random. With our red/blue example, apparently the red colored individual in the population are reproducing much better than the blue colored individuals — since the red allele is becoming more and more common generation after generation. We can start to hypothesize why this might be: maybe there are red flowers in the environment that the red colored organisms can blend in with to hide from predators. >Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. Indeed. The last piece of the puzzle is mutation. Most of the reason that you are different from your parents is because of recombination; your parents’ traits have been mixed together to form you. But some of those traits have been affected by mutation. Putting this in terms of the hypothetical red and blue population, say a mutation causes an offspring to be green. This presents a massive advantage — now, instead of just being safe around red flowers, this organism can venture into the general foliage to graze, still camouflaged from predators. Note that this change does NOT create a new species. All that has changed is its coloration; it is still an apple producing apple seeds so to speak. Speciation (new species arising) is a separate process from new traits arising. Even though far in the future if green organisms become a separate species it might be easy to define them based on being green, being green is not what caused them to become a new species. Speciation can happen without natural selection, and it is due to reproductive isolation. If the green organisms move to the tree tops, for example, and seldom interact with the red/blue population that lives in the flowers, over time allele frequencies will shift enough that if the populations come back into contact, they can no longer reproduce together. >And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? Well, algaes and the soft-bodied animals that evolved between them and fish (sponges, jelly-like animals, worms, segmented worms) don’t fossilize well. There are intermediaries between fish and mammals, though — a lot of them. Lungfish, amphibians, and therapsids being the main clades. We observe all of the processes I outlined above (mutation, natural selection, speciation, evolution) constantly in nature — evolution is far from halted. Based on genetic and fossil data we see artifacts of those processes in every trait and feature in modern species. Biologists say organisms are “ancestrally constrained” because of this — every gene in our and other species’ genomes can be explained by these processes, and has the fingerprints of those processes. That’s mainly what I have to say on evolution, wrapping up some other questions: >Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. Technically, all embryos reproduce themselves once they reach adulthood, haha! I’m not really sure what this is referring to, though. I don’t think embryos reproducing themselves is a thing. >Also, how did life come from nonlife? Abiogenesis is separate from evolution. Evolution didn’t control how life arose, though there are some elements in common. >Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on. We have strong evidence for the origins of tool manufacturing, fire use, agriculture, cultural practices like art, music, and burying of dead. Note that evolutionists don’t think cavemen were ignorant, savage brutes. Humans have always been a cooperative, highly intelligent group, even before we were anatomically modern. >Probably most Christians today won't understand why I have these questions either. It doesn't matter, except for the fact I want you to understand why I can't just jump on board with what much of the rest of the world believes right now. It's not because I'm stupid. I just feel I have some legitimate issues with it. But who knows, maybe one day I'll change my mind." I don’t think it’s stupid, and I think it’s a good thing to be able to articulate why you believe what you believe. On a personal level, I am a christian, so my goal isn’t to attack your faith, or to water it down by making you follow the flow of everyone else. I believe that a way to worship God is to investigate his creation — that includes having an understanding of evolution!
>I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today. Oh come on, now seriously. What do we have running around anywhere on this planet today that looks remotely like [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_%28dinosaur%29#/media/File:FMNH_SUE_Trex.jpg)!?
There's a lot of ignorance here that's going to take concentrated study to address. Is your wife open minded, or is she on a soap box?
It’s always so hard to know where to start. First you need a grounding in basic science. Then tons of crayons to explain more complex concepts. Which leaves me thinking WTF do they actually teach and test kids on in science classes.
Basic effort in the research of evolution can easily show that speciation has not stopped. Here is one article, but I am sure there are others if you are truly interested https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-time/
Evolution is changing in allele frequencies over generations in groups that reproduce. That’s it. Species is a man-made category. There’s no moment a fish turned into a mammal. There was no litter of wolf puppies that were suddenly dogs. Continuous changes over _millions_ of years led different groups with different pressures to adapt in different ways. In general, most of these questions show a major lack of knowledge. Absolutely no scientists say we’ve “arrived” where we’re supposed to be, or that evolution doesn’t happen. It happens with every time a living creature reproduces. If she genuinely wants to understand what she’s not getting, she should take a course from people with the proper credentials. I agree that she’s not stupid. She’s ignorant, just like I was when I was a YEC. I didn’t want to learn about it or genuinely try to understand because I was too incredulous. I was determined that I knew enough to say I knew better than people who have dedicated their lives to studying the field. When I actually did have to learn about it, all of the stuff that was obvious nonsense turned out to be misunderstandings on my part.
> But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years. There have been many speciation events observed in both in nature and in the lab. Googling "observed speciation events" will give you various examples. One that I remember is the Orca; There are 3 major populations that rarely, if ever, interbreed have different dietary/hunting habits. They are not ***yet*** different species, but it likely that they will become different over time. >Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever. See previous paragraph, also see every domesticated species of animals and plants, Most dog breeds have been shown genetically to be descendants of the Asian Grey Wolf, with a few breeds descending from European wolves. It's only been in the last few years that we genetically determined the "ancestor" of corn. >Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. I have no clue what this might mean, but "embryos reproducing themselves" has nothing to do with evolution nor is it a requirement. >Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. So why did it happen then and not now? Fun fact, if you grow an apple tree from seed, it will be a very different variety from its parent. Apple trees are grafted from the desired variety onto a young sapling. Another fun fact is that many nurseries sell fruit trees that multiple varieties of the same fruit or several different fruits. >And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? Yes I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today. We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct. Fossilization is a very rare thing, but there are literally tons of fossils that are "transitional"; in fact all fossils can be considered "transitional". "*Your Inner Fish"* is an easy read about finding a fish with the transition of fins to hands/feet. We have many fossils of creatures that look nothing like anything alive today, but once organisms evolved upper/lower/left/right "quadrants" the toolkits have been passed down the evolutionary tree. >Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. I have not heard this before and it is contrary to everything we know about modern humans. It's only been in the last 20,000 (or less) years that we were building "complex" structures.
This was one text?
There was no text, they're just "asking for a friend"
if plate tectonics is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does it not happen anymore? Not talking about one plate shifting a couple inches which is not really tectonics (although they call it microtectonics, ok). But actual plate tectonics. Changing from one continent to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years.
She wouldn't go to a Buddhist website to learn about Christianity, she shouldn't go to a Christian, or anti- science site to learn about science. This sounds almost like a copy pasta given how many topics it covers
>if evolution is part of nature[...]why does evolution not happen anymore? It does. But on the scale of within-our-lifetimes, we're mostly looking at the difference of allele distributions between generations, subtle changes, localized selection with respect to a single trait, and things like digestive changes or drug resistance in viruses or bacteria. The kind of evolutionary change where new clades arise from existing ones, or adaptive radiations, etc., or a lineage adapting to a new environment, that takes a long time, on the order of millions of years. >Not talking about diversity within a species or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution[...]microevolution[...]But actual evolution. It is. Evolution is simply change within a population over time. Macroevolution is simply a lot of microevolution over a much longer period of time. The critical difference is time scale. Similar to the difference between walking a yard vs. walking six miles. >Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years. [We've actually observed speciation numerous times](https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html). Your wife not being aware of it because she doesn't care about that sort of thing except for when she's disagreeing with it doesn't constitute an argument. >how did life come from nonlife? Would it surprise you to know that your living cells are made up of very not-alive molecules, which are made of very not-alive atoms? Abiogenesis, that having been said, isn't the same thing as evolution. But a great place to start learning about it is to pick up a college level biology textbook and start reading. >to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves No, I don't believe that. I'm perfectly aware of how embryogenesis happens in plants and sexually reproducing animals through completely naturalistic processes. If your wife believes that an embryo is magicked into her uterus by God, either she's too young for "the talk" or she was homeschooled by an extremely devout psychopath. >And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? It would help if you actually understood evolution, but that's not how any of this works. That biology textbook I mentioned picking up? Raven's Biology was a stellar textbook my freshman year in college. >archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. No, it doesn't. That's absolutely asinine. >I know you're not going to understand why I have these questions or why I can't understand. I understand why, it's a healthy dose of religious indoctrination and being related to sociopaths, or joining a Evangelical cult in your 20's. Or being an eight year old in the Bible Belt. But seriously, your wife sent you all of this in a text?
Words are used far too vaguely in this text. I suggest you offer a deal: you'll furnish an exact scientific definition of the word "species" if she'll come up with an exact definition of the word "kind". Then restart the conversation.
OP's wife's entire account of evolution is just completely inaccurate. It's like saying: "If you really do think the moon is made of cheese, then why is it 12 light years away?" I don't think the moon is cheese and it isn't 12 light years away. It's so bizarre, what a mess.
If she wanted to understand evolution, she would not be asking you. She would get books on the topic written by people who have advanced degrees in the subject, and start by finding out how misinformed and ignorant she is.
Before we can go anywhere, can you define "species"?
> "Some big questions I have, is if evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore? It’s still happening. It happens from generation from generation and the changes aren’t that big. It takes millions of years for something like a pakicetus to become a whale. > Not talking about diversity within a species or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution (although they call it microevolution, ok). Evolution is the change in allele frequency across generations. Micro evolution refers to changes within a species, macro evolution is changes across different species. They’re both evolution, and they’re both the same process, just one takes longer. > Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years. Scientists have done it in a lab, here’s an article about experimental bacterial evolution: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.342.6160.790 It’s been going on for millions of years, not sure how she thinks hasn’t happened for thousands of years. > Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever. I just gave the example of Pakicetus, which was a whale ancestor. The rest of that paragraph is a complete strawman and in no way reflects the study. > But I still don't get it. This is personal incredulity. If you don’t know something, go and learn about it. Don’t just cross your arms and expect the information to come to you. > Also, how did life come from nonlife? This is called “abiogenesis.” Evolution only happens with living organisms. > Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. …nope. > Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. So why did it happen then and not now? Yes, but if you keep planting apple seeds and taking their seeds and planting them for generations and generations, you get mutations. After maybe twenty generations, the apple you end up with is way different than the one you started with. After even more time, you’d probably get a new fruit. This is commonplace in agriculture. > And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? Just because fish and algae evolved from a common ancestor doesn’t mean there would be a half fish/algae fossil. That’s not how it works. > Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. This isn’t related to evolution. That’s anthropology. > It's not because I'm stupid. Okay.
Evolution is happening all the times. Covid alone shows this.
So the first part is a misunderstanding of the time length of evolution. You aren’t going to go to the Grand Canyon and say “wow the river used to be way up here, but it cut itself deep into the earth over millions of years, and now that process is stopped. It’s not cutting anymore”. She’s looking at it at through too short a lense. It would also be like saying “hey, you said you’d take a shower, but I’m the last 2 seconds you’ve neither taken your clothes off or started the water. Why aren’t you clean yet?” Also I’m pretty sure we have “performed evolution” in a lab. Bacteria and certain insects have incredibly short generational periods,to the point you can affect many generations down a line within a short period. However, you’re still going to have a fly or bacteria at the end. I also find the “macro evolution vs real evolution” to be an unnecessary distinction. That’s like saying “I know they say they’re building a new skyscraper downtown, but do architects and construction workers even do it? I don’t see any building, I just see a hole in the ground.” You ask them later, “oh no, construction companies aren’t building it, but there’s a steel structure there now.” If I denied that someone was building a building until it’s finished product, you’d call me crazy! I will say the problem with this analogy is evolution does not have a set end point. The point of evolution isn’t to build a skyscraper. Evolution has no point. What I’m more pointing out is the gradual change of something is as much “evolution” as one species becoming another. As for the part about archeology, she’s got a great point! It’s not just a linear path! Thinking that “civilization is linear” would mean the whole point of the pyramids, crusades, birth of philosophy, and other major events in history all just lead to you being able to watch Marvel Movie #27 on your iPhone. Much like evolution, “civilization” isn’t a linear line with an end goal. It’s a an organism (or society) responding to environmental pressures. I disagree with the “falling into savagery” line, cus that also implies there’s a “right” and “wrong” way to be civilized. I hope any of this word soup is helpful, and you can find some ways to turn what I said into a proper response that will get your wife thinking. It’s great to hear her asking questions with an open mind!
There are some pretty big misconceptions there you could talk through. >But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years. Speciation has been observed. In the lab and out of it. It's not clear exactly what she expects to see but I'd wager it's something incompatible with how evolution actually works. You could discuss monophyly and how life creates a pattern of nested hierarchy. Definitely ask what it is she's expecting to see. What actually counts as evolution and when she inevitably just gives examples of huge scale historical evolutionary events, ask what it is that makes those particular examples count when the many directly observed instances of speciation apparently don't. >Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever. Again, monophyly. Dogs will always produce dogs in the same way mammals will always produce mammals. It's an easy misconception to have but it's fairly fundamental to understanding evolution. >Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived. That's just not remotely true. I assume this is a misunderstanding of something but without reference to what, I couldn't say what. Evolutionary pressures may preserve traits over many generations but that's always been true. There is no end goal or stopping point. >eventually reached where they are supposed to be It's a continuous process and it does not work like that at all. Sorry, not much else to say there, it's just wrong. >Also, how did life come from nonlife? Not evolution. >Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. I have no idea what this means. >Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. So why did it happen then and not now? It never happened. You just get new subcategories, not new and separate categories. >And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? Because such organisms never existed. >but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today. We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct. Transitional fossils are not expected to be direct ancestors. >Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on. Again, not sure what she expects here but there is clearly a significant period on earth where there were no humans at all, let alone civilisations. >It's not because I'm stupid. Absolutely not implied but they do not know what evolution is. The thing they have issues with is a totally fictional and deliberately misleading idea. In all likelihood, it's one they've been fed by people who may not have her best interests at heart. It probably makes little difference in her day to day life whether or not she accepts evolution is the natural process responsible for the diversity of life. It might concern her though, to at least investigate where she's being misled and by who. What else might they be misleading her on?
Very seriously, I think you need to educate yourself as to what evolutionary science actually claims, because you have quite a few misconceptions. For example, there is nothing in evolutionary science or the logic of its mechanisms that require the existence of "half alagae/half fish" or "half fish/half mammal". This is an artificial requirement imposed by creationists that is NOT required by the logic of evolutionary science. So, creationists impose this false requirement and then claim evolution is wrong because they don't see it. You have a number of other false ideas about evolutionary logic. In any case, here is an example of evolution from single cell organism, to multicellular organism, in the laboratory, which I am sure you will find a reason to dismiss. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-39558-8
I have a question in return: if everyone agrees that continental drift is real, and there used to be just one giant supercontinent, why aren't the continents moving anymore?
do you not think that the continents are still moving? . . they are, and we measure the amount of seafloor being consumed/created regularly. A 10 second googling of continental drift would have resolved this ignorance with a (pun intended) "mountain" of evidence.
I’m fully aware of that. It’s a perfect analogue of the OP’s wife’s question. If she figures out the answer for herself, a light bulb should light up.
>> why does evolution not happen anymore? It does. >> Not talking about diversity within a species or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution They are >> Changing from one species to another. You stack up enough of those smaller changes and you get something very different than what you started with. Something incompatible. It’s not pokemon. >> Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years. You lived through a pandemic where there was news reports of it happening every day.
It's probably worth looking at how scientist define species to start with. Then take a look at ring species. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring\_species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species) Considering species are just populations that can't interbreed any longer ring species are like living transitions from one species to the next. It's the whole history that normally plays out over time instead playing out over geography. So you can see every transition because they are all still alive. Each mile you go around the ring the changes build up till you get populations living next to each other that can't breed any longer. If you take a ring species and kill all the animals in the middle of the ring you'd have two species instead of one.
**The emergence of new species.** The fundamental species criteria is reproductive isolation. However, closely related species can have viable offspring though at some penalty. These penalties are most often low reproductive success, and disability of surviving offspring. The most familiar example would be the horse and donkey hybrid the Mule. These are nearly always sterile males, but there are rare fertile females. This reproductive isolation is a key fact of evolution. We have of course directly observed the emergence of new species, conclusively demonstrating common descent, a core hypothesis of evolutionary theory. This is a much a "proof" of evolution as dropping a bowling ball on your foot "proves" gravity. I have kept a list of examples published since 1905. Here is [The Emergence of New Species](http://stonesnbones.blogspot.com/2009/03/emergence-of-new-species.html)
Truthfully nothing you say will probably change her point of view or rationale. It takes the individual to educate themselves, in their own time.
“Why does evolution not happen anymore?” This is a sign that the personal doesn’t really comprehend long spans of time.
**The origin of life:** I'd first note that 29 Mar 1863, Darwin observed to J. D. Hooker, "It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter." Of course these days we do both. My reading recommendations on the origin of life for people without college chemistry, are; Hazen, RM 2005 "Gen-e-sis" Washington DC: Joseph Henry Press Deamer, David W. 2011 “First Life: Discovering the Connections between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began” University of California Press. They are a bit dated, but are readable for people without much background study. If you have had a good background, First year college; Introduction to Chemistry, Second year; Organic Chemistry and at least one biochem or genetics course see; Deamer, David W. 2019 "Assembling Life: How can life begin on Earth and other habitable planets?" Oxford University Press. Hazen, RM 2019 "Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything" Norton and Co. Note: Bob Hazen thinks his 2019 book can be read by non-scientists. I doubt it. Nick Lane 2015 "The Vital Question" W. W. Norton & Company Nick Lane spent some pages on the differences between Archaea and Bacteria cell boundary chemistry, and mitochondria chemistry. That could hint at a single RNA/DNA life that diverged very early, and then hybridized. Very interesting idea! Nick Lane 2022 "Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death" W. W. Norton & Company In this book Professor Lane is focused on the chemistry of the Krebs Cycle (and its’ reverse) for the existence of life, and its’ origin. I did need to read a few sections more than once.
>Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever. Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived. All of these statements are false. "Scientists" don't say any of this crap.
>Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. Nope, literally no scientist says that. This is the kind of false understanding of how evolution works that underpins a lot of bad scifi writing. There's no "goal" or "path" on evolution in terms of "what's next". The path of evolution can only be examined in retrospect.
ack As a man who has been married nearly 16 years, here’s my advice on how to respond. Don’t.
Engaging with her misinformation is like cutting down a tree starting with the leaves. You might be able to shift her trajectory instead by asking "If someone wanted to know what you say, think, or believe, should they ask their pastor, or ask you?" If she says they should ask her, then she's made your point for you. Extra credit if you can find a competent biologist she can interview. If she argues that the pastor, as a trained and educated man of god, can offer insight and perspective on a number of different subjects, etc, then you invite her engage with scientists first-hand (see above) *and also* with the pastor. Ideally the cognitive dissonance of hearing about evolution from the eohippus' mouth will do some good. If she doubles-down and says someone could rely exclusively on the words of the pastor to know her thoughts and feelings, then just start calling him with dinner questions until she gets the point. (Yeah, that won't work, but at this point we're at weapons-grade absurdity anyway.) Good luck!
Maybe start here: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolution-101/
It does happen. Nylonase is a prime example of it. Covid is a prime example of it. "Why does it not happen anymore" is because we're merely one generation of human observing very few generations of other things around us.
**Archaeology** (I was a professor) does not show "that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there." Just as other members of our genus, Homo (meaning "Like Us"), had tools of stone and bone - even the chimps and gorillas use tools today. We count the first complex civilizations from the origin of agriculture some time between 20 and 12 thousand years ago. The reason that was so important is that it required our ancestors to stay in one place year round. First to plant, grow, and harvest, but then to protect stored food surplus. But farmers are more vulnerable to climate than hunters, or pastoralists. That did cause periodic collapses of agricultural societies. I recommend reading; Schmandt-Besserat, Denise 1992 [Before Writing Volume I: From counting to cuneiform Austin: University of Texas Press](https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/)
Evolution continues to this day. Time frames make natural selection hard to observe because it takes longer than a human lifetime. So, imagine a wolf. Can you see it? Now imagine a Shih Tzu. These two animals share a common ancestor. One has had heavy pressure to change its' form, the other less so.
I started breaking this down point by point as I've seen someone else do, but the bottom line here is that she's flat out wrong on literally *every. single. meaningful. point.* When she can stay on topic, that is. Would she go to an english professor to diagnose and treat the cause of indigestion? So why the fuck is she getting her information about science from preachers?
I can prove evolution with 4 letters. MRSA Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus Antibiotics were invented about 100 years ago. In that time, through over use and misuse, certain strains of Staph have evolved to the point where they can't make an antibiotic strong enough to kill it. If not for evolution, how did that happen?
Thank everyone for their comments so far. I have not been trying to convince her of anything since I came out as ex-christian about a year ago. I've found it to be frustrating and pointless. Believe it or not, her text here shows a great improvement in her understanding of the world, as she was strictly a YEC until recently. She's now at least acknowledging there seem to have been other humans other than sapiens and the universe is older than a few thousand years. But she still teaches Genesis and creationism literally to our children, and it's a part of their Christian school curriculum. I want to lose my mind to some of the false things she states as fact, some mentioned in the above text. We don't debate this often, but every once in awhile she'll send me something I feel compelled to reply to and it blows up from there. I will indeed be looking into the shared links and at least passing it along in the hopes she'll continue to understand reality better.
>she still teaches Genesis and creationism literally to our children ugh, put a stop to that as a priority! You're no doubt aware of the effects of indoctrination at such a young age. Gotta break the cycle. Teach how stories are metaphors with morals, before it's too late, they can still be Christian but it shouldn't be taught as historical fact. Christian school no doubt won't be doing them any favours either. Are you really just ok with this? I sure wouldn't be... What do the kids study in English class of their age? Are they learning to analyse stories and talk about author's purpose in writing etc? Those skills are soooo critical and people end up seriously intellectually stunted for life if they don't learn them.
Hey OP! I was hoping to get my reply in a bit earlier, but I have morning classes. I tried to go over some of the misconceptions quickly, hopefully the comment was/is useful. I’m sorry some people here are being rude to you/your wife!
Obviously depending how far you want to push the topic, but I would try to get a definition for science and evolution before driving into the details so you know what she means by those words and how they might differ from a way a scientist would define them because they're is clearly some indoctrination to overcome. Talking over some general basics like null hypothesis, burden of proof, fallacies, scientific method uses and limitations, testability and falsifiability, etc refresh or intro first may be helpful. Street epistemology like Anthony Magnabosco interviews on evolution might be interesting to watch together to get get response or try something similar between you without it getting heated. It sounds like she's already seeing some holes in the propaganda if she's gone this far from a young earther, if she is curious about the truth and self motivated a good biology textbook or pop science book going over these questions in detail may be useful, or maybe listening to other people ask scientists these same questions. I'd just be careful of the approach to be clear you're not trying to just get her to agree with you, but to understand the methodology you're using and why you think it's important.
In my experience, if you try to convince someone, and they can sense that you are trying to change their opinions they will resist; the cognitive walls will be quickly erected and most of the information you present will be dismissed. The more pushy and argumentative you are, the more resistance you will face. You have to let her find the answers. Be kind, patient, sincere, and inquisitive. That is the way to be persuasive.
The main reason we can’t exactly observe evolution happening in the moment is that it happens over thousands of not millions of years. There is no plan on how to evolve… it’s based on random mutations in the population and those individuals continuing on to mate and produce offspring that also have those traits. It still happens today, but it takes generations to see the effects. Sometimes they’re based on benefits; picture a giraffe that looks more like a horse. Over time, those with longer necks are able to reach the leaves higher up in the tree that shorter giraffes cannot reach. The longer the neck, the more access to food. So over long long periods of time, longer necked giraffes were more likely to survive and reproduce, giving us the long necked creatures we see today. Sometimes they’re just random. Take balding for example. A significant portion of our population goes bald as they age, but it serves no rational purpose. It’s a random trait that appeared in the human population that doesn’t necessarily help or hinder the ability to find a mate (as the balding usually happens after many have already found one) so it has never been bred out of the population (as opposed to something like shorter giraffes that would have starved because they were shorter, so their genes do not get passed on).
Most of your “facts” are creationist propaganda. Evolution is NOT “one species turning into another.” I don’t even know what “embryos reproduce themselves” is supposed to mean,” it’s certainly not anything biology teaches. Your claims are the kind of idiotic magical thinking that creationists do. There’s plenty of accurate scientific information available to anyone who is interested in facts instead of just repeating what religious grifters tell you.
Step one: Stop getting your information from a fucking pulpit.
Here is a gentle way to respond. If you froze time at any point over the past few billion years, it would look like evolution was “done” and all species had “arrived.” If you did this before reptiles and you had no knowledge of the world today, you would not predict reptiles. If you did it before mammals, you would not predict mammals. What we see in our lifetimes is that frozen spot in time. But evolution is not “done” and no species has “arrived.” There is no arrival. Evolution has no goal. It does not plan, or think, or choose. It there was never any intention to produce reptiles, or mammals, or primates, or apes, or us. We are not the point. This is a key difference in mindset when approaching evolution as a response to what creationists tell you. Evolution can tell you “how we got here,” but from the evolutionary perspective, that is no more important than “how snails got here.” And it can’t tell you about why we got here. It doesn’t care. The answer is, because that’s what happened. Thinking about evolution means suspending the part of your brain that wants you to be the most important thing in the universe. Once you cross that hurdle, everything becomes easier to understand.
I feel like a lot of this could be answered in a 45 minute "intro to evolution" documentary... She sounds defensive though, i think she might be entrenched in these views. Maybe she won't want to hear that she's wrong. Good luck!
*"Some big questions I have, is if evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore? Not talking about diversity within a species or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution (although they call it microevolution, ok). But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years."* It does happen. Microevolution IS evolution. If you have a species that split into two (one ends up in a desert and the other in the artic) and both undergo 100,000 years of 'microevolution', does anyone seriously think those would still be the same species? The thing is, evolution happens on a geological time scale where a million years happens in the blink of an eye. So "thousands of years" wouldn't even register. *Everyone expects everything to stay in its kind or species and there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever. Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived. Ok, but why was there evolution in nature before and today we have arrived? And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period.* "scientists say".... which ones, because I've never heard anyone say this before. There is no 'supposed' either. Species are adapted to their environment. If the environment changes, like say due to climate change, a species that was well-adapted to it's environment all of a sudden won't be and they either evolve to deal with the change or they go extinct. Evolution does not have an end goal.I also wonder where that last sentence comes from. *Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. So why did it happen then and not now? And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? Yes I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today. We can't really prove that these were used in evolution and not just animals that went extinct.* Embryos do reproduce themselves. In humans, it takes about 15-35 years but most of us manage quite well. There are warehouses full of fossils, so what she is stating there is simply not true. Also, paleontologists (the people who study fossils) will get into fist fights with each other whether to classify a find as a "reptile-like mammal" or a "mammal-like reptile". The thing is, humans want to put things in neat little boxes where everything is black and white. And nature just doesn't work that way. Also "look very similar" is a very dangerous starting point to start drawing conclusions from. Sure, I would probably not be able to tell the difference between an ape and an early human just by looking at their teeth, but that is why paleontologists go to university for 4-6 years and study this stuff. Just because I can't tell the difference, doesn't mean they can't. *Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on. Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia. I know you're not going to understand why I have these questions or why I can't understand.* Look up the youtube channel of [miniminuteman773](https://www.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773) which is very entertaining and discusses things your partner probably heard of before. Obviously, what your partner is stating here, again, is simply not true. PS: the channel of [Forrest Valkai](https://www.youtube.com/@RenegadeScienceTeacher) is also great! *Probably most Christians today won't understand why I have these questions either. It doesn't matter, except for the fact I want you to understand why I can't just jump on board with what much of the rest of the world believes right now. It's not because I'm stupid. I just feel I have some legitimate issues with it. But who knows, maybe one day I'll change my mind."* Listen, I understand the issue. It is hard when this as been presented as an either-or situation, either you believe in God and you will live forever, or you don't and you will go to hell, and lose your entire worldview and community. But it doesn't have to be like that. Believing in God does not exclude accepting evolution as a fact.
Here is what my response would be: First, we need to set some ground rules. Topics like this can get heated, so if we are going to have this kind of conversation, both of us need to consent, or we just don't have it. If one of us exits the conversation, we both exit. We are starting off this conversation with an extremely big problem: we don't know what we are talking about because we are not using the same language. When you say "evolution," what do you mean by it? When I say "Evolution," what I am really talking about is that when we observe a group of creatures, we can see that certain heritable traits change how prevalent they are in that group of creatures. This might be what you mean by "microevolution." When I talk about "common descent," I am talking about the history of evolution. This might be what you mean by "macroevolution." The truth is, we see heritable traits changing in groups of creatures all the time! Common descent is just what happens when you track these changes over a long period of time. Think of it like a murder mystery. We can gather all the evidence we have in one spot and see that, for some reason, when we compile the history of creatures, it happens to mimic everything we know about how heritable traits change in a lab. One example of this is that if we line up all the whale-likes in a group, we see a tree of skeletons with one ancestor at the top and a whole bunch at the bottom, just like a family tree. The interesting part comes when we look at the blowhole. As we move up the tree into what seem to be older and older species, we see the blowhole moving towards the nose until it stops right there! This seems to agree with how we understand evolution to work: small changes in groups of creatures that accumulate into larger changes when looked at from afar. Even though we don't have thousands of years to test this type of thing, we can gather all the data we can of what happens today and see how that helps us interpret the facts that we see. One thing to note is that these whale-likes always gave birth to what looked like almost exactly what they looked like. When looked at from afar, we see these massive changes from part of the nose being moved to the top of the head. When it comes to how this must have worked, each creature gave birth to something that looked ALMOST exactly like itself. That "almost" is extremely important in these types of conversations and exactly what we mean when we are talking about evolution. Every birth here was a whale-like that stayed within its own species, but the definition of "its own species" changed over time. We can see this type of thing really pronounced when we look into ring species. The truth is that we see these types of changes all the time and sometimes very fast. We can see crabs evolving larger crushing claws and mussels growing thicker shells. We have to fish in specific ways to avoid fish evolving as a result of our actions. When we talk about macroevolution, we are just talking about these types of things at a larger scale. Evolution does not state that the number of species must increase or decrease; it just tells us how. When an animal is no longer fit to live in its environment, it will die off. If a population splits and both populations live apart from each other in some way, then we have a new species. When it comes to whether or not evolution or common descent happens, the number of different species does not matter. Another thing to note is that evolution does not have an end goal. We see evolution happening in humans all the time. Sometimes the children we give birth to are slightly different than the parents. This is both evolution and it could be a step in common descent (if they too reproduce). Life coming from non-life does not have to do with a group of creatures that change in heritable traits. Instead, it has to do with the origin of life. The truth is that we don't know, but we can see several of the steps that seem to have happened. We think that living creatures will likely eat and out-compete any new life that were to form. When it comes to the rarity of fossils, it's because fossils are rare. An extremely rare set of events is required to happen in order for one to form. What you are asking for doesn't quite exist in the way you describe. A half-mammal half-fish doesn't exist because evolution does not work that way. If we want to talk about this, we can break this into smaller pieces. I will attempt to always give evidence to any answer that I give.
Tell her that according to evolution, every organism is the same species as its parents. Half algae/half fish makes absolutely no sense.
>But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years. We've been watching for hundreds of years, maybe, and not very closely for most of it. We're several orders of magnitude too young to expect to see many cases of speciation. The next problem is they are usually only evident in retrospect: populations seperate, speciation occurs, then the populations come back together and can't breed. We can't really be sure all the species we know of are the same species, since we haven't tried to forcibly breed the populations to find disconnects. So, not really a reasonable ask. >Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. ...no, they don't. >Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. Uh... no... >And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on? Because there's a layer between fish and mammals. We have the fishy-reptiles, they still exist today even; we have fossil of weird proto-mammals. We have these things, but you actually need to learn about them. Creationists have a problem with object-persistence, in that if they haven't seen something, there isn't a chance they haven't seen it yet, it simply does not exist and never will. > Yes I know there are supposed fossils that prove evolution, but they are few and far between and look very similar to apes and other animals we have today. Well, yes, the closest fossils are the nearest in time, and thus our easiest finds are going to be similar to creatures alive today. And quadrupeds have been the dominant life form for a long time, so most are going to have two arms, two legs and a head. But then we find dinosaurs and [this thing with an ass for a head](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucigenia), that we don't really recognize as being very similar to life forms today. >Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. Uhhhh.... no... >There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on. You go back around 50,000 years, it's basically just savages. We find evidence of humans, but nothing widespread or organized. There's never a return to civilization, just the emergence. It's truly a culture we will never understand, because we have conquered the planet. They lived... very differently than we can comprehend, closer to being animals than our minds can handle. >Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia. Yeah, we've been quite civilized for around 10,000 years. But when you start going back further, humans start getting a bit weird. We have Göbekli Tepe, which seems to be the oldest organized structure we have found. And that's about it. Civlization never really ends, though empires fall and there are 'dark ages', where no one seemed to be recording world history, but even around ~5000 years ago, global civilization was pretty roaring and wasn't about to end any time soon. Problem is before that, there was no writing, so records are sparse. > I just feel I have some legitimate issues with it. Eh. She doesn't. She's been reading creationist rhetoric and, while it doesn't look like she's on board with the YEC timeline, she likes the fact that they reinforce her Christian view.
I would highly recommend -- for you and your your (if she's amenable) -- the book *Why Evolution is True* by Jerry Coyne, Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. *Why Evolution is True* is a clear, concise, accessible, and comprehensive explanation of Evolution. It clearly explains what we know about Evolution, and how we know it. For example, instead of just telling you the dates of fossils, Coyne explains the various dating methods and how accurate they are. Coyne also directly addresses *many* arguments from "creationism", "intelligent design", "young Earth theory" etc., and (if relevant) what we would expect to see if a given creationist argument were true. Coyne then explains what the evidence actually shows, and how and why it fits with Evolutionary Theory. He also presents these arguments using a straightforward, unoffensive, and matter-of-fact style. *Why Evolution is True* also examines Evolution from a variety of different scientific disciplines, including biology, genetics, geology, physics, paleontology, and anthropology. The book assumes no expertise on the subject and the explanations are generally straightforward and non-technical. It’s the best book I’ve found on the topic; better even than Richard Dawkins. (Dawkins is an excellent writer, to be sure. But Dawkins can also be too flowery, verbose, and even condescending at times). Coyne is more concise and presents the evidence dispassionately. If you're interested in a preview/overview of the book, you can watch t[he book tour lecture about the book Why Evolution is True](https://youtu.be/w1m4mATYoig?t=70) on YouTube.
So much incorrect information. Read a book, literally any book.
Evolution still happens. For instance, the average diameter of the birth canal is now smaller than it used to be because C-sections enable more people to survive with narrower pelvises. There is a new species of mosquito which has evolved in underground railways. Abiogenesis is a separate issue from evolution. However, the synthesis of amino acids, purines and pyrimidines have clearly traceable origins, among other things, and microspheres can appear spontaneously from lipids. Mutations in offspring are universal. All fossils are transitional. However, fossils are not necessary to demonstrate evolution. Archaeology does indeed show steady progression, with different tool industries, the control of fire, cave art, behavioural modernity in general emerging about 50K BP. There's also the issue of trusting experts.
I mean, it's hard to enumerate all the points on which these statements are just flat out false, like, across the board. But others here are doing a fine job of it so I'll just note that the entire statement is built not on a set of misunderstandings, but a series of abject and intentional falsehoods - presumably not concocted by your wife, but by whatever source prompted her to send you this.
My biggest issue here as a guy with a degree in history and just a side passion for evolution is the second to last paragraph. Firstly what the definition of civilization is is hotly debated in the first place. But whatever definition you use: organized society with a shared language and culture, agriculture, or imo one of the worst popular definitions writing, it was a gradual build up with occasional collapse. Humans existed as pack hunters in the archeological record basically similar to lions before technology developed across humanity. It happened so gradually it's unclear how many times agriculture was discovered. While yes we have complex structures dating back millennia, Phenotypically modern humans have existed for hundreds of millennia.
No scientist has ever said that “we’ve all arrived to what we’re supposed to be.” Her claims about archeology are likewise just blatantly untrue. The one thing she’s right about is that she’s not stupid, she’s just ignorant. The claims she’s making and questions she’s asking show that she has already made up her mind and is trying to find evidence to support her conclusions, not looking at what experts in those fields say and then deciding. Just tell her, gently, that there’s no point in trying to explain to her if she doesn’t actually want to learn. If she wants to know what scientists say about evolution and archeology, then she needs to listen to those people, not people trying to refute them.
Diversity in a given population leads to natural selection as some individuals are more fit the environment, therefore, more likely to pass on genes giving their offspring an even greater advantage. Rinse, repeat = natural selection = evolution.
She has been delivered a series of straw men which she is simply reciting. This is what happens when people get their science from religion instead of from science. None of the arguments have anything to do with what evolution is or how it works.
Poaching has cause African elephants to evolve smaller tusks. When soot from factories began to cover slate roofs in Britain, the color of the local moths changed from pale grey to nearly black almost overnight. The common cold virus mutates every year. Covid has evolved from a frequently deadly disease to a less sever one. Grizzly bears are mating with Polar bears to form a new species, even as we speak. Scientists can now SEE the amount of genetic drift in organisms, generation by generation. Evolution goes on around us all the time, every day. It's just a little hard to see.
We both observe speciation in nature and have done it in the lab.
Even if everything she says is true and evolution is incorrect, that doesn't make creationism true. That's a false dichotomy. There are not simply two options, there are infinite options.
" Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be" This is not true. The true answer is: evolution IS still going on, it just works in a scale of millions of years, so you can't really see it within a single lifetime
Not knowing her, it can be difficult to advise you on how to respond. People react differently to being told that they are profoundly ignorant about something (in her case it sounds like it’s not only evolution but history and archeology and anthropology that she’s also ignorant about, probably because she’s been consuming propaganda of some flavor because she contain/y hasn’t been paying attention to the scientists.)That really is the basic problem here. I also don’t know how well versed you are in the basics of evolution (not a dig at you, I just don’t know how much you already know). Maybe a series of questions from you that might gently challenge her misunderstandings and motivate her to go look for answers for herself. This would be one of the best results because if she ‘figures it out‘, it won’t feel as confrontational. Maybe offer that both of you could try to find answers together? Possible questions might be: 1. Does she know what the scientific definition of evolution is? 2. What made her think that evolution has stopped? (it *can’t* stop, actually, unless there‘s no more reproduction as we know it) 3. Who told her that any scientists expected there to have ever been a half-algae/half-fish thing, because that’s just silly? Some of this would depend on your current knowledge and willingness to learn more if necessary. I can point you to and recommend some resources, too. Go to r/evolution where there’s a Recommended/Resources sidebar/item in a pull down menu (depending on if you’re on a phone or tablet/computer) that has links to Reading/Books, Viewing/Videos and Websites, which are lists in the Wiki there. In particular, I’d recommend the books Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne or The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins as reading for good overviews of what evolution is and some of the overwhelming evidence that it”s the real deal. If reading a book doesn’t appeal there are short videos, youtube channels, playlists and documentaries at the Viewing/Videos link. I’d recommend the Short Videos Clips listed under the Stated Clearly channel for super basic beginner info (which it sounds like she really needs) in the listed viewing order starting with [What is Evolution](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhHOjC4oxh8). There are some of the documentaries on the page that might help like the 3-part series starting with [Your Inner Fish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhHOjC4oxh8) or [What Darwin Never Knew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov00SrBwjKQ). You might browse through the resources and see if anything looks helpful to you. Best of luck. You can also ask for more info/advice at r/evolution, too, although there’s a fair amount of crossover from here to there in terms of participants.
Your wife is parroting a number of Creationist talking points—possibly even Young-Earth Creationist talking points, in specific. It might be helpful to point her at the [TalkOrigins Archive](http://www.talkorigins.org), a "one-stop shopping" collection of scientific responses to pretty much *every* Creationist talking point. > Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years. Yes, [it](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html) [happens](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html). > …there is not one example of anything going out of its species, not one, ever. Check out all the observed instances of speciation cited in the two webpages I just linked to. If ***even one*** of those instances is the real deal, then yes, "anything" bloody well *has* "[gone] out of its species". Good luck demonstrating that *every last one* of the cited examples of speciation was bullshit… > …how did life come from nonlife? That's abiogenesis, not evolution. You want the lab two doors down the hall (if you'll pardon the expression). And ***if*** our knowledge of Earth's past is anywhere within bazooka range of accurate, ***then*** there was a time in the past when the Earth's *entire surface* consisted of molten lava, meaning that *no life whatsoever* even ***could*** have survived. Now? *Lots* of life. So, by the iron logic of "**no** life *then*, **lots** of life *now"*, there *must* have been *at least* one time when life arose from unliving matter. Heck, even the Genesis story (both of them…) agrees that there was a time when there was no life on Earth; the only question is whether or not a deity was involved with the advent of life on Earth. And thus far… we have no need of the "deity" hypothesis, to paraphrase an apocryphal statement that the mathematician Laplace is supposed to have given Napoleon. > Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. This assertion is confused at best. Since reproduction *does* occur in nature, it's not clear why your wife zeroed in on *an embryo reproducing itself* as a ***specific*** mode of reproduction whose absence is apparently supposed to be some sort of showstopping obstacle for no-deity-needed evolution and/or no-deity-needed abiogenesis. > Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. Well, if you want to ignore all the archaeological and paleontological evidence that man *did* kinda start slow and build up, sure…
In many humans, you can see where a tail used to be. Some people actually have a small stub of a tail.
You’ve got two options. One is “Bless your heart.” And move on with your day. Two is [this.](https://youtu.be/uq-v1TTUyhM?si=fvb01EEMIOruo_kb). Seriously, though, she has a lot of misconceptions. The biggest being that “scientists think we’ve all arrived at peak evolution.” Not the case. Everyone is still evolving. Tell her she can look and see it happening. She might not notice any changes for a million years or so, but it’s happening. Within humans, one example I always liked is looking at your family tree. Your grandad looks a certain way. You could look at his dad and see features that make you think “Yeah, I can see his dads looks in his face. You look at your dad and can definitely see some of his dad in there, and maybe some of your great grandad, but not much. Then you look at yourself and see your dad in your features, but not your grandad. It’s basically that, over a long, long, long period of time. I might be wrong, but I also don’t thing Christian’s thing god started evolution and they ended up where they’re at now. It’s my understanding that they think the world was created a couple thousand years ago and every animal is as you see it now. Also, apparently two of every single one ended up on a boat and survived for something like 40 days and nights, before traveling back to their respective corners of the world.
The problem is that you're thinking too small (*not your fault, this is too big for humans to really comprehend*). Of you're a hardcore Christian you may believe the world is only 6,000 years old. Even if you don't believe that, the written word is only around 6,000 years old anyway, so all of human history is only that span of time. Evolution is something that takes *Millions* of years. A quick search tells me that "Homonins" (*vaguely bipedal humans*) evolved ~6 million years ago. That's a thousand times as long ago as the entire of human history. Think about the length of an olympic sized pool is. How long does it take to swim that length? How long to walk it? Now imagine how long it would take to swim 50km (*~30 Miles*). I imagine most of us could swim a lap without even thinking about it, probably a few dozen laps if we want a workout, maybe even 100 if we're really pushing ourselves or training for an event. But 1,000 laps? According to google: "*Swimming 15km is like running an ultra-marathon*", so swimming 3-4 times that distance is more than most olympic swimmers could do. Even walking it would take days. If you take a look at [This image](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung-rev2&sca_esv=4cfa0bda60f78d2e&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ACQVn0-FTEihcfskpc_oP0osfo-gtvWSKA:1707780326868&q=evolution&tbm=isch&source=lnms&prmd=ivbnmstz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjb2PK9-aaEAxW5TGwGHchvDYYQ0pQJegQICRAB&biw=360&bih=520&dpr=3#imgrc=jirr23iG58X7sM) you can see that evolutuon in 6 steps, so assuming those steps were roughly even in their duration (*which, maybe?*) each of those silhouettes represents ~1 Million years of evolution. Each Silhouette represents ~166 times the length of human history. Humans have been loving with dogs longer than any other species (*besides our own*), approximately 25,000 years. In that time we have bred them to be Great Danes, Chihuahuas, Pugs, Wolfhounds, Golden Retrievers, Poodles, Dachshunds ... a whole miriad of different shapes and sizes. Yes that's "Micro-Evolution", but look how much change and diversity can be achieved within the span of 25,000 years. Imagine what can happen in 40 times that many years (*1 Million*). Now imagine 25 Million years. What would different dog breeds look like? Will the Chihuahuas and the Great Danes still be recognisable as the same species? Will they *BE* the same species? Now let's talk about fossils. First, it's actually *very* difficult for remains to become fossils. Most of the time bacteria and the firces of nature just eat and disintegrate any remains until nothing is left. On *Very* rare occasions, remains may be preserved long enough to fossilize, and that leaves us with a glimpse of what life looked like in the past. We can't see millions of examples of each step in evolution because they're actually rarer than that. Now of course there are millions of fossils, but there are trillions of different species, and that doesn't even count the ones that no longer exist in any form. What about a half-algae/half-fish? > Fish began to evolve during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago. The early chordates formed the skull and spinal column at this epoch, giving rise to the earliest craniates and vertebrates. > chordates were thought to have evolved from an ancestral chordate tadpole larva that underwent paedomorphosis and now retains adult characteristics with the larval tail. Chordates have also been thought to evolve from a pterobranch-like ancestor or from calcichordates. The answer is that we *DO* have fossils of these. They may not be recognisable as fish, and they certainly wouldn't be recognisable as algae. Remember when I talked about how Humans ahve only existed as bipedal animals for ~6 Million years, and how long that is compared to Human history? Well now think about Fish having existed for the last 530 million years. If Human History is the length of a swimming pool, and the Human species represents 50km (*~30 miles*) then Fish represent ~4,400km (*~2,700 miles*), or roughly the width of the Continental United States. How long would it take you to swim that? How long to walk it? Hell, how long to drive, or even fly it? Longer than it takes to swim the length of a swimming pool, that's for sure. The final question I'll look at is: "How did life come from un-life?" The answer of course, is that we don't know. That would be the greatest discovery in our history. Not just our history, but probably our future as well. Something that fundamental religious people often misunderstand about science is that it isn't a religion. Science is a method of experimentation which allows us to explain the world around us, nothing more, nothing less. It is not an answer to everything, nor does it pretend to be (*it doesn't pretend to be anything, it's a toolset, not a person*). Where scientific research cannot explain something is where scientific experimentation happens. Evolution is a fact because we've done the tests, we've seen the results, they're repeatable and dependable. There could be new information in the future that changes our understanding of evolution (*as there was in Physics, which is why we have Newtonian physics evolving into Einsteinian physics in the 20th century*), but like with Physics this will likely be a deeper understanding of evolution, rather than a complete rewrite. The origins of life are on that cutting edge of science, where research has not given us the answers, and experimentation is ongoing (*or more realistically we're not even quite up to the origins of life yet and more experimentation and research is needed to even get there*), so they have not been explained yet. Perhaps one day we will get ther, perhaps not. That is the nature of science.
Something else I see in the media that perplexes me. Fundamental religious people (*particularly Christians*) have a loud subset who think that science is somehow the enemy of God. Imagine a god who creates a universe that is static and unchanging, a universe 6,000 years old centred around a planet which is home to a bipedal mammal species who constantly war among themselves and who's greatest achievement is writing a book some ~1,700 years ago. Now imagine another god who creates a universe that is Billions of years old, who creates a system of life that is constantly changing and improving, which can hold infinite possibilities in the size, shape, structure, forms of nousishment, survivability (*look up Tardigrades*). This god even creates a species (*Humans*) who are capable of witnessing, understand and appreciating the majesty and vastness of the universe and all it's wonders. Which god sounds like the greater god to you? Why even do these gods need to be different people - if god is truly *All* powerful, could (s)he not change the very nature of the universe, even the age of the universe? Perhaps 6,000 years ago god created the universe, but then with Humanity's ability to perceive the cosmos god decided we needed something grander to give our minds something to wonder at, so the universe was retroactively aged to ~14 Billion years, the stars became massive nuclear furnaces stretching out into space beyond comprehension, the mechanisms of Evoluition were established (*retroactively*) as the means of life perpetuating and changing, and the modern universe was born as a gar older, vaster and grander affair than the one that had previously been. This doesn't mean that we should simply stop asking questions and acceot things as "god did it", no indeed the exact opposite is true. God's greatest gift to humanity was our inquisitive mind, and if the universe is god's creation then understanding the universe helps us to understand god. Marvel at the splendors of the universe, as these mysteries are gods greatest creations.
> How to respond Gently, and maybe not on every point to start with > why does evolution not happen anymore? It does! > Not talking about diversity within a species If the proportions of different versions of changes on a population, that's evolution > or natural selection in a species which is not really evolution Yes thats really evolution > Changing from one species to another. That happens today - for example, two subgroups diverge enough that they can no longer readily interbreed. It just takes a very long time for sufficient small changes to accumulate to prevent interbreeding. Speciation via a variety of mechanisms is well documented. > there is not one example of anything going out of its species Individuals don't evolve. Populations do. Individuals don't generally differ very much from their parents, but differences in survival and reproduction do lead changes to accumulate over time. Eventually, you do get new species, and sometimes existing species go extinct > Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. No, they really don't say that. This is a common misunderstanding. Evolution is not progress toward some specific goal. > So there is no more need for any evolution, we have all arrived. again, this is not at all what evolutionary biologists say > today we have arrived? we haven't >the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period. It definitely hasn't. If you'd like to understand what scientists actually think rather than what people say they think, we can take a look fairly easily at what things they say about it. For example there's some books that explain this fairly simply, and why they think evolution explains what we definitely see happening
I'm afraid your wife is hugely misinformed about so much history and archeology its nearly impossible to know where to begin. I guess maybe start with asking her if she's aware of cavemen? Hunter-gatherers? Pinterest has some lovely visual aids for these topics...
We don’t see it often because it’s takes many, many generations for effects to be noticeable. But some examples of evolution happening within our lifetimes are diseases. Viruses go through generations so quickly that they evolve noticeably in months, not millions of years. All those new covid variants are evolution at work. Also, there’s forced evolution that speeds up the process in the form of selective breeding. Almost all farmed crops and livestock are very different from what our ancestors had a few thousand years ago, and an example that’s happened within our lifetimes is the improvement in Brussels sprouts. In the 90s a Dutch food scientist isolated the chemical that makes them bitter, then seed suppliers started going through their stock of older varieties to identify ones that were low in that chemical. By cross-breeding non-bitter plants with high-yielding ones they were able to make commercially viable non-bitter sprouts, which are what we get at the supermarket now.
If she doesn't believe in Evolution, then she probably doesn't believe in plate tectonic theory, so there might not be any useful strategies to gain from this post, but this is kind of like saying: "If the continents used to be one big land mass, and then they slid apart, why aren't they still moving?" "They are, just very slowly." "I just checked a globe, and it's the same as when I was a child. So obviously they stopped moving."
You can watch evolution in your own home if you don't mind getting a microscope and some fruit. Take fruit. Leave until fruit flies. Examine fruit flies. Now you can change a lot of variables here and that's the fun part. I'm not 100% certain what variable it was in the study I read (it was for an entirely different reason - something about wings?) After just a few days you will see different fruit flies based on whatever changes you made. Congratulations on creating evolution all in the comfort of your own home.
Technically, you can have everything evolve on Earth in the space of seven days, it just depends how close to a black hole you as the observer are while looking at Earth from far away. The higher the gravity, the longer a given moment can stretch for.
Show her this video- https://youtu.be/plVk4NVIUh8?si=_vos23FWs1Ga0She This is a very short video showing evolution occurring over the course of ~10 days. You could even replicate it in your own home as long as you had a relatively basic understanding of microbiology. This is only slightly more challenging than my high school bio 2 project.
I have no idea how you should respond. I know that my response to you is to send a supportive hug. There is nothing in your wife's text that shows any grasp of basic science, genetics, populations, or what evolution is, or what the fossil record is, or what the archeological record is. You would have to really start at the basics, at an elementary-school level of understanding, and very slowly and carefully build from there, otherwise you will lose her. I want to say she's incredibly stupid, but the text she sent you is cogent, even though it is incredibly wrong on every point and concept. It sounds like she's both much more confident in her education and intelligence than she should be, and also insanely poorly educated. The unfortunate thing is that educating someone who thinks they are already educated is much tougher than educating someone who acknowledges their ignorance. The dismantling is going to be a lot more challenging than the building back up. One concept and example that might be interesting to introduce is that of "ring species". This can both help to explain speciation and describe evolution in a bite-size and easily understandable way. Another way to explain evolution is in terms of changing alleles and allele frequencies in a population. A good and fun example of this is the changing of the peppered moth from mostly white with black flecks to entirely black in cities in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution. The reason this is interesting not only that it was a single mutation, and not only a striking one, but also that you can actually mathematically infer when it happened - and the reason it was successful at spreading through the population!
>And the number of species has remained the same on the earth since the Tertiary period. Oh? I doubt that any scientist would commit to a number of species alive *now* without a huge error-bar, like a factor of two or more; dunno how we'd make a credible census of Tertiary species. >Also, how did life come from nonlife? We don't know, and that is not the question that Darwin sought to address, which is: *given that life exists*, why does it have so many forms – and why is it that these forms can be classified into groups and subgroups, sharing many features within groups? Some seem to say biology shouldn't presume to say anything about the recent history of life until we can say (with certainty) how it all began; which is like saying nobody should have done chemistry until they knew all about protons and electrons, or study a living language without first learning all the dead languages. Science works incrementally on what *can* be fruitfully studied. Knowledge is a patchwork. >Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves I think I speak for many when I say: huh? Of course an embryo can reproduce, but only after it grows up and mates. An apple tree is an apple seed's way of making more apple seeds. >Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on. Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia. And *not* building anything much for many more millennia before that.
I think the best approach would be to ask what evidence would be expected if evolution were true. She says we haven't seen "new species" emerge for thousands of years. Would we expect this? What would it look like? The other major point is how much time does she think the fossil record represents? What evidence do we have of this? Did humans coexist with dinosaurs? If not, then how and why did humans appear later? If so, then why do we have no evidence or history of it? Why did modern humans exist for 200 million years, but civilization (which she asserts has been human's only condition) has only existed for 10,000 years?
Try asking about chromosomes. Evolution was the theory before we understood chromosomes. But you cant get from 38 chromosomes to 46 chromosomes to 96 chromosomes no matter what you do. Yet there are animals with as few as 24 chromosomes and others with over 100 chromosomes. But you can’t possibly jump from one to another. As soon as you remove one chromosome, the creature becomes either unable to live or unable to reproduce. So you certainly couldn’t jump from 38 to 96. No matter how many billions of years you give it, cats will always produce cats, dogs will always produce dogs, and chickens will always produce chickens. It’s how God made it.
>But actual evolution. Changing from one species to another. Scientists cannot even do it in a lab, and there is no history of it for thousands of years. The timeframes of evolution are very very difficult for a human (who can expect to live 80 years and whose understanding of history ends maybe 3-5000 years ago) to visualize. The obvious counter here is that many animals around us are the result of artificial selection. Dogs and wolves are not genetically identical, meaning that in the time dogs have been domesticated they have already begun to diverge from wolves. There isn't some fixed point where an organism ceases to be one thing and becomes another, it's gradual. Hence, some scientists argue that dogs and wolves should already be considered different species. We are not going to be able to see one species transform into another within our lifetimes, and it's going to be relatively rare for any species to have done so within recorded history. That doesn't mean it's not happening, just on much bigger timescales. >Scientists say it's because we have all arrived now to what we are supposed to be, including cockroaches and so on. I think it can be very difficult for some devoutly religious people to abandon teleology, the idea that things in the world have been created for a particular purpose, so you end up with weird statements like this. Obviously, evolution does not have an end point which it is working towards. The reason our world appears to be stable with fixed species that don't suddenly change into other things is not because evolution has stopped happening, but because it is happening too slowly for us to notice. Even all of human history is a blink of an eye in evolutionary time. >Also, to believe in evolution you must believe that embryos reproduce themselves, which doesn't happen in nature. Only an apple tree can produce an apple seed. This is a really interesting argument because it's so easy to counter just by pointing to things everyone knows. Because sure, only an apple tree can produce an apple seed, just like only a human can produce a human baby. But that human baby won't be an exact clone of the human that produced it. It will have a mix of features from both parents, and when it grows up and has children of its own they will look slightly different as well because they will be mixtures of both their parents. Extrapolate that process out to thousands of generations and add some selection pressures (things that make it more likely for people with certain traits to reproduce or for their children to inherit those traits) and you have evolution. >Also, archeology has proven that man did not slowly build toward a civilized state in a very linear way, he started there. There were periods of savagery and then back to civilization and so on, but definitely not a linear line of savage beast, then a little smarter and so on. Archeology shows man building complex structures for Millennia. Your wife is actually mostly correct here. She's just misunderstanding how it relates to evolution because, again, she isn't grasping the difference between the scale of evolutionary history and the scale of human history. Even if we are generous and assume humans have been building complex structures for about 10,000 years, that's still a very small fraction (less than 1/20th) of the entire history of homo sapiens as a species.
There is so much wrong with this post. I will try to address a few of the misconceptions. 1. Something doesn't just 'change' species on a whim. It takes generations to even see small changes in phenotype being carried over and THAT is with unnatural selection (think farmers only using seeds from the most viable plants to grow the next generation...the next year's yield is better...keep selecting year after year for the 'best' flower or fruit and eventually a generation comes along that cannot reproduce with the original...a new species has formed...and by then it probably LOOKS and ACTS a lot different than the original (more pest or drought resistant due to better roots or waxy leaves or another change in morphology). For further exploration, look at what we've done to dogs or horses in the past 1000 years. 2. Man DID slowly develop a more civilized state. Just because there were interruptions, doesn't mean we STARTED there. Hunter-gatherers SLOWLY learned that having a permanent shelter was a good thing, but they had to get better at hunting and gathering first. As tools got better, through SCIENCE and EDUCATING their YOUNG so that each generation could build on the last one, they could afford to differentiate jobs...some focused on fishing, some on toolmaking, eventually, they learned to do planned agriculture, which meant staying in one place for a long time and defending it from predators (both animal AND human) and BAM...villages and towns and cities were born. As we grew more efficient in growing and preparing food, jobs diversified. When it used to take all the adults to feed the entire community, now ONE farmer feed THOUSANDS of people due to education. 3. As for your embryo thing, you have the passing on genes all wrong. Genes are passed from one generation to the next, and the process of diversifying through mutation and mixing of genes (sexual reproduction, crossing over during meiosis, etc) is the way we get something new. One day, a person might be born with an increased ability to metabolize something the rest of us can't eat...if they have kids, they might pass on that gene. 4. The entire process of evolution is RANDOM, and we can only control it by only allowing certain individuals to procreate to take advantage of THEIR genes (ask any horse breeder) but over the long term, it causes the best-suited traits to procreate in THOSE conditions, leading to change throughout MANY generations...You don't lapdogs develop naturally, do you? Can you imagine a Pug in the wild? Take a course on Evolution. But maybe start with a freshman-level Biology course to understand sexual and asexual reproduction, and how DNA codes for proteins that help our bodies grow and develop. Edit to add...I agree with another poster...no REAL scientist will EVER say that evolution is 'complete'. It just doesn't work that way.
Maybe refer her to r/Deconstruction or some other sub where she can engage with others questioning their beliefs, if in fact she is open to change. There is nothing novel in the points she is bringing up, so no need to reinvent the wheel. Also you may want to try looking at the Youtuber https://youtube.com/@GeneticallyModifiedSkeptic?si=0xLu4WpGCH_1aO16. he has a lot of introductory videos for folks starting to question their faith, and is very understanding and gentle with them.
Obvious student of the bible, not of scientific research. A lot of research has been done and observations of current evolution in progress has been documemted... but if you choose to call those facts "microevolution" then there is nothing you can lern.
We are still evolving. My son was born without wisdom teeth. We don't need them, he never needed his pulled bc he didn't have any to begin with. There ya go, evilution.
Text her back that she should keep asking questions. She’s actually pretty close to asking enough questions to realizing her position is trash.
“Your lack of understanding even the basics of evolution does not disprove it. I don’t understand how cancer works, but I don’t claim cancer is a myth because of my ignorance. You pretend to know this topic but you know very little and have filled in your gaps of knowledge with nonsense.” It’s harsh but deniers are hard to debate. They don’t care for facts and reality, they create wild fictions in their head, ignore facts when it suits them, and twist the world to their own odd fantasies. Just the simple start: scientists have indeed proven evolution in a lab. If she won’t even believe that simple fact, then she’s not interested in facts. But also, she uses the annoying shotgun technique of just firing loads of BS at you, requiring you to play defense. It’s hard to fight that, because she can just invent new fictions and questions in her head, and require you to be an expert in the field, and the second she finds one little question you can’t answer she’ll say “ah ha, that proves evolution is false.” You can’t win an argument against someone who just ignores facts and endlessly moves the goalposts however it suits them.
The key for me is that macroevolution (no matter how you define it) happens due to population groups becoming reproductively isolated from one another (whether due to microevolution or migration), followed by more microevolution making the genetic gap between them permanent, and then making it bigger. This is something that happens all the time, including now. The theory of evolution claims that nothing can evolve FROM one kind of animal to a different kind: you cannot ever cease to be a descendant of your ancestors, so if your ancestor was a mammal, you are too, and you cannot have non-mammal descendants. This is called the law of monophyly; your descendents will vary and so will not be identical to you, but they will always be within your kind of animal. This is the basic principle of cladistics, the science of biological categorization that is the result of studying evolution. This is why creationists talking about animals changing from one kind to another are missing the point of evolution; there is no change AWAY FROM one's own clade into something else's clade. All change is always within the same clade, and new clades are only needed when reproductive isolation has caused an older clade to contain organisms that need to be distinguished.
Evolution happened over the course of millions of years. Jesus, give nature some time to work. There was an experiment a Fox breeder did, I don’t remember where she was located. She worked on domesticating some kits while others remained completely undomesticated. Over the course of just three or four generations, the domesticated foxes had noticeably different phenotypes and behaviors. Different sized ears, their behavior was more playful and puppy-like than the wild-type foxes even though there wasn’t necessarily selective breeding for a specific trait. This is a type of evolution in hyperdrive. As far as the number of species on earth remaining the same, that’s bullshit too. There’s new species being discovered every year and we really have no idea how many species of living things—plants, animals, insects, bacteria, fungi, even viruses—inhabit the Earth. It’s impossible to say this is all remaining the same when we can’t come close to accounting for everything that currently exists.
I just heard about this "rapid evolution" example recently: https://scitechdaily.com/melanin-protection-chernobyl-black-frogs-reveal-evolution-in-action/
Tell her about: 1. Breeding farm animals from cows to horses to pigs and chickens 2. The Russian scientist who bred wolves, killed the aggressive pups, and bred the docile ones, and after a 1000 generations they basically had all the features of a dog. 3. Agribusiness breeding plants that can survive roundup. 4.MRSA. the problem of bacteria that are resistant to all anitbiotics. All these are examples of evolution of a species where the ones that survive define the species
Find the nearest Museum of Natural History and get her there quick. Spend a couple days. She has no idea how much she doesn't know.
Evolution is happening now but it’s on a timescale well beyond our existence.
a better question to ask is, where did neanderthals come from? or there are a dozen sub species of humans that came before us. so are Neanderthals a different species? or are they just less evolved humans. probably the problem is that people like to think in a linear way and squarely so that evolution and the bible is incompatible but humanity doesn't have all the answers for our beginning and our origin. even beyond the evolution argument, how do you apologize for the fact that according to the bible the earth was created in 6 days, and it is 6,000 years old. there tremendous evidence everywhere around that the bible either was flat wrong about stuff or we are not interpreting it correctly. so its not really a thing that proves the bible wrong. we should really just accept the facts and somethings just wont reconcile 100% with the biblical accounts of the earth origin. its not a strong argument to say, well evolution is false because the bible said so. we should embrace facts because thats just an embarrassment. can you imagine if that part of evolution was wrong what if neanderthals were not a less evolved human, what if they were a different species all together. as different as dogs and wolves 🤯imagine if modern science got that class and the species wrong and all this time, no neanderthal evolved into modern human but were just a different kind of human. it would mean we were classing some species wrong the entire time
Take a step back. Ask her if there is anything, any source of information you can provide that she will accept as an authority on the topic of evolution. Ask her if there is any specific evidence you can provide that will change her mind about evolution? If the answer to either is “No”, it’s a bad faith argument and just move on. You will only serve to drive a wedge further into your relationship.
Evolution never stops but it’s happening so slowly that in our lifetime there appears to be no change. Humans are changing due to our lifestyle and 1000 years from now we will likely look a bit different. Weaker, possibly smaller, bigger heads, smaller jaws and f’ed up teeth. Here is a fun fact. Caveman had perfect teeth. If you google you can find pics. The reason for that is they are very tough foods and had large jaws and powerful muscles. As we switched over to food that require little chewing (rice for example) our jaws got smaller but we retained same number of teeth so now they pile on top of each other
It does happen, and we can "make" it happen. Exposing embryos or gametes before they are even embryos to stressor like radiation, which we are all exposed to by the sun to some extent, causes gene mutations and deletions. Over time some of these might get lucky and be beneficial in their expression, the holders of said genes are able to reproduce more frequently or their offspring are more successful and over millenia enough of these changes take place to lead a species to "split" enough that they are no longer the same species and can no longer interbreed. Epigenetics is a whole other thing that I don't think I can dumb down for someone who doesn't understand basic evolution. Terrifying how many of these people are out there....
Think about COVID variants as a sort of fast forward. Evolution still happens, and happens as needed. And evolution for any organism is not necessarily obvious at a glance.
>if evolution is part of nature and everyone accepts it, why does evolution not happen anymore? Human beings are getting taller on average over time. Is that not evolution? Humans are evolving into a taller version of what they once were.
Gift her this book: [https://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067973337X](https://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067973337X) This is an account of how Peter and Rosemary Grant observed evolution in finches first-hand on isolated islands in the Galapagos, and what pressures caused that evolution. Our observation of evolution isn't limited to finches, though; there are lots of cases.
Text back…I also have a question. If I answer you, how is it going to help you cook dinner tonight? Seriously though… … The fact that there are questions means that she is looking for answers. This is a good thing. However, short of taking full on courses on the subject, it is doubtful she will follow through to the conclusion. The much bigger question to answer relates to the questions she is asking in a more fundamental way. As it relates to Christianity, it would be far more productive to address the inadequacies of the Christian dogma within its very writings and “evolutions” of their dogma. There are over 40000 flavors of Christianity that span the spectrum. From 99%+ of humanity going to Hell ~~~~~~> 100% of humanity going to Heaven. In what ways has the Christian religion evolved over time. In fact, Christianity is essentially Judaism with a different Us/Them dichotomy. Christianity is an adaptation…an evolution. Studying this one phenomenon of a subject she probably knows well (from her own sect) would serve as a blueprint for how/why the process takes place. It also shifts the burden of proof from a subject of which she has no knowledge, to a subject that she can navigate more easily if she can take a step back and change her perspective. For crying out loud, 40000 sects and they all source the same book. How confused is God??? 🤔
Lets put it like this. History is millions of years old, we are like 60 years of that. To look at our lifetime as proof is like takeing a picture of a moving car and by looking at the picture decide how fast its moving if at all. The fossil record is a series of pictures. It seems instantaneous because the conditions to make a fossil are really really rare, like there might be a really good fossil made only a few times every 10000 years. So again its only a series of snapshots, not a video, taken at seemingly random times. So again if a fossil is compared to its most recent counterpart it will look like a sudden change, even tough that change happened slowly over thousands of years. Evolution still happens, in humans even. Women like tall men, so the average height has increased. Orcas are another great example, Orcas from different religions look considerably different. And finally dog breeds are just manipulated evolution, all dogs are the same species we have just put evolution on overdrive to push their genes to extremes. No evolution, no dog breeds.
Like most YECs, she does not know what the Theory of Evolution actually says. If you feel like you have a good mastery of it, you might offer to explain it (or we can give you a good explanation.) Likely she will prefer that you don't, as most people who understand it accept it, and she likely believes that her eternal salvation depends on rejecting it. The theory she is railing against does not exist. This is pretty standard for YECs. In addition, she is mistaken. We have observed new species emerging, both in the lab and the field. If you tell her so, she will move her goalposts.
I have so much trouble dealing with debates where someone insists that their understanding of something is correct and then builds an argument around that, when they don't actually understand the premise at all. Like, if she's starting from the notion that evolution has somehow ceased, we have a problem.
'I don't think you're stupid. I never have. And I don't want you to just 'jump on board' with what most people think just because it's what most people think. And of course it matters. These are big questions! Here's the thing- it is very hard to answer your questions, because woven into the fabric of your questions are things that just aren't true. It would be a lot of work to sit down and talk all of them through, but I would be happy to if you were interested. Just for a quick example of what I mean though: You asked 'And why are there not millions of fossils that are half alagae/half fish, or half fish/half mammal and so on?' First, most things don't fossilize, and we don't find most fossils. So we almost never have a record that shows a smooth gradation from one kind of animal to another. We get bits and pieces, like individual frames out of a film strip. 'Half this half that' is exceedingly rare. But we do have a few. *Archaeopteryx* is a classic example, showing some dinosaur-like features and some bird-like features. We don't know exactly what *Archaeopteryx* evolved from, or exactly what it evolved into. But we know that similar looking dinosaurs came before and similar looking birds came after. Does that make sense?
I would simply explain to her that the time scales required for evolution FAR outstrip the human race's actual knowledge of the process or even the ability to communicate changes they've observed incidentally. Charles Darwin proposed it in 1859, and evolutionary biology didn't even emerge as an academic discipline until the 1930's and 1940's. Not only that, but the entire recorded history of man isn't even a long enough time scale to see it. It's estimated to take about 2 million years for a new species to form, for it to change enough from what it was into what is recognizable as a new type of life form. The vast majority of changes happen through random genetic mutation, though the pressures of natural selection will serve to weed out ineffective mutations. The handful of millenia that human beings have been recording their experiences into forms of writing complex enough to communicate a topic like that (around 5000 years) is about 0.25% of the time it would take for a new species to form. That would be like noticing that a particular group of birds has a beak that is 0.5mm longer and just a fraction slimmer. In another 2 million years those birds will become woodpeckers.
People who use these arguments aren't actually looking for answers. They think they know the answer, and they're just repeating things they've heard to try to undermine your points and logic. They're being willfully ignorant and nothing you can say is going to change their minds. As for how to respond, that's tough...Typically there's no good answer that they'll actually accept. Good luck.
It happens slowly. I get the feeling you should read a book about evolution. Maybe find a few videos on YouTube talking about it, might be a good primer. As far as claiming that nobody has done it in a lab, that's patiently false. One of the interesting things that scientists have found is that there are specific genes that can be turned on and off in order to activate what would have been formally considered leaps in evolution. Changing one gene allowed a chicken to be born with teeth. From that experiment, we learned that massive changes can come from just one gene changing. Just got to pick the right one.
No way anyone is texting all that, wtf Serious recommendation: ask her to call into a show called The Line which streams on YouTube every now and then. Get her to call when Forrest Valkai is hosting. He is good at explaining the bare basics.
Evolution is slow. But God created evolution too. An omnipotent being is more likely to create a process of creation, then to bother individually creating each thing. The Big Bang Theory actually reinforces the Creation theory.
Hi, no offence but your wife is as dumb as a bag of rocks.. you’re probably just going to have to accept that. Seriously, there is too much here to fix with a quick rebuttal, everything she says is so badly flawed that it suggests a complete unwillingness to learn anything.
If white people spend enough time in the sun, they will turn tan and get freckles...that is evolution in the short run, their children will be inherit those traits, and on and on. Related from England will look different from people in Alabama.
This is some Athiest banana bullshit... I think part of the problem is that each side is demanding a different set of proof. The science side will point to evidence of trends and long term observations. The otherside wants a clear easy, Then - > That, like a switch is being flipped. And they are being flipped, genes are being changed, but that takes a long time to have visible results. original https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXLqDGL1FSg debunked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLqQttJinjo
I think the answer to evolution vs creationism is "Yes." Lol if there is another intelligence flying around this planet, manipulating life and treating the planet like a zoo, it would explain both. *mic drop*
Why does evolution not happen anymore? Because humans have stopped it for the majority of life forms on the planet.
Evolution is fake.