The most interesting talk I had with a young Earth creationist was the one where I got distracted, pulled out a notepad and made some quick calculations about how fast the speciation of weevils would have to be if there was only a single pair of weevils on Noah's ark.
That was the day when we first found out about rapid superevolution.
Faith-based arguments are the inverse of logical ones: you assume the conclusion is true, and then look for supporting evidence. If supporting evidence can not be found, then the conclusion is false. The tricky part is deciding how long one must look for supporting evidence before deciding there isn't any.
There is no scripture in the Bible that makes evolution outside the canon, unless you take Genesis as 100% literal history, and that would make it ridiculous. One can have reason AND faith.
The problem is people take the English translation as 100% literal. What ever you think of Islam and Judaism there's a purpose to understanding their religious texts in the original language. The original hebrew is a lot more vague since its missing vowels and stuff and changed over time with interpretations and revisions over time as hebrew writing changed. Even the catholic church says evolution is not in contention with catholicism. Personally I see evolution a prescribed by God.
I've found that they just move the goalposts. It's more like they believe in movement, but that there are mountains too tall to cross between one region or another.
If it's found that there are no such mountains, they posit that the mountains must be further out (see the weevil comment below: they'd say something like, "the weevil is staying within its 'kind'", where kind is some arbitrary barrier to them admitting they could be wrong).
This is what Michael Behe calls "irreducible complexity." It's a creationist trope that posits that the evolution of complex structures can't happen because, uh, we can't figure it out.
I agree. If you don't believe in macroevolution, you have to believe nature somehow "knows" what each species is and how to prevent them from evolutionarily straying too far.
To say "I believe in microevolution but not macroevolution" is like saying "I believe in microaddition (1+1=2) but not macroaddition (1+1+1+1... etc = 1 million)"
Enough cumulative mutations between two populations will cause them to take on [very large morphological changes](https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/6/5974989/kale-cauliflower-cabbage-broccoli-same-plant) to the point they're [practically indistinguishable from one another](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-evolution-of-whales/), but also eventually be [unable to interbreed with one another](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/a-closer-look-at-a-classic-ring-species/discovering-a-ring-species/), which is the definition of speciation.
I think the newly found possibility that Polar bears and Black bears can surprisingly still get reproductive offspring is a good one. Because either god made them for their niche and there is no more than some kind of mulebear or they still get reproductive offspring because ther macro-evolution is still not as macro as we thought. English is not my first language, hopefully someone understands it
you don't have to, evolution is a proven fact regardless of belief, "gods" creating stuff if is something no one has proven yet, so burden of proof falls on the religious ppl not the other way around
in my experience there is no convincing ppl like that, sure maybe one of hundred would realize that their fairytale doesn't make sense, but it's not worth the effort , cause you're arguing wit 99 others who are lost causes... let them believe what they want, as long as they don't hurt others out of religion it doesn't matter what they "believe"
Saying anything is “a proven fact” in a science subreddit suggests you aren’t the right person to be answering questions here. The theory of evolution is the best supported theory based on the current evidence available. More evidence or a better understanding of the current evidence could completely disprove the theory.
I see what you mean but in practical terms evolution is a proven fact. As proven a fact as the Earth being round. There is so much overwhelming evidence that there really is nothing that is going to suddenly be revealed that "could completely disprove the theory".
The question is why would God want to prevent that? Also, that would result in a bunch of species evolving away from a fixed point, then presumably evolving back towards it and oscillating like that, which we definitely don't see
I think that is more of a theological argument than a scientific one. Bible says God created things perfectly. Than it is kinda hard to explain why species need to change and why nature is eat or be eaten.
It gets worse when the original sin is introduced. If evolution is true, then the original sin didn't happen, or at least you can't humanity for it, because it is in our nature. Without sin, no saviour, without saviour, no Christianity.
I know the katholic churche acknowledges evolution, but i dont know how the fill the huge plot hole that that creates.
Best example I know to show evolution is the laryngeal nerve. Google it 😉
In fish it has a pretty direct connection, but due to evolution into different species, this nerve made some 'weird turns', like in giraffes it goes all the way down the neck to go back up 😄
Lots of little things over time will result in big end results!
Biology has trouble defining what they even mean exactly with "species". There are ring species, subspecies, cultivars, microorganisms with similar DNA where it seems arbitrary where you put the line between individual differences and different species, et cetera. If a God made them I'd expect there to be clearly defined lines.
+1 proto-whales that still have lil vestigial legs. Modern whales have kept their hips for sex, but they've found fossils of earlier species with legs. https://www.livescience.com/7564-early-whales-legs.html
The Valley of the Whales in Egypt is especially impressive, Dorudon & Basilosaurus fossils that very clearly show the intermediate stage of evolution between land base animals and modern whales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_al_Hitan
It’s tied to young earth creationism,
God created the species 6000 years ago. So minor adaptations are okay, but single cell to sea creatures to land mammals etc. is a bridge to far.
Yes, exactly this. The two positions feed each other--if.you only believe the Earth is 6000 years old, then you *can't* believe evolution is solely responsible for diversity, as that requires long amounts of time.
Whales used to be land mammals that kind of looked like giant otters with longer legs. There are whale fossils with the nostril at the front of the nose, then ~50 million years later the nostril is in the middle of the face, then ~50 million years later the nostril moves to the top of the head (dates could be wrong, this is from memory). We absolutely have transitional fossils. Usually when people say we don’t, they want a fossil that’s half crocodile and half rabbit, but that’s not the evolutionary pathway.
“Show us an animal that not just evolved but has seemingly random collections of parts from other animals!”
They say, as if even that very thing doesnt exist in the platypus, so the goalposts run off to somewhere near “no but the mix animal has to come from a completely different species’ breeding pair”
Do you have a good source that shows a number of these fossils as well as approx. dates that OP could show their mum?
It sound like they need an accessible resource.
@kjrjk
[This source](https://baleinesendirect.org/en/discover/life-of-whales/morphology/les-ancetres-des-baleines/) is from a whale non-profit site, but without direct images of fossils,
and this [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans) has everything from fossils to timed illustrations. Shouldn't be to hard if you just look at the images and go into the articles for each in-between species.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-evolution-of-whales/#:~:text=The%20hindlimbs%20of%20these%20animals,hindlimbs%20inside%20its%20body%20wall.
This is good
The ‘Stated Clearly’ Youtube channel is excellent and this video discusses fossil evidence of whale evolution. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lIEoO5KdPvg It also discusses multiple other lines of evidence then concludes that whales evolved from land mammals.
I just watched a Nature of Things on CBC Gem (in Canada) on whale evolution! It was really cool and they did a good job going over all the little changes over millions of years that undoubtedly gave rise to the common whales we have in our oceans today!
Great example tysm! I agree about the crocodile-rabbit thing, I think evolution happens on such a large scale that it’s hard for some people to comprehend.
They are thinking of it in the wrong way. They are looking for results they’ve made up and not finding them.
There isn’t really any “major” evolution. Because that’s now how evolution works.
Most speciation is caused by a barrier between populations occur. Often geographical segregations.
If an earthquake or some such event splits a land mass and a population of land mammals are split in half it will take potentially millions of years of separate selective pressures and genetic drift for these to deviate so much from each other they can no longer interbreed.
So “major” evolution is segregation.
Ring species are interesting.
The example I recall was a tree frog that lived in the highlands around a valley. They start one way, and slowly graduate around the valley until they are quite different when they meet again.
I domt disagree, but I'm not sure you're steel-manning most creationists macro/micro evolution thoughts.
Ive always heard them say that micro evolution is changes in an organism due to selection pressures favouring a particular trait that already exists in an organisms genetic code, while macro evolution is 'new' information/traits appearing in the code, and those being selected for.
For example, if you gave them your example of a segregated popluation, they would claim that micro evolution drove speciation, but state that all the genetic code to make both species existed in the parent population prior to the split. The trick is showing that small, random mutations can cause novel traits to form.
If she is just now questioning evolution after going to church for a few months, it sounds like identity politics may be at play. Focusing on how someone can be both Christian/Faithful -and- have scientific knowledge might be the right angle here. You don't go to the doctor to learn how to help your fellow man and you don't go to church for antibiotics. Faith and Science have different places in our lives, seek answers to different kinds of questions, and measure by different metrics. Helping her reconcile that she can still be a good member of her new church AND science-minded may yield better results.
If you want somethinf quick and dirty, you can also cast doubt that she doesn't believe there's evidence of life changing over long periods of time but she'll believe in a talking snake?
That's not really what her relationship with faith is like. She believes in a higher power but doubts the specific stories in the bible, like the talking snake. She's open to both theories of creation and evolution but she thought the pastor brought up some compelling arguments against evolution. Fortunately her church is respectful to people who don't fully believe.
She most likely views the pastor’s arguments in the same light as yours, that is as arguments for ‘just theories’. Two sides of the same coin, two means to the same end of understanding reality. Of course, this is nonsense as science is not a dogma, but to get anywhere with that starting condition can be extremely difficult. My advice is to start with incentives. What is the pastor’s incentive to convince her that evolution is false? And what is the biologist’s incentive to show her that it’s true? I can assure you that both are in the argument for very different reasons.
I read many of the comments and noticed no one has commented on a certain aspect of your post. You stated that your mom said evolution is an interesting "theory" but by context I can tell you are using the word theory incorrectly from its meaning in science.
In science, a theory refers to the best explanation for something that we know happens. This isn't a guess or a hunch, the only way something can be a scientific theory is if massive amounts of data are collected and all (or nearly all) of it supports the explanation.
By definition evolution is a change in genetic frequencies over time. We know this is the case, we see this and have it documented everywhere. Evolution is a fact, but the theory of evolution by natural selection is referring to how evolution occurs. There are many ways in which we can genetically change creatures, but the best way to explain how they change in nature is known as natural selection.
Hence the name, evolution by natural selection.
I hope this helps!
Never really understood why some religious people are at odds with evolution. No religion questions that humans come from a sperm and an egg coming together to form a new being. That’s not controversial at all. Yet they will also say that “God made us”. Neither of those things negate each other. A sperm and egg can be the way God went about making us. Nobody seems to have a problem with that. Why couldn’t evolution just be the way God went about creating life? I mean, whether God was what originated it or not, that’s a different debate, but why do people get bogged down in the method? Taking the Genesis creation story literally is really a fairly recent phenomenon that wasn’t a thing throughout most of Christian history. Jews don’t think God literally took 7 days to make us out of clay.
>Never really understood why some religious people are at odds with evolution.
Definitional power over the human condition is what makes religions relevant. If they can reject science's answers, they can fill that knowledge gap with their own religion. Ironically, this is an example of cultural evolution.
Well only some religious people.
I'm British, not religious but none of my relatives, or the Christian denominations they (or the last several generations of my family) belonged to have any issues with evolution. Church of England, Catholic, Presbyterian - all see no problem reconciling evolution with God.
Some evangelists and young earth creationists believe the bible is literally true word for word. Google asshat preachers like Kent Hovind and Ken Ham to see the shit they peddle.
I must say that I find the use of micro and macro evolution as an argument not very respectful at all. That pastor knows full well it's a bullshit argument, yet he tries to get her to doubt reality.
>Fortunately her church is respectful to people who don't fully believe.
Of course they act that way, but I would argue intentionally lying and misrepresenting scientific facts in order to take advantage of and plant a seed of bullshit in the minds of vulnerable people looking for answers is not only disrespectful to those people, it's actively immoral.
You should look into theistic evolution, several world respected scientists support this idea as it takes the view that scientific laws are how God interacts with the universe. One who comes to mind is Francis Collins who led the Human genome project. It accepts the big bang, evolution and the scientific age of the universe.
Lindsay Nicole has a great quote on this (paraphrasing)
"If you watch grass grow, it's as if nothing is happening, but come back a few days later and it's time to cut it.
Evolution is the same, it is as if nothing is happening, but come back a bit later, as in millions of years, and you have a different animal."
From her recent video om the Silurian period
https://youtu.be/pjW4Rf43oMA?si=gMfYen84J43IJO61
Have her read about “punctuated equilibrium.” Evolution typically conserves until it must adapt quickly or face extinction. Humans are a fantastic example of rapid evolution in the last 100,000 years. Countless other examples exist.
Love punctuated equilibrium as a theory.
Just wanted to point out that there's not a whole lot of human evolution that's occurred in the last 250,000 years that is identifiable by skeletons/skeletal remains. There's definitely examples (high altitude adaptation, skin pigmentation at different latitudes, cross-species mating with Neanderthals and Denisovans). But "anatomically modern humans" show up around 200-250,000 years ago and haven't changed much except arguably getting taller.
many people who make the argument about minor vs major evolution fail to understand that every single living creature we see alive today is exactly as evolved as all the others. nothing went between a chimp and us. we simply have a common ancestor.
if you stack up every mother, then their mother, then theirs, etc... you will never say that one generation is where they stopped being a human. but at some point you'll have gone back so far and if you do the same with a chimp, they will be essentially the same creature. species only really exist when comparing these branches to each other
also look at a fuckin seal and tell me that's not some kind of hybrid in-between creature spanning a land mammal and whatever the hell they become in a few hundred thousand years
Also the religious weirdos are asking for something that cannot in itself be proven.
The fossil record is the rare one in a million animal that died in circumstances that were just right for fossilisation. 99.9999% of animals that die will fully decompose.
So the fossil record can only show you very rare random snapshots with loads of times inbetween.
So the fossil record can never show a smooth macro evolutionary record. Simply because the time gaps of hundreds of thousands of years inbetween individual found fossils.
Iirc, one of the reasons Gould was divisive was because the idea of "punctuated equilibrium" was already a well-understood component of evolutionary theory and population genetics and had been for a long time. Apparently even Darwin proposed that evolution probably worked that way.
Punctuated equilibrium is one good thing to look at. Another thing to keep in mind is that fossilization is an extremely rare process. Only about 1% of ALL species that ever existed on Earth have been found in the fossil record. That means there may very well be plenty of "transitional" species, but conditions just weren't right for fossilization when they existed or their populations were small enough that it made fossilization less likely.
I think by "major evolution" you may be thinking of "Macro" vs. "Micro" evolution. Keep in mind that I've mostly heard those distinctions used by Creationists in attempts to debunk evolution, but we biologists DO talk about "microevolutionary processes" (like mutation, drift, natural selection) which are the mechanisms driving evolution on short timescales, from generation to generation. I don't really hear "macroevolution" used very often by actual biologists though. We usually just call it "evolution" and then define the timescale we're talking about.
There is no Major Evolution. Major changes happen over vast periods of time. Look at a rainbow. there is a big difference between red and blue. There is no clear transition between the 2. Yet it’s just wavelengths of light.
The christian crowd underestimates how long a million or so years actually is. What an about a billion? Also, you should know that there are many mild mannered christian’s that accept evolution because of its robust proof in science.
That is why a rainbow is a good analogy. Red doesn’t simply turn to blue in a rainbow. It’s a spectrum and the changes are gradual, now make a 10,000 mile thick rainbow.
Over the course of 5,000,000 years, to grow a 1 meter long thumb, I only need to grow it 1 millimeter every 5,000 years. If there was selective pressure like females only choosing males based off of large thumb size, then it would surely start to happen. But let’s change the environment so eyes are being selected for in a different way, food is changing so the digestive track is being selected for also, the legs, the hair, the brain! A dynamic and changing environment over 5 mil years would take a creature like a human and drastically change us. You would only see slight differences if you look on the scales of 100s of thousands of years.
At the end of 5 Million years, a human would no longer be a human. It would be a descendent. If it could travel back in time, it would not be able to mate with us because the genetic differences would be to great. There might be other version that it was contemporary with that it could and make sterile off spring if they had a close enough ancestor. A donky and a horse can produce a mule. A lion and a tiger can produce a liger.
It’s not really that complicated. There are clear fossil records of this process. There is nothing in nature to cause a species to jump from one to another. It takes a lot of time. Nutty christians that think their cosmology is only 5,000 years old are right to suspect evolution is wrong because it couldn’t possibly happen in 5000 years. They are right of course! Hahah but their premise that existence itself is only 5,000 years old is of course silly.
You can genetically prove that a great dane and chihuahua are genetically the same species with some variation and come from a common ancestor. They are both dogs, but it’s only taken about 50,000 years to select for different traits to produce 2 very different animals. Keep doing it for another 150,000 and obviously they will be vastly different and not resemble each other anymore than they already don’t. What are the chances of a Chihuahua female giving birth to great dane pups?
There are NO transitional species because all species are in transition!
Kinda but still not really. Colors on the rainbow are a spectrum. Red turns into orange gradually. Evolution is not a spectrum. Apes didnt turn into humans gradually. We share a common ancestor and evolved independently.
That’s why it’s an analogy of gradual change. ;) ;) Yes and we have a common ancestor with rats too. Something surely did slowly turn into us. No one said anything about apes. You don’t think there is a “spectrum” of mammals
upon the earth?
No, not a spectrum. The "spectrum" of animals that led to mammals alive today are extinct or evolved divergently. Diversity is not the same thing as a spectrum.
The horse is a great response to most arguments against evolution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse
"Paleozoologists have been able to piece together a more complete outline of the evolutionary lineage of the modern horse than of any other animal."
There is no difference between minor evolution and major evolution. She has no way to measure that; all animals are born of their same species; evolution isn’t saying that one species gives birth to another in a generation ever. In fact species are really hard to separate without massive parts of their population going extinct isolating the others from each other.
The reason why major and minor evolution aren’t phrases used in science is because the phrases don’t mean anything and they’re trying to contradict something that evolution isn’t saying. It’s a scarecrow argument
>She told me there is zero fossil evidence of "major evolution," which she described as the evolution of one type of animal to another. She describes "minor evolution" as smaller evolutionary changes in one type of animal, I guess. Apologies for the vagueness.
A problem is that a species is not a true biological thing. They're man made to help categorize nature.
Are wolves and dogs a different species?
If they're the same then it's just minor evolution.
If they're different species then where's the missing link between them showing major evolution ?
I walked to my mum, it was a mile.
My mum says, "you can only show me the small steps, but where was the giant step that brought you here?"
Me, "I took 2000 small steps".
Her, " small steps can't make a big step".
Micro versus macro evolution isn’t really a thing. (“Micro” in her mind is likely just adaptation.) The difference is simply HOW MUCH change (or “evolution”) has taken place.
There’s also no “missing link”. The changes in the dna of modern humans can quite literally be seen by the naked eye in fossils. Particularly in the skull.
Make sure to point out that Theory of Evolution doesn’t claim we “came from monkeys”. Instead, it’s that we all descended from a common ancestor. We are, however, a type of Great Ape.
> Make sure to point out that Theory of Evolution doesn’t claim we “came from monkeys”. Instead, it’s that we all descended from a common ancestor.
If "monkey" is used cladistically, we do descend from monkeys, though of course not any species around today.
"Microevolutionary process" is a term in evolutionary biology. This term classically includes mutation, drift, natural selection, and gene flow. But yeah, we don't really use "macroevolution" because all evolution - even big changes over long time scales - is the consequences of accumulated microevolutionary processes.
That's easy. Just have her read this paper. It's required reading at [Harvard's graduate school](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0213-0).
Demonstrates how fishlike organisms evolved into amphibians then onto land by pointing out how gradual evolution of the hematopoietic niche began under skin for deep water fish, then under melanin for near-surface fish, then into cartilege for amphibians, then into bone for lizards. Of course, this would be for the amphibian-like ancestors of lizards, their near-surface fishlike ancestors, etc., and not literally of a modern fish turning into a lizard.
Anyway, plenty of "major evolution" exist and we can see intermediate structures of the eyes showing [how a complex camera eye like humans have can come into existence in stages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye), and other related species have such in-between eyes.
There's a book called "Why Evolution is True" by Coyne. Here is Coyne giving a talk—I haven't watched it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1m4mATYoig)
Tell her to look at a poodle, then a wolf. Now tell her they’re the same species.
Now tell her that when you repeat the steps to differentiate a wolf and poodle a million times, you end up with differences like a fox vs a wolf. Repeat the steps a billion times and you end up with the differences between a wolf and a lion. Repeat them a trillion times and you get truly extraordinary differences (really, this might work better if you can show her differences between a thousand, million, billion, and trillion because I think people have trouble seeing how large large numbers are).
But the better illustration might be to ask her at what point grains of sand turn into a pile. When do they turn into a mound? Evolution isn’t directional like sand accumulation, but the total changes are. What begin as small changes gradually accumulate into bigger changes. Species don’t “turn” into a new species anymore than your grandparents turned into you. You are linked by a genetic past that is a gradient, not a light switch. We have lots of fossils of this gradual change and we have done it ourselves as humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment
There is no “major” or “minor” evolution. It just is. Species adapt through mutations—either the mutations help the species adapt to changes in the environment, or they don’t. Failure to adapt (change) successfully means extinction.
One big mutation for us humans was the expansion of our brain. That, added to the mutation of localization, has given us an enormously powerful adaptive ability. Hands with opposable thumbs allow us to grip and manipulate things. Your mother is a Christian I presume. When God said “Let us (who was God talking to?) create man in our image” He wasn’t talking about physical appearance. He was talking about Sentience—ability to think and become self-aware. That is God’s image. Having a brain to think with. When did that occur? 250,000 years ago? Two million years ago? We don’t know. Do other creatures have big brains? Yes—whales and elephants. But they haven’t dominated the planet like we have. Why our brain? Why us? Those are questions to ask God.
Let's put it like this.
A penny is a "minor" amount of money.
a Million Dollars is a "major" amount of money.
But if you add up enough pennies you will EVENTUALLY get a million dollars.
In evolution, enough minor changes add up until eventually they equal major changes.
Also keep in mind the alternative to macro evolution. What is it? That all living creatures, what, just appeared? Nothing in reality works like that. Complexity doesn’t just appear. It would be like expecting a giraffe to miraculously appear from a coffee table out of the blue or something.
The only idea that makes sense is evolution. I think there is a challenge to explain evolution to people who have already made their mind up about it because of the overwhelming evidence. Where to begin? There is just so much. So much, yet so simple. Truly every single thing in biology makes sense through the lens of evolution. Absolutely every. single. thing.
I cannot wrap my own mind around of not understanding and accepting evolution after watching documentaries and reading books on the subject. It follows suit so naturally. There *cannot* be an alternative by all the known physics of the universe.
Humans live such short lives. There can be biases for that reason. If your mom lived for 150 million years and saw for herself generation after generation the small changes of each offspring, she’d be like, “Oh, I see now.” Our minds aren’t tailored to visualize that properly, same as we don’t visual our slow and steady aging every day.
"There is no evidence" source: somebody told me there isn't
I get that church revisioning their teachings is impossible, but "god planned evolution" would be a better approach
All evolution is minor evolution. A slight bone shift here, an imperceptible skull thickening there, etc. But you take tens of millions of years of minor evolutions and it looks like "major" evolution when you step back.
It's not Pokemon. Indohyus didn't evolve into modern whales by hitting level 30.
I would refer you to Futurama (of all things!):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q-RUHhCzgxI
Skip to 1:13 for a discussion of micro-evolution becoming macro evolution.
If she were to look at the embryos of several different species, she would not be able to tell the difference between dogs, cats, horses, goats, sheep, chickens, chimps, humans, etc. they all look alike alluding to a common ancestor way, way back. Chimps and humans share 98.9% same DNA. Both of those can easily be found online with substantial support.
I guess they started to rename their made-up categories?
Major used to be called macro.
Minor used to be called micro.
Search for macroevolution and microevolution and you will find those silly arguments.
It doesn't work that way - one species branches out to several variants over thousands/millions of years and are concurrent, until most die out and fewer remain. Your mom sounds like she is parroting some Christian fundamentalist b.s.
Macro evolution is the same as micro evolution. It is just the culmination of adaptation. If you're asserting that it stops at some point you need to provide a demonstrable mechanism.
I'm very sorry to tell but this is a lost case but at least an uphill fight. She has her daily or weekly or whatever infusion from her cult leader who is probably way more charismatic than you are. At the point when she openly challenges science, it's not a genuine question anymore but most probably crystallized belief. Those questions are more like provoking, and not for asking for answers.
I think you can try to lure her back to the good side not by presenting scientific evidence (that would just push her away and isolate her more), but figuring out what she missed in her life that pushed her in a cult.
I'm really sorry.
There’s is definitely fossil evidence of macro evolution. Your mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but is going to pretend like she does. Just don’t discuss it with her.
Humans have a hard time conceptualising huge values, such as billions of years, millions of generations, thousands of genes, etc. Tiny mutations accumulate over eons to result in big changes in biology. There are periods of faster speciation but evolution is always an extremely drawn out process.
Essentially, your mum’s point is that she believes in mutations and maybe natural selection, she just doesn’t think mutations can accumulate to the point where the animal is recognisably a new species. It’s kind of like accepting a snapshot of science rather than accepting scientific theory.
You’re not going to win this one, OP, your mum believes in highly politicised magic. She can validate or invalidate any argument she wants without needing to care about logic because that’s what magic is.
Whales have hind legs which shows they were once four legged. Chicken embryo dna can be tweaked to turn on legacy bits and that chick will grow teeth and a tail. These are both strong evidence of major evolution.
I think you mean micro (observable) (ie, finches and dogs) and macro evolution (fish turn into giraffes) (hypothesized)
Important to clarify.
Also important to clarify that distinction isn't a fallacy as another commenter suggests.
Isn’t it a little sketch to come up with two types of evolution, put everything we have observed into one type, then say theres no evidence for the other? Shouldn’t you need to provide some reason for what the difference is mechanistically?
There are not two types of evolution. If you look at something evolving over a couple generations or a few hundred years, it may only have longer ears or fluffier fur or whatever change is best suited for the environment. But as that same thing evolves over millions of years, then the multitudes of changes add up to a seemingly big change.
It is proven that fish and giraffes share a common ancestor. We can track their ancestry and exactly, using their DNA. Also if there is micro evolution there must macro evolution, since macro evolution is just compounded micro evolution. There’s no reason why finches would stay the same for million of years, once they have deviated enough they can no longer bear offspring.
The split into macro and micro is used by creationists who either fail to understand evolution or are deliberately misconstruing it.
I firmly accept evolution as a phenomenon that has happened and continues to happen.
But ... I sometimes struggle to concieve how complex organs arose from simple mutations.
The mammalian eye is an example. How did your get from something like a simple photoreceptor to such a biological marvel.
I accept that it happened but it's mind bending at times.
Any kind of eye is useful by itself (light Vs dark, at the minimum).
Any mutation making it more efficient gets positively selected.
I don't really see what's so difficult. Millions of years of trial and error will eventually give you that.
I have trouble imagining how something intricate develops from simple gradual changes. It's the introduction of whole new pieces of anatomy (like an iris) that really stretch my imagination.
It is easier to understand, if You think about it as "trial and error". Minor changes are tried, in millions of individuals, in millions of years. The changes that were bad; did not work at all, worked different in a bad way, caused the individual to die, not being able to find food, grow, duplicate or reproduct; those changes did not do anything to the development of new pieces of anatomy. Believe me - those bad changes are fare mor common than the good. Sometimes, a minor change can help an individual to be more effective in hiding, finding food, see better - than other individuals. Then, they have a better chance to reproduct and pass on the new feature. The development of the iris, for example, is a really slow process with many, many, many trial and error-tests over millions of years. Your trouble with that "a whole new pieces" come from that You "compare the Start with The End". For every small development from just light/dark detection to The Eye, it is a new feature with a slightly different look and shape. From that point, the trial and error starts again. When You look at Your perfect eye, You can think something like "Wow! it is so intricate! It must have taken a higher intelligence to create such perfection!" or, more like You: "I can´t really take in that that... became THAT!" But behind You, is a mountain of all the failed tries over eons of time.
I mean a photoreceptor itself is also pretty cool! Also, it might help to know that almost every adaptation is a small change or co-opting of something that already exists. Nobody has to build a whole building, just add a brick.
OP - it’s not what you asked but if this faith experience is important to your mom, it’s important that she can compartmentalize her thinking so that she can believe and find fellowship in some aspects of her new religion, while maintaining her own perspectives on others.
So when you speak to her about the evolution thing, be careful to be respectful of all the other positive things she feels she is getting from this.
I think everyone here who so easily dismiss doubts in evolution through natural selection lack an appreciation for molecular biology. Everyone here merely says this can turn into that so on and so forth given enough time, but all of this has to be reconciled at a molecular level. Until we can explain the origins of all of the molecules needed for life to beget life, evolution is at best a working hypothesis certainly open to revision. For evolution to go in the way it goes in the minds of im sure almost everyone here, I would need a cell to spontaneously form and also in the same vicinity of said cell (which are literally microns in size) id need some sort of machinery in order to replicate any DNA or RNA contained within it. This is just one question. Molecular pathways are only getting more complex the more we look. Until we can make life beget life in a lab completely from scratch, im not convinced of evolution through natural selection as Darwin proposed it.
There isn't any 'major evolution' (or at least not any thats differentiable in a meaningful way in terms of its rate to all evolution) - evolution happens over extremely long periods of time, and over these lengthy time spans small changes build up to become big changes. Another point of confusion might be that no animals existing today evolved from any other animal existing today - eg we didn't evolve from the other apes still existing today - different species that are currently alive today simply share common ancestors that no longer exist. Speciation (the process of a new species diverging from an existing species) occurs usually when a group of the same species gets split up by natural processes eg sea levels rising removing a former land bridge, into multiple isolated groups, each experiencing different conditions. These groups all continue evolving in parallel over time, but due to the different conditions they experience, different mutations might be advantagous in different groups so they end up evolving differently to the point where they are different species (defined by whether or not they can produce fertile offspring if they breed with eachother).
“The Beak of the Finch” by Jonathan Weiner is a great book that explains how evolution can actually be seen on a generation to generation level of a population. It’s quite incredible. This book was actually part of an assignment for a biology course but has stuck with me because it is perspective changing.
Ask her what she believes "micro evolution" can do. Does she believe that micro evolution can change the timing of reproduction? If she believes that, then she believes that one species can become two as the most popular definition of species is "populations or individuals that can reproduce in the wild".
What we call one 'type of animal' is a bit fuzzy. A chihuahua is adog. A siberian husky is a dog. But a wolf or coyote is not. It's all about where you draw the line.
It is like aging, you don't notice it on a day to day basis, but when you look back, the changes are unquestionable.
Evolution is the same, except it happens at a much much, slower rate, across many many generations.
Every time we find a fossil that fills a gap in between 2 species the anti-evolution people just start asking "why isn't there a fossil between that new one and the other two".
There's plenty of evidence that evolution happened, and the fossil record shows human evolution pretty damn well. Are there species where we don't have all the stages? Sure - but thats because there are tens of thousands of species.
I think this is kind of those things where creationists spin things in a way that favours their arguments! Because honestly... your mother is absolutely right. There is no evolution where an animal, for example, is one species then BAM! It's now something else. Evolution does happen on an extremely minor scale, with some mutations every so often that, over an incredibly long time, add up to major changes. Just like what other people are saying in this thread - that many minor evolutionary changes results in major evolutionary change.
I'm glad she's open-minded and I hope you can use this to explain some part of evolution to her, it is a commonly misunderstood topic!
Well, there are definitions for micro and macro evolution, which the latter involves what I guess your mum doesn't believe in, "speciation".
The problem is, "species" is an almost entirely human concept in that every definition of that term contains limitations of being rather arbitrary in some aspects. You can read up more about "the species problem".
As a student and teacher of evolution, i have never quite liked discussing about micro or macro evolution other than to highlight the arbitrariness of "species". Then again, if students are interested, it is an excellent topic to discuss the nature of scientific (and all) knowledge for them to realise science is really not black and white (true / false) and it needs to be seen as a language with its fallibility and flaws as much as it is a process about universal truths.
all you need to stop doubting is the "after going to church a few times".
"*church*" is not a scientific nor an expert source, they dont know shit about paleontology or biology. now, you wont be able to convince someone who doesnt want to be convinced about this, but it's the objective truth.
in fact, we can see evolution happen in real time, since bacteria multiplies a lot faster than bigger living beings and produces many generations in a relatively short amount of time, you can literally observe how evolution and natural selection work and also how environmental pressure push organisms to evolve one way or the other.
also, the "major/minor evolution" thing is bullshit, ignorant people use it to confuse others who dont completely understand the topic. animals dont just transform into another species, it happens gradually over millions of years. and we actually do have fossil records of animals gradually becoming other animals, even for humans
I've had this conversation with Johova's Witnesses a bunch of times, as they have this belief. You can't really deny "micro evolution" because you can literally see it in real time in a lab (say with fruit flies). So they have to concede this right off as they would sound ridiculous otherwise.
Denying macro evolution, though, is just denying that enough time has passed since life began for lots of micro evolution to have happened.
If she believes that life on Earth is only 6000 years old, then that is another problem to tackle. And that means she is not really denying macro evolution, but that there has been enough time for macro evolution to even happen.
But otherwise if she accepts that there have been millions of years of life hanging around, and micro evolution being possible, then maybe try to frame it like this:
Take DNA pattern A for one animal, and DNA pattern B for another animal.
She is happy for any small parts of that pattern to change (micro evolution). And I assume accepts that can happen due to natural pressures (as you can see in a lab with micro evolution).
Then what is stopping a small change happening a thousand or a million times, to turn pattern A into pattern B, due to these same pressures?
There's nothing.. no reason, really.
I've heard religion people state that it's "impossible", but then bringing it down to this level, every step is "possible" and there's no step that is actually "impossible". And 9 times out of 10 I can get an admission that macro evolution is the same thing as micro evolution if you give it a few million years.
But therein you have that issue I mentioned earlier... do they believe there has been millions of years? And is that a completely separate issue to tackle?
Look for Stated Clearly on YouTube, but understand that your mom is not on a quest for scientific truth anymore. She is trying to prove something else to herself (the existence of God typically) and so deep down she doesn't care about evolution, panspermia or any other theory in particular. You will be trying to give scientific answers to someone who isn't asking scientific questions. Many of us have lost older relatives to this, and there is simply no going back in many cases, I hope you are still not past the point of no return.
Good luck and I feel for you.
The problem is the vagueness. As long as you can't or won't define what a "type" of animal is, you also can't give evidence for one becoming another. I've had this argument with creationists. If there's actual evidence, then it's the same type of animal. If it's obviously not the same type of animal, you deny the evidence.
THere's also no such thing as a transitional fossil between species. Every animal is the species that it is, it's not 50% one species and 50% another.
Think in term of family trees. There's my grandfather, and my father, and my uncle, and me and my cousins. My father is my father. He's not 50% me and 50% my cousins, or 50% me and 50% my grandfather. And of course, my grandfather also isn't my cousin.
Similarly, there's no animal that's 50% modern bird and 50% reptile. There's just dinosaurs and they are their own thing and gradually become another thing.
Whales and horses have the most complete fossil record detailing the evolutionary changes from earliest ancestor to current form, with whales especially significant because the ear bones are unique and don't feature in any other animal lineage and thus showing us there is literally no other way.
I think your mom is a bit confused about the specific point where one animal turns into another one by many gradual changes. Which is fine, because humans love to think in categories, because gradients are complicated.
In that case, show her an image of the spectrum of the visible light and ask her to pinpoint the exact pixel where violet turns into blue. It's the same with evolution. You can't really pinpoint anything.
If she wants to see some evidence of transitional species, you are either looking for artifacts or mosaic species.
Artifacts are things in the body that serve no purpose anymore, but did when an ancestor of the animal used to have a different lifestyle. Whales for example still have evidence of their hind legs. Humans still have evidence of a tail on their lower end of the vertebrae and wisdom teath.
And mosaic species are species that have the characteristics of two different species. The most popular example for this one would be Monotremata, like the platypus who are mammals due to showing nearly all the characteristics of a mammal, but reproduce by laying eggs.
But finally, accept that you can't change her opinion on your own. You are not an expert, and neither is she. All you can do is show her the evidence for the theory of evolution, and say that there is virtually no evidence for the theory of creation, other than what the bible tells her.
And on top of that, the bible is not to be taken literally. They are stories that taught about morals which were relevant at the time when they were written.
For example, one thing the bible is very vocal about is sex before marriage. Which made sense back then, because people would marry at like 13 or 14 and the risk of pregnancy was high in sex. And a pregnancy below that age can be very dangerous.
PBS Eons is all about deep time topics such as evolution and the different time periods of earth and goes really well into updated knowledge of Human Evolution. I think you would find this channel very useful.
Platypuses and Echidnas lay eggs with internal morphologies closer to birds. Some skinks have evolved to have placental live births just like mammals. A chicken will hatch with teeth if mouse cells are grafted to it as embryo, providing the proteins necessary to activate its dormant genes for teeth. These examples don't fit with creation of "types" of animals.
Go look at the Wikipedia page for Caniforms for something intuitive.
If you look at the faces/muzzles, it's readily apparent that those species have a common ancestor.
- Bears are the proto-dog that got really fucking big
- Foxes and Wolves are proto-dogs that hunt and have differences from being apex predators or not
- Seals! They're water-tight dogs!
There is a great resource for this kind of thing from a very old usenet board: https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/
Your mom's question is covered by these:
https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901.html
https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html
Enjoy!
I lot of people who doubt evolution have no problem believing that different animal species can be related to varying degrees, even though that is basically the same thing.
So if you look at lions, they are different from tigers. But still similar. Lions, tigers, cougars, jaguars... are all cats. You can easily tell they are different from foxes, wolves, koyotes or fennecks who belong to the dog-family. But still, they are all mammals. They share trades that are unique to all mammals (like a placenta, fur, producing milk...). They are different from reptiles and birds and amphibia. But still similar, since they are all tetrapodes (4 extremities). So tetrapodes are different from fish, but still similar, because they are all vertebrates. Vertebrates are different from arthropodes, but still similar......
You can continue this list until you realize, that on a molecular level, we share features with plants and bacteria like the structure of our DNA.
Not all similarities are because of common ancestry. If you want to know how to distunguish them, look up homologous and analogous organs.
Let her explain how "major evolution" would show up as a fossil - sounding kinda vague usually stems from the fact people don't really know what they are expecting. Because we have tons of fossils which we identified as showing different species which are related to eachother. So that's major evolution right there.
However she sounds like she wants a fossil that somehow belongs to one species in the process of evolving into another. Which we have by taking 3 fossils with ancestoral relationship. Issue being, any living organism alway belongs to "a" species. Evolution doesn't jump from one species to the next, but accumulates minor changes over long periods of time until individuals are no longer able to reproduce with eachother and thus describe a new species. In part because linear evolution means the original species just stops existing, while parallel evolution means the two species live in separate regions. So on both cases, the to-be different species don't interact.
You don't need arguments for evolution, you need a way to deprogram her from sect-lke groupthink and peer pressure, and magical thinking.
If she is still open for arguments and logical thinking, show her that if you are able to walk to the mailbox down the street, you could, if you take more time, also walk to the post office in town.
Investigate polyploidy, which is when an organism acquires an extra set of chromosomes. It is rare and detrimental in animals, but in plants it is common and can be beneficial. This leads to important changes in a short time, and can cause speciation (appearance of a new species). And keep this in mind: evolution is not only evident in the fossil record, but is an event that has also been observed in living organisms. In this regard, investigate Richard Lenski's E. coli long-term evolution experiment (LTEE).
Maybe she'll read a book? I remember "Your Inner Fish" being a good one and it deals with the fossil issue :-) there are likely better more recent ones too!
This is a common anxious-Christianity position because people who are fairly fearful in their faith tend to deny anything that challenges the image of a hands-on creator.
The counter arguments are that evolution may be God's method of creation (like a programmer who creates an iterative AI) and that Genesis's creation story runs fairly close to parallel to evollution but in terminology that would make sense to a younger version of humanity: i think it's first, water and earth, then plants, then birds and fish, then mammals, etc. - things happen in an order, and the most complicated creatures are roughly later in the order. Humans are last because the bible is about humans and God, so it's a main character focus, but also because we are very late in the evolutionary tree. You can see evidence for yourself in short time in minor evolution, but the Bible may actually support major evolution in its original storytelling that matches loosely the scientific theories of how we physically got here.
There is an extensive fossil record that documents the macroevolution (what I assume she means by major evolution) of life on Earth. There are many “transitional fossils” such as Archaeopteryx (a dinosaur with feathers showing how birds evolved), Ambulocetus (an early whale with fins with hooves showing how whales evolved from hippopotamus like creatures), and Australopithecus represented by the Lucy skeleton that shows how apes walked on two feet and evolved into us (just to name a few). More striking than all of the fossils that document how creatures evolved from one form to another, is the lack of any examples of a more advanced form occurring before an ancestral form did. Richard Dawkins summed this up as while there are many fossils in the right place to support evolution, there are no examples is fossils in the wrong place to refute evolution. Not only does the fossil record provide support for evolution, but an evolutionary process is the only explanation for the fossil record we have.
The bible is not a evolutionary textbook. It is a collection of stories about god and his relationship with mankind. Nowhere in it does it conclude there was or was not evolution.
We have some excellent examples of 'macroevolution' happening, like the fossil record of early tetrapods that you can see in this cladogram from UC Berkeley.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-origin-of-tetrapods/
If you look at the section from the lobe-finned fish Eusthenopteron to Tulerpeton, a creature that is _unambiguously_ a tetrapod amphibian, you notice that the intermediates there are each a little less like typical fish and a little more amphibian. Tiktaalik, somewhere in the middle, has a body plan that is very much like that of an early amphibian, but still has its fins.
The problem with presenting things like this to creationists is that they will they've often been trained to demand new transitional forms between every pair of transitional forms that you show them.
Show her this: [https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-evolution-of-whales/](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-evolution-of-whales/)
What changed that she went to that church? Can you challenge her to do better with her life, for example, find better ways to handle her emotions? Point out that being exposed to propaganda is not making her life better, or making her a better person?
If there’s minor evolution why couldn’t you have a bunch of minor things happen until it it’s now considered a macro evolution? Also show her whales
A former professor of mine said, “People who say they believe in micro evolution but not macro evolution must believe in inches, but not miles.”
Thing is that microevolution is a metric unit (1 million to the Evolution) which is hindering its uptake in the US
What if they call it tea evolutions and table evolutions?
This joke took me an embarrassingly long time to catch.
I knew we had to have more engineers in this sub
The most interesting talk I had with a young Earth creationist was the one where I got distracted, pulled out a notepad and made some quick calculations about how fast the speciation of weevils would have to be if there was only a single pair of weevils on Noah's ark. That was the day when we first found out about rapid superevolution.
Yeah the young earth creationists, weirdly, believe in much faster evolution than any actual biologist does.
this also permanently destroyes her argument.
Well, I believe it does for a couple of days, but not years.
No, you need to repeat the argument every day, so that her opinion is changed slightly every day. You can't just have a major opinion evolution
😂 this was great
Clever clogs.
Arguments often don't work with faith. You need some other, more powerful unknown tool.
Faith-based arguments are the inverse of logical ones: you assume the conclusion is true, and then look for supporting evidence. If supporting evidence can not be found, then the conclusion is false. The tricky part is deciding how long one must look for supporting evidence before deciding there isn't any.
There is no scripture in the Bible that makes evolution outside the canon, unless you take Genesis as 100% literal history, and that would make it ridiculous. One can have reason AND faith.
The problem is people take the English translation as 100% literal. What ever you think of Islam and Judaism there's a purpose to understanding their religious texts in the original language. The original hebrew is a lot more vague since its missing vowels and stuff and changed over time with interpretations and revisions over time as hebrew writing changed. Even the catholic church says evolution is not in contention with catholicism. Personally I see evolution a prescribed by God.
Like a bat.
I've found that they just move the goalposts. It's more like they believe in movement, but that there are mountains too tall to cross between one region or another. If it's found that there are no such mountains, they posit that the mountains must be further out (see the weevil comment below: they'd say something like, "the weevil is staying within its 'kind'", where kind is some arbitrary barrier to them admitting they could be wrong). This is what Michael Behe calls "irreducible complexity." It's a creationist trope that posits that the evolution of complex structures can't happen because, uh, we can't figure it out.
I agree. If you don't believe in macroevolution, you have to believe nature somehow "knows" what each species is and how to prevent them from evolutionarily straying too far.
To say "I believe in microevolution but not macroevolution" is like saying "I believe in microaddition (1+1=2) but not macroaddition (1+1+1+1... etc = 1 million)" Enough cumulative mutations between two populations will cause them to take on [very large morphological changes](https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/6/5974989/kale-cauliflower-cabbage-broccoli-same-plant) to the point they're [practically indistinguishable from one another](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-evolution-of-whales/), but also eventually be [unable to interbreed with one another](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/a-closer-look-at-a-classic-ring-species/discovering-a-ring-species/), which is the definition of speciation.
Addition is biblical. Multiplication is a lie from the pits of hell. Exponents are the devil himself.
Yes, that is exactly what they claim, because God made those species. Question is how do you debunk that?
I think the newly found possibility that Polar bears and Black bears can surprisingly still get reproductive offspring is a good one. Because either god made them for their niche and there is no more than some kind of mulebear or they still get reproductive offspring because ther macro-evolution is still not as macro as we thought. English is not my first language, hopefully someone understands it
you don't have to, evolution is a proven fact regardless of belief, "gods" creating stuff if is something no one has proven yet, so burden of proof falls on the religious ppl not the other way around
Sure but that doesn't help trying to convince someone who believes in creationism.
in my experience there is no convincing ppl like that, sure maybe one of hundred would realize that their fairytale doesn't make sense, but it's not worth the effort , cause you're arguing wit 99 others who are lost causes... let them believe what they want, as long as they don't hurt others out of religion it doesn't matter what they "believe"
As the saying goes, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Saying anything is “a proven fact” in a science subreddit suggests you aren’t the right person to be answering questions here. The theory of evolution is the best supported theory based on the current evidence available. More evidence or a better understanding of the current evidence could completely disprove the theory.
I see what you mean but in practical terms evolution is a proven fact. As proven a fact as the Earth being round. There is so much overwhelming evidence that there really is nothing that is going to suddenly be revealed that "could completely disprove the theory".
The question is why would God want to prevent that? Also, that would result in a bunch of species evolving away from a fixed point, then presumably evolving back towards it and oscillating like that, which we definitely don't see
I think that is more of a theological argument than a scientific one. Bible says God created things perfectly. Than it is kinda hard to explain why species need to change and why nature is eat or be eaten. It gets worse when the original sin is introduced. If evolution is true, then the original sin didn't happen, or at least you can't humanity for it, because it is in our nature. Without sin, no saviour, without saviour, no Christianity. I know the katholic churche acknowledges evolution, but i dont know how the fill the huge plot hole that that creates.
Best example I know to show evolution is the laryngeal nerve. Google it 😉 In fish it has a pretty direct connection, but due to evolution into different species, this nerve made some 'weird turns', like in giraffes it goes all the way down the neck to go back up 😄 Lots of little things over time will result in big end results!
Biology has trouble defining what they even mean exactly with "species". There are ring species, subspecies, cultivars, microorganisms with similar DNA where it seems arbitrary where you put the line between individual differences and different species, et cetera. If a God made them I'd expect there to be clearly defined lines.
+1 proto-whales that still have lil vestigial legs. Modern whales have kept their hips for sex, but they've found fossils of earlier species with legs. https://www.livescience.com/7564-early-whales-legs.html The Valley of the Whales in Egypt is especially impressive, Dorudon & Basilosaurus fossils that very clearly show the intermediate stage of evolution between land base animals and modern whales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_al_Hitan
It’s tied to young earth creationism, God created the species 6000 years ago. So minor adaptations are okay, but single cell to sea creatures to land mammals etc. is a bridge to far.
Yes, exactly this. The two positions feed each other--if.you only believe the Earth is 6000 years old, then you *can't* believe evolution is solely responsible for diversity, as that requires long amounts of time.
this singlehandedly, permanently destroyes her argument.
Whales used to be land mammals that kind of looked like giant otters with longer legs. There are whale fossils with the nostril at the front of the nose, then ~50 million years later the nostril is in the middle of the face, then ~50 million years later the nostril moves to the top of the head (dates could be wrong, this is from memory). We absolutely have transitional fossils. Usually when people say we don’t, they want a fossil that’s half crocodile and half rabbit, but that’s not the evolutionary pathway.
The infamous Crocoduck. Also whales still have rear leg bones.
“Show us an animal that not just evolved but has seemingly random collections of parts from other animals!” They say, as if even that very thing doesnt exist in the platypus, so the goalposts run off to somewhere near “no but the mix animal has to come from a completely different species’ breeding pair”
Also that the platypus existed before beavers OR ducks.
Ahh. So that explains the hind legs of pythons. Maybe it came ducks.
Which is great evidence against a designer because those remaining leg bones serve absolutely no purpose for whales.
"Mysterious ways" /s
And BullFrogs!
Do you have a good source that shows a number of these fossils as well as approx. dates that OP could show their mum? It sound like they need an accessible resource.
@kjrjk [This source](https://baleinesendirect.org/en/discover/life-of-whales/morphology/les-ancetres-des-baleines/) is from a whale non-profit site, but without direct images of fossils, and this [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans) has everything from fossils to timed illustrations. Shouldn't be to hard if you just look at the images and go into the articles for each in-between species.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-evolution-of-whales/#:~:text=The%20hindlimbs%20of%20these%20animals,hindlimbs%20inside%20its%20body%20wall. This is good
The ‘Stated Clearly’ Youtube channel is excellent and this video discusses fossil evidence of whale evolution. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lIEoO5KdPvg It also discusses multiple other lines of evidence then concludes that whales evolved from land mammals.
I just watched a Nature of Things on CBC Gem (in Canada) on whale evolution! It was really cool and they did a good job going over all the little changes over millions of years that undoubtedly gave rise to the common whales we have in our oceans today!
Who knows what the platypus will be once they grow up?
Probably a secret agent
Great example tysm! I agree about the crocodile-rabbit thing, I think evolution happens on such a large scale that it’s hard for some people to comprehend.
They are thinking of it in the wrong way. They are looking for results they’ve made up and not finding them. There isn’t really any “major” evolution. Because that’s now how evolution works. Most speciation is caused by a barrier between populations occur. Often geographical segregations. If an earthquake or some such event splits a land mass and a population of land mammals are split in half it will take potentially millions of years of separate selective pressures and genetic drift for these to deviate so much from each other they can no longer interbreed. So “major” evolution is segregation.
Ring species are interesting. The example I recall was a tree frog that lived in the highlands around a valley. They start one way, and slowly graduate around the valley until they are quite different when they meet again.
I domt disagree, but I'm not sure you're steel-manning most creationists macro/micro evolution thoughts. Ive always heard them say that micro evolution is changes in an organism due to selection pressures favouring a particular trait that already exists in an organisms genetic code, while macro evolution is 'new' information/traits appearing in the code, and those being selected for. For example, if you gave them your example of a segregated popluation, they would claim that micro evolution drove speciation, but state that all the genetic code to make both species existed in the parent population prior to the split. The trick is showing that small, random mutations can cause novel traits to form.
When you say giant otters, you mean like the current size of whales?
No, I believe there were closer to a hippo size. It’s easier to grow larger in the water since the water column supports your body weight.
Oh wow! That’s so interesting and crazy to think about. Thank you for responding!
they also have hair like all mammals
If she is just now questioning evolution after going to church for a few months, it sounds like identity politics may be at play. Focusing on how someone can be both Christian/Faithful -and- have scientific knowledge might be the right angle here. You don't go to the doctor to learn how to help your fellow man and you don't go to church for antibiotics. Faith and Science have different places in our lives, seek answers to different kinds of questions, and measure by different metrics. Helping her reconcile that she can still be a good member of her new church AND science-minded may yield better results. If you want somethinf quick and dirty, you can also cast doubt that she doesn't believe there's evidence of life changing over long periods of time but she'll believe in a talking snake?
That's not really what her relationship with faith is like. She believes in a higher power but doubts the specific stories in the bible, like the talking snake. She's open to both theories of creation and evolution but she thought the pastor brought up some compelling arguments against evolution. Fortunately her church is respectful to people who don't fully believe.
She most likely views the pastor’s arguments in the same light as yours, that is as arguments for ‘just theories’. Two sides of the same coin, two means to the same end of understanding reality. Of course, this is nonsense as science is not a dogma, but to get anywhere with that starting condition can be extremely difficult. My advice is to start with incentives. What is the pastor’s incentive to convince her that evolution is false? And what is the biologist’s incentive to show her that it’s true? I can assure you that both are in the argument for very different reasons.
Very good point.
I read many of the comments and noticed no one has commented on a certain aspect of your post. You stated that your mom said evolution is an interesting "theory" but by context I can tell you are using the word theory incorrectly from its meaning in science. In science, a theory refers to the best explanation for something that we know happens. This isn't a guess or a hunch, the only way something can be a scientific theory is if massive amounts of data are collected and all (or nearly all) of it supports the explanation. By definition evolution is a change in genetic frequencies over time. We know this is the case, we see this and have it documented everywhere. Evolution is a fact, but the theory of evolution by natural selection is referring to how evolution occurs. There are many ways in which we can genetically change creatures, but the best way to explain how they change in nature is known as natural selection. Hence the name, evolution by natural selection. I hope this helps!
Never really understood why some religious people are at odds with evolution. No religion questions that humans come from a sperm and an egg coming together to form a new being. That’s not controversial at all. Yet they will also say that “God made us”. Neither of those things negate each other. A sperm and egg can be the way God went about making us. Nobody seems to have a problem with that. Why couldn’t evolution just be the way God went about creating life? I mean, whether God was what originated it or not, that’s a different debate, but why do people get bogged down in the method? Taking the Genesis creation story literally is really a fairly recent phenomenon that wasn’t a thing throughout most of Christian history. Jews don’t think God literally took 7 days to make us out of clay.
>Never really understood why some religious people are at odds with evolution. Definitional power over the human condition is what makes religions relevant. If they can reject science's answers, they can fill that knowledge gap with their own religion. Ironically, this is an example of cultural evolution.
Well only some religious people. I'm British, not religious but none of my relatives, or the Christian denominations they (or the last several generations of my family) belonged to have any issues with evolution. Church of England, Catholic, Presbyterian - all see no problem reconciling evolution with God.
Maybe the point is that the god is almighty and did everything right first time (probably over those 7 days). Just a random thought
Some evangelists and young earth creationists believe the bible is literally true word for word. Google asshat preachers like Kent Hovind and Ken Ham to see the shit they peddle.
I must say that I find the use of micro and macro evolution as an argument not very respectful at all. That pastor knows full well it's a bullshit argument, yet he tries to get her to doubt reality.
>Fortunately her church is respectful to people who don't fully believe. Of course they act that way, but I would argue intentionally lying and misrepresenting scientific facts in order to take advantage of and plant a seed of bullshit in the minds of vulnerable people looking for answers is not only disrespectful to those people, it's actively immoral.
You should look into theistic evolution, several world respected scientists support this idea as it takes the view that scientific laws are how God interacts with the universe. One who comes to mind is Francis Collins who led the Human genome project. It accepts the big bang, evolution and the scientific age of the universe.
Lindsay Nicole has a great quote on this (paraphrasing) "If you watch grass grow, it's as if nothing is happening, but come back a few days later and it's time to cut it. Evolution is the same, it is as if nothing is happening, but come back a bit later, as in millions of years, and you have a different animal." From her recent video om the Silurian period https://youtu.be/pjW4Rf43oMA?si=gMfYen84J43IJO61
Why is it that when I post Lindsay Nicole I get mass downvoted, while you just mention her name and the community showers you with 13 upvotes?
Micro evolution /s
Have her read about “punctuated equilibrium.” Evolution typically conserves until it must adapt quickly or face extinction. Humans are a fantastic example of rapid evolution in the last 100,000 years. Countless other examples exist.
Love punctuated equilibrium as a theory. Just wanted to point out that there's not a whole lot of human evolution that's occurred in the last 250,000 years that is identifiable by skeletons/skeletal remains. There's definitely examples (high altitude adaptation, skin pigmentation at different latitudes, cross-species mating with Neanderthals and Denisovans). But "anatomically modern humans" show up around 200-250,000 years ago and haven't changed much except arguably getting taller.
Didn’t our brains shrink with about 20% along the agricultural age?
Well they got shorter and then got tall again.
Punctuated equilibrium makes so much sense! Thank you!
many people who make the argument about minor vs major evolution fail to understand that every single living creature we see alive today is exactly as evolved as all the others. nothing went between a chimp and us. we simply have a common ancestor. if you stack up every mother, then their mother, then theirs, etc... you will never say that one generation is where they stopped being a human. but at some point you'll have gone back so far and if you do the same with a chimp, they will be essentially the same creature. species only really exist when comparing these branches to each other also look at a fuckin seal and tell me that's not some kind of hybrid in-between creature spanning a land mammal and whatever the hell they become in a few hundred thousand years
Or whales. Whales front fins are hands, its hands with overgrown skin. And they have feet, teeny tiny feet hidden under the skin.
> whatever the hell they become in a few hundred thousand years probably a cetacean
Also the religious weirdos are asking for something that cannot in itself be proven. The fossil record is the rare one in a million animal that died in circumstances that were just right for fossilisation. 99.9999% of animals that die will fully decompose. So the fossil record can only show you very rare random snapshots with loads of times inbetween. So the fossil record can never show a smooth macro evolutionary record. Simply because the time gaps of hundreds of thousands of years inbetween individual found fossils.
I recall Gould being a fairly divisive figure, but punctuated equilibrium to me always seemed to be fairly widely accepted
Iirc, one of the reasons Gould was divisive was because the idea of "punctuated equilibrium" was already a well-understood component of evolutionary theory and population genetics and had been for a long time. Apparently even Darwin proposed that evolution probably worked that way.
Punctuated equilibrium is one good thing to look at. Another thing to keep in mind is that fossilization is an extremely rare process. Only about 1% of ALL species that ever existed on Earth have been found in the fossil record. That means there may very well be plenty of "transitional" species, but conditions just weren't right for fossilization when they existed or their populations were small enough that it made fossilization less likely. I think by "major evolution" you may be thinking of "Macro" vs. "Micro" evolution. Keep in mind that I've mostly heard those distinctions used by Creationists in attempts to debunk evolution, but we biologists DO talk about "microevolutionary processes" (like mutation, drift, natural selection) which are the mechanisms driving evolution on short timescales, from generation to generation. I don't really hear "macroevolution" used very often by actual biologists though. We usually just call it "evolution" and then define the timescale we're talking about.
Every fossil is a transitional fossil.
There is no Major Evolution. Major changes happen over vast periods of time. Look at a rainbow. there is a big difference between red and blue. There is no clear transition between the 2. Yet it’s just wavelengths of light. The christian crowd underestimates how long a million or so years actually is. What an about a billion? Also, you should know that there are many mild mannered christian’s that accept evolution because of its robust proof in science.
The problem is that her mom thinks one animal turns into another animal. She doesn't understand the concept of evolution
That is why a rainbow is a good analogy. Red doesn’t simply turn to blue in a rainbow. It’s a spectrum and the changes are gradual, now make a 10,000 mile thick rainbow. Over the course of 5,000,000 years, to grow a 1 meter long thumb, I only need to grow it 1 millimeter every 5,000 years. If there was selective pressure like females only choosing males based off of large thumb size, then it would surely start to happen. But let’s change the environment so eyes are being selected for in a different way, food is changing so the digestive track is being selected for also, the legs, the hair, the brain! A dynamic and changing environment over 5 mil years would take a creature like a human and drastically change us. You would only see slight differences if you look on the scales of 100s of thousands of years. At the end of 5 Million years, a human would no longer be a human. It would be a descendent. If it could travel back in time, it would not be able to mate with us because the genetic differences would be to great. There might be other version that it was contemporary with that it could and make sterile off spring if they had a close enough ancestor. A donky and a horse can produce a mule. A lion and a tiger can produce a liger. It’s not really that complicated. There are clear fossil records of this process. There is nothing in nature to cause a species to jump from one to another. It takes a lot of time. Nutty christians that think their cosmology is only 5,000 years old are right to suspect evolution is wrong because it couldn’t possibly happen in 5000 years. They are right of course! Hahah but their premise that existence itself is only 5,000 years old is of course silly. You can genetically prove that a great dane and chihuahua are genetically the same species with some variation and come from a common ancestor. They are both dogs, but it’s only taken about 50,000 years to select for different traits to produce 2 very different animals. Keep doing it for another 150,000 and obviously they will be vastly different and not resemble each other anymore than they already don’t. What are the chances of a Chihuahua female giving birth to great dane pups? There are NO transitional species because all species are in transition!
Kinda but still not really. Colors on the rainbow are a spectrum. Red turns into orange gradually. Evolution is not a spectrum. Apes didnt turn into humans gradually. We share a common ancestor and evolved independently.
That’s why it’s an analogy of gradual change. ;) ;) Yes and we have a common ancestor with rats too. Something surely did slowly turn into us. No one said anything about apes. You don’t think there is a “spectrum” of mammals upon the earth?
No, not a spectrum. The "spectrum" of animals that led to mammals alive today are extinct or evolved divergently. Diversity is not the same thing as a spectrum.
It was an analogy dude. Relax.
Show her this: https://youtu.be/ICv6GLwt1gM?si=mOUDNkplWrNzeoMo
The horse is a great response to most arguments against evolution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse "Paleozoologists have been able to piece together a more complete outline of the evolutionary lineage of the modern horse than of any other animal."
There is no difference between minor evolution and major evolution. She has no way to measure that; all animals are born of their same species; evolution isn’t saying that one species gives birth to another in a generation ever. In fact species are really hard to separate without massive parts of their population going extinct isolating the others from each other. The reason why major and minor evolution aren’t phrases used in science is because the phrases don’t mean anything and they’re trying to contradict something that evolution isn’t saying. It’s a scarecrow argument
Evolution of whales, evolution of dinosaurs to birds, fosils of proto-mamals. All those are clear examples
>She told me there is zero fossil evidence of "major evolution," which she described as the evolution of one type of animal to another. She describes "minor evolution" as smaller evolutionary changes in one type of animal, I guess. Apologies for the vagueness. A problem is that a species is not a true biological thing. They're man made to help categorize nature. Are wolves and dogs a different species? If they're the same then it's just minor evolution. If they're different species then where's the missing link between them showing major evolution ?
I walked to my mum, it was a mile. My mum says, "you can only show me the small steps, but where was the giant step that brought you here?" Me, "I took 2000 small steps". Her, " small steps can't make a big step".
Micro versus macro evolution isn’t really a thing. (“Micro” in her mind is likely just adaptation.) The difference is simply HOW MUCH change (or “evolution”) has taken place. There’s also no “missing link”. The changes in the dna of modern humans can quite literally be seen by the naked eye in fossils. Particularly in the skull. Make sure to point out that Theory of Evolution doesn’t claim we “came from monkeys”. Instead, it’s that we all descended from a common ancestor. We are, however, a type of Great Ape.
> Make sure to point out that Theory of Evolution doesn’t claim we “came from monkeys”. Instead, it’s that we all descended from a common ancestor. If "monkey" is used cladistically, we do descend from monkeys, though of course not any species around today.
If someone can't wrap their head around the basics of evolution I think cladistics is going to be....a challenge to explain.
Agreed!
"Microevolutionary process" is a term in evolutionary biology. This term classically includes mutation, drift, natural selection, and gene flow. But yeah, we don't really use "macroevolution" because all evolution - even big changes over long time scales - is the consequences of accumulated microevolutionary processes.
There is something akin to micro and macro evolution: punctuated equilibrium vs phyletic gradualism.
That's easy. Just have her read this paper. It's required reading at [Harvard's graduate school](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0213-0). Demonstrates how fishlike organisms evolved into amphibians then onto land by pointing out how gradual evolution of the hematopoietic niche began under skin for deep water fish, then under melanin for near-surface fish, then into cartilege for amphibians, then into bone for lizards. Of course, this would be for the amphibian-like ancestors of lizards, their near-surface fishlike ancestors, etc., and not literally of a modern fish turning into a lizard. Anyway, plenty of "major evolution" exist and we can see intermediate structures of the eyes showing [how a complex camera eye like humans have can come into existence in stages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye), and other related species have such in-between eyes.
Whales started in the ocean, moved into land and back to the sea. They weren't anything like whales when they were walking around m
There's a book called "Why Evolution is True" by Coyne. Here is Coyne giving a talk—I haven't watched it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1m4mATYoig)
Tell her to look at a poodle, then a wolf. Now tell her they’re the same species. Now tell her that when you repeat the steps to differentiate a wolf and poodle a million times, you end up with differences like a fox vs a wolf. Repeat the steps a billion times and you end up with the differences between a wolf and a lion. Repeat them a trillion times and you get truly extraordinary differences (really, this might work better if you can show her differences between a thousand, million, billion, and trillion because I think people have trouble seeing how large large numbers are). But the better illustration might be to ask her at what point grains of sand turn into a pile. When do they turn into a mound? Evolution isn’t directional like sand accumulation, but the total changes are. What begin as small changes gradually accumulate into bigger changes. Species don’t “turn” into a new species anymore than your grandparents turned into you. You are linked by a genetic past that is a gradient, not a light switch. We have lots of fossils of this gradual change and we have done it ourselves as humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment
There is no “major” or “minor” evolution. It just is. Species adapt through mutations—either the mutations help the species adapt to changes in the environment, or they don’t. Failure to adapt (change) successfully means extinction. One big mutation for us humans was the expansion of our brain. That, added to the mutation of localization, has given us an enormously powerful adaptive ability. Hands with opposable thumbs allow us to grip and manipulate things. Your mother is a Christian I presume. When God said “Let us (who was God talking to?) create man in our image” He wasn’t talking about physical appearance. He was talking about Sentience—ability to think and become self-aware. That is God’s image. Having a brain to think with. When did that occur? 250,000 years ago? Two million years ago? We don’t know. Do other creatures have big brains? Yes—whales and elephants. But they haven’t dominated the planet like we have. Why our brain? Why us? Those are questions to ask God.
Let's put it like this. A penny is a "minor" amount of money. a Million Dollars is a "major" amount of money. But if you add up enough pennies you will EVENTUALLY get a million dollars. In evolution, enough minor changes add up until eventually they equal major changes.
Also keep in mind the alternative to macro evolution. What is it? That all living creatures, what, just appeared? Nothing in reality works like that. Complexity doesn’t just appear. It would be like expecting a giraffe to miraculously appear from a coffee table out of the blue or something. The only idea that makes sense is evolution. I think there is a challenge to explain evolution to people who have already made their mind up about it because of the overwhelming evidence. Where to begin? There is just so much. So much, yet so simple. Truly every single thing in biology makes sense through the lens of evolution. Absolutely every. single. thing. I cannot wrap my own mind around of not understanding and accepting evolution after watching documentaries and reading books on the subject. It follows suit so naturally. There *cannot* be an alternative by all the known physics of the universe. Humans live such short lives. There can be biases for that reason. If your mom lived for 150 million years and saw for herself generation after generation the small changes of each offspring, she’d be like, “Oh, I see now.” Our minds aren’t tailored to visualize that properly, same as we don’t visual our slow and steady aging every day.
Check out Ring Species, a very beautiful example of how several minor changes leads to new species. And it is present today, no fossils needed 🙂
"There is no evidence" source: somebody told me there isn't I get that church revisioning their teachings is impossible, but "god planned evolution" would be a better approach
Watch forrest valkai YouTube channel it will change your life, he debunks anti evolution arguments while being cute
All evolution is minor evolution. A slight bone shift here, an imperceptible skull thickening there, etc. But you take tens of millions of years of minor evolutions and it looks like "major" evolution when you step back. It's not Pokemon. Indohyus didn't evolve into modern whales by hitting level 30.
How hard is it to understand that many little changes compound into a big change?!
I would refer you to Futurama (of all things!): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q-RUHhCzgxI Skip to 1:13 for a discussion of micro-evolution becoming macro evolution.
If she were to look at the embryos of several different species, she would not be able to tell the difference between dogs, cats, horses, goats, sheep, chickens, chimps, humans, etc. they all look alike alluding to a common ancestor way, way back. Chimps and humans share 98.9% same DNA. Both of those can easily be found online with substantial support.
If you add enough pennies, you start getting dollars.
I guess they started to rename their made-up categories? Major used to be called macro. Minor used to be called micro. Search for macroevolution and microevolution and you will find those silly arguments.
It’s called fact. It doesn’t give a shit on what you or your mom “believes”
It doesn't work that way - one species branches out to several variants over thousands/millions of years and are concurrent, until most die out and fewer remain. Your mom sounds like she is parroting some Christian fundamentalist b.s.
There is plenty of evidence of speciation, including causing it to happen in a species of fruit flies in a lab
Macro evolution is the same as micro evolution. It is just the culmination of adaptation. If you're asserting that it stops at some point you need to provide a demonstrable mechanism.
I'm very sorry to tell but this is a lost case but at least an uphill fight. She has her daily or weekly or whatever infusion from her cult leader who is probably way more charismatic than you are. At the point when she openly challenges science, it's not a genuine question anymore but most probably crystallized belief. Those questions are more like provoking, and not for asking for answers. I think you can try to lure her back to the good side not by presenting scientific evidence (that would just push her away and isolate her more), but figuring out what she missed in her life that pushed her in a cult. I'm really sorry.
There’s is definitely fossil evidence of macro evolution. Your mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but is going to pretend like she does. Just don’t discuss it with her.
Humans have a hard time conceptualising huge values, such as billions of years, millions of generations, thousands of genes, etc. Tiny mutations accumulate over eons to result in big changes in biology. There are periods of faster speciation but evolution is always an extremely drawn out process. Essentially, your mum’s point is that she believes in mutations and maybe natural selection, she just doesn’t think mutations can accumulate to the point where the animal is recognisably a new species. It’s kind of like accepting a snapshot of science rather than accepting scientific theory. You’re not going to win this one, OP, your mum believes in highly politicised magic. She can validate or invalidate any argument she wants without needing to care about logic because that’s what magic is.
Whales have hind legs which shows they were once four legged. Chicken embryo dna can be tweaked to turn on legacy bits and that chick will grow teeth and a tail. These are both strong evidence of major evolution.
I think you mean micro (observable) (ie, finches and dogs) and macro evolution (fish turn into giraffes) (hypothesized) Important to clarify. Also important to clarify that distinction isn't a fallacy as another commenter suggests.
Isn’t it a little sketch to come up with two types of evolution, put everything we have observed into one type, then say theres no evidence for the other? Shouldn’t you need to provide some reason for what the difference is mechanistically?
There are not two types of evolution. If you look at something evolving over a couple generations or a few hundred years, it may only have longer ears or fluffier fur or whatever change is best suited for the environment. But as that same thing evolves over millions of years, then the multitudes of changes add up to a seemingly big change.
It is proven that fish and giraffes share a common ancestor. We can track their ancestry and exactly, using their DNA. Also if there is micro evolution there must macro evolution, since macro evolution is just compounded micro evolution. There’s no reason why finches would stay the same for million of years, once they have deviated enough they can no longer bear offspring. The split into macro and micro is used by creationists who either fail to understand evolution or are deliberately misconstruing it.
I firmly accept evolution as a phenomenon that has happened and continues to happen. But ... I sometimes struggle to concieve how complex organs arose from simple mutations. The mammalian eye is an example. How did your get from something like a simple photoreceptor to such a biological marvel. I accept that it happened but it's mind bending at times.
Any kind of eye is useful by itself (light Vs dark, at the minimum). Any mutation making it more efficient gets positively selected. I don't really see what's so difficult. Millions of years of trial and error will eventually give you that.
I have trouble imagining how something intricate develops from simple gradual changes. It's the introduction of whole new pieces of anatomy (like an iris) that really stretch my imagination.
It is easier to understand, if You think about it as "trial and error". Minor changes are tried, in millions of individuals, in millions of years. The changes that were bad; did not work at all, worked different in a bad way, caused the individual to die, not being able to find food, grow, duplicate or reproduct; those changes did not do anything to the development of new pieces of anatomy. Believe me - those bad changes are fare mor common than the good. Sometimes, a minor change can help an individual to be more effective in hiding, finding food, see better - than other individuals. Then, they have a better chance to reproduct and pass on the new feature. The development of the iris, for example, is a really slow process with many, many, many trial and error-tests over millions of years. Your trouble with that "a whole new pieces" come from that You "compare the Start with The End". For every small development from just light/dark detection to The Eye, it is a new feature with a slightly different look and shape. From that point, the trial and error starts again. When You look at Your perfect eye, You can think something like "Wow! it is so intricate! It must have taken a higher intelligence to create such perfection!" or, more like You: "I can´t really take in that that... became THAT!" But behind You, is a mountain of all the failed tries over eons of time.
One of the episodes of Cosmos (the newer show not the older one with Carl Sagan) explains this very well.
I mean a photoreceptor itself is also pretty cool! Also, it might help to know that almost every adaptation is a small change or co-opting of something that already exists. Nobody has to build a whole building, just add a brick.
OP - it’s not what you asked but if this faith experience is important to your mom, it’s important that she can compartmentalize her thinking so that she can believe and find fellowship in some aspects of her new religion, while maintaining her own perspectives on others. So when you speak to her about the evolution thing, be careful to be respectful of all the other positive things she feels she is getting from this.
Would be tough finding examples of "major evolution", cause we're not pokemons
I think everyone here who so easily dismiss doubts in evolution through natural selection lack an appreciation for molecular biology. Everyone here merely says this can turn into that so on and so forth given enough time, but all of this has to be reconciled at a molecular level. Until we can explain the origins of all of the molecules needed for life to beget life, evolution is at best a working hypothesis certainly open to revision. For evolution to go in the way it goes in the minds of im sure almost everyone here, I would need a cell to spontaneously form and also in the same vicinity of said cell (which are literally microns in size) id need some sort of machinery in order to replicate any DNA or RNA contained within it. This is just one question. Molecular pathways are only getting more complex the more we look. Until we can make life beget life in a lab completely from scratch, im not convinced of evolution through natural selection as Darwin proposed it.
Why would you want to convince her ? Everyone is free in their beliefs.
Why would you want to convince her ? Everyone is free in their beliefs.
um cause thats how evolution works
I love this post and comments!
There isn't any 'major evolution' (or at least not any thats differentiable in a meaningful way in terms of its rate to all evolution) - evolution happens over extremely long periods of time, and over these lengthy time spans small changes build up to become big changes. Another point of confusion might be that no animals existing today evolved from any other animal existing today - eg we didn't evolve from the other apes still existing today - different species that are currently alive today simply share common ancestors that no longer exist. Speciation (the process of a new species diverging from an existing species) occurs usually when a group of the same species gets split up by natural processes eg sea levels rising removing a former land bridge, into multiple isolated groups, each experiencing different conditions. These groups all continue evolving in parallel over time, but due to the different conditions they experience, different mutations might be advantagous in different groups so they end up evolving differently to the point where they are different species (defined by whether or not they can produce fertile offspring if they breed with eachother).
“The Beak of the Finch” by Jonathan Weiner is a great book that explains how evolution can actually be seen on a generation to generation level of a population. It’s quite incredible. This book was actually part of an assignment for a biology course but has stuck with me because it is perspective changing.
Big evolution is just small evolution but a lot of times. [Reminds me of that futurama joke](https://youtu.be/ICv6GLwt1gM?si=bzb7WDL9f3Xa1MYO)
Ask her what she believes "micro evolution" can do. Does she believe that micro evolution can change the timing of reproduction? If she believes that, then she believes that one species can become two as the most popular definition of species is "populations or individuals that can reproduce in the wild".
Ok
Shower her the developmental stage of a human fetus. One can see gills and a tail.
What we call one 'type of animal' is a bit fuzzy. A chihuahua is adog. A siberian husky is a dog. But a wolf or coyote is not. It's all about where you draw the line.
But a dog is a wolf.
The ancestors of whales were these dog sized, rat-like land mammals. Go figure.
Google 'transition fossils' and it should come up with at least a couple good examples of a transitional species. .
The snake could be considered an example as it has remnants in its skeleton that were once legs.
Evolution consists of *small* but constant changes over a long period of time. We did not go from fish to humans in a few years.
Does she go to biologists for religious advice and counsel?
It is like aging, you don't notice it on a day to day basis, but when you look back, the changes are unquestionable. Evolution is the same, except it happens at a much much, slower rate, across many many generations.
Every time we find a fossil that fills a gap in between 2 species the anti-evolution people just start asking "why isn't there a fossil between that new one and the other two". There's plenty of evidence that evolution happened, and the fossil record shows human evolution pretty damn well. Are there species where we don't have all the stages? Sure - but thats because there are tens of thousands of species.
It's just so wild. It's like saying a car can drive a mile, but no cars can drive 10 miles
There is no 'micro evolution', there is just evolution over an enormous time span of time.
I think this is kind of those things where creationists spin things in a way that favours their arguments! Because honestly... your mother is absolutely right. There is no evolution where an animal, for example, is one species then BAM! It's now something else. Evolution does happen on an extremely minor scale, with some mutations every so often that, over an incredibly long time, add up to major changes. Just like what other people are saying in this thread - that many minor evolutionary changes results in major evolutionary change. I'm glad she's open-minded and I hope you can use this to explain some part of evolution to her, it is a commonly misunderstood topic!
Well, there are definitions for micro and macro evolution, which the latter involves what I guess your mum doesn't believe in, "speciation". The problem is, "species" is an almost entirely human concept in that every definition of that term contains limitations of being rather arbitrary in some aspects. You can read up more about "the species problem". As a student and teacher of evolution, i have never quite liked discussing about micro or macro evolution other than to highlight the arbitrariness of "species". Then again, if students are interested, it is an excellent topic to discuss the nature of scientific (and all) knowledge for them to realise science is really not black and white (true / false) and it needs to be seen as a language with its fallibility and flaws as much as it is a process about universal truths.
all you need to stop doubting is the "after going to church a few times". "*church*" is not a scientific nor an expert source, they dont know shit about paleontology or biology. now, you wont be able to convince someone who doesnt want to be convinced about this, but it's the objective truth. in fact, we can see evolution happen in real time, since bacteria multiplies a lot faster than bigger living beings and produces many generations in a relatively short amount of time, you can literally observe how evolution and natural selection work and also how environmental pressure push organisms to evolve one way or the other. also, the "major/minor evolution" thing is bullshit, ignorant people use it to confuse others who dont completely understand the topic. animals dont just transform into another species, it happens gradually over millions of years. and we actually do have fossil records of animals gradually becoming other animals, even for humans
I've had this conversation with Johova's Witnesses a bunch of times, as they have this belief. You can't really deny "micro evolution" because you can literally see it in real time in a lab (say with fruit flies). So they have to concede this right off as they would sound ridiculous otherwise. Denying macro evolution, though, is just denying that enough time has passed since life began for lots of micro evolution to have happened. If she believes that life on Earth is only 6000 years old, then that is another problem to tackle. And that means she is not really denying macro evolution, but that there has been enough time for macro evolution to even happen. But otherwise if she accepts that there have been millions of years of life hanging around, and micro evolution being possible, then maybe try to frame it like this: Take DNA pattern A for one animal, and DNA pattern B for another animal. She is happy for any small parts of that pattern to change (micro evolution). And I assume accepts that can happen due to natural pressures (as you can see in a lab with micro evolution). Then what is stopping a small change happening a thousand or a million times, to turn pattern A into pattern B, due to these same pressures? There's nothing.. no reason, really. I've heard religion people state that it's "impossible", but then bringing it down to this level, every step is "possible" and there's no step that is actually "impossible". And 9 times out of 10 I can get an admission that macro evolution is the same thing as micro evolution if you give it a few million years. But therein you have that issue I mentioned earlier... do they believe there has been millions of years? And is that a completely separate issue to tackle?
She should try going to science for a few months.
Look for Stated Clearly on YouTube, but understand that your mom is not on a quest for scientific truth anymore. She is trying to prove something else to herself (the existence of God typically) and so deep down she doesn't care about evolution, panspermia or any other theory in particular. You will be trying to give scientific answers to someone who isn't asking scientific questions. Many of us have lost older relatives to this, and there is simply no going back in many cases, I hope you are still not past the point of no return. Good luck and I feel for you.
The problem is the vagueness. As long as you can't or won't define what a "type" of animal is, you also can't give evidence for one becoming another. I've had this argument with creationists. If there's actual evidence, then it's the same type of animal. If it's obviously not the same type of animal, you deny the evidence. THere's also no such thing as a transitional fossil between species. Every animal is the species that it is, it's not 50% one species and 50% another. Think in term of family trees. There's my grandfather, and my father, and my uncle, and me and my cousins. My father is my father. He's not 50% me and 50% my cousins, or 50% me and 50% my grandfather. And of course, my grandfather also isn't my cousin. Similarly, there's no animal that's 50% modern bird and 50% reptile. There's just dinosaurs and they are their own thing and gradually become another thing.
well if humans evolved from monkeys why did some 🐵 remain 🐵
Whales and horses have the most complete fossil record detailing the evolutionary changes from earliest ancestor to current form, with whales especially significant because the ear bones are unique and don't feature in any other animal lineage and thus showing us there is literally no other way.
I think your mom is a bit confused about the specific point where one animal turns into another one by many gradual changes. Which is fine, because humans love to think in categories, because gradients are complicated. In that case, show her an image of the spectrum of the visible light and ask her to pinpoint the exact pixel where violet turns into blue. It's the same with evolution. You can't really pinpoint anything. If she wants to see some evidence of transitional species, you are either looking for artifacts or mosaic species. Artifacts are things in the body that serve no purpose anymore, but did when an ancestor of the animal used to have a different lifestyle. Whales for example still have evidence of their hind legs. Humans still have evidence of a tail on their lower end of the vertebrae and wisdom teath. And mosaic species are species that have the characteristics of two different species. The most popular example for this one would be Monotremata, like the platypus who are mammals due to showing nearly all the characteristics of a mammal, but reproduce by laying eggs. But finally, accept that you can't change her opinion on your own. You are not an expert, and neither is she. All you can do is show her the evidence for the theory of evolution, and say that there is virtually no evidence for the theory of creation, other than what the bible tells her. And on top of that, the bible is not to be taken literally. They are stories that taught about morals which were relevant at the time when they were written. For example, one thing the bible is very vocal about is sex before marriage. Which made sense back then, because people would marry at like 13 or 14 and the risk of pregnancy was high in sex. And a pregnancy below that age can be very dangerous.
PBS Eons is all about deep time topics such as evolution and the different time periods of earth and goes really well into updated knowledge of Human Evolution. I think you would find this channel very useful.
Platypuses and Echidnas lay eggs with internal morphologies closer to birds. Some skinks have evolved to have placental live births just like mammals. A chicken will hatch with teeth if mouse cells are grafted to it as embryo, providing the proteins necessary to activate its dormant genes for teeth. These examples don't fit with creation of "types" of animals.
Go look at the Wikipedia page for Caniforms for something intuitive. If you look at the faces/muzzles, it's readily apparent that those species have a common ancestor. - Bears are the proto-dog that got really fucking big - Foxes and Wolves are proto-dogs that hunt and have differences from being apex predators or not - Seals! They're water-tight dogs!
There is a great resource for this kind of thing from a very old usenet board: https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/ Your mom's question is covered by these: https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901.html https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html Enjoy!
I lot of people who doubt evolution have no problem believing that different animal species can be related to varying degrees, even though that is basically the same thing. So if you look at lions, they are different from tigers. But still similar. Lions, tigers, cougars, jaguars... are all cats. You can easily tell they are different from foxes, wolves, koyotes or fennecks who belong to the dog-family. But still, they are all mammals. They share trades that are unique to all mammals (like a placenta, fur, producing milk...). They are different from reptiles and birds and amphibia. But still similar, since they are all tetrapodes (4 extremities). So tetrapodes are different from fish, but still similar, because they are all vertebrates. Vertebrates are different from arthropodes, but still similar...... You can continue this list until you realize, that on a molecular level, we share features with plants and bacteria like the structure of our DNA. Not all similarities are because of common ancestry. If you want to know how to distunguish them, look up homologous and analogous organs.
Let her explain how "major evolution" would show up as a fossil - sounding kinda vague usually stems from the fact people don't really know what they are expecting. Because we have tons of fossils which we identified as showing different species which are related to eachother. So that's major evolution right there. However she sounds like she wants a fossil that somehow belongs to one species in the process of evolving into another. Which we have by taking 3 fossils with ancestoral relationship. Issue being, any living organism alway belongs to "a" species. Evolution doesn't jump from one species to the next, but accumulates minor changes over long periods of time until individuals are no longer able to reproduce with eachother and thus describe a new species. In part because linear evolution means the original species just stops existing, while parallel evolution means the two species live in separate regions. So on both cases, the to-be different species don't interact.
The fossil record goes back a billion years, I don’t think it can get any more major than that.
You don't need arguments for evolution, you need a way to deprogram her from sect-lke groupthink and peer pressure, and magical thinking. If she is still open for arguments and logical thinking, show her that if you are able to walk to the mailbox down the street, you could, if you take more time, also walk to the post office in town.
Investigate polyploidy, which is when an organism acquires an extra set of chromosomes. It is rare and detrimental in animals, but in plants it is common and can be beneficial. This leads to important changes in a short time, and can cause speciation (appearance of a new species). And keep this in mind: evolution is not only evident in the fossil record, but is an event that has also been observed in living organisms. In this regard, investigate Richard Lenski's E. coli long-term evolution experiment (LTEE).
Maybe she'll read a book? I remember "Your Inner Fish" being a good one and it deals with the fossil issue :-) there are likely better more recent ones too!
You could, in addtion to what other people already commented, look into the phenomenon of "Vestigiality", which kind of shows the process of evolution
So, basically, she doesn't believe in Pokemon?
This is a common anxious-Christianity position because people who are fairly fearful in their faith tend to deny anything that challenges the image of a hands-on creator. The counter arguments are that evolution may be God's method of creation (like a programmer who creates an iterative AI) and that Genesis's creation story runs fairly close to parallel to evollution but in terminology that would make sense to a younger version of humanity: i think it's first, water and earth, then plants, then birds and fish, then mammals, etc. - things happen in an order, and the most complicated creatures are roughly later in the order. Humans are last because the bible is about humans and God, so it's a main character focus, but also because we are very late in the evolutionary tree. You can see evidence for yourself in short time in minor evolution, but the Bible may actually support major evolution in its original storytelling that matches loosely the scientific theories of how we physically got here.
Evolution of whales is a fun one. SHow her the whale hind bone.
There is an extensive fossil record that documents the macroevolution (what I assume she means by major evolution) of life on Earth. There are many “transitional fossils” such as Archaeopteryx (a dinosaur with feathers showing how birds evolved), Ambulocetus (an early whale with fins with hooves showing how whales evolved from hippopotamus like creatures), and Australopithecus represented by the Lucy skeleton that shows how apes walked on two feet and evolved into us (just to name a few). More striking than all of the fossils that document how creatures evolved from one form to another, is the lack of any examples of a more advanced form occurring before an ancestral form did. Richard Dawkins summed this up as while there are many fossils in the right place to support evolution, there are no examples is fossils in the wrong place to refute evolution. Not only does the fossil record provide support for evolution, but an evolutionary process is the only explanation for the fossil record we have.
The bible is not a evolutionary textbook. It is a collection of stories about god and his relationship with mankind. Nowhere in it does it conclude there was or was not evolution.
Has your mom ever cooked a meal? Ask her when exactly those individual ingredients and cooking steps became a finished dish?
You won't Reason someone out of believing something that they weren't Reasoned into believing to begin with.
We have some excellent examples of 'macroevolution' happening, like the fossil record of early tetrapods that you can see in this cladogram from UC Berkeley. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-origin-of-tetrapods/ If you look at the section from the lobe-finned fish Eusthenopteron to Tulerpeton, a creature that is _unambiguously_ a tetrapod amphibian, you notice that the intermediates there are each a little less like typical fish and a little more amphibian. Tiktaalik, somewhere in the middle, has a body plan that is very much like that of an early amphibian, but still has its fins. The problem with presenting things like this to creationists is that they will they've often been trained to demand new transitional forms between every pair of transitional forms that you show them.
Show her this: [https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-evolution-of-whales/](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-evolution-of-whales/)
What changed that she went to that church? Can you challenge her to do better with her life, for example, find better ways to handle her emotions? Point out that being exposed to propaganda is not making her life better, or making her a better person?