A while back (a long while, by now), a friend-of-a-friend mentioned something interesting....

[conuly]

She said that most people she knows who accept the Theory of Evolution ignore "large holes" in it. Now, that may be, and those holes may exist. However, in my experience, most "large holes" mentioned are not, actually, large holes at all - or rather, they're holes in the knowledge of the questioner.

I'm hardly a biologist. However, if you post any complaints you have with evolutionary theory, with one exception... no, two exceptions, I'll gladly start running around to see if I can find answers. Or maybe one of my other friends can answer the problem.

The two exceptions are as follows:

1. I'm not answering that damn chicken or egg question, or any transparent version of it.
2. I'm not answering any question that has to do with the creation of the universe, or the beginning of life. If you say "See, this means there must be a designer", I'll quietly sigh, because the only response to that is "Well, who designed the designer", and before you know it we're having the second-silliest flamefest in history. There might very well have been some sort of original creator(s) or designer(s). I don't know, I don't care, that's onen puzzle we're never getting to the bottom of.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

First of all, your premise is false. Evolution includes the concept of random mutations. It is possible to have pretty much any degree of change just happen. It's highly unlikely, but it's possible. Given millions of years, many unlikely things will happen.

Second of all, there is only a tiny degree of difference genetically between humans and other primates. I don't recall with which species this was stated, probably homo erectus, but I know it was with one of the close but not quite humans where if you cleaned one up and put it in modern clothes, it'd pretty much look human. It could pass on a busy street.

People keep talking about the missing link, and I keep wondering - which link is missing? We have countless links.

Also, as was stated, lots of things get destroyed over time. We don't expect a perfectly seemless record of history left in the ground. We expect gaps. Not every animal is going to get conveniently trapped in a tar pit for us.

Finally, by the very nature of evolution, it is very hard to draw boundaries. To say, this is no longer a FOO and now a BAR. It's partly the seamlessness of it that makes it so hard to trace the path. Is this an unusual homo erectus showing the normal variation for a homo erectus or is this a something else? Am I a human showing the normal variation for a human, or am I an early stage of some other species? If the theory of evolution is correct, then it will be very hard for people to answer those questions. And thus it will be very hard to draw the clear straight path, especially as there isn't really a clear straight path but a bush, a bush that sometimes intermingles its genes back together, that splits off shoots, some of which die and some become new species and some mix back. It's tangled and it should be tangled.