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Asked by alamin to David, James, Mike, Suze, Will on 13 Jun 2011.
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Mike Dodd answered on 12 Jun 2011:
Very interesting question. I personally do believe in Charles Darwin’s theory. The theory of natural selection can be seen throughout the natural world. From your own genes and proteins to the animals around you, there is survival of the fittest. If a gene no longer serves a purpose it will eventually be removed from a cell and an animal. Charles Darwin’s research on the finches of the Galápagos Islands was wonderful. It showed how separation of the same species, eventually led to differences. This meant that each finch had slightly changed due to there surroundings. Say that on one island the birds favourite food was found deep inside a tree or plant. To enable the bird to get to the food, it needed a beak that could make holes and reach the inside of the plant. Eventually a bird would be born with a long beak that was able to get the food easier than the others. This bird would be better suited to its surroundings and would use less energy getting its food. This bird would be the “fittest”, and the genes for long beaks would be passed on. This is why I believe in the theory of evolution.
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James Marrow answered on 12 Jun 2011:
Yes – the evidence is in the earth (in the fossils). I find the hardest thing to get my head around is the immense length of time that evolution has been going on for. The fossil record (I mean the fossils that we find in the ground) gives us snapshots of the story. But it’s a bit like seeing only 20 still images from a 2 hour movie – we can perhaps get an idea about the main events from these pictures, but the complexity of the plot can be hard to work out.
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David Ingram answered on 13 Jun 2011:
Yes – we have evidence in fossils, remote communities of animals on “islands” – including mice that live on the london underground who are genetically distinct from the main groups, etc.
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William Eborall answered on 13 Jun 2011:
I do believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution.
In fact there is evidence for it happening within your own lifetime.
Drug companies are constantly researching new medicines for diseases like malaria. However the parasite which causes malaria becomes resistant to these new medicines within a decade. When we say “becomes resistant” what we actually mean is that most of the individual malaria parasites will have been killed by the medicine. However a small number of the parasites will have a mutation, which usually might have been a disadvantage, but now means that the medicine doesn’t affect it. As the mutation prevents the parasite being killed it survives to reproduce and have children, who will also have that mutation allowing its children to survive the medicine. In this way a “Darwinist adaptation” is spread through the population as any parasite without it will die. This changes the species. OK it isn’t growing a third leg – but it does make the species different from its ancestors.
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Suze Kundu answered on 13 Jun 2011:
I do also believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Do you believe in it, or are you not sure? Have you ever seen that episode of Friends where Ross and Phoebe have the same debate?!
My reasons for believing in it is the evidence that we have in front of us. As the guys have said, fossils give us clues as to how animals and plants have changed over time. We are able to put these fossils into date order using different methods, like carbon dating. This is where a small portion of all carbon is slightly radioactive. If something is radioactive, its amount becomes smaller and smaller by a known amount. By working out how much of this radioactive carbon is left, you can work backwards to find out how long it has been since it was all there, and that gives you a good guesstimation as to how old the fossils are.
When you put the fossils in order, you can see changes to the animal or plant over time. It’s a bit like one of those puzzles where you have to get from the word CAT to the word DOG by changing one letter at a time, only these changes have happened really slowly, over billions of years! They change to adapt to their surroundings. The world wasn’t always the way that it is now. Different climates and weather phenomenon have battered the Earth, and life has changed in order to survive against this. Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest means that the strongest life was able to survive. These had the most favourable genes within them, so that when they survived and made further plants or animals, these genes were passed onto the next generation, and so on.
Comments
sodiumpolyacrylate commented on :
no i do not believe in the theory because of religious reasons
Will commented on :
Do you think that it is possible to believe in evolution and in creationism?
sodiumpolyacrylate commented on :
I don’t think that it’s possible (my personal opinion) because creationism and evolution are both different theories but for some people, they can think that the theory comes from the same source so other people might believe in both whereas I don’t believe in evolution.
Will commented on :
That’s a fair point.
I choose to try and think of them as separate ideas though, explaining separate processes.
Creationism explains how things began and how we got here.
Evolution explains how things that are here are changing and specialising. It doesn’t necessarily need to include the that idea that the primordial soup became us. We can’t recreate or measure that. But without turning to fossils we can still see evolution happening all around us, with its effects visible and measurable within a number of years, not millennia. And this happening doesn’t contradict or violate creationism as far as I can see. What do you think?
James commented on :
This is a difficult area for many people. Most scientists that I know (including those with religious beliefs) take the position that we should always question “received wisdom” – by that I mean we should always question what other people tell us is “true”. What we are told could be right or wrong, but we should look at the evidence in the world around us and come to our own view on what we are told. It’s a debate that’s been going on for hundred’s of years.
sodiumpolyacrylate commented on :
will and james, i do agree to what you say…. thank you for the information you have wrote to me.