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Asked by ixabdulxi to Andrew, Ben, Beth, Heather, Louisa, Andrew, Ben, Beth, Heather, Louisa on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: General. This question was also asked by bertisha1.
Question: do u believe darwins theory and why
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Andrew McKinley answered on 16 Jun 2010:
By “Darwin’s Theory” I assume you mean the process of evolution by natural selection. Yes, I believe that this is the most likely explanation for the development of life on our planet. Over time (a *lot* of time), life will mutate. Some of these mutations are good, others are bad. Some of the ‘good’ mutations will give the ‘mutant’ an advantage over the ‘normal’ animals, which will lead to them flourishing over the ‘normal’ animals. These ‘mutations’ then spread through the gene pool and every animal without a mutation will die out; Eventually, over millions and millions of years, the animals are ‘selected’ (the ‘natural’ selection) and become the dominant form of their species.
During the agricultural revolution, we developed the process of selective breeding – breeding animals with a particularly tasty meat, or with that produced a particularly large amount of meat by choosing the animals which had those particular characteristics and breeding them together. This was successful over the course of 50 years or so.
If, by forcing it, mankind can make change happen in a gene pool over this short a timescale, then surely nature will be able to do it given the timescales of the development of our planet. (4.6 billion years!)
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Beth Dyson answered on 16 Jun 2010:
I do believe Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin showed that many more animals are born than can ever survive, so the ones that do must be the best adapted to their environment.
Darwin is famously associated with finches on the Galapagos Islands, although he never actually wrote anything about it. The finches on separate islands in the Galapagos eat different sizes of seeds, so they all have differently shaped beaks. This is because small beaks aren’t very good at eating large seeds, and large beaks aren’t very good at eating small seeds.
So, on islands with small seeds, you only get birds with small beaks and vice versa. Eventually, the birds become so different that they are classed as different species.
Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection has been backed up by lots of evidence from fossils, and lots of experiments done all over the world. It is generally accepted by most scientists to be true.
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Ben Still answered on 16 Jun 2010:
Evolution is a way of life. There is so much evidence that evolution was they way in which we came to have the variety of species of animal and plant on the Earth.
See my answer for “why are black people better than everyone at sprinting” and “why are white people white”. This is just two very small examples of how evolution adapted just human beings.
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Louisa Chard answered on 16 Jun 2010:
I do believe in the theory of evolution as it has a lot of proof to back it up. Darwin produced a lot of proof and we have found more since. We can even see evolution happeining on a smaller and faster scale if we look at seasonal viruses. Our immune system is able to recognise viruses as foreign and get rid of them, which usually take a little while the first time you get an infection (4 days with the cold, during which you feel a bit poorly). After this, it remembers the virus so if you are infected again it can getrid of it almost immediately. To overcome this, viruses evolve. Some of them mutate so they look slightly different to the immune system and it doesn’t recognise it, giving the virus a chance to replicate for 4 days or so before the immune system is finally able to clear the infection. Viruses that haven’t evolved/mutated will be cleared immediately and will not replicate so only the mutated viruses produce more viruses. This is ‘survival of the fittest’ in action.
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Jon commented on :
Great question (can’t resist popping in here from another zone, because this is such a good question)! Personally, I don’t “believe” in evolution (and I’m a biologist) – because evolution does not require my “belief”.
Rather, what I “believe” is that the scientific method can produce a reliable understanding of what happens in the world around us (and actually, philosophically, I think that does require “belief”).
Now, when you plug all the available evidence so far into the scientific method, evolution by natural selection is the only possible conclusion that pops out of the other end, to explain the diversity and patterns of life that we find.
So if you don’t accept that conclusion, then you are rejecting the whole scientific method, which also underpins chemistry, physics etc. So people who reject evolution as an idea are not just rejecting one idea in biology – they are actually rejecting science itself. And from what I see, science seems to work pretty well when it comes to explaining other things.
Of course, because of how science works, we can’t ever say that something (like evolution) is ever “true”, in the very strict sense of that word. But we can say that it is utterly improbable to be wrong. And that’s the conclusion you get from applying the scientific method to the available evidence.
If someone doesn’t believe in evolution, of course that is fine – anyone should be free to believe whatever they like. But as I hope I’ve tried to explain, not to “believe” in evolution is actually not to believe in science, as a reliable way of understanding the world around us.
And if someone believes evolution is incorrect as an explanation for the diversity and patterns of life around us, then in science they would have to disprove it, through new evidence and experiments. So far that hasn’t happened. In fact, so far the more evidence we’ve collected, the less likely it looks that evolution could be wrong as an explanation.
Now, when I talk to people who have doubts about evolution (which actually includes some of my students when they start at university), I like to point them to how dog breeds have changed dramatically in just the past 50 years (you can see it in photographs of dogs from dog shows over that time). For some breeds, like Bassett Hounds, the shape of their skulls has changed dramatically, over just a few generations. That’s because people have selected which dogs can breed, to create those changes in their offspring.
And if we can do that, then why can’t nature? That’s all evolution by natural selection is saying – that depending on who survives the trials of life and gets to breed, we see changes in species over generations. What I can’t believe is why that is so hard for many people to accept as an idea 🙂