Questions About Evolution

asked by my Biology 1400 class on February 27, 2001

I have had to pick and choose questions here, and will add some more at a later date. There were several cases where several students asked the same or very similar questions, so if you don't see yours, look for questions like yours.


Do you believe in evolution and if so is it right?

Well, it appears to work. It looks to me like evolution can account for an awful lot of things that would be extremely difficult to explain otherwise (which I can only present a taste of in the time we have in this course). I accept it -- but bear in mind that it's always changing, always being revised. It's never completely "right" because we're always finding out more about it, correcting past mistakes and asking new questions.


Just because these animals have similar characteristics, how does that prove evolution?

Science doesn't "prove" anything. (Weren't you listening to my earlier lectures?? Sheesh!)

At any rate: similar characteristics in different animals, by themselves, don't necessarily support evolution. BUT. . . biologists use them together with other lines of evidence (DNA similarities and differences, embryology, biogeography, fossils, experiments on artificial and natural selection, etc. etc.)


Why is evolution not happening in the world around us?

I beg to differ. . . evolution is happening in the world around us. I mentioned the ongoing process of bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics, and insect pests evolving resistance to pesticides. Another example is flu: The reason you have to get a flu shot every year or so is that new influenza viruses are constantly evolving. There are plenty of other examples (some of which will probably turn up on the next exam, so I beg your pardon for not giving them out here. . . ) There have even been a number of cases of new species being observed forming: see this list for starters. All of these are changes over time -- in other words, evolution.

Perhaps those don't seem like obvious or spectacular examples. Major evolutionary changes take far too much time to be observed directly, over one human lifetime. But there's no reason at all to think that the entire process has conked out.


Is it possible that a God or Gods created the world through evolution? This is somewhat possible in my mind due to the fact that the Bible itself says that time is different for God and that he works in mysterious ways.

Not being a minister or theologian, I prefer to remain neutral on questions like this. As far as I'm concerned, this is something everyone has to work out for himself or herself. That being said, there are many people who believe that God has guided the evolutionary process and used it to fulfill His purpose. This viewpoint is called theistic evolution. The Roman Catholic Church, along with many Protestant denominations and individuals, accept some form of theistic evolution. Some Websites with essays and information on this view include the Affiliation of Christian Geologists, this list of statements from the National Center for Science Education, or this FAQ from the talk.origins website.


Why is evolution taught in schools and creationism is not?

First of all: I've asked a number of my students just how much evolution was covered in their high school biology classes. Frequently the answer is "none" -- often because the teacher is scared to cover it, doesn't have time, doesn't know enough about it, and/or doesn't believe in it. So evolution is often not taught in public schools in the first place, at least in this state. (Private schools may or may not mention evolution at all, and may or may not include creationism in science classes.)

That being said: Any healthy field of science is constantly being revised and updated as new facts come in and old facts get reinterpreted. (A fair chunk of what I learned in my freshman biology class, back in 1987, was either wrong or incomplete.) That's just the name of the game: good science is always open to revision. We only "believe" in theories until something better comes along -- if anyone comes up with something that explains the facts better than evolution does, or finds something that evolutionary theory genuinely cannot account for, I'll drop evolution like a hot potato. Religious faith -- at least in traditional Christianity, Judaism, and Islam -- is not subject to change. If it was, there would be rewritten versions of the Bible coming out every year, with new chapters added and old ones dropped. And traditional Christian creationism is a religious faith -- because it all depends on one particular interpretation of the first book of the Bible. The strict creationists all tell me that theirs is the only right way to interpret it, with no room for change. That's out of bounds for science right there.


Why can't one Creator have made all these things similar, after all, this is his world?

Sure, a Creator could have just created all the similarities between organisms that we observe. But that raises some nagging questions: First of all, what kind of creator would have created a world in which it looks like evolution has happened? Why would a creator have put fossils in the rocks, tiny pelvises in whales and boas, ear-wiggling muscles in people, phony radioactivity in rocks, similarities in DNA, and pharyngeal arches (incorrectly called "gills") in embryos? Why would a creator deliberately set out to fool people?

Another nagging question is: how do you disprove the idea of a Creator? I sometimes tell people that the world was created yesterday morning at 9:28 AM, and the Creator gave us all false memories, and planted false newspapers and books in our libraries, etc. so that we'd think that we existed before 9:28 AM. How could you ever disprove that? You can't -- which is why it's not science.


Do you think humans are finished evolving, or do you think we would evolve again in the next million years?

It's extremely difficult to make accurate long-term predictions of how evolution will go. Think of the weather, or of human history: in both cases, it may be possible to make predictions in the short term -- but so many complex events happen, with so many unforeseen effects, that long-term predictions are virtually impossible. (Read some 1950s science fiction sometime. Most of those authors predicted that by 2000 we'd have intelligent robots and cities on Mars -- and none of them predicted the Internet!) Evolution's much the same.

But there's one reason to think that physical human evolution won't go much further: Evolution happens the fastest in small, isolated populations. If a small group of humans were somehow completely isolated from the rest of humanity for, say, 100,000 years, they might evolve into a new species. But because of human migrations, explorations, and especially modern transportation and mobility, it is very unlikely that any group of humans has ever been, or will ever be, isolated for that long. Humanity is close to becoming one enormous population -- and evolution happens extremely slowly in large populations. Humans can also avoid natural selection in many cases, thanks to our complex culture. (Instead of having to evolve huge teeth to crack nuts, we just make nutcrackers. . .)

So my best prediction is that we won't physically change much over the next million or so years. Of course, if human genetic engineering takes off, all predictions could end up going right out the window. . .


Where is proof for similarities between chimps and people besides gene sequence and bone structure?

I'll spare you my usual rant about science and "proof". . .

A lot of similarities between chimps and people have turned up in the field of behavior and psychology. Chimpanzees make simple tools in the wild, organize hunting strategy, and have been observed engaging in organized aggression -- "war." Captive chimpanzees have been taught to communicate in a version of American Sign Language, and have learned up to 240 signs. Their communication is perhaps not completely "language" as we know it (scientists have debated this an awful lot), but chimpanzee communication has many features in common with human language. Chimps teach signs to each other, create new signed expressions for unfamiliar things, understand the importance of word order, and can conceive of situations that might happen but haven't happened yet. (Check out the CHCI website for more. . .) Chimpanzees can also deceive each other -- which is otherwise a very human trait. All in all, chimpanzee minds are much more like our own than most people feel comfortable with. . .

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