Evolution for Dummies

[forufes]

well, not only dummies, but kids, simple minded people, guys with ADHD, those who are lazy to research, and the sheer dumb.

 

so i'd like to have a story in this thread, a story of Ted, ted was flung away as something or another in the big bang, and now after billions of years he's a human, we would like to have his biography here, Ted didn't mind, i hope you will be as generous to supply us with the details, in a manner a 10 year old can read and understand.

 

also if the story can go on a fictional ground, but based on actual science, so it'll be easier to relate to it.

 

and it would be better if the story was told small bit by bit, easier for you to tell, easier for us to read without getting lost; less possibility of getting lost for both of us, and more opportunities to interact and ask questions..

 

 

---------------------------------------

 

so, once upon a time ted was a clump of matter, something out of the periodic table, something that is unknown and didn't have a name, along with other similar clumps huddled together.

 

one day they got bored and blew up in all directions...creating solar systems and planets....(?)

 

am i correct so far?

if yes, then what?

[insane_alien]

the big bang and solar system formation are not part of evolution.

 

nor is abiogenesis. evolution starts of with the assumption 'life exists'

 

it doesn't care about how life started, just that it exists and can reproduce.

[forufes]

wow, you're right.

 

can a mod transfer the OP to general discussion or any other sub forum he sees suitable.

 

or we can just start with "life exists" and trace off humans, especially Mr.Ted..if it's possible.

 

although combining it with abiogenesis and cosmology would be more comprehensive and fun...

[iNow]

Another issue is that, right off the bat, the story assumes intention among the constituent parts where there is, in fact, none.

[john5746]

in a manner a 10 year old can read and understand.

 

If you are 10 and can't understand or don't want to invest the time to understand, then just wait a few years. If you are an adult and don't want to invest any reading time, then just stick with whatever fiction you believe now. It will save both of us much time and frustration.

[forufes]

one thing i know for sure, if i understood evolution more than an average person who asked me to explain it to him in a simplified manner, i wouldn't mind.

 

and i did not imply intention, i'm just trying to have the story be told from an inner prospective, not from an observer's, and if it did imply intention, then please change it so it doesn't, my start is a suggested one, to get things going, nothing more.

 

i don't know why people are getting all offended and hostile here:confused:

[Sisyphus]

Don't pay attention to any perceived hostility. People are just used to idiots going around trying to prove evolution wrong, and so they end up prickly about it.

 

Now, what do you mean by an insider's perspective? Do you mean following human evolution specifically all the way back to life's common ancestor?

[iNow]

I think he's simply looking for a first-person style account. "I am the universe, one day I decided to start expanding, and soon my expansion caused me to have clumps of matter and energy. Later, I decided to form earth, and my chemical processes began coagulating constituent parts, until I had created bacteria. I then had the bacteria start splitting, and some of those splits caused mutations, and some of those mutations went into future generations more successfully than others. The success ones kept changing, and good changes were kept, until there were multi-celled organisms. Millions and millions and millions of years passed, and then one day a creature crawled from the sea on to the land...."

 

 

That sort of thing. Am I correct, forufes?

[forufes]

Don't pay attention to any perceived hostility. People are just used to idiots going around trying to prove evolution wrong, and so they end up prickly about it.

well instead of labeling them stupid and shooing them away, they should confront the subject and discuss it..what happened to "you should once in a while put question marks in things you believed for your entire life"?

 

why is evolution branded as perfectly correct and above debate?

 

and even if it was absolutely correct, why would it be above debate, don't you want to share your discoveries with others and show them how you're right? or are you afraid (and none of this is directed at Sisyphus) that by them sharing their findings with you you might see that you are wrong and them right?

 

or is evolution, being a product of science, better than all other hypothesis which compete in explaining the origin of life? and may that be so, then it seems you have all forgotten that science advances by questioning what is established and given, even if that established given is a product of science itself, which soon will be past misconceptions...

 

as for me, i believe in evolution, though not for humans, and i thought i knew enough about it, till i read some threads here, and knew i was far away from it, so i am inquiring to answer the questions which rose to me, to recalculate the situation and take a new stance if needed, something it seems, many of you don't have the guts to do.

Now, what do you mean by an insider's perspective? Do you mean following human evolution specifically all the way back to life's common ancestor?

more like starting off with the common ancestor and show how he became human.

 

I think he's simply looking for a first-person style account. "I am the universe, one day I decided to start expanding, and soon my expansion caused me to have clumps of matter and energy. Later, I decided to form earth, and my chemical processes began coagulating constituent parts, until I had created bacteria. I then had the bacteria start splitting, and some of those splits caused mutations, and some of those mutations went into future generations more successfully than others. The success ones kept changing, and good changes were kept, until there were multi-celled organisms. Millions and millions and millions of years passed, and then one day a creature crawled from the sea on to the land...."

 

 

That sort of thing. Am I correct, forufes?

EXCELLENT!!

yes, something like that, although i think we should start with a part of the universe, because we'll end up with humans, who are a part of the universe, i think we should discard the rest, but if you see otherwise please share.

 

also your description, although fits the general idea, is too compressed and lacks gaps for us to ask our "how"s and "why"s...also we can start from wherever life starts because that's as insane alien mentioned, the concern of biology and evolution, especially if the thread is gonna stay in this subforum.

[ydoaPs]

Let's ask Mr Dawkins how Evolution works:

You stand on the shore of the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia' date=' facing north, and in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her hand, and so on. The chain wends its way up the beach, into the arid scrubland and westwards on towards the Kenya border.

 

How far do we have to go unitl we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It's a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with the chimpanzees in under 300 miles. We've hardly started to cross the continent; we're still not hlaf way to the great Rift Valley. The ancestor is staning well to the east of Mount Kenya, and holing her hand an entire chain of her lineal decendants, culminating in your staning on the Somali beach.

 

The daughter that she is holing in her right hand is the one from whom we are descended. Now the arch-ancestress turns eastward to face the coast, and with her left hand grasps the other daughter, the one from whom the chimpanzees are decended (or son, of course, but let's stick with females for convenience). The two sisters are facing one another, and each holding their mother by the hand. Now the second daughter, the chimpanzee ancestress, holds her daughter's hand, and a new chain is formed, proceeding back towards the coast. First cousin faces first cousin, second cousin faces second cousin, and so on. By the time the folded-back chain has reached the coast again, it consists of modern chimpanzees. You are face to face with your chimpanzee cousin, and you are joined to her by an unbroken chain of mothers holding the hands of their daughters. ... Daughters would resemble their mothers as much (or as little) as they always do. Mothers would love their daughters, and feel affinity for them as they always do. [/quote']

Full Text Here

[Edtharan]

Evolution can be understood in terms of an algorithm (or a "set of instructions" if you don't know what an algorithm is).

 

Evolution of life is just life following these instructions.

 

The instructions are:

 

1) Reproduce with variation

2) Select those that can reproduce best

3) Repeat from step 1

 

Very simple.

 

You will note that the "Selection" that occurs is not random, also, although variation can be random, it does not necesarily have to be.

 

Much of asexual reproduction is not entirely random, the organism reproduces its genetic code as accurately as it can. Too much random variation is selected against (but a small amount can be good).

 

So despite what many creationists claim, evolution is not exactly random. There is a small amount, but it is not very much and there are processes (that have been evolved) to prevent it occuring.

 

It is actually possible to have evolution without any randomness at all.

 

Try this experiment:

 

Get a lot of plastic straws, some scissors and a ruler.

 

1) Cut around 10 to 20 straws into random lengths.

2) Take the shortest 3 to 5 straws and remove them from the ones you have.

3) Take the longest 3 to 5 straws and make 5 to 15 more straws (enough to return the amount of straws you have back to its starting number) based on small variations from these straws (1cm to 2cm, 1/2 inch or so, longer or shorter)

4) Repeat until you have run out of straws.

 

What will occur is that over time you will get longer and longer straws in your collection.

 

What this means is that the straws have "evolved" into a longer form. Now, although the variation was random, the selection was not. You can eliminate all randomness by making each "Selected: straw have 2 variants, one longer and one short by a pre-set amount, and you still get evolution.

 

So although randomness does not disrupt evolution, it is also not necessary for it (but too much randomness will tend to disrupt it).

[tar]

Forufes,

 

At iNow's suggestion, I join you on this thread. I think I know what you are asking.

 

How do we get from dead, unintentional stuff, to stuff that is purposely trying to live and reproduce and survive.

 

And I don't think a realistic answer is too difficult. Although I don't know all the details, and can't fill in all the gaps I think it goes something like this.

 

The Earth formed from a collection of elements, including the heavier elements that were formed in the nuclear furnace of a former star that exploded and left its bits about to gather together with gravities help to form the sun and the planets and the asteroids and the other items in our solar system. As molten stuff on Earth cooled, the contituent minerals formed. Oxygen, aluminum, silicon, different elements joined together with chemical bonds to form compounds that because of their atomic shapes and nature, formed crystals, when bonds that fit were near. The crystals grew. They knew not what shape they would take, but the crystals actually grew. No mind involved. No intention. What fit, fit, and kept on fitting. And the crystal grew. Then on the surface, hydrogen and oxygen, formed water, and the atmosphere developed from nitrogen and other gases, pools formed from rain and evaporation and rain again. Lightning storms, molten lava about, energy from the sun, kept things mixed up and moving about, dissolving things, salts and chemicals. Phosphates, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon. Forming rings and bonds, breaking apart, forming again, depending upon what was around, next to each other, and how thing where mixed up. If stuff fit, it fit, and kept fitting together. Can't tell you the exact order that what occurred occured in, or the exact mechanisms involved in each step but organic compounds formed and dissolved and formed again. The right combinations occurred to form RNA and DNA components, clumps and modules of the stuff mixing about and grouping for various chemical reasons, with the energy of the sun, and the heat of the Earth keeping things churning. RNA DNA, Mitochondria, metabolism, cellular structure, evolving. What fit fit, and kept fitting together. What didn't fit, didn't happen. If movement aided in gathering chemicals, those chemicals combinations that created movement worked better than those that didn't.

 

The key was that at some point in the above, some arrangement of stuff was complex enough, and fit together well enough with its environment of pressure, heat, and available chemicals, that it could split and recombine with unorganized chemicals to make two of itself. To reproduce the pattern. To reproduce its pattern. To live, and reproduce. The rest is history. Perhaps we are the offspring of the first mitochondria, as surely as we are the offspring of Lucy.

 

Regards TAR

 

P.S. Interesting to me, is the fact that women are born with a full complement of eggs in their ovaries. That means that half the chemical instructions, to put you together are as old as your mom. One quarter as old as your grandma. One eighth as old as your great grandma. One ?th as old as Lucy. One ?th as old as that piece of RNA in my above example.

[JillSwift]

How do we get from dead, unintentional stuff, to stuff that is purposely trying to live and reproduce and survive.

 

You don't.

 

You get from inanimate matter to matter arranged such that its complex chemical and mechanical behaviors are such that these patterns reproduce themselves and "survive" They survive not by purpose, but rather because if they didn't, they would no longer exist. This is a fine point, it does not exist to survive, it still exists because it survived.

 

Exactly how these complex arrangements of matter came about is called "abiogenesis". This is a different subject from evolution by natural selection. Evolution explains diversity of life.

 

One of the big misconceptions about evolution and abiogenesis is the human habit of purposeful thinking. Our brains think in terms of purpose - a good survival trait for a species able to use tools. However, the universe itself is intrinsically purposeless. It just is. The events within the universe are equally purposeless. It isn't until our brains started thinking in terms of purpose that the universe started having purpose.

 

Great post, tar, describing abiogenesis like that.

Edited September 22, 2009 by JillSwift

[iNow]

If somebody wants to understand evolution, you should check out this new book:

 

The Greatest Show on Earth

 

 

It's been welcomed with rave reviews and is incredibly accessible to all readers:

 

 

http://richarddawkins.net/thegreatestshowonearth

I-QWv_0Mjq0

 

 

Click here to read an extract from Chapters 1 & 2.

[tar]

iNow,

 

I had some ideas I wanted to explore, concerning "intention" and purpose and such, but after being surprised by the fact (in the clip) that so many people still "actually" ignore the evidence and think the world was literally created by God just several thousand years ago, I will cease and disist. My debate was intended for like minded individuals, concerning some fine points. Not suited for the gross point debate that is obviouly and unbelievably still alive. I will supply no fodder for ignorance.

 

Regards, TAR

[iNow]

I had some ideas I wanted to explore, concerning "intention" and purpose and such, but after being surprised by the fact (in the clip) that so many people still "actually" ignore the evidence and think the world was literally created by God just several thousand years ago, I will cease and disist. My debate was intended for like minded individuals, concerning some fine points. Not suited for the gross point debate that is obviouly and unbelievably still alive. I will supply no fodder for ignorance.

The best way to overcome ignorance is to educate it.

 

As an FYI - I've requested the staff split those posts from the other thread to which you refer. Once they have, we can carry on there and explore these other points. They are worthy of discussion, as many people have similar questions to yours.

 

Also, the ignorance is much deeper than you may think. Too many people would rather deny reality in favor of their faith, and often this conscious denial of the evidence is reinforced as a good thing, but that is perhaps a topic for another forum.

 

Cheers.