What i can't understand about evolution....

“survival of the fittest””that humans and animals compete within their kinds for survival. The fittest live; the weakest die. when we see a mother cat leave one of her cubs to die, that is survival of the fittest, she'll feed the healthy ones and allow the weak one to die as an example.2. I think all life is complex, no matter how small it is, its complex so 'more advanced' does not mean 'more complex' but rather higher forms of life. Eg, humans are a higher form of life compared to an ape or gorilla.thats how i understand it to be anyway.

From what you wrote earlier I got the impression that you had the wrong idea about it, but you've set that straight. In essence, you're saying that survival of the fittest is the result of struggle for existence between members of the same species - even though you use the word 'kind' - and often even between siblings. That's good. But a human is necessarily more complex than a bacterium, simply because of the fact that a human is multicellular and a bacterium is not. So if you are saying that all life is equally complex, no matter how small, I would beg to differ.Next, saying that "more advanced" means "higher" is not very helpful, because you're just replacing one term with another. You would need to define 'higher', not by example, but with a proper definition, such that it can not only tell a human from an ape in terms of "highness", but also a shark from a hawk, a mouse from an elephant, an ant from a bee, a rose from an orchid, et cetera.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

so they have 'proved' evolution by experiments?what sort of experiments are you talking about??? have they produced life from non living matter?because if they do that, then i'll believe that life arose by chancePs, in case you havnt noticed, i acknowledge that 'evolution' occurs...i am well aware that species do diversify thru genetics and can adapt to environmental change...this isnt the issue i have with evolution.

Hi Mantis your reasoning is good and i totally see your pointI suppose its the implications that the theory of evolution are proposing that makes me want to see the foundation first.I know people keep saying that evolution and 'origin of life' are completely separate issues, and evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life, but the logical deduction is that if all life arose by chance and evolved gradually from one form to another, then logically it takes it all back to an original sourceso if that original source was not God, then I want evidence for what it was... i dont want theories and speculation

Which species of crocodile are you talking about? The crocodiles of 200 million years ago are not the same species as today's crocodiles. The same that todays coelocanths, cockroches & ginkos are different than earlier species.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969

What do mean by 'proved'? Do you mean "confirmed by evidence obtained from the experiments", which is the type of terminology Kapyong was using? If that's the case, then yes, evolution has been confirmed through experimentation, just as Kapyong told you. Hey, Peg, do you maybe remember something from someone at some point saying something that maybe suggested that evolution and abiogenesis are not the same thing? About 20 times?So did it maybe strike your noggin at some point while reading Kapyong's post that since he never mentioned abiogenesis or the origin of life, and since he only mentioned evolution, that maybe his post was about evolution and not about abiogenesis?Sheesh!--Percy

This has nothing to do with evolution, as has been stated a number of times.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969

Evolution and abiogenesis are related, but they are not the same thing.Let's say that in some way it is demonstrated that the first life arose by a miracle and not by abiogenesis, so we become very certain that abiogenesis never happened. How would that invalidate the evolution that you have already acknowledged takes place within what you call "kinds"? It doesn't invalidate it, right? Now can you see how independent evolution and abiogenesis are?--Percy

i see what you are saying and i apologise, my definitions are not very clear... and now im not really sure how to define iti view all animals equal in complexity, but in terms of intelligence, not all are equalI guess when i spoke about it before, it was in the context of the ape-men... the homo erectus/hominoids/neanderthals/humans etcin that context, its the intelligence that made them 'higher' or 'lower'but in saying that, i wouldnt apply this in the same way to all animals

In the same post Peg also claimed you said that evolution is random. You might want to address that point as well.--Percy

if evolution is to be proved, in my eyes, they need to show how it originally developedto show how it originally developed, they need to create it... they need to create molecules and chemicals that produced life and then watch how it evolvesbut if they cannot reproduce it, then how can they say we've proved it via experiments???what sort of experiments prove 'evolution'
(please keep in mind that i do believe in evolution in terms of genetic variations and speciation)Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

it was said earlier that the crocodiles of today have been the same for a million years... thats not much change at allits not logical that evolution would have been active with all other species but not on this one....would it do that?????

The "experiments" you can do to confirm - not prove - evolution are a little more sophisticated than that. Most of these experiments take the form: "if the theory is true, then if we do such and such, we should find so and so."For example, if the theory of evolution is true, then you can predict that one of the most likely places to find fossils of a transitional between fish and amphibians is a geological layer of a particular age, and in a particular location on earth known to have had a particular climate at the time the transitional species must have been extant. The test you can conduct is to actually go and look in that layer at that location and see what you can find.They did just that and found Tiktaalik.It's this kind of "experiment", or "test" if you will, that provides corroborative evidence for the theory. No scientist will ever claim that the theory has definitely been proven, but they will all point to the massive amount of evidence that has been gathered by this and other kinds of tests. If, in the course of such "experimenting", they find a fossil rabbit in a Precambrian layer, for example, the theory is in serious trouble. In the 150 years since the publication of "On the Origin of Species" such damning evidence has not been found. And it isn't for want of trying: the theory of evolution is probably the best tested scientific theory we have.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

You already accept that evolution takes place within kinds. Ask yourself why you accept this. Whatever your answer is, that's the evidence you're using to accept evolution.Also, you probably want to avoid using any variation of the word "prove". It only leads to confusion in these kinds of discussions. Obviously they don't, because you already accept evolution.You don't seem to be aware of the many contradictions in your own thinking, even while composing contradictions in consecutive clauses of the same sentence.If you're going to reject evolution because you believe there's insufficient evidence for abiogenesis, then you have to reject the evolution you already accept between kinds. The question you actually meant to ask is, "What sort of experiments are supportive of the possibility of abiogenesis?" That's a very interesting question, but this thread is about evolution, not abiogenesis.Peg, if you want to spend some time here developing a better understanding of why evolution is not dependent upon abiogenesis then that would be fine, but ignoring the issue isn't going to make it go away.--Percy

There is no % change in a species. Evolution is the descent with modification. If very little modification is necessary for the species to survive then little modification occurs. If more modification is necessary, then the species with evolve more. That is what is actually meant by "Survival of the fittest."Edited by bluescat48, : missing letters

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969