The next question people generally bring is due to the word "evolution" meaning "improvement". For example: if we are evolving why don't we have lion's strengths, dolphin's ability to breath underwater, etc? The answer pictured here is in fact valid: whatever evolved, evolved by accident, and remained or spread by chance. While human kind has generally been improving its technic and knowledge over time (and, say, dogs have not), there is no grand scheme of evolution making anybody better.
Interestingly, there is emerging evidence in epigenetics that non-DNA changes can also lead to heritable traits. So perhaps Lamarck wasn't all wrong. Grabbing the link, I just learned of paramutation, which is weird. It seems it's going to become even more difficult to speak properly about evolution. :/
Yeah, TBH I don't think I understand paramutation enough to explain it, even after reading this a couple of times. I wonder if paramutations themselves might be activated or inactivated by environmental factors. For example, perhaps in times of environmental stress paramutation can be enhanced, leading to more phenotypic variability, and thus, more possibilities to find a more advantageous phenotype. I have to think that dogs have to have some of this going on. I recall reading a study that it only takes a few generations of selective breeding to turn a wild canine into a very different-looking domestic dog.Interestingly, paramutation can result in a single allele of a gene controlling a spectrum of phenotypes. At r1 in maize, for example, the weaker expression state adopted by a paramutant allele can range from completely colorless to nearly fully colored kernels. This is an exception to the general observation that traits that vary along a continuum are usually controlled by multiple genes.
True enough -- but it's also true that we can't claim to know what everything in our body does and why. Eye color, obviously, is not going to turn out to have some amazing significance, but a different example might. Also, I'm interested in knowing if varying eye color is strictly a mutation or not, and if so how the various colors came about. Raises some questions for me.
People with lighter eyes tend to have more sensitivity to light. Couldn't there be a biological advantage to having darker eyes?
Perhaps not the best source but then, I'm about to watch a movie and am short on time.
Not always. There can easily be two or more genetic variants that have more or less even odds of survival, but one happens to be dominant, say, in a valley that gets flooded, thus ending their lifespan. The one that's left over then gets to acquire this niche when the flooding subsides. Chance is a very key player in evolution, not just w.r.t. gene mutation.
They think that, because that is what they are taught in school and in the popular vernacular. It revolves essentially around The Ascent of Man, the legend that we always see depicted with the primates lined up, a small ape on all fours on the left, gradually giving way to the human on the right. They do the same thing in biology textbooks with the evolution of the horse, from small to grand, toes to hooves, as if God had intended it so, but couldn't--for an unbeknowst reason--just will that a horse be a horse from the beginning.
"If we evolved from monkeys, why are monkeys still here?" Yeah, the concept of evolution seems to be one of the most widely misunderstood theories there is. And, of course, the term "monkey" is itself misapplied constantly to apes.
That depends. Are you asserting that evolution is completely false? Or are you asserting that there are holes, errors and mistakes that need to be filled and corrected? If you claim is the former then you are wrong. There are mountains of data supporting evolution. The entire field of Biology would not exist without it. In fact, I just had a speaker at my Michigan Skeptics group from the Beacon Center for Evolution In Action. His paper last month in the Journal Nature not only documented evolution actually happening but detailed the steps in which it does. If it's the latter then you would be correct. There will probably always be errors or holes in the theory that need to be updated with new findings. That's how science works. As we learn something new, we add it to the knowledge we already have. Fine tuning our theories and and making the whole greater.