I love how people will believe in God. Many years ago it was agreed (by believers) God created the heavens and the earth, animals and what not. Now, as always happens when science faces religion in some context; religion fails, people will believe in theories of, for example, the big bang, but wait! God created that too! They have wriggled and wrapped their God around the science that defeated the old belief. Of course this is a simplified idea but it illustrates the point that religion will always fail when in contest with science.
Science is built on irrefutable fact. Religion doesn't have a scrap of fact to call it's own and has always been defeated in contest with science. That's why the church fears science and has, in the past, tried to discredit discoveries and punish scientists.

Also, it seems that from reading this thread, a lot of people don't have a good understanding of the theory of natural selection or have invented their own ideas around what they percieved it to be.

I do not respect beople's belief in God. If it gives you some kind of comfort like a fairy story does a child, fair enough, I can't say that's a bad thing but it's not worthy of any kind of respect. I don't want to offend anyone, you probably don't even want my respect (it's not worth much anyway).

If early man didn't have psychedelics, we wouldn't have religion or god. They created god and religion to explain crazy shit like that groovin' tree that spoke in tounges while shifting in colours.

- This discovery about bacterium does not prove that evolution created everything there is today. Can you actually think of a reason/argument why we evolved into the only intelligent beings, instead of whopping my posts around? Why aren't there variations to humans, like intelligent humans with large arms and hands? Or jaws? Or whatever? Surely that would help that species survive natural selection. If the chance that only ONE species evolves into intelligent beings exists, then the chance of humans evolving into stronger beings surely exist too.

One annoyed biologist rant coming up!

Dude, why don't you just use that brain you've been so randomly endowed with.

Important principle in just about anything: trade-off. Basically, "cheap, fast, good, pick any two". There are strong, long-armed humanoids with big jaws. We call those gorillas. The point is: if you're at the top of the food chain already, why change? What good are big brains if you don't need them to thrive? Somehow evolving them for the heck of it will only cost you huge amounts of resources, and the chance you'll fuck up big-time is so large, it's best to, you know, not take the risk, and therefore evolution doesn't work that way right now. And huge dumb primates they remained, or whatever gets the Aesop across.

Humans, on the other hand, have worked themselves into a bit of a pickle. Not only are we weak, we also go reeeeal slooooooow relative to everyone else, evolutionarily speaking. It takes us over a decade, sometimes two decades to pass on our genes to very little offspring. We simply couldn't rely on natural selection to take us out of the mess we worked ourselves in genetically. What else was left? That's right, memetics. Now, we know animals use it, and primates in particular (knowing which stuff is food and then showing your children). It's cheap, easy, and improving it doesn't always require the death of over half of the population. You can just pass it on without the squick. Sure, it's not perfect, but it works, just like gorillas work. Consider this: If the gorilla gets by without brains but with brute strength, why wouldn't the human get by without brute strength but with brains? Claws are irrelevant once you have spears. Fur is irrelevant once you have clothing. Being super-fit physically is irrelevant once you're super-fit mentally, and a waste of resources. That's why.

And we're not the only intelligent beings. We've just out-lasted our competitors (Neanderthals et al). Apparently, sapience is a very narrow niche, and if you were educated you'd know what happens when two species inhabit the same niche: competition, usually leading to the (nigh) extinction of one and the survival of the other. It's how these things work. Evolution isn't a steady progression from bacterium to homo sapiens -- it's littered with the corpses of innumerable failures. Extinct species outnumber living species a trillion to one-trillionth. Evolution is speciation and extinction (creating new species and destroying old species, respectively), whatever works at the time lives, and what doesn't work dies, until something different works, wash, rinse, repeat.

Evolution is just so fucking obvious, and if there's one thing I just can't grasp is how the majority of the human population isn't sentient enough to understand it. What works, works, and what stays, stays. It's nice to know why specific things work and stay, but it is not necessary to come to such an obvious conclusion as this. Natural selection seems to be one of the most basic principles of the universe. Maybe it even evolved that way, and there's hundreds of lifeless, entropic, failed universes scattered about. Be happy you live in this one.


Also: Scientists watch Darwin's finches evolve

tl;dr version: Invasive species of finch nearly makes native, comparable species of finch extinct, which then changes its niche (something called character displacement) and is now going strong again, only entirely different, in just two decades' time, and is documented start to finish. Evolution, right in your face.

good job 4d sheep. No seriously that pretty much sums it up, thank you.

also evolution has no counsciousness a lot of people seem to not get this

"well if evolution is true why do xxx have xxx useless abilities?"

abilities or genetically traits that are irrelevant to that species' survival will randomly pop up as time passes, also traits that are potentially dangerous can survive if it doesnt affect the ability to reproduce and raise children (like people dying at 50 isn't a big problem if you start having kids at 20 and raise them until they're adults) (this can technically also be a benefitial trait since it stops overcrowding SO YEAH EVOLUTION IS WHAT KILLS YOU!)

so ye evolution isnt a POSITIVE WORD or anything much like DEVOLUTION isnt a biological term at all, what people consider devolution is actually evolution, and genetical offspring that will make humans increasingly stupid overall is still evolution even if it doesnt benefit us at all!!

LOL