Quote Originally Posted by annslow41
so explain.. you asked all those questions. if you "understand" evolution, enlighten me..

"How did evolution happen to mutate anything? How did it mutate eyeballs? How did it mutate blonde hair? How did it mutate legs?"

how exactly is "The same way it mutates everything," hmm?

something i dont get, is that if you're saying over time bits and pieces are put together and eventually, after some millions of years, make something useful, what's happened to the whole idea of "natural selection" over that time that the pieces do not make a whole? i mean, natural selection doesnt just allow random useless pieces to lie arround. if it's of no use, it dies off and doesnt get passed on. it isnt contributing to "the fittest" so it's getting eliminated. and if that's the case, nothing would ever get accomplished thru evolution. see my point? it's not very logical...
It makes perfect sense, when you take a different look at things: For example, the evolution of the eye. Imagine, if you will, a small multi-cellular organism with no eyes at all. An utterly blind, primitive organism living among other blind, primitive organisms. It may be eyeless, but there are plenty of stimuli out there. Then, by fluke chance, this organism's distant descendent gains a cell or two that are just a little more sensitive to heat and light. Not much, just enough that this creature's slightly more capable of determining whether the sun's directly over its head. This mutation adds a very slight bit of extra survival value, since sunlight is a key factor for primitive organisms. This critter's chances of reproducing go right up, as do any of its kin with a similar chance mutation. Soon (i.e. after many hundreds of generations), the slightly-light-sensitive organism is doing much better than it's not-at-all sensitive forebears. It's become the dominant species of its kind. Then, by further chance, some more of these guys develop just a little more photosensitivity in their photosensitive cells. More survival, more mutation, with each 'improved' version gaining more sensitivity to light. Given enough time, you get more complex multicellular organisms. A single over-developed cell which functions as a nerve allowing, for the first time, some perception of light and dark. Lo, the sense of sight is born - in a rudimentary fashion. In the eons that follow, more improvements take place: organisms with slightly convex photosensitive cells are better able to distinguish light and dark; this trait is 'selected' by natural processes since it improves the odds of survival, however infinitesimally. Over time, these convex cells give rise to the first lens - a clear shell of protein covering photosensitive cells, which can help to focus and deliver information to the first central nervous system.
And so on, until you get to the more complex, fully-developed organ we now call an eye.
plus, doesnt evolution totally go agains the 2nd law of thermodynamics? there's a little fact that is that "devices always move from order to disorder" ... but it seems that evolution pretty much goes in dirrect violation of this fact. while evolution is just a theory, the other's a law -- a tested fact.
Evolution follows a certain amount of logic - traits that improve an organism's chances of survival are likely to be passed on to future generations, because that organism is more likely to breed. It happens around us today - big, strong, healthy animals in the wild are more likely to breed than weak, sickly variants of the same species.
the main mutations i've heard of make people die, and that's called cancer. i mean sure, i've heard stories and seen pictures of turtles w/ 2 heads, or a cow w/ an extra leg, but that extra leg.. i mean look at it. it's not in a useful place. it's all weak and sickly looking. and usually those special animals' life expectancy is less than a normal one's. w/ all the creatures that live on this planet, it's strange that none of them have evolved during the existance of man.
Ah. I see there's a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of evolution, here. Evolution isn't about a new creature simply being born with a new organ or a new ability. It's an incredibly incremental process, dependent on miniscule mutations taking an effect over countless generations. One species can't simply "evolve" into another species in the space of a single generation. The 'mutations' we know as cancer and other deformities aren't part of the evolutionary process because they're radical, often actively harmful, mutations. Evolution involves tiny mutations, often of a single base in the DNA sequence. You never hear about this kind of mutation, because it's such an immeasurably small change that it's scarcely noticeable.
"In shocking news, a child has been born with a brain that's 0.002% larger than predicted!"