Evolution is natural gradual process of development in accordance with the needs of natural world. As environment in the nature transforms, it demands only species to survive that can fit. In other sense is modification process to survive in the natural world is genetic evolution.
Environmental process by occurrence changes condition for species, evolution process acts accordingly for existence. Reacts and modifies shapes to fit in the environment. Environment initiates species to react for its fittingness. All genuses do not survive due to incompatibility; on the other hand which is strong to endure can survive or modify selves to fit with. Nature wants something new and evolution given it.
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A couple of comments, to refine your ideas...first, in blue...the currency of natural selection is reproduction, not strength. Something which is strong, but does not have any offspring, is an evolutionary dead end. In reality, we end up with several competing reproductive strategies--strength, intelligence, even cheating! If you are weak, but can get others to help you, that is a successful strategy. The bottom line is that "fitness" means "reproductive fitness" rather than any specific characteristic. Whatever happens to have worked is what gets passed on.

Which brings me to the comment in red. Nature does not "want", nor can evolution "give". The environment may have some selection pressures, and natural selection may or may not be able to react to those pressures. Sometimes, species go extinct. Even if a successful mutation occurs, we can rarely if ever predict how a selection pressure will be responded to. If a niche opens up on an island because a new fruit plant is introduced by a floating seed...what animal will be able to take advantage of that plant? How? We simply cannot tell, in advance, whether the bird or the lizard, both, or neither, will gradually respond to that pressure.


From your website...I could make many comments, but I will start small. "Genetic character of two legged species are more intelligent among all species, due to inbuilt genetic character." Birds are two-legged, and the Dodo bird's lack of intelligence is both legendary and directly implicated in its extinction. Our own bipedalism has had far-ranging effects, but it has a bit of a love-hate relationship with our intelligence. Yes, it freed our hands and gave us an advantage in perspective over other creatures our size, and may have thereby contributed to the pressures in favor of intelligence...but it also meant selection for narrower hips, appropriate for walking. The combination of narrow hips and a big cranium (for that intelligent brain) means that some women die in childbirth, and our babies are born premature (in comparison with other species, that is--a deer can walk mere minutes after birth, we take a year!)

Things are rarely simple in natural selection. It is a simple process, but with so many pressures and so many possible responses, the outcome is incredibly complex, and far more jumbled and chaotic than it appears at first glance.

You know, Diggy, that was the first thing you have written that I read without nodding off, but I suspect it is because I have a background in biology. You did an excellent job of explaining it. Not as good as Richard Dawkins in his amazing book The Selfish Gene, but very good. I'm afraid, though, that non-biology types may have had glazed eyeballs from all that logical talk. I wish it weren't so, because ever person on these forums should read it.

There is an old joke: A chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg. Like so many jokes, there is a strong element of truth there. Genes are still around because they are good at making copies of themselves. The myriad of ways they have found to make copies of themselves is astounding. Some do it by making gazillions of copies and hoping some survive. Some do it by making a few really good copies and then protecting them fiercely. Whatever method is used, it is only the genes that are important to other genes. They don't give a flying fart about good and evil. They are there to make copies of themselves, whatever way they can. If they can't do it in their current state, they evolve, or they disappear. There is no direction, no goal, no ultimate wisdom.

This does not mean, though, that we shouldn't find meaning and love and joy in our lives. I believe those are good survival traits. Happy people try harder to survive.

Gee...thanks, I think.I am reminded--though I don't quite know why--of a conversation I had, over 20 years ago, with a cousin of mine (who is now a faith-healer). She had recently been stung by a wasp, and was wondering "what is the purpose of a wasp? What function do they serve? I mean, bees give us honey, but what does a wasp do?" The underlying assumption was that all organisms have a purpose, and the subtle underlying underlying assumption was that this purpose was ultimately to serve Man. My answer to her was "the purpose of a wasp is to make baby wasps. Same purpose as any other plant or animal. They don't have to serve us, or any recognisable purpose, they just have to have been successful at reproducing."

Survival of the fittest...how that phrase has been mis-used...a strong, powerful man who lives to be 100, but has no children, is not "fit" in the darwinian sense. A weakling who dies at 20 after fathering a couple of kids (who themselves successfully have children) is much more fit.I agree. I find it amusing that some folk (in my experience, religious folk, but my experience may not be typical) think that the message of evolution (pronounced evilution) is to compete, lie, cheat, steal, rape, murder...whatever it takes to get your genes to the next generation. They don't realise that cooperation, peace, and love have been pretty darned successful reproductive strategies themselves.

Apollyon! You know, in reference to the White Anglo Saxon Protestants?

Excerpt from The Advent of Dionysus, chapter 6 ...

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

So anyway, Goozeberry, as I was saying...

It dumbfounds me that something as simple, yet elegant, as natural selection, something with so much evidence backing it up, something so parsimonious yet complete, is discarded in favor of elaborate, fantastical webs of meaning (to be said with deep, profound voice), which are inferred from next to nothing, have no evidence, but allow us to maintain a tenuous grasp on the belief that we are somehow special, that the laws, and final mortality, of nature do not apply to us. You are right, more people should read Dawkins. And Gould. And maybe some Sagan. All of these are very approachable, in my opinion.

Well, let's not forget that things have their spiritual correspondences as well.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

"As well"? Sorry, there is no spiritual correspondence here. I am very sorry you were able to read the first 4 posts of this thread and still think a spiritual correspondence has any place in this. It shows the lengths you will go to to shoehorn your world-view into places it has no business being.

I think animals doesn't always change for the better. It's possible that a new 'evolution version' of a animal don't get better potencial than they had before. i.e. Mammoths => Elephants.
Personally, I don't think elephants is a much better animal than the mammoths was.
So I think 'errors' happens in evolution, and that evolution isn't quite perfect, although the nature system still is stabile enough. (But that may change in the future, with new evolution).

And I think mutation-diseases is mainly caused from evolution. So I think evolution isn't always a good thing.

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The Heavenly Afterlife exist.

How are you defining "better"? Read the first few posts, before Iacchus hijacked the thread, and see that "fitness" has to do with reproduction only. Elephants were selected for by a different environment which selected Mammoths. There really is no reason to speak of either as "better" than the other.

An error often made by those not familiar with evolution is to suppose that anything older than current species are ancestors of current species. That is not necessarily the case. For example, mammoths are not ancestors of elephants. Rather both mammoths and elephants are descended from a common ancestor. (Just as your uncle's father and your grandfather are the same person, but your uncle is not your ancestor.)

See the diagram on this page which traces the evolutionary history of elephants.

http://elephant.elehost.com/About_E.../evolution.html

And like Digi said, there is no reason to consider that either elephants or mammoths are better than one another. Each is/was suited to its environment. But when the Ice Age environment disappeared, so did mammoths.

Modern elephants may disappear because of illegal ivory poaching and loss of habitat. For example, villagers in Bangladesh are currently having problems with elephants which have moved into their territory because their habitat across the border in India was destroyed to build a highway. It is causing a bit of a diplomatic ruckus between India and Bangladesh.

It would be sad indeed if the part of the environment that made elephants not well-adapted...was us. But it looks that way.

Yes you're right, I hijacked the thread. So, in order to be fair to everyone else, I split the thread and started a new one called, Apollyon and Wasps / Hijacked Thread. Will try and be more mindful of this the next time. Thanks!

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

Wow...For once I agree with the splitting of a thread! Thanks for the split! Good call...

The word "better" has many meanings. To evolution, it usually means more capable of reproducing (as Diggy and Gluadys have noted). But sometimes there are short-term gains which are not good for long-term survival. Each time a new trait emerges, it is thrust on the test bed to see how it fares. Many, probably most, fare poorly and are lost to history, leaving no record. A few survive long enough to leave a trace (like dodos) but are not ever major players. Others, like dinosaurs, survive for very long times, but eventually succumb to better adapted competitors.

Here's an interesting example. You perhaps know that marsupials are found almost exclusively on Australia and surrounding islands. Scientists think that this is because Australia was separated from the rest of the big continents during the evolution of mammals. Marsupials have a very inefficient reproductive scheme, requiring an immature embryo to migrate from the womb to a pouch and then be nurtured there. When other mammals evolved the placenta, marsupials were displaced in much of the world because they could not compete with placentals. But because of the geographic separation, placentals never took a strong foothold in Australia, so marsupials, inefficient though they were, managed to hang on a great deal longer than they have in other places.

But even now, marsupials are in danger of becoming extinct. Man has brought many placentals to Australia (mostly by accident) and they are systematically replacing the marsupials there. Wombats, Tasmanian Devils, Koalas and even kangaroos are under severe pressure and may not be here a few thousand years from now (which is an instant in geologic time).

So was the evolution that created marsupials "bad"? Of course not. It was amazingly good, or marsupials would never have been able to spread over much of the world (opossums being a prime example). But evolution never stops working. If something survives better than other things, it often replaces them in their niches. Mollusks replaced trilobites. Bony fish mostly replaced sharks. Mammals replaced dinosaurs. There is no issue of morality, only of fitness.
The word "errors" implies a right or wrong judgment, but evolution makes no judments of the sort. Obviously, some, in fact most mutations are not beneficial for survival. But those mutations don't last long, because they aren't any good at reproducing themselves. It is pretty obvious that evolution makes no value judgments, because organisms, including humans, are often left with leftover trash from evolution which serves no purpose. Because it does not harm the species, it remains around. Some snakes, for example, still have a rudimentary pelvis, although it is useless to them, having no legs. Humans have an appendix, which serves no apparant function, but was used by our ancestors (and by many extant species) in digestion of un-chewed food.

These things weren't "errors" when they evolved, but they are not useful anymore. Sort of like my collection of 8-track tapes.
You are absolutely correct that many diseases are caused or exacerbated by their ability to evolve quickly. but it is not either "good" or "bad". They are simply reproducing the best way they know how, and if a strain of a bacteria evolves a resistance to drugs, it is very good... for the bacteria.

But it is interesting how evolution works to balance things. Because viruses and bacteria have such short life cycles, one might think they should be much more powerful than they are at killing people. But here's the thing. If they prey on people, then to kill them all would mean that they die too, so most diseases have a sort of "treaty" with their victims. They won't kill them all because that would kill themselves too. They evolve a way that puts pressure on the victim to resist them and pressure on the disease to overcome the resistance. Sometimes this "treaty" evolves to the extreme that they become dependant on each other.

Here's an example. Humans have many gut parasites in their system which are almost completely harmless to us. In some cases, they are even helpful. In ruminants (cud-chewing animals) this "agreement" has gone even further. Cows could not digest grass if not for the bacteria in their guts which do the actual digesting. The bacteria get a nice place to live and the cows are able to eat and thrive off a substance (grass) that many other animals cannot.

I could give you many other examples of how evolution has resulted in amazing symbiotic relationships, but you get my drift. Evolution doesn't care about anything. Evolution is not a conscious thing, but only a process which assures that things that adapt successfully reproduce copies of those successful adaptations. It doesn't care if you want certain diseases to go away, and it doesn't care whether or not you let people learn how it works by teaching it in classrooms. It will ignore anything you want and go on doing what it does.

Personally, I think it would be better if we learned how it worked rather than denying that it works because of some foolish religious beliefs. But I could be wrong. Foolish religious beliefs may turn out to be benificial for survival. Evolution will eventually answer this question.

There is much I don't understand about evolution. And one of the things is, why did apes become to human beings?
Human beings is the only creatures on Earth that does things that the nature is not able to fix properly. High pollution is only made by humans, and by no animals. Hence I cannot understand why evolution created us the way we are. It would have been less nature problems if humans have been more nostalgic like apes, which according to the evoulution theory- is a older version of humans. Or with other words, humans is a newer version of apes.

There has been done experiments that shows that apes is in fact able to learn words, etc. after a long time. So the intelligence of apes is perhaps not lower,- they are just more nostalgic and don't want to find out new ways to do a stated task.

So all in all, I cannot see much logic in the evolution theory, because of reasons I have mentioned.

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The Heavenly Afterlife exist.

They did not. They both evolved from a common ancestor which was neither ape nor human. Think of apes as cousins rather than as grandparents.Oh, nature will fix it--we will just have to wait and see how. And beavers also have wide-reaching effects on entire ecosystems. And we simply do not know how many species grazed themselves into extinction; our own experience here is too brief to have allowed us the opportunity to see.Oxygen, when first produced on Earth by certain plants, was extraordinarily toxic to the anaerobic life which dominated at the time. It would have been called a "pollutant", if any of the bacteria could have written about it.No. Humans and apes are both modern species--neither is appreciably older than the other. There are older species of both apes and hominids which are no longer around.

If you begin your post with "there is much I don't understand about evolution", don't you think it a bit presumptuous to say, as you do here, "which according to the evolution theory"....? You are making a claim that evolution theory says something...right after you admit you do not understand evolution theory. In point of fact, the theory of evolution by natural selection does not say that apes are older versions of humans, nor does it say that apes are "nostalgic".This conclusion does not follow from this research. Current thought on ape acquisition of language suggests that, although apes' attempts at human language do demonstrate the symbolic aspect of language, the evidence is considerably less strong for the structure or generativity of human language--that is, syntax is very iffy, and the ability to generate new words or meanings is also iffy. I would say that any attempts to compare human and ape intelligence are misguided, but the evidence is quite strong that apes do not naturally acquire language--so they do not actively choose, nostalgically, not to.Go read the most recent National Geographic. On the cover: "Was Darwin Wrong?"....inside..."NO". Or go to talkorigins (.org, I think, but it might be .com), and poke around for a bit.

Your reasons are reasonable if they were in fact true--but they are very easily shown to be misunderstandings of either Natural Selection or of the evidence. I do applaud your willingness to look. The theory of Evolution has had more attempts to prove it wrong than perhaps any theory in the history of science, and it is still standing strong.

The short answer to this is that there was a niche, meaning a place where certain traits would flourish, for a tool-using animal. Creatures that could fill that niche survived better than those who couldn't. Had it been insects to fill that niche, then we might have smart insects. But apes (or ape-like animals) had better characteristics, like hands and larger brains, to fill that niche. Since things like hands and brains are what it took to fill that niche, those creatures which had more agile hands and a more upright posture so they could use them, and those creatures with more agile brains had better survival traits for that niche, and so those characteristics were passed on.

Eventually, tool-using apes were so different from non-tool-using apes that they no longer interbred, and in fact were another species.

There's much more to it than that, but this is the Reader's Digest version. Hope it helps. Please ask questions if you want me to elaborate.
This is a common myth. Many creatures have substantially changed the environment. One of the first things that happened after life evolved was that certain organisms started producing oxygen as a waste product. This killed almost every anaerobic creature on earth, except for the ones in places protected from oxygen, and indeed killed most of the oxygen-producers themselves. They literally died in their own excretory products.

And don't worry about nature not being able to "fix" things. Nature is not at risk. It is human beings that are at risk by experimenting with nature when we don't fully understand how it works. It is the survival of humanity that drives my wish for knowledge about ecology, not the survival of nature. Of course, the survival of man is likely to rely on not driving vital species to extinction, as well as many other factors. It behooves us to try not to mess with the system too much, but it is purely for selfish motives that I want us to take care of the earth.
That is mostly true, but not comletely. Most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from volcanic gasses. We don't call it "pollution" because it is natural, but it is the same gas that we are trying to cut down in our automotive emissions.

And what do you think is one of the worst sources of stream pollution in the US and many other places? It's cows. Their manure is washed by the rain off the fields into the streams, turning them into "cow sewers". Of course, the population of cows would not be so great if not for Man, but believe me, it is quite possible for animals to pollute.

Still, you are correct that Man, by far, produces more of the things that change the environment than any other species. It could be that this "tool user" niche is an evolutionary dead end, like so many other species.

You have to realize that evolution doesn't have any "goal" in mind. More than 90% of all the species that have ever lived are now extinct. A few very successful species have managed to stick around for a very long time because their "niche" is not as susceptible to fluctuations. But when the environment changes, as it always does, life changes with it. And indeed, there is a lot of feedback, because life can change the environment which in turn changes life. Just as those oxygen-pooping organisms changed life and the environment.

If humans change the environment with their actions, then life (possibly including humans, possibly not) will evolve to adapt to the environment. Those that can adapt will survive, those that cannot will become extinct.

There have been many many cases of mass extinctions in the history of earth. We all know about the dinosaurs dying out at the end of the Cretaceous period. We are pretty sure now that this was triggered by a comet impact, but that's not the whole story. Although the environment was severely changed by the comet impact, life adapted to the new environment. As it turns out, the "new kid on the block", i.e. mammals, were better at filling the new niches that had been created than the slower, stupider dinosaurs. Had there been more clever, quick dinosaurs, they might still be the dominant animals.

The Permian-Triassic boundary was another cataclysmic event when about 90% of all life forms (mostly marine life forms) became extinct. There are a number of theories on what caused this extinction, including another comet or asteroid impact, but there is no general agreement.
Yes, apes are quite smart, as animals go, but not nearly as smart as humans. The smartest adult ape is not nearly as smart as the average five-year-old human. Their "niche" called for some intelligence, but not as much intelligence as ours. I would not attribute this to such human concepts as "nostalgia". They simply have much smaller and less agile brains.

Some kinds of whales and dolphins are quite smart too, but they are not, generally speaking, tool-users because the environment in which they live does not have a niche for tool-users.
I think you would if you learned more about it. There are so many pieces to the theory of evolution that fit together like a hand in a glove. This web page shows a few of them, like

• Homologous structures (you have basicly the same bones as a bird, but they are adapted differently)
• Vestigial organs (You have no use for your appendix, but the animals you evolved from did.)
• Embryonic development (The human embryo as it develops goes through a stage where it looks like a protozoan, a fish, an amphibian, and an ape. At various points, the embryo has a tail, and even gills!)
• Disease resistance (we see evolution in action every time a disease evolves a resistance to the kind of medicine we are using)
• The fossil record (Though spotty in many cases, there are numerous examples of a continuous line of evolution in the fossil record.)
• DNA and biochemistry (The closer we are along the evolutionary tree to an organism, the more similar our DNA and other body chemicals are.)

Now obviously one can (and many do) wave away all of the many millions of bits of evidence by claiming that "God can do this any way he likes"", or something to that effect. I believe that it is wrong to ignore evidence, especially so many pieces of evidence that tie together so beautifully.
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edited to add
Wow, for once, I am more boring and long-winded than Diggy. I guess I just needed a subject that I am passionate about.