Misconceptions about evolution

Hello everybody. Figured I needed to write a new blog because I see misconceptions about evolution on a daily basis. Sometimes it's due to a lack of understanding about it, religious indoctrination teaching people that it didn't happen or plain willful ignorance which drives me absolutely crazy. Anyone that would rather be willfully stupid is beyond me. Let us start with the most common misconception.




1."If we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?"

This is probably the most commonly spoken misconception about human evolution. We did not evolve from monkeys. We share a common ancestor with them.This means that at some point in the distant past we split off and went our separate ways. Let's take a look below.

This is a chart showing when we split from our great ape cousins. As you can see we shared a common ancestor not evolved from each other. They are our cousins not our ancestors.

Our family tree is very vast, whether you follow that line for Geckos, Giraffes, Parrots or Dolphins. If you go back far enough you will find common ancestors for every living thing on this planet that has ever existed. 

The second one is merely a basic lack of understanding.

2. "Evolution is just a theory"

Yes, at face value evolution by natural selection is classified as a theory. The issue with this statement is not knowing what a theory really is. A theory is a well substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation. As a result, and inherent in its nature, a theory can be modified, tweaked, or even discarded when new evidence or results come along. In the case of the theory of evolution by natural selection, all of the evidence collected and tested over the past 150 years have supported its validity. 

There are no beliefs in science, no presuppositions or wishful thinking. Merely data. Empirical data gathered through numerous experiments and observations. There are a few other theories that I bet you have no issues with. Such as the theory of gravity, plate tectonics, germ, general relativity and special relativity. All are just theories but I hear no one saying earthquakes do not happen and that if they jumped off a building they would go up!

3. The eye is too complex to have evolved

People usually quote Darwin here when he said that the evolution of the eye seems "absurd in the highest degree". However, Darwin follows that statement with a three and a half page proposal of intermediate stages through which eyes might have evolved via gradual steps. Below is the list of steps the eye evolved through.

• photosensitive cell
  
• aggregates of pigment cells without a nerve
• an optic nerve surrounded by pigment cells and covered by translucent skin
• pigment cells forming a small depression
• pigment cells forming a deeper depression
• the skin over the depression taking a lens shape
• muscles allowing the lens to adjust

All of these steps are known to be viable because they exist in animals living today. The increments between these steps are slight and may be broken down into even smaller increments. Natural selection should, under many circumstances, favor the increments. Since eyes do not fossilize well, we do not know that the development of the eye followed exactly that path, but we certainly cannot claim that no path exists. Therefore we can see how the eye became complex.

4. The second law of thermodynamics says that everything tends toward disorder, making evolutionary development impossible

The second law of thermodynamics doesn't state that at all. It says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order because the earth is not a closed system; sunlight (with low entropy) shines on it and heat (with higher entropy) radiates off. This flow of energy, and the change in entropy that accompanies it, can and will power local decreases in entropy on earth. Entropy is not the same as disorder. Sometimes the two correspond, but sometimes order increases as entropy increases. Entropy can even be used to produce order, such as in the sorting of molecules by size. Even in a closed system, pockets of lower entropy can form if they are offset by increased entropy elsewhere in the system. In short, order from disorder happens on earth all the time. 

The only processes necessary for evolution to occur are reproduction, heritable variation, and selection. All of these are seen to happen all the time, so, obviously, no physical laws are preventing them. In fact, connections between evolution and entropy have been studied in depth, and never to the detriment of evolution.

Several scientists have proposed that evolution and the origin of life is driven by entropy. Some see the information content of organisms subject to diversification according to the second law. So organisms diversify to fill empty niches much as a gas expands to fill an empty container. Others propose that highly ordered complex systems emerge and evolve to dissipate energy (and increase overall entropy) more efficiently.

5. "There should be millions of transitional fossils"

You have to understand a few things about fossilization. Fossilization is not a very common event. It requires numerous factors in order to happen. First it requires conditions that preserve the fossil before it can be scavenged  or decays. These conditions only happen in a few habitats, such as river deltas, tar pits and peat bogs. Anything that has died outside these areas rarely fossilize. Many animals do not preserve well. Evolution of new species is fairly quick in geology terms so transitions will be uncommon. 

Other processes destroy fossils like erosion destroy millions of years of the geological record. Heat and pressure destroy fossils when they are buried deep underground. Even as rare as fossils are to find them is even more rare for the most part we find fossils when erosion exposes them or a job site digs one up. My paleontologist buddy Trevor Valle knows that all too well. There are also shortages in the people that dig for fossils. It can take up to a decade of work on one site! Also, only Europe and North America have been vastly searched for fossils thanks to the lack of paleontologists and political reasons. There are however plenty of transitional fossils that we have found. Such as Tiktaalik, Ichthyostega, Darwinopterus, Archaeopteryx, Dimetrodon, and then to our own evolution we have found Apidium, Aegyptopithecus, Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, and Homo Rhodesiensis. The fossil record clearly shows evolution by natural selection.

If you have any other questions please feel free to ask and I will gladly answer them! I hope you enjoy the read and learn a little more to help you understand your actual origins in this life.