Evolution Questions?

Question

1.) How did Darwin think up evolution?

2.) Did anyone else work in eveolution proofs other than Darwin?

Answer 1

Many people erroneously think that Charles Darwin (who earned a degree in theology) was once blissfully content with the biblical explanation of origins—until, that is, as an unbiased naturalist, he stumbled across the idea of evolution by observing the ‘facts of nature’ in the Galápagos Islands in 1835. The truth is significantly otherwise. The concept of evolution had, in fact, been ‘in his family’ ever since his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, first suggested it in 1770.

http://creationontheweb.com/content/view...

Darwin did not prove evolution. He found examples of Natural Selection and variation (eg finches beaks).

He certainly did not find evidence of one kind of creature evolving into another. Finches are still finches.

Since then, evolutionists have singularly failed to prove Darwinian evolution. In fact, as we discover more about the world it is becoming easier to refute scientifically.

http://creationontheweb.com/content/view...

Note for example, that darwin expected many transitional fossils would be found. Indeed his theory requires it.

Dr Patterson had written a book for the British Museum simply called Evolution.2 Creationist Luther Sunderland wrote to Dr Patterson inquiring why he had not shown one single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book. Patterson then wrote back with the following amazing confession which was reproduced, in its entirety, in Sunderland’s book Darwin’s Enigma:

‘I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?’

He went on to say:

‘Yet Gould [Stephen J. Gould—the now deceased professor of paleontology from Harvard University] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. … You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.” I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.’

Out of their own mouths evolutionists refute evolution!

Answer 2

1) Darwin looked at the work of contemporaries and scholars of previous eras before finally coming up the idea. The idea of evolution was not actually a new one, he was just the one who came up with the proper specifics and the vehicle of evolution: Natural Selection.

Other naturalists, such as Linnaeus, Lamarck and Malthus paved the way for Darwin's theory. If Darwin hadn't written the theory of evolution, someone else would've.

2) A contemporary of Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace, was working on his own theory of evolution. He came up with this independantly of Darwin. Darwin wrote the Origin of Species and sat on it for years, afraid of the complications it would create in the scientific and religious world. When he found out that Wallace was planning on releasing his own theory of evolution, this spurred Darwin to publish his before Wallace.

Answer 3

Darwin had an over active imagination....

Answer 4

Actually, Darwin isn't the first to suggest evolution. In fact, Erasmus Darwin, his grandfather, had some preliminary ideas on the subject, as did a whole bunch of other historical figures. What Darwin really devised was the mechanism by which evolution occurs.

So, Darwin took a five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, including a trip to the Galapagos Islands where he encountered and documented a wide variety of species new to science.

Darwin simply observed what he saw: each island had species that were specific only to that island. In fact, by looking at a tortoise's shell, one could identify which island it had come from. Darwin took particular interest in a variety of finches, each finch having a beak adapted to the particular type of food it ate. There are a bunch of other observations Darwin made that can be looked up if you're interested.

Anyway, Darwin's logic is as follows.

Organisms in nature have more offspring than the environment can support. Thus, organisms must compete for scarce resources, or else they will perish. Organisms that are better at finding food, avoiding predators, and reproducing will naturally reproduce more often, and pass their traits on to the next generation. Of course, Darwin didn't know how these traits were passed on, as DNA wasn't discovered until much, much later.

Darwin theorized that eventually, through the above process of natural selection, organisms would develop traits that suited their environments. Birds that ate hard nuts would have beaks suited to cracking shells, and birds that ate nectar would have long beaks suitable for extracting nectar from plants. Now, remember, this process happens over thousands or millions of years, so that if you looked at a generation of birds and their offspring, you probably wouldn't notice any difference between the parents and offspring. However, let the process go on for many generations, and eventually you would see certain traits arise.

So, Darwin realized, different populations of organisms would be adapted to different purposes, such that over millions of years, the two populations would become so different that they would be separate species. This is known as common descent - every organism on earth is descended from other organisms, all the way back to the very first primitive, single-celled organisms.

Now, you asked "Did anyone else work in evolution proofs other than Darwin?"

Well, yes, but Darwin was the major contributor. You have to realize that even before Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1860, most scientists were convinced that species changed over time. Even back then, scientists could see from fossils that species changed over time, although there were some scientists who were not convinced.

By the time Darwin died, it was pretty well-established that evolution occured. However, there was still debate as to how. In the 1930s, Mendelian inheritance became widely accepted (you can look Mendelian inheritance up on wikipedia if you're interested in that). Since the 1930s, evolution is one of the most robust theories in all of science, and is the backbone on which all of modern Biology is based.

So, evolution has been accepted by virtually all scientists for well over 100 years. Despite this, it's still controversial in the public domain due to some religious movements. But considering how long it took for the Catholic Church to finally accept that the Earth orbits the Sun, it's no surprise that it's taken the theory this long to get the widespread acceptance of the general public.

Answer 5

Go here and do some of your own research.

http://www.aboutdarwin.com

Answer 6

Darwin made MANY contributions to our biological world today, evolution being the least of these. Do some research.

Answer 7

1) From the observations he made!

2) LaMarcke, the Greeks, and specifically Aristotle...

Answer 8

Darwin came up with Natural Selection.

Yes. Mendel, Lyell, many others.