How has Charles Darwin Changed Our Lives?

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kevv729, lifes's very simple: you're born, you reproduce, then you die. All the rest of it is just an aside. You can search for some higher meaning if you want, but there's overwhelming evidence that what I've said is the truth; we are no different to any other organisms on this planet in that respect. How we got to where we are over the course of the last 3.8 billion years (and I've read there are signs that there may have been life that far back) is rather sketchy, and will never be perfect; but we as humanity do have a significant undertanding of the mechanisms that might have brought us to where we are now from that point.

Going back to the faith and "meaning of life" stuff, I can see why people cling on to those views; it must provide some comfort — reality is cruel. But please keep it in your own heads, and don't force it's irrational dogma on the rest of us. (Edit: not that I'm implying you are.)

ascan

I was not talking about faith, god or anything like that.

I am talking about what We humans try to understand about Ourselves and how We try to understand it. That is what I am trying to get at leaving the rest like faith or god out of the debate.

For some reason, the word "theory" doesn't hold much sway in the eye of the general public simply because we frequently misuse it when we should be using "hypothesis".

Gravity is a theory. Theory is the highest level of certainty science has the ability to offer. But not enough think of the word in such a fashion.

It is the Theory of Evolution.

Wow, amazingly described, I agree 100% with those sentiments. He postulated and presented it to us. That's the humble beginnings of all science. An idea.

And now it is an idea that some people have based their entire philosophy on... and they aren't even sure it's correct. Heh, there's been a lot of disagreement lately on evolution and it's not exactly like we can prove it by the scientific method, which is what science is supposed to be based on....

Not that biblical creationism can be proven either, but, well, let's just save that debate for later. In order for something to be proven by the scientific method, it must be both observable and repeatable, and neither evolution nor creation is.

Evolution does fulfill the criteria for a scientific theory. It makes predictions about where we should find various fossils.
As Richard Dawkins said, "is there any evidence that evolution actually has happened? The answer is yes; the evidence is overwhelming. Millions of fossils are found in exactly the places and at exactly the depths that we should expect if evolution had happened. Not a single fossil has ever been found in any place where the evolution theory would not have expected it, although this could very easily have happened: a fossil mammal in rocks so old that fishes have not yet arrived, for instance, would be enough to disprove the evolution theory."

On the other hand, there is overwhelming evidence against Biblical Creationism - if you're talking about the version of Creationism (how many versions are there?) that claims that the earth is only 6,000 years old. You will find this evidence not only in the field of zoology, but in the fields of geology and astronomy too.

How many threads on Darwinism do we really need? I can't help feeling we're going over old ground here.

I don't believe personally that it has been proven or disproven thoroughly myself. It might take us 10,000 years of continual presentation of 'proof' and 'disproof' before we get a definitive answer, for all we know. But we need to start somewhere. We need an act of pure inspiration to get us all scratching our heads and having discussions on internet forums about it.

He is one of the many people who've discovered that there are animals who are superior and animals who are inferior and deserve their utmost contempt (like he was the originator of that idea ).

Yes, it's pretty much strife here in human civilisation (no s**t); look at how many pick on/ and pity (which is just as demeaning) someone with Down's Syndrome, for example.

Evolution is observable.... like Klytus said macroevolution predicts what fossils should look like. It also predicts the relationship between organisms which exist today (e.g. Darwin's finches).

Microevolution has been observed (and in a sense repeated) many many times ... even most creationalists don't dispute it. Their issue with with macroevolution, or evolution making new species.

If you really really want to stretch things - Avida and Tierra have proven that the concept of macroevolution itself is at least valid. The evolution of species in these artificial computer environments (with organisms made out of computer instructions) has been observed. So the concept itself isn't flawed - the process of macroevolution has been reproduced and observed, just not with biological genes.

Of course that example can't be used to show that macroevolution did in fact create new species in the real world...but it more or less destroys any argument that macroevolution is flawed or doesn't exist. So someone who believes in creationism will be very hard pressed to explain why macroevolution DOESN'T occur in the real world (i.e. in biological organisms).....

Kentucky Fried Chicken has done an excellent job in proving macroevolution because they've been creating and feeding us with mutant forms of chickens for years which technically aren't part of the chicken species anymore, lol.

Well, proving that was easy enough. Thank yew... thank yew...

Well, there's always "Law", as in Newton's third law of motion, or the second law of thermodynamics, but that is as abused and misunderstood as "theory" is, *and* not just by the general public.

"Formula" would do for "law" in most cases, and perhaps provoke more enquiry why it is that particular formula not any other.

In another post,

Namiko wrote:

"...an idea that some people have based their entire philosophy on... and they aren't even sure it's correct. "

But there is very little we can be absolutely sure of. If we are to build at all, it is with bricks that are only provisionally solid.

Sub-atomic *theory*: we get computers, which is encouraging, but not proof.

The pre-Copernican Ptolemaic view was pretty good at predicting astronomical events too, but hid a major flaw in increasing levels of complication.

(But had round earth and a near-infinite heavens by AD150, which many don't realise to this day!)

Sophist

KFC

It tastes like chicken and all the parts look right in the bucket though.

How can you eat that stuff? They put a picture of a dead guy on the outside of the bucket for crying out loud

mjs82

I don't go to KFC very often if every but it doesn't taste that bad.

Bump up for more debate on this subject.

His theory gave me a valuable understanding of the nature and origins of life. We would have very little understanding or explanation of life were it not for the theory of evolution. And knowledge is the thing I value the most. And Darwin's book ignited modern biology. Modern biology touches everyone's lives through medicine, agriculture and environmental engineering.