Quote Originally Posted by Zain
Mutations? No, simple changes due to casted out genes. I can not accept the Evolution saying that something changes for no reason.
Something changes because of 'mistakes' in reproducing DNA, if the mistake leads to a 'better' individual the mistake will be passed on to the children of that individual and so on. This is of course, horribly simplified.


I do, however, will accept Natural Selection.
Then how does that not lead to evolution ? The best adapted survive and pass their DNA on to their children, how is this not evolution ?


What changes have evolution made? Does it make someone a better person?
It made us humans for a start

This is no argument for Creationism however, Budhims and Hinduism and pretty much all major religions have made people better persons, they have different views on creation and can't be all correct. So they might as well all have it wrong. There's no connection between something being true and having a positive effect on people. Fairy tales are told to teach children valuable lessons. Santa Claus is made up so children would behave better. Neither of those are true.



I understand that as far as that goes, it's long term. Computer Programs, in the human body? I'm probably missing something, can you help me out a little to understand this?
No, on a computer. I'll try to explain briefly:

Lets say you have a problem you want to solve which involves you finding the minimum of a certain mathematical function. This is what is commonly known as an optimization problem. Sometimes functions are too complex to find the minimum analytically or by another 'standard' technique. Genetic algoritmes use 'genomes', mostly binary strings of ones and zero representing numbers corresponding to the variables of the function. You start of with a large set of those genomes, you evaluate them (this corresponds to a thing living in the world) and you keep the best x% (only the most adapted breed), you then use the same methods as nature to make new genomes: cross-over and mutation, simply put, cross over is an exchange of data between two individuals (so parts of the binary string get transferred from one to the other) and mutation (a 1 can change into a 0, with a small chance). You make new genomes (normally the same amount as the original amount of parent genomes, so twice as much as there were parents used). You repeat this process a few times (sometimes quite a lot of times actually) and in the end, if your parameters (population size, cross over rate, mutation rate, etc) are well chosen you will find a 'good' solution to your problem, even if you start of with an initially randomly generated population.

This shows that the basic mechanism of evolution can be used to obtain an 'optimum' (you don't know if it's absolute), if you consider the function to be a 'niche' environment it shows that a population over generations can relatively quickly adapt to the environment. Now these algoritmes are far simpler than the way DNA works, since DNA can change size, has duplicate copies of genes (possibly), has genes ordened in a certain way etc. So just by using the inherent properties of the reproduction process life has the possibillity of quickly adapting to pretty much any given environment.

Also if you start out with a certain, uniform population, split it in two and evaluate two, sufficiently different problems (two different niches in the environment) you should get two populations of pretty different individuals since they are each aimed at their own problem. The same thing has happened in nature, each creature is essentially a solution to the problem of reproduction: using minimum energy to produce as much offspring as possible. This problem is dependant on the environment, if there is no food, getting energy from the sun is a good idea, if there are plants, eating them might be more efficient, etc...