The Theory of Evolution

Without anything to argue against, I will just post the basics of what Darwinian Evolutionary theory is, and await my opponent. Evolution by natural selection is a theory about the origin of adaptation, intricacy, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. It is "just" a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is "just" a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, dynamics and structure of atoms, is Atomic theory. Electricity is a theoretical construct, relating to electrons; tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. It is an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such explanations confidently but conditionally; it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along. ID is not that. The supporting evidence is copious, various, increasing, soundly interconnected, and easily available. No one needs to, nor should, accept evolution as a matter of faith. The gist of the theory is that small, random, heritable differences among individuals result in different chances of survival and reproduction; success for some, death without offspring for others. This natural culling leads to significant changes in shape, size, strength, armament, colour, biochemistry, and behaviour etc. among descendants. Excess population growth drives the competitive struggle. Because less successful competitors produce fewer surviving offspring, the ineffective or negative variations tend to disappear. The useful variations tend to be perpetuated and gradually magnified throughout a population in a progression called anagenesis, where a single species is transformed. Accompanying that is another process, known as speciation. Genetic changes sometimes accumulate within an isolated segment of a species, but not throughout the whole, as that isolated population adapts to its local conditions. Gradually it goes its own way, claiming a new ecological niche. At a certain point it becomes irreversibly distinct; so different that its members can't interbreed with the rest. Two species now exist where formerly there was one (principle of divergence). It is an important part of evolutionary theory, explaining the overall diversity of life as well as the adaptation of individual species. The easiest example of natural selection in action is probably bacteria. By natural selection they acquire resistance to drugs that should kill them. They evolve. There's no better or more immediate evidence supporting the Darwinian Theory than this process of forced transformation among our inimical germs. Base evidence: biogeography, palaeontology, embryology, and morphology. Biogeography is the study of the geographical distribution of living creatures; which species inhabit which parts of the planet and why. Palaeontology investigates extinct life-forms, as revealed in the fossil record. Embryology examines the revealing stages of development (echoing earlier stages of evolutionary history) that embryos pass through before birth or hatching, embryology also concerns the immature forms of animals that metamorphose, such as the larvae of insects. Morphology is the science of anatomical shape and design. Biogeography: Considering biogeographical data, we notice clustering patterns among "closely allied" species, i.e. similar creatures sharing roughly the same body plan. They tend to be found on the same continent (several species of zebras in Africa) or within the same group of oceanic islands (dozens of species of honeycreepers in Hawaii), despite their species-by-species inclination for different habitats, food sources, or climate. Adjacent areas of South America, have flightless birds (the rheas, Rhea americana and Pterocnemia pennata), not ostriches as in Africa, or emus as found in Australia. Palaeontology reveals a similar clustering pattern in the dimension of time. The vertical column of geologic strata, laid down by sedimentary processes over the ages, lightly strung with fossils, represents a tangible record showing which species lived when. Less ancient layers of rock lie atop more ancient ones (except where geologic forces have tipped or shuffled them), and similarly with the animal and plant fossils that the strata contain. Closely associated species tend to be found adjacent to one another in successive strata. One species endures for millions of years and then makes its final appearance in, say, the middle Eocene epoch; just above, a similar but not identical species replaces it. In North America, for example, a loosely horselike creature known as Hyracotherium was succeeded by Orohippus, then Epihippus, then Mesohippus, which in turn were succeeded by a range of horsey American animals. Some of them galloped across the Bering land bridge into Asia, then through to Europe and Africa. By five million years ago they had nearly all disappeared, leaving behind Dinohippus, which was succeeded by Equus, the modern genus of horse (My thanks to National Geographic). Morphology: For example, the five-digit skeletal structure of the vertebrate hand appears not just in humans and apes and raccoons and bears but also, variously modified, in cats and bats and porpoises and lizards and turtles. The paired bones of our lower leg, the tibia and the fibula, are also represented by homologous bones in other mammals and in reptiles, and even in the long extinct, bird-reptile Archaeopteryx. What's the reason behind such varied recurrence of a few basic designs? Common descent, as shaped by natural selection, modifying the inherited basics for different circumstances. The mouse genome effort, according to Nature's editors, had revealed "about 30,000 genes, with 99% having direct counterparts in humans." The resemblance between our 30,000 human genes and those 30,000 mousy counterparts shows common ancestry. Vestigial characteristics are still another form of morphological evidence, illuminating to contemplate because they show that the living world is full of small, tolerable imperfections. Why do male mammals (including human males) have nipples? Some snakes (notably boa constrictors) carry the rudiments of a pelvis and tiny legs buried inside their sleek profiles. Certain species of flightless beetle have wings, sealed beneath wing covers that never open. Evolution does not, cannot say what one species evolved in to another unless via direct observation, we infer from fossil records. What it does, is provide a theory of falsification. It tells us what to expect in the fossil records, and we find that. It tells us the characteristics of fossils that should be in an era of time, and we do. More importantly it tells us what we should not find, and we have not.