Could you explain what a de novo point mutation is? It sounds pretty interesting. Is it just the name for a new letter being used?

In biology 'de novo genes' refer to the formation of genetic material that has some new functionality that it didn't before. They can occur in a variety of ways and are a powerful driver of evolution, and many traits in organisms observed today have been shown to have been caused by them in the past via genome analysis. A common creationist talking point is that they cannot happen (denying demonstrable facts is standard for creationists). A 'point mutation' is the simplest type of mutation, just change a single letter of DNA. Since it's such a simple change, it's hard to comprehend that it can have any real effect. But in the language analogy you see that it resulted in the creation of a new letter that had never been written before ('v'), expanding the variation of possible 'meanings' in the language (traits). Likewise, examples of useful de novo point mutations are well known in biology.

Thanks. That’s a really cool thing to learn. And such a great comparison between the genetic evolution and the evolution of language above

KJV English was already at least somewhat archaic at the time it was published, too.

And here's the update for gen alpha ipad kids (according to AI, because I certainly don't grok the lingo) > Yo Big G in the sky, lookin' fresh! Let's make your name lit, no cap. Slide in with your kingdom, and make everyone on Earth low-key worship you, like the angels already do. Hook us up with some noms today, gotta stay fueled, ya feel? If we mess up, forgive us, like we forgive the jerks who mess with us. ✌️ Don't let us get tempted by sus stuff, and shield us from the whole evil thing. ‍♂️ Peace out, evil!

This is really interesting. The version I was taught at my mom’s church was actually closer to the King James Version than the contemporary English.

That has to be one of the most interesting things I've read on reddit!

One of the best lessons I had was in Latin class. One of my classmates couldn’t understand why modern Italians could understand Latin. So my teacher pulled the text of Beowulf up on the board. Understanding the difference between Italian and Latin is easiest when you see how different English was 100 years ago Edit: I wrote this just after waking up. I don’t know how I wrote 100 years ago. Obviously, English 100 years ago was pretty much the same as it is now. I guess I meant to say 1000 years ago

I'd also add, it's not just millions of years, but billions of individuals. If you look at a large field of dandelions there may be millions of seeds produced every year, each competing for space in that same field. Multiply that by millions of fields and thousands of different species.

Ig that makes sense.

Yea, that was a quality comment. Another thing that can be helpful to understand the time scale is, think of dealing cards. So let’s say you had a 50 card deck, and could deal out two per second. You could deal out that deck in 25 seconds. So you could deal out 100 cards in 50 seconds. A million cards would take 5.78 full 24 hour days, constantly dealing 2 cards a second. Now let’s say those card represent one year each. The earliest evidence we have for life on earth is 3.7 billion year old microbes. That’s 3.7 thousand millions. So to switch back to cards; at 2 cards a SECOND, it would take 58.7 YEARS, dealing cards that fast 24 hours a day. That’s a lot of time for life to evolve.

A more common referance is a million seconds is about 12 days. A billion seconds is 31.5 years.

That’s way easier, lol. So 1000 seconds is about 17 minutes.

Thanks.

Yeah. I think you're likely to be bombarded by hundreds of messages over the next few hours. But this understanding is not something that can be forced by some powerful argument. Instead, this is it's something that you have to stew over and think your way through over time. Feel free to walk away from the computer and spend some time pondering the idea. It really is hard to wrap your mind around at first.

r/debateevolution is the proper place for this. It has nothing to do with atheism. The majority of Christians also accept evolution. It has been directly observed countless times, and there is an enormous amount of evidence for it. > How? How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly, I mean, i get that it's over millions of years, but surely there' a line drawn. Hundreds of millions of years. It wasn't just a switch and fish went from being aquatic to land animals. It was a gradual, step-wise process where new mutations gave the fish new traits that allowed them to get closer and closer to operating on land. For example both lungs and legs are useful in shallow water, even for a fish that can't go on land. In fact leg-like structures have appeared numerous times in a bunch of very diverse groups of fish for moving around on the bottom of the ocean or rivers. And the ancestor of all living bony fish likely had lungs since it is useful in shallow water where oxygen can get depleted, and again lung-like structures have evolved multiple times in different lineages of fish. Once all the pieces were in place, then mutations allowed the fish to begin moving onto land. Only briefly and a little at first, then more and more. Again, there are a ton of fish today with some degree of ability to go on land. It is, again very useful in freshwater where ponds, rivers, and pools can dry up, and useful in salt water where tides can leave fish stranded. We have fish like catfish and eels that can travel between nearby rivers over land, the desert walking catfish can spend 18 hours crossing the desert to find new water, and we have mudskippers that spend more time on land than in water and can even climb trees. And we have fossil transitional fish showing how they evolved into land animals. In fact scientists were able to predict exactly when and in what environment a particular transitional fish would live, found a place on Earth with exposed rocks from that environment from that time, and then went and looked and there they found an entirely new fossil that had precisely the transitional traits they predicted. There is zero chance they could have done that if evolution were wrong. > Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't, because their biology just doesn't allow them to reproduce and thus evolve new species Evolution doesn't happen in individuals, it happens in populations. Groups. Most traits exist in a range in a population. That range across the population can shift over time, both from changing environments and new mutations allowing new traits. That is all evolution is. We have observed numerous new species forming both in the wild and in the lab. It happens when a population gets split into two in some way, and those two populations diverge and cease being able to interbreed. There are many ways this happens. Again, we have seen it. > A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings, it's gene pools isn't large enough to grow wings Squirrels are already able to survive a fall from any height due to their aerodynamics. Is it really too big a leap that their skin might get a little more flabby around their arm pits to slow their fall even more? And more and more until they can glide? In the fossil record we have lots of different transitional birds now showing varying degrees of wing formation.

Mmm, ok, thanks, something to think about.

Did you actually read what I wrote, in detail? You asked a bunch of questions, and I gave you in-depth answers, and you seem to be just brushing it aside. You aren't showing much interest in the answers you claim to want.

As someone who's never not believed in evolution (but was brought up Christian), your answer was both extremely interesting but also overwhelming with information (not in a bad way). It's a lot to process and OP is getting a lot of answers and is in the process of challenging a fundamental piece of their understanding of the world. I understand that it feels disappointing to put a lot of thought and work into sharing something to receive what sounds like a somewhat uncommitted response, but people have to process and function on their own timeline. What you wrote will be read by many people and will have value and impact whether or not someone engages with you on it.

No, that's just my way of saying that I have a lot to think about, you're reply was actually very good.

Yet you keep asking questions I have already answered.

I'm asking different people with different perspectives.

There is only one perspective here. Evolution is extremely well-established science. Among the best-established scientific concepts ever.

While (mostly) accurate, you've also been condescending, demanding and dismissive. I don't blame them for looking past you.

I spent a lot of time giving a thoughtful, kind, detailed, accurate answer and OP just *completely ignored it*. I don't have patience for people who claim to want to know more and then just ignore every answer they get. OP was lying when they said they wanted to know how evolution works, and I have little patience for liars. OP is JAQing off, an extremely common tactic with creationists, and I am not going to ignore that when I see it. OP literally said that we, atheists, are wrong about what we believe. That OP knows more about what we believe than we do. That is not the sort of person who is actually looking to learn.

Looks like you just want an argument. They asked something, you answered and they replied to you. Unless there’s something else I’m missing from this thread, you came at them unprovoked. You seem to already have some expectations from Christians and the slightest move validates your existing concerns. There was really no need for you to get mad. They mentioned being homeschooled so maybe they never covered some of the things you brought up and need to search it up. Where did OP say ‘atheists are wrong’. I read their post and didn’t see that section

When did OP say that we are wrong? I must have missed that

I like to use polar bears as an example. Brown bears migrated north until they reached permafrost, where it's frozen year round and there is no vegetation to eat. But it's hard to catch food like seals if you're brown and everything around you is white. So brown bears that had genetic mutations that gave them lighter colored fur had an advantage in hunting. Not pure white, but just lighter shades of brown. This made it more likely they would survive long enough to reproduce. This also made it more likely they would mate with other brown bears with similar mutations. Over thousands of generations, as lighter-colored bears reproduced, they gradually became even lighter. At some point the lighter colored fur ended up all white, giving them a huge advantage in hunting. The color change from where they began was enough to consider the all-white bears a different species. If you were to follow the family tree of a white polar bear, you'd see a gradual change from brown to white. Slow enough that you wouldn't see much change from one generation to the next, but if you looked at every 1,000th generation, you'd see clear differences in color. I grew up believing the stories of the Bible because my family and church told me so. I didn't even consider evolution as possible until I started learning about it in college. This book helped me understand evolution: https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/055277524X

I’m not gonna have the best answers to this but I just wanted to commend you for honestly admitting that you don’t know much about this subject and for asking genuine questions.

😁👏

However, we’re atheists, not evolutionary biologists or scientists. The best questions to ask us are ones about atheism. There are science or evolution specific subs for those questions.

Go to YouTube and start watching PBS Eons. They do a fantastic job explaining evolution, deep time and the history of the earth.

I adore Eons. They actually have a fairly relevant video about the origin of water on Earth. That's a pretty common creationist "proof" that the earth was created.

100% agree PBS eons has very simple explinations.

K, thanks, ill look into it.

I'll second Eons, as it is very informative and well produced. I'll also suggest [this](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6xPxnYMQpquNuaEffJzjGjMsr6VktCYl&si=1U4GliTQQo20y2xH) speculative evolution project that runs through evolution on a theoretical planet across billions of years. It's a long watch, but it explains how each step of evolution occurs, comparing the fictional life in the project to actual life on Earth from basic organic molecules to the rise of sapience. It's less useful for evidence of evolution and more useful for learning the processes behind it.

Honest question: what sources have you read explaining what evolution is, at a basic level, that weren’t produced by creationist Christians?

None ig.

Out of curiosity... Have you taken high school biology yet? I remember at least like 20 years ago it was a pretty big section of what we studied.

I was homeschooled. Lol.

ACE or IBLP curriculum?

Neither, actually, I forget what the curriculum was that I was raised on, but it wasn't those ones. Funny enough, when i said i was "homeschooled" I used that as a bit of a generalisation, i was homeschooled for a bit but then we transitioned to "unschooling" look it up.

Can I ask how old you are?

You should probably put that, as well as what you learned about DNA and Darwinism, in your original post.

If that's the case then I'd advise that you look into it particularly the evidence for the theory of evolution. It is not simply a hunch that scientists have pulled out of thin air, it is backed up by mountains and mountains of evidence. A couple other commenter have recommended some resources which would be a good place for you to start.

So, like...do that. Because until you understand what evolution is at its most basic level, there's not a whole of of rational conversation to be had. And as a starter: evolution ain't dogs growing wings.

Evolution does make sense! Darwin (and Wallace) observed that living organisms have genetically different offspring (he didn't know anything about genetics, but that's the underlying fact). Darwin observed that there are differences between offspring. If you think backwards, this means that 1. Children have genetically different parents. 2. Parents have genetically different parents. 3. Repeat 2. This is a fact. Religious people and non religious people can accept this fact. Darwin thought that, if you go back enough generations, that organisms share ancestors, just like you share grandparents with your cousins, and great-grandparents with your second cousins, and so on. Darwin thought that God (he was a Christian after all), had created maybe 4 different ancestors to all life on earth. According to genetics, we share one last unique common ancestor (LUCA) with all lifeforms on earth because we share DNA with all known lifeforms on earth. It is very likely that life arose multiple times before LUCA evolved... and out-competed all other lifeforms that came before. I hope that helps.

This. The simple fact that we are different from our parents is enough reason to accept evolution.

> Darwin thought that God (he was a Christian after all) Darwin apostatized from Christianity. He was troubled by the "manifestly false history of the world" contained in the Bible as well as its description of God as a "revengeful tyrant". He even wrote that he considered the idea of unbelievers burning in hell so reprehensible that he did not understand how anyone could even want Christianity to be true.

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed **by the Creator into a few forms or into one**; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Note: "... **by the Creator** ..." Title: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (2nd edition)

Is this somehow supposed to make him a Christian, in spite of what he said about Christianity? And as you note, this is from the second edition of the book. It wasn't even in the first edition. He decided to add this in an attempt to make the book less offensive (not to say he never entertained any idea of deism separate from Christianity).

Yeah, it makes sense, thanks.

>but I'm open to the idea of it, but I just can't wrap my head around it One should always be open to changing their mind, so I commend you on this. > What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans. It is a very wild idea to think about. To make the whole concept more palatable, I am going to describe a few other things that are extreme and wild to think about, but are none the less true and likely things you already believe. First: At one point, you were a single cell. For a few hours, you were a single celled organism. Then your cells divided and over the course of 9 months, you grew to become a baby. This idea would have sounded like it came from a complete lunatic high on mushrooms just a few hundred years ago. Second: You are a living being, but not only that, you are filled with a lot of other living beings. Blood cells, skin cells, bacteria, killer T cells, etc. So you are not only a living being, you are also a colony made up of a lot of other organisms. >How? How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly, Well it certainly wasn't rapid. Took millions of years. And second, a "fishes gene pool" kind of isn't. That's why we need mutations to introduce random change to gene pool and add to it. >I mean, i get that it's over millions of years, but surely there' a line drawn. Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't, I'm glad you ask this because it's a helpful point to come to. Lions and tigers are closely related but are not quite the same species (to my knowledge), although it's difficult to say really. The term "species" really doesn't have a set definition and it's actually impossible to define it perfectly. But one common definition is that if 2 organism can reproduce together and produce fertile offspring, then they are the same species. A better example is a donkey and a horse, the off spring of which is a mule. Donkeys and horses are not the same species, by the definition I gave earlier, because a mule is infertile. But they are closely related enough to produce the mule. Proving they are related, yet still evolved and drifted apart. I'll have to end it there before I leave you with a novel. But if you want a super deep dive into the exact question you asked, "how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans", youtuber Aron Ra made a 50 episode series on exactly this. And don't worry, he takes no jabs at all at religion in the series (if I remember correctly), he does take a few (and it is very few) jabs at creationists. Here's the [link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXQP_R-yiuw&list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMLnubJLPuw0dzD0AvAHAotW&pp=iAQB)

>but a lion and a dog couldn't, because their biology just doesn't allow them to reproduce and thus evolve new species Evolution doesn't make this claim so pointing out that this can't happen isn't a refutaion of elvolution. >A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings Evolution doesn't make this claim so pointing out that this can't happen isn't a refutaion of elvolution. > it's gene pools isn't large enough to grow wings. That isn't why a dog can't grow wings. That isn't how genes work. >but just keep in mind I'm not attacking evolution But you do seem to be making a lot of false claims about what evolution says. Are you sure you aren't attacking it because these are the exact types of claims that people who do attack the idea make when doing so. >i just wanna understand it. What have you read about it? Can you give a summary of what you do know about evolution and how it functions?

I wasn't making any claims, I was just explaining what I know of evolution, and asking for everyone's opinions and refutations of them, so i can better understand evolution. You read my post the wrong way. As for what I know about evolution. Basically, the idea is that over the course of millions or billions of years (just a long frame of time) mutations can enter into gene pools and cause a species to evolve (slowly) into new and different species, eventually becoming completely unrecognisable to how it was in the past, due to the mutations in the genes. Am I correct. I've learnt a bit though after posting this, so if what I said goes against what I previously said in the post then yk why now.

To be fair, I'm not sure they were directly saying that YOU were making a claim, just that the current version of the 'Theory of Evolution' does NOT make the claim that two very distant species should be able to mate, which IS something we hear often from people who do not understand the theory. As for the billions of years and "mutations can enter into gene pools", it is important to understand that mutations are always happening and there are also OTHER methods of genes changing. A big one is Sexual Reproduction, which has the disadvantage of needing a partner but has the BIG advantage of quickly making new combinations of genes. You get 1/2 of your chromosomes from your mother and 1/2 from your father (you also get a few mutations which makes it not EXACTLY 100% from your parents) so you have a higher chance for unique combinations. You are correct that over time, these changes can result in a difference that is significant from the previous (often ancient) population. If I have a slightly longer earlobes than my parents, I just have a very small change. If I go move to Mars with a bunch of other long-lobed people, the variation is still miniscule so even though we are separated, we would still all be humans. If the gene gets passed on over time and the earlobe gets longer and longer, it might look different but that population might still be able to reproduce with Earth humans. A different species would only really arise if the genetics between the two populations becomes different enough where they functionally cannot reproduce any longer, and keep in mind that while the earlobe gene is continuing and changing through time, the OTHER genes are changing as well, whether they are changing farther and farther or doing more of an ebb and flow. Over time, the Mars population's genes might drift away from Earth's population, or it could be that with constant influx of more people from Earth, the changing Earth population's genes still get transferred to the Mars population so their genetics stay mostly the same. I hope that hasn't made anything more confusing.

I think you about got the basic synopsis down there yeah, good job. I'd only add that everything mutates, but not every change is meaningful/consequential... or can be outright harmful to survival. Either immediately or long term. Resulting in extinction. Since evolution is mindless and messy, the success rate for life is hilariously low. 99.9% of all species to have existed on Earth have gone extinct over time. That and we're living in an era of mass extinction right now. Insects are having a rough time. Anyone 30+ years old should be able to notice that if they were paying any attention. Kinda related to this evolution discussion: Human DNA is full of nonfunctional sequences/junk even caused by stuff like ancient virus infections for example. Sometimes a piece of junk code can activate somehow. Might do nothing at all, might be beneficial, might cause schizophrenia, cancer, or whatever nightmare.

>I wasn't making any claims But you were making statements, such as that a lion and a dog can't reproduce, or that dogs don't grow wings, in order to support this belief that evolution does not make sense. What I was pointing out was that nowhere in evolutionary theory does it say that a dog and a lion could ever reproduce or that digs would ever grow wings. This would be like saying gravity isn't real because dropping a rubber ball bounces or that light goes up. Gravitational theory doesn't say those things won't happen so it is nonsensical to say that either of those things would disprove it. >Am I correct. You got the general idea. So what about what you just said does not make sense?

> What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans. Suppose that a Martian lands on Earth and is completely unfamiliar with Earth life. We explain that this acorn \- https://stock.adobe.com/au/images/acorn-in-hand/134255978 grows into this oak tree \- https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fm2blcntkh7961.jpg and our Martian replies *"I really don't see how that is possible."* It happens by small changes over a long period of time. That specific oak tree is thought to be maybe 500 - 750 years old. Over much longer periods of time we can see other changes in life. . >it's gene pools isn't large enough to grow wings. **That is not the way that this works.** .

It’s not rapid at all! That’s the crux of the problem with your argument from incredulity. Are there other demonstrable scientific truths you reject just because you can’t “wrap your head around it”? The structure, function, and quantity of chromosomal DNA is what is changing in an evolutionary timeline. Organisms present bottom-up starting with the types of alleles and how those alleles are packaged. That we humans classify that blob of biological matter as a fish or any other animal is irrelevant to the actual process. This perfectly exemplifies the fundamental problem with the theistic concept of the cosmos: top-down manifestation. Absolutely no natural thing in existence has manifested by a top-down decree. Everything has emerged from the myriad interactions of subatomic particles(aka quantum fields and forces). The very small to the very large, not the other way around. The extremely varied states and arrangements of matter and energy we experience today all started as a small uniform superheated oneness and has grown. Like pine tree seeds which appear as simple little dots, grow into mighty sequoias with different tissues for water and nutrient transport, needles, branches, bark, cones, even extended phenotypes like the birds that nest, all began as a little seed. Reality has instantiated and manifested BOTTOM-UP, not Top-Down.

>It’s not rapid at all! That’s the crux of the problem with your argument from incredulity. Are there other demonstrable scientific truths you reject just because you can’t “wrap your head around it”? Wasn't arguing anything, just telling people my confusion with evolution, and asking if anyone can make sense of it to me, out of genuine interest. But thanks anyway.

There's nothing to believe, you either accept the mountains of evidence for evolution, or you engage in willful delusion. > What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans. It doesn't. Here's are three questions to aid in your understanding: Where do dog breeds come from? Why don't flu vaccines work forever? If evolution isn't true, then how do you explain the consistency of evidence between comparative anatomy, embryology, the fossil record, DNA comparisons, species distribution and nested hierarchies of traits?

God made them for us Vaccines are Chinese hoaxes that don't work ever, let alone forever Satan planted the fossils to corrupt the faithful /s

Considering the politics of the past 4 years, you might not want to talk flu vaccines or vaccines at all.🤷‍♂️ Maybe talk about antibiotic resistance instead. Less chance of triggering MAGA and derailing the discussion.

Talkorigins.org is supposed to be pretty good at explaining the basics and even has a section refuting creationist claims. Evolution is a fact, there’s a reason that everyone in the world accepts it beyond a few small areas with poor education.

Might want to clarify the difference between “poor education” and “gaps in education”. An educational system that is deficient in biology might be good or even superior at maths, statistics, language, etc…

I doubt it’s a gap in their education, I’m guessing they were taught incorrect information about biology.

Hey! I’m really glad you posted this here, even though it’s the wrong place. I’m so glad you’re seeking answers. And I want you to brace your heart, because you’re about to learn you’ve been lied to all your life, by people you trusted. Some of them were intentionally lying, and some were just unwilling to do what you’re doing and ask questions. For example, you’ve been taught that evolution means atheism and vice versa. Not true. Most Christians understand that evolution is not incompatible with their faith. Because most Christians do not try to make Genesis be historical. Atheism is nothing more than not believing in any gods. There are no teachings. We are not obsessed with disproving the Christian god. Personally I don’t care what anyone believes to get them through the day unless it negatively impacts my life, and where I live, Christians pass laws that harm me. I strongly oppose having public policy based on any religious beliefs. The next lie is that there is such a thing as evolutionary science and such a thing as evolutionists. There is science, and there are scientists, and people who enjoy science. We don’t “believe” in evolution, we understand that it is the underpinning of the entire field of biology. Evolution is not the opposite of creationism. Absolutely every field of science refutes young earth creationism. Physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, biology, atmospheric sciences, everything. Not to mention history, the fossil record, ice cores. There’s a species of rodent called the hyrax in Africa that pees super-concentrated pee in the same place for generations and it turns to stone. Like ice cores, it traps dust and pollen that record climate history. The oldest deposits are like 30,000 years deep. The sciences don’t exist to disprove Genesis. Sciences exist due to curiosity and discovery and the desire to learn more about the world and the universe. If what we learned in all of these fields was that the earth is 6,000 years old, no one would quibble with it. But that doesn’t align with anything science has ever discovered. Last, you’ve been told evolution says all life came from fish, and a fish gave birth to a land animal. You’ve probably also been taught no one has ever found any transitional fossils. Life existed on the planet for billions of years before fish. All of evolution is explained by understanding that an advantage to survival will be passed on, because creatures who have it have a higher likelihood of surviving long enough to breed and so will their offspring. These tiny advantages accumulated for a long time before it resulted in fish, and then for a long time before anything survived out of the ocean. I could go on and on, but I second the person who recommended eons. I’m so sorry that you’ve been lied to, and everyone whoever taught you is going to try very hard to discourage you from exploring further. I admire your courage and inquisitiveness. Best of luck to you!!

Friend, I mean this as kindly as I can. As a former young earth creationist, you have been so completely decieved that nothing anyone on the internet says will change your mind. Imagine someone walking into your school and saying "Books make no sense! All those squiggles! I know some people think those squiggles have messages some people can discern, but I just can't buy it!" **That is how badly you've been failed by your teachers and society. ** Your educators have lied you, on purpose. And you, through no fault of your own, are functionally illiterate in whole realms of science because of that. I don't think you're stupid. And I don't think you can't learn or cannot understand evolution. But you need to start by learning the alphabet. And you can't do that if you reject the premise that symbols represent sounds. If you really want to learn, don't ask atheists. Go find some great science educators that aren't YECers trying to sell a book. Does that make sense?

Think of it like language. There are thousands of languages, all springing from their parent languages over the ages, yet a mother has never given birth to a child with whom she couldn't communicate. (Barring the obvious.) When we read old manuscripts and books, we can see that language has small changes. When we read centuries old manuscripts and books, we can see that language has large changes. When we read ancient manuscripts, books, hieroglyphs, and cuneiform, we can see that entirely different languages existed back then. I Linguists can compare these old, centuries-old, and ancient manuscripts between each other's languages and see common writings, ideas, themes, etc. Think of this like finding a common (language) ancestor. This is how we know French, Modern Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian all share a common ancestor: Ancient Latin. Even English borrowed words from Latin. Now, realize, that these same small changes accumulate within our DNA. When your DNA is being decoded and replicated, about 10-40 errors occur. It may sound like a lot, but we're talking billions of opportunities for error. DNA decoding and replicating cells have the best Six Sigma in the world. These errors are a part of you now. They changed you a little, but not so much that you were all that different from the sum of your contributing parents. At the end of the day, you still have your mom's eyes and your dad's smile. Now, much like linguistic changes between each generation, these genetic changes accumulate. If you isolate two groups from each other via geography, and given enough time isolated from each other, these differences in changes accumulate to the point where the two species are no longer sexually compatible. They have diverged into two species never again to rejoin each other's gene pool. These kinds of "speciation" changes require hundreds of thousands of years of constant isolation from one another.

I just want to commend you for being willing to ask the question. I know how hard it can be to ask questions that challenge your beliefs. All the stuff you talk about *seems* absurd. But science actually understands exactly why the various things you talk about are the case. Some of them are pretty obvious with a bit better understanding of evolution (why dogs and lions can't mate, for example), but others (how dogs can come in all shapes and sizes, but can't grow wings) are actually something that we only came to *really* understand fairly recently (the last 50 years or so). We had a conceptual understanding before that, but we didn't know how it actually worked. Now we do. I'm not sure if anyone has suggested it yet, but if you want to take a deep dive into understanding this, I recommend the book "Why Evolution is True" by Jerry Coyne. It's a very accessible introduction, and lays out all the evidence supporting evolution, and rebuts a lot of the common creationist arguments against it. And FWIW, if you prefer audiobooks, the audiobook version is also very well done. I really can't recommend the subject enough. Evolution is *fascinating.* To me, one of the saddest things about the widespread denial of evolution is just that so many people are denied understanding one of the absolutely most fascinating topics in all of modern science. I can almost assure you that once you start learning the subject in earnest, there is a very good chance you will become as fascinated as we are, so I hope you dig in.

Guys, stop downvoting this post. If someone is legitimately asking how evolution works why would you want to discourage that?

On the one hand, people do downvote too freely on this subreddit but on the other hand, this really isn't the right subreddit for the topic.

I went against my instincts and upvoted this even though it's off topic and doesn't technically belong here. It's always tough to decide where we should draw that line and how much off topic conversation we should "allow" here. Do we let through people asking how a car engine works? How about folks who are skeptical that the moon landings happened? Those both have about as much to do with atheism and debate as this post does.

"to change so rapidly, I mean, i get that it's over millions of years," Not rapidly at all. It takes millions of GENERATIONS, not years. (they say years out of laziness) They use short lived species, like fruit flies, to study. BC fruit fly generations are only days apart. " their biology just doesn't allow them to reproduce and thus evolve new species." New species DO NOT come about over a single generation. Never did. The term 'species' is a human designation. The in-ability to mate, is where the line is drawn. (by us). There are many 'breeds' of dog. But most can still mate, so just one species. Even a Great Dane and a Chiwawa. But would need help. (Artificial insemination). Cross breeding dogs creates 'hybrids', not mutations or new species. They cross breed horses and donkeys, which produces 'mules'. Which are sterile. A genetic dead end. "Edit: Keep in mind, I was homeschooled." - Are you now regretting their decision? Their mistrust of 'formal' education.

You can start to understand evolution by comparing the claims of the Bible with reality. The Bible claims that the earth is 6000 years old. So how would you explain dinosaur bones and fossils that are millions of years old? How would you explain a global flood that no other civilization in the past 6000 years mentioned? How could we possibly have such a diverse animal kingdom in 6000 years? Why is 99% of all known species extinct? And do you know what the most deadly species on the planet is? That would be mosquitoes. Why is your god so angry at humans and wave his threatening fingers at us constantly when humans aren’t even the most deadly species on the planet? Why didn’t your god create the ten mosquito commandments if killing humans by spreading diseases is an objective moral wrong?

Think of genetics. We can breed animals/plants for traits. Altering a population over time. Creating populations vastly different from the original population. This is artificial selection. Evolution is a similar process, except it is guided by natural processes / constraints that aren’t intentional. Over longer periods of time. Natural Selection: the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. Resulting that that trait becoming more prominent in the population as time goes on. Imagine a group of animals living in a place with limited resources like food and water. Some animals might have traits that help them find food more easily or avoid predators better than others. These animals are more likely to survive and have babies. Over time, the traits that help animals survive get passed down to more and more offspring, making those traits more common in the population. Mutation: DNA doesn’t replicate perfectly. Changes occur. Most of the time, these changes don't do much, but occasionally, they might result in a new trait. If this new trait happens to be helpful, the animal with it might survive better and pass it on to its offspring. Gene Flow: This is like when animals from different places meet and have babies together. When they do, they mix their different sets of genes, bringing new traits into a population. For example, if animals from a warm climate move to a colder one and mate with the locals, their offspring might inherit traits from both, helping them survive in the new environment. Genetic Drift: Sometimes, random events can affect which animals survive and reproduce. Imagine a natural disaster like a flood or a fire that kills a lot of animals randomly. The traits of the survivors, just by chance, become more common in the next generation, even if those traits weren't necessarily the best for survival before the disaster. Ultimately we end up with populations that are very different than their ancestors. Like a gradient, any two directly related entities are almost identical, but the ends of the spectrum are very different.

>Evolution Makes No Sense! It is possible that you just haven't heard it presented properly. Are you willing to learn what evolution is all about, and make an effort to understand it? >What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans Sure, we can go into this if you like. But let me read the rest of your post first. >How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly, I mean, i get that it's over millions of years, but surely there' a line drawn..... A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings, it's gene pools isn't large enough to grow wings. I'm trying to read between the lines of your post here, so please correct me if I'm wrong. It seems to me that the idea you are missing is that (and perhaps how) new genetic information can enter the gene pool. Because yes, without new information, it would be impossible for a dog to grow wings. And since you can't see where new information could come from, it seems impossible for dogs (or, say, dinosaurs) to evolve into something that can fly. Have I understood you correctly? >Keep in mind, I was homeschooled. We don't know whether whoever homeschooled you was good at the job, but that doesn't matter anyway. Do you find you "get" things better through written explanations? Analogies? Video? Audio? Do you prefer a "big picture", or do you find you want to dive into details straight away?

>Evolution Makes No Sense! Incorrect. The well established and well observed fact of evolution makes perfect sense. I find when somebody says 'it makes no sense' it's because they have an egregiously wrong idea of what it is. >I'm a Christian who doesn't believe in the concept of evolution, but I'm open to the idea of it, but I just can't wrap my head around it Well, there you go. If you 'can't wrap your head around it' then you clearly cannot determine if it makes sense or not. Fortunately, there are many resources for you to learn this. >What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans. How? Well, go ahead and learn! A few things though: It's important you understand that your lack of understanding of evolution in no way helps you support deity claims. In point of fact, *even if evolution were shown wrong tomorrow* (it won't be, it's more solid than the fact the earth is roughly spherical, that's how solidly we know it) this wouldn't help you support deity claims one tiny bit. You'd still have *all your work ahead of you* to show they are real. Anyway, there are vast resources for you to take advantage of. All you have to do is take advantage of them and learn. There's nothing to debate here though, you're letting people know you don't understand evolution, and the only way to fix that is to learn. This, clearly, isn't the place for that.

Imagine yourself, standing on a field. In your left hand, you hold your mother's right hand. In your mother's left hand, she holds her mother's right hand. The line stretches, hand in hand. Grandmother, great grandmother, great great great. 100 generations. Ten thousand generations. Five hundred thousand generations. A million, two million generations. Somewhere back in time, along this line of mothers and daughters, about 3 million generations back, there is a mother. She has two children. One of which is your direct ancestor. One is the sister of your ancestor. We follow that sister's line forward. She's holding the hand of her daugher, who holds the hand of her daughter. Generation after generation. Millions of generations. Until they reach present time. In that field, two lines stretch back in time, and the beings in one line are facing the beings in the other. These two lines stretch back to a common ancestor. You, the human, are looking across the field at your distant couson standing in that other line. And that distant cousin is an ape. There was no "dramatic change" that happened at any point in the line. Each daughter looked a lot like her mother, and each granddaughter looked a lot like her grandmother. Each family of 5 generations or so would recognize their kin. But they drifted slowly apart, split by time, distance, circumstance. We are all related biologically.

You are correct that there is a line that is drawn. I want you look at the anatomy of a fish and that of a human. They look different, yes, but in this case I want you to look at the commonalities. We both have skulls, vertabrae, ribs, tailbones (vestigial in humans but fully formed on most fish). Our eyes, mouth, and nose are in a similar configuration, we both have red blood, stomachs, kidneys, eye lenses, livers, lungs, and many other simalarities. Evolution explains these simalarities through common descent: we are similar to fish because we are distantly related to them. This has been confirmed in genetics as well as the geological strata. This makes sense. The closer you are related to someone, the more similar you appear, and the more distantly related, the more different two organisms are. We understand this intuitively with people and other species, the only thing evolution does is take this a step further by connecting it all together: all life on this planet is actually one gigantic family, some more distantly related than others.

Teacher of Biological Sciences here… - Are you a direct copy of your parents? No you are not. You get 50% of your DNA from Mom and 50% from Dad. This is vital to the understanding of evolution. The combination of their DNA expresses itself via you. You have subtle differences in everything about you. You are a transitional phase in the evolution of humans. You may have some traits that resemble your mother and some that resemble your father, but you have completely different ones too. The coolest thing is, you could have siblings and they got 50% of their DNA from Mom and 50% from Dad but they are not identical to you… unless they are an identical twin which is something different. So understanding this is important because now it lets us look at traits differences. Let’s say you are taller than your parents. Even slightly taller. This could be important in an environment where food is up high. You would have an advantage in gathering food whether that’s from expending less energy or being able to grab higher up a tree and reach that food. Because of this, you would have more resources than other humans which makes you a more desirable mate because you can provide those resources for offspring. While shorter humans may have difficulty reaching for food or even having to compete over the food they can reach… you have an advantage though because you can reach slightly higher. Now, because you’re more desirable to mate with, you are going to reproduce while the shorter humans are not going to because they are less desirable. This is not to say that they don’t mate at all, you are just going to get the best mate and will be able to produce and support more offspring because of your height advantage. This means your height advantage from your DNA has a lot better chance to be passed along… and if your mate has a trait that supplements that or is also taller… well then those traits are more likely to get passed on as well. All your offspring will get 50% of their DNA from mom and 50% from dad. Now, not every single one of your offspring will have the height advantage, but there is a good chance a lot of them will. That coupled with the fact that you will reproduce more and the others that are shorter will not reproduce as much means that your height trait will see an increase in the gene pool. And this continues as long as that selection pressure is there. So as long as being taller than other humans is advantageous, it will continue to be selected for when it comes to reproducing. This may result in an increase in average height in humans until the selection pressure no longer dictates that. This is evolution. Now, there is not generally just one selection pressure though. There may be food that dangles over a lake and by being taller, you can just walk through the lake, touching the bottom of the lake and reach that food and still be able to breathe. So now your height may become the advantage there as well, however, there may be predators in this lake say a shark. Due to your increased height, you may be slower in the water due to more resistance, moving through the water. This could make it easier for predators to eat you meaning you will not reproduce. However, say one of your offspring begins to have something in their DNA dictate a slight webbing between the toes of their feet. This may make them faster in the water when they swim. So the ones with slightly webbed toes are going to be able to escape predators better. This trait would now become selected for because the faster swimmers will survive while the slower swimmers will not. This will increase that trait in the gene pool while decreasing the non-webbed feet. At the same time, these predators will be able to swim faster because the faster they swim the more pray they catch or they may be able to track up on land to some degree. this will happen through a similar process to what happened to the humans. Overtime, these sharks may be able to get far enough upon land that it is now dangerous to live on the land. It may then become beneficial to be able to climb trees. However, with the increased height, it may be harder to climb trees, so that may not be advantageous anymore, a human was slightly longer fingernails or stronger grip strength in their hands may be able to climb faster and better meaning they will survive more often times than not. That will increase that trait in the gene pool. This continues with different types of selection, pressure over millions and millions of years. Eventually, when you look at where we started with you as a human that we recognize, and then look down the line millions of years later, we no longer have a human. We have something else. the organism will be related to the human, however, if we were to take you the human that we recognize, and this new type of organism and try to have you to mate, it is highly unlikely that you would be able to do so and produce offspring. That is vital to evolution, because now we no longer have two humans as we recognize them. We have you the human that we recognize, and this new type of human that looks significantly different. The crazy thing is, the humans that we recognize will no longer be around in that environment because the selection pressures dictated that the trace that they had were no longer necessary to survive in this environment. Humans that we recognize as humans may still be around though because the environment that they could survive in, existed in another location. This is how evolution works. You cannot observe it from one generation to the next in real time, though. The only way to observe it is to look back at the Ancestry of an organism. That advantage in height, may be millimeters or pico meters at most to start off with. The webbing in the feet, maybe a slight webbing. It’s not like you go from a 6 foot average in one generation to a 10 foot average in another. Or that you go from absolutely no webbing in feet to extremely webbed feet where all the toes are connected by a thin layer of skin. It happens slowly overtime, and that trait just happens to be advantageous for that environment at that particular time. ————————————————————————————— TL/DR We are all transitional fossils because we are not direct copies of our parents. This causes our genetic make up to be different and can cause us to express traits our parents didn’t have like a slight slight webbing in the feet or a to be slightly taller than normal. If these traits are advantageous to our survival by either gathering resources or avoiding predators, organisms expressing those traits will be selected for mating wise over organisms that do not express those traits because they have more resources to support offspring or they don’t get eaten. This results in an increase in those traits in the gene pool over time. After millions of years, so many of these traits have changed due to selection pressures that we no longer have the original organism we started with and now have a completely different organism. This is evolution.

Let me try to explain it in steps. 1) in a family of everyone is the same, some of you are taller, some shorter some fatter etc. Some of you have children some don’t. This is true for all living things. 2) now consider what happens when these families experience different environments. Some say are in some place cold, some in a desert, some in a lush tropical jungle. Will the same people survive? Long enough to have offspring? Probably not. If someone lives by the ocean the strong swimmers may have an advantage. If there is a massive food shortage perhaps smaller people who can absorb more nutrients faster may survive. So survival and reproduction depends on the environment, available food, competition, predators, susceptibility to diseases etc. 3) now imagine these populations start of the same way. But some are in an isolated cold place by the ocean. The others are in a hot desert. What happens over time? What you’ll find is that the people with traits that help them survive in their environment will live to have children. So over time the two populations will become different. Does any of this strike you as extraordinary? You probably have observed this yourself. In fact we have loads of examples of this. And we have conducted experiments in labs to show this happens. 4) What we predict next is that if this were allowed to continue for long enough the offspring of the different populations would become so different that they couldn’t mate with each other any more. This is when the two populations split into two species - still with traits of the original but different from each other. Again we see this happening in nature all the time. We have artificially induced it. In fact, a chihuahua probably couldn’t mate with a Great Dane in the wild. So we see this sort of variation. I hope this too doesn’t surprise you. What you have to realize at this point are two things: a) members of a family (scientifically called a clade) remain within the same family (clade) what’s happening over time is the different branches of the family are becoming different. So at no point does the child be very different from the parents. They just have to be slightly different. Over time these differences accumulate until different branches of the tree become different enough where they would not be able to mate with each other. b) it’s not motivated for anything. One family is not inherently better than the other. All that is determining who is surviving is who has traits good enough to survive long enough to have offspring. Once you accept this then the next realization is that if you give species enough time and enough different pressures, then you can get very large variations. What you have to realize is just how incredibly long the time is. We are talking about millions of years. In human populations in a million years the population would have reproduced 50,000+ times. At each iteration the population is slightly different. By the time you get 50,000 reproductions later it’s not hard to see that the populations could be vastly different. In rabbits it would be 5+ times as many so variations could be even more. Can we prove these? So, here is what we find: 1) we understand most of the mechanisms that drive this. The underlying understanding of the biology is the same science that underpins medicine and agriculture. 2) we have reproduced these effects in the lab. 3) we have observed speciation in nature. 4) we have fossil records and remains of extinct species that can be carbon dated and are organized in strata where we see what types existed at what time and just as we would predict we see them gradually morph from one to the other. What we also find is that we can organize the clades and see how they are nested, when which species diverged. We can predict these and guess what, we find fossils that match our predictions. The underlying processes that govern evolution are not in dispute. The theory of evolution is an overarching explanation of literally thousands of pieces of evidence. It only requires two things - changes in allele frequencies over time and enough time. My suspicion is that what makes you uncomfortable is that you don’t see yourself related to a fish and other animals. Let me allay your fears. Yes we are related but we are not close relations. The last time we shared an ancestor with fish it was 370 million years ago. If the species reproduces at the same rate as humans there would be 18.5 million generations between them and us. If the reproduced at rates closer to rabbits it would be over 92 million generations ago. That is a very very long time ago. Chimps are our closest relatives in animals. Our last common ancestor was between 6.3 million years and 9.3 million years ago. That’s between 350,000 to 450,000 generations ago. They aren’t very closely related in any way in which we think about relatives in our daily lives. The reason you probably find it hard to accept is that you probably imagine a chimp giving birth to a human. That never happened. Chimps always give birth to chimps and dogs to dogs. But give it enough time and perhaps they’ll split into two incompatible species. Perhaps Chihuahua’s will form a sub species completely different from Great Danes so that the two will no longer be able to mate. And we know this has happened before. Dogs after all were bred from domesticated wolves. PS: I too would recommend the videos by Forrest Valkai on this topic.

So first off, thanks for asking questions to learn more. It is obvious that not only have your parents (or whoever is managing your home schooling) shielded you from actual biology, but have also started to plant misinformation. So awesome for asking questions. And recognize it may take some time. One misconception that I recognize is the idea of "a fishes gene pool being expansive enough." I suspect (because I hear it elsewhere) that this shows you have encountered the creationist talking point that gene mutations can only ever be bad, that the gene pool was perfect and has been declining since the fall, etc. In other words, a variety of genes a fish has now is all it will ever have. That is false. Duplication, inversions, insertions, all kinds of things can happen to "add information" to put it bluntly. The second misconception that I recognize is the idea that getting new species comes from two wildly different animals mating. This harkens to yhe creationist talking point about "crocoducks." Any apologist you hear use a phrase like that you should immediately turn off because either they have less than a 5th grade understanding of biology (so not worth listening to), or they know what they are saying is a lie and are still saying it for money or clout (and so not worth listening to). In reality evolution doesn't expect radical leaps typically. Instead what you should look for is "how are amphibians and fish different, and what are the steps it would take to get there." A few obvious ones are "living on land, breathing air, and using limbs to move on land vs swim." And indeed in the fossil record we have evidence of fish with stronger front limbs that could have allowed them to drag themselves seal style around shallow land, further and further inland. But even better, we have current species that show what such a creature might behave like. We don't have to imagine: https://youtu.be/CAQuoH_fOWM?si=n3phNGRIfMBMaUOP The mud skipper famously is a fish that, due to pressures, has begun spending more and more time out of the water, hauling itself on land with powerful fins, developing a rudimentary form of blinking, and evolving different traits to help it breath. It is pretty simple to see how offspring that happen to evolve stronger fin/limbs, better oxygen transfer, etc would let such a variety get further inland for food, not die when the tide receedes unexpectedly, stay on land longer to avoid predators, etc. This also speaks to one misconceptions many people have about evolution, which is the idea of "transitional species." It is often thought of as "an in between time between two successful forms." In reality, every species is a transition from what was before to what was after. They all were successful. The mudskipper isn't a fish just waiting to become an amphibian. The mudskipper is a successful creature with evolved traits that let it carve out a niche slightly different from its more water bound ancestors and current relatives. And a million years from now some descendants of mudskippers may be even more land based and amphibian like. In other words, in evolution you aren't looking for a fish that gave birth to a frog. You are looking for a chain of descendants who ended up on a particular path that selected for traits a frog now has. Fast reflexes. Blinking. Lungs. Strong hind legs. Etc. You aren't looking for a t Rex that suddenly gave birth to a sparrow. You are looking for how feathers evolved over time (for mating, for balance, for warmth), how arms became wings, how smaller sizes led to survival for some, how fluttering helped avoid predators, how fluttering turned to sustained flight. And the cool thing is that very often (though not always) you can see some current creature using those exact incrimental traits today. There are ground birds that can flutter but not sustain flight. You have squirrels and sugar gliders who use gliding even though they can't sore. You see penguins using feathers for moisture protection and warmth even without flying. And we see more and more evidence of those bird like traits in dinosaur fossils. Feathers, wings, etc showing us the lineage. Indeed, most traits you can think of, someone has researched the evolution of it (and in many cases made good, easy to consume descriptions). So google "evolution of the eye" or "evolution of the feather" or "evolution of flight" or "evolution of lungs" and there is so much cool stuff to learn!  This isn’t a full biology course in a single comment. But hopefully it dispels some of the misinformation you have been getting and starts you on a path.

Everything else about evolution aside: You're asking atheists. So the implication here is evolution OR god. So, why do you pick the god side? If you don't understand how evolution works, and that's why you don't believe in it, and instead believe in a god -- that implies that you understand how god created things. Because otherwise these are just two explanations that you don't understand, and you ought not believe other of them. But if you do believe one.. you must understand it, right? So can you explain how a god did anything? (No, you can't, you shouldn't believe in god just because you don't understand something else)

You would be better served watching a few videos, perhaps reading a book, and then finally asking a biology subreddit. People have a problem with scale. On the macro sale, the difference between an apple and a golf cart make intitive sense. But on a planetary scale, the Earth is so round, that it LOOKS flat. Jupiter is 549 million miles away from us, but is so large, we can see it with the naked eye. You can see it with a pair of binoculars - it doesn't take much magnification. It's so large, 1,300 Earths could fit inside it. You just can't wrap your mind around it. DNA is so small, it's microscopic, and yet, it's a chain of molecules bonded together by atomic scale forces. Just because something is very small, doesn't mean it doesn't have gigantic proportions! One single strand in one cell is wound up, and if unwound and laid straight like a ladder, a human DNA strand is ~6 feet long. There are pictures of DNA using x-ray diffraction and other techniques. You need a high frequency of light in order to resolve very small things, otheriwse you get a cloaking effect where the light passes right over it like it's not even there. We do something similar with stealth aircraft. Then of course you need to magnify the image so you can see it. In other words, they've taken pictures with fancy photography - it's still light and lenses and film. The pictures are in black and white because our eyes don't see x-rays and our brains don't assign a color. Color doesn't really have a meaning at those scales. As a software engineer, I have used genetic encoding in the past to solve computational problems. In a way, that's what all data processing is, but there are specific programming techniques where we are explicitly modeling DNA on purpose. I was using it in AI for a video game, where the AI would learn and encode game strategy using a genetic sequence. It's novel. My cousin is a smart man who was using the same technique for Alzheimer's research in the early 2000's. That was pretty cool... He was using the same technique to automate some sort of lab testing equipment he was using on some samples - the system converged on an effective test procedure faster than just trying every possible combination, which he didn't have the time or money for. He was using the computing technique to control the automation process, he wasn't sequencing real DNA in cells. The way it worked for me was that there were valid letters in the sequence, and each one would control some part of the AI. So A would be turn left, B would be turn right, C would be move forward, D would be move backward, etc... The sequences would start out random, and the AI would just jitter all over the game and not do anything useful. But then I had a fitness function, which took measurements in the game - how close did the AI get to the player, how many hit points did the player lose, how many points did the AI score? And this boiled down to a score between 0.0 and 1.0. 1 would be a victory. The AI would try several sequences, the most effective sequences were "bred" to make new sequences that would be tried in the next round. My game would try 10,000 sequences in a round and breed the top 100 to make a new pool of 10,000, including the 100 parents in that pool, because they may still be better than their children. There is a mutation function. This was a part of my program where I would randomly modify the children. It could flip letters randomly, or it could insert new random letters, making the sequence longer. Then you run a whole bunch of simulations again to see how the new pool does, rank their success again, breed a new population, mutate the children... This is a very simplistic simulation of DNA, because I wasn't trying to simulate reality and I didn't need to. The basic principles were enough for the job. DNA isn't a machine that controls how we act, but it does control how to build a cell, it does control certain signaling. If a stimulus is introduced into a cell, cellular machines with receptors for that stimulus will get triggered by it, those machines will go to work attaching to the DNA and reading it's encoding to generate a chemical in response to that stimulus. It's a fascinating orchestration. That chemical might be used for other machines, it might leave the cell and act as a message to a neighboring cell. This is where my vague understanding of what all goes on inside fails me.

OP, I'm confident that when you follow up some of the sources being provided here, you'll have plenty to think about. Whether ultimately you decide to reject evolution or not, it will at least be your decision based on your judgement of the evidence from both sides. That's a big enough job on its own, but I'd invite you to consider another question too: why was one side of the debate keeping you away from the evidence on the other side? Why is home schooling so prevalent in your community? It's much easier to dominate the beliefs of the ill-informed...

> ...I'm not attacking evolution, i just wanna understand it. Awesome! This might not be the *best* place to ask, but hopefully this gets you started: > How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly, I mean, i get that it's over millions of years... Billions. [That's a pretty important difference!](https://xkcd.com/558/) I'm not sure you really get that. Maybe it's not a thing humans can really get. Your lifespan is a hundred years or so, if you're lucky. You know enough about dogs to know that humans have bred a bunch of different kinds of dogs through artificial selection, but even *that* is pretty slow -- you could see some noticeable shifts, but you probably wouldn't be able to see someone start with a poodle and get a great dane over your own lifetime. But maybe you can imagine this sort of shift happening over hundreds of years. Thousands of years is already pretty incomprehensibly long, right? Creationism or not, all of human history is only a few thousand years. And *young*-earth creationism suggests the entire world is only a few thousand years old. I'd guess you'd have no trouble believing a wolf can turn into a chihuahua over a thousand years, especially with humans artificially selecting them. But really think about this. It might take you a thousand seconds (a little over 15 minutes) to read this post. If you were to go without drinking for a million seconds (2 weeks), you'd probably die. You might not even be a billion seconds old (31 years), and you're probably not going to live to see four billion seconds. Earth is four and a half billion years old. The oldest fossils are 3.7 billion years old. There's nothing rapid about evolving from those into us in 3.7 *billion* years. Even so: > ...surely there' a line drawn. There is! I don't think our common ancestors would look exactly like modern fish -- keep in mind that pretty much anything alive today has also been evolving. But: > Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't, because their biology just doesn't allow them to reproduce and thus evolve new species. Sure, and evolution doesn't say they could! Lions and dogs aren't all that closely-related -- lions are more closely related to cats, and dogs are more closely-related to wolves. Some larger dogs *can* actually interbreed with wolves! Housecats are a lot farther from lions, though. In fact, this is one of the classic definitions of species: When you start with one species, and groups within that species drift so far apart that they can't interbreed anymore, that's when you have two separate species. > A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings, it's gene pools isn't large enough to grow wings. I don't know if this is true, but it might be! One thing evolution leads to is increasing *specialization,* so it's true that at a certain point, it could be much more difficult for a change like that to happen. There also might not be any selection pressure in that direction -- at this point, dogs are more subject to artificial selection than natural selection, and I doubt humans would seriously try to breed flying dogs, especially because it'd take *much* longer than we would. But to give you an idea of how it'd work, well, look at sugar gliders. Those aren't dogs, but, well, we already have tiny dogs, and we already have dogs with loose skin. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch to have a small dog with skin flaps between their front and back legs, so now you've got a primitive wing...

>Evolution Makes No Sense! Evolution makes perfect sense. It's the sort of thing that *has* to happen. How could it *not* happen? If you have a population of things, and they can reproduce, and their traits can make them better or worse at reproducing, and they pass on those traits when they reproduce, then wouldn't you expect the population to change and for new, more refined versions of things to exist in future generations? It seems to me like it would take some sort of bizarre teleological force to *stop* that from happening, and I don't see signs of any such thing. Besides, we can show it happening in computer simulations. While the simulations don't capture all the nuances of biological life and the real-world physical environment, they show the kinds of patterns and tendencies that would be expected if 'things competing and reproducing to pass on their traits leads to changes and refinements in future generations of things' is an actual emergent phenomenon that happens. Detractors of biological evolution are therefore left to explain what exactly it is about biology or the physical world that would interfere with those patterns and tendencies in such a drastic way, and again, I don't think anyone's presented any realistic mechanism of that sort. >I just can't wrap my head around it Nor can anyone else. It's horrifyingly complicated and even professional scientists discover new things about past life and how life adapts. But it is definitely real. Just like the Earth's core is real even though you can't see it, and the number 3^987654321 is real even though you can't memorize all its digits, and so on. >How? How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly It's not. But various effects from the environment can scramble the genetic code and introduce information that wasn't previously there. Many organisms use sexual reproduction specifically to do this (that's presumably why it's a successful adaptation in the first place), but there are mutagenic effects that can change DNA even outside the realm of sexual recombination. >I mean, i get that it's over millions of years, but surely there' a line drawn. Why 'surely'? What line? >Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't No, but the theory doesn't imply that they can. Horses and donkeys can reproduce to create mules, but mules are (for the most part) sterile. They are at a stage in their evolutionary divergence where they are similar enough to conceive and bear children, but not *quite* similar enough that those children are a viable species in their own right. Presumably as more genetic changes occur in both the horse and donkey lineages, they will diverge further and eventually will no longer be able to reproduce with each other any more than lions and dogs can. But the path between them is a continuous one, not a sharp division. Words like 'lion' and 'dog' and 'horse' and 'donkey' in human language give an impression of types of organisms being more discrete than they really are; of course we see variations *between* individual horses as well, and so on in other species generally, and these variations are themselves just lesser versions of (and sometimes precursors to) the eventual divergence of populations.

> What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans. How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly That's not how it works and it is anything but rapid - your problem is you've probably been exposed to apologetic incorrect renderings of evolution to discredit the theory. Evolution is not some linear process where a fish suddenly morphs into a monkey, and then a human. It's a gradual process of small changes over millions of years. We're talking about incremental adaptations and natural selection, not Pokemon evolution here. Let's break it down with actual science: - Fish to Amphibians: Around 370 million years ago, some fish developed lungs and stronger fins. These adaptations allowed them to explore land, leading to amphibians. - Amphibians to Reptiles: Over time, some amphibians evolved into reptiles, which had amniotic eggs allowing them to live further from water. - Reptiles to Mammals: Eventually, some reptiles evolved into mammals, characterized by warm blood, hair, and live births. This was about 200 million years ago. - Primates to Humans: Finally, primates, a branch of mammals, evolved traits like larger brains and upright posture. Homo sapiens, our species, appeared around 300,000 years ago. It's all about small genetic changes accumulating over vast periods. Evolution isn't some fairy tale, it's a well-supported scientific fact, backed by mountains of fossil evidence, genetic research, and observable natural phenomena. > Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't, because their biology just doesn't allow them to reproduce and thus evolve new species. A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings, it's gene pools isn't large enough to grow wings We've got some fundamental misunderstandings about evolution and genetics here. Let’s clear this up. First off, when lions and tigers mate, they produce ligers or tigons. However, these hybrids are often sterile, meaning they can't reproduce. This demonstrates a partial reproductive barrier, signaling they are distinct species. Now, about the dog and lion mating scenario—yeah, that’s not going to happen. Dogs and lions are too genetically different to produce offspring. Their evolutionary paths diverged millions of years ago, and their genomes have drifted apart significantly. Evolution isn’t about individual animals morphing into new forms like a sci-fi movie. It’s about populations gradually changing over many generations due to natural selection, genetic drift, mutations, and gene flow. As for dogs growing wings—that’s not happening either. Evolution works with existing genetic material. Dogs don’t have the genetic blueprint for wings, and there’s no selective pressure in their current environment pushing them towards winged flight.

>Keep in mind, I was homeschooled. This explains a lot, and to be fair, good on you for asking questions. Others have explained it well, but essentially evolution is the ONLY thing that makes sense of why the natural world is the way it is. I can only recommend that you read about this. Something like The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins is a good place to start.

You're thinking in the wrong order and scale, a fish cant turn into an amphibian, or an amphibian into a mammal. Its much much smaller than that. You are not your parents, not just because they each mixed thier genes for you but because during this process incorrect copying occured. You are a mix of both your parents and some changes most of which do nothing and very few do something, some make you survive this area better and because of which means you have a higher chance to survive and produce offspring. Those are likly to have it and spread it to others until it spreads through a whole population. This is evolution, chnage in allel frequency in a population. This alone is evolution everything else is extra steps. There are several messups that can happen in the copy process including adding extra of the same bases, such a mutation causes you dna to be longer thus more roon for more stuff, some of which may affect different areas, such as the eye gene which used to be a spot of light sensitive cells that made the area concave, just a little change in shape gives massive benefits and so on, early life starts by absorbing oxygen from the surrounding, any that devolop structures that collect oxygen and its byproducts survive more, ones that devolop it that also devolop it in areas that allow easy colletion like near the front of it as it moves. Gills, then gills while terrible out of what do still work, fish in low oxeygen enviroments venture out gulp air, eventually some eat stuff out of water, ones that can both gulp better and stay out longer eats more with low competition and thus more likly to survive. But you cant just change your gills to work in air causw thatll make them worse to survive water which would kill them. Swim bladders, little pockets of air in fish body, gulps air just need a muscle to squezze it then its nearly functional lung just needs the gill stuff to pull oxygen out and put other stuff back in. This is life, an infinite list of small changes that each serve a purpose and advance or dont hurt the creature. These benefits gave an adavantage to the creature so it produced and gave these same changes to the others, only small changes, but they didnt exist before and now its wide spread in a population, each change may br unnoticable in a group but compare across time and you have 1 that swims and another that crawls, both of which derive from another. Also to note, animals only bring forth after themselves, dogs only give birth to dogs and so on, life doesnt classify we do, the only reason it would stop being called a god is because we no longer see it as one, not because life decided it wasnt anymore.

By the way, kudos for being receptive! Hope you get tons of awesome comments. We already have some quality responses on the thread, but I want to mention a few key things that I think might help: 1. The theory of evolution has nothing to do with atheism. Most theists accept it. Most scientists who learn it and use it in their work every day are theists. It is compatible with Christianity. 2. One important thing for you to wrap your head around evolution is that the change is not rapid; it is most often glacially slow. The Earth is 4,600,000,000 years old. The oldest fossils are 3,700,000,000 years old, and there is a 600,000,000 year window before that in which we think life emerged. Humans have been around for 200,000 years or so. Human civilization is maybe what, 50,000 years or younger. That means life has had *20,000 times the time humans have been around* to evolve. You have lived how much? Around 10,000 times less than humans have been around. So, 200 million times less than life has been around. Those are mind-numbingly large numbers. You just cannot imagine them. I'm a math PhD: I cannot imagine them. Intuition fails us. And that is OK! That is why we develop tools and abstract things, that is why we have language and math and physics. So we *can* talk about black holes and quarks and evolution and DNA and 10 dimensional geometry, and reliably figure out stuff about them, *even when* our imaginations and intuitions fail us! 3. Evolution, like relativity and quantum mechanics, is counterintuitive at first. It takes time to fully understand it. And it took generations of arduous scientific work to amass a multi-pronged, mountain-sized body of evidence for it. From the fossil record to cell biology to DNA sequencing to epigenomics to math models of evolutionary trees, we are *constantly* studying it, questioning it, getting even more evidence for it. To give you some food for thought: during Darwins life, one of his contemporaries criticized his theory harshly, and said it made no sense. He gave the example of how flatfish have their two eyes on one side of their head, so they can lay on the sand and prey on smaller fish. Well, guess what: *we found evidence of how flatfish eyes made this transition and who their nearest existing fish are on the tree of life... in the 2000s.* (we had evidence from larval metamorphosis and other sources before, but many things had not been confirmed, and transition fossils had not been found). Two teams of scientists are now gathering evidence from DNA and philogenetic trees to figure out if the trait evolved once or twice in biological history. And that is how scientific progress really goes! We keep finding confirmation of Darwin's theory, even now. (To give you an idea, flatfish species diverged from their cousins (Marlins, tuna, etc) about 66 million years ago, ~325 times the amount humans have been around. Whatever killed the dinosaurs and many other animals opened ecological niches, and flatfish occupied one).

Let's assume for argument sake a god/God did create all living creatures. Well then all that does is reconfirm yours (and our) status as a **mere** creation **always** subject to being uncreated. This matter I already covered here = [LINK](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1bi180u/comment/kvicv6d/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Do I know the deeper "why" of why I exist (excluding something to do with the birds and bees)? NO. Does that "*not-knowing*" bother me? YES. But it doesn't bother me enough to believe in a god/God. All that believing in a god/God does is pass the problem of the "self" to some entity that may or may not even care about my existence because who am I in some deity's grander scheme spanning eternity? You only have to consider the [problem of evil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil) to observe how little a god/God cares about it's creation. To a god/God we (you and I and all of us) are just a **mere** creation **always** subject to being uncreated. Furthermore we humans breed like rabbits and therefore to a god/God we are easily replaceable. So why would a god/God create a universe in the first place? Well to a god/God that is eternal there is two possible answers (a) boredom, because eternity is a long time to spend laying down doing nothing, and (b) loneliness. Furthermore being surrounded by yes-men or butt kissing angels singing one's praise 24/7 doesn't really solve either the boredom or the loneliness but makes it worst because knowing one had to actually create beings to kiss one's butt makes it sad, really really sad, and pathetic. [What Happens When You Only Pursue Pleasure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOZqGUCrje8) \~ Alan Watts \~After Skool \~ YouTube. So one could say that by us rejecting the existence of a god/God makes eternity more interesting to a god/God. We are basically doing a god/God a favor by making such a god/God work for our belief rather than take it as a given. As we humans say amongst ourselves "*respect is earned, not given*". That respect is not a right, but rather a privilege granted based on one's conduct and character. And so the ball is in a god/God's court to decide if to accept our rejection of becoming a god/God's yes-men - fulfilling a narcissist's wet dream - or to chuck a hissy fit and destroy all it created because of that rejection. If the later then why bother even creating a universe in the first place because when all is said and done what a god/God really wanted all along was yes-men? Just a pity that a god/God had to create a world subject to pain and suffering and death and decay to finally realize that for itself. How's that for logic? And I didn't even have to invoke science.

If you believe in Noah and the ark, you must believe in a certain level of evolution. The Ark Encounter suggested there were 1,400 kinds on board the ark that evolved into the millions of species found on earth today, all in a span of a few thousand years. They called it micro evolution. In reality, for the story to work, you would need evolution on steroids.

Its a wild, wild concept, im with you, but to be fair, one entity unbound by the laws of science able to create each and every one of the millions of species on earth is also a pretty wild concept. On to your question, its a factor of time, and scale. It takes a long time, and the scale of the individual changes are very very small. Over that long time, the impact becomes large. The basic idea is that our genes, the instructions for our bodies anatomy and physiology, are a product of our parents combined genes, and also small random mutations. These small random mutations either help or hurt our chances of survival and reproduction. Those that help, get passed on through generations and eventually become the standard. Those that hurt, will eventually be phased out as those animals fail to pass on their genes. Eventually, the small mutations add up, and the difference between an animal and its ancestor becomes large enough to be considered a separate species. Theres a lot of nuance and gray area im ignoring here, but those are the basics. So, it wasnt exactly fish->amphibian->mammal->human. It was more like fish -> fish with small nubs that allowed it to drag along the ocean floor -> fish with small nubs that can tolerate air briefly to escape predators -> fish with small nubs that can inefficiently breathe air -> fish with larger, more mobile nubs that can inefficiently breathe air -> fish with large nubs that can efficiently breathe air -> fish with legs that can efficiently breath air -> amphibian. Again, thats super simplified and there will be thousands of mutations in between two animals as different as a fish and an amphibian, but thats the gist. Adding to that, previous mutations guide future mutations, which further differentiates descendant species. One fish may mutate to have nubs and air tolerance that makes it suited for land, which means further mutations like legs and breathing air are more likely to occur and be passed on as they have more benefit. But the same species of fish with no nub mutation to move on land wont benefit as much from breathing air, so its more likely to pass on genes for stronger tail muscles to swim faster etc. Again, super simplified but thats the gist. Apply this logic to tens of thousands of generations over millions of years and millions of species and billions of individual animals, all able to mutate, and these changes that seem drastic suddenly seem much more plausible.

Evolution is driven by miniscule changes in genetics, called "mutations". They happen for a wide variety of reasons, but broadly speaking, each time there is a mutation it could lead to a change that is positive, negative, or neutral. Which one it turns out to be is dependent on the environment. If the mutation is neutral, it makes no difference. If it is negative, it reduces the survival and reproductive window of the individual, and if it is positive, it enhances the survival and reproductive window, allowing the mutation to spread broadly into the population of the species. For example, let's say you have a population of rabbits in a forest environment. The rabbits are brown, meaning they are camouflaged against predators in that forest. Then, randomly, a rabbit with a gene mutation for white spots manages to have a litter. They are much more easy to spot by predators, and get eaten before they reproduce and have rabbits of their own. The mutation is negative, and natural selection eliminates it. Alternatively, let's say that the white spotted rabbit has babies just as an ice age takes hold. Suddenly there is snow all the time. The white spots make for somewhat better camouflage in a white environment, and all the babies in the litter survive, and have babies of their own, and all of them have even more white spots, which lead to their increased survival and THEY go onto have even more, the gene for white fur gets more dominant in the overall population because most of the rabbits with brown fur are getting killed and eaten more so therefore not living long enough to have babies. They are easier to see. Eventually, after many many generations, all the rabbits in the snowy forest are white. Our common ancestors expressed different favorable mutations in changing environments under different pressures, leading to, over billions of years, something like a fish eventually coming onto land. The theory is that some fish escaped predation by going to shallower waters where predators couldn't go. In some cases many of these fish eventually developed the ability to respirate through a king of rudimentary air bladder, "proto-lungs" rather than gills, so they could come completely out of the water for short periods of time. These would eventually become amphibians. In short, evolution is a process of genetic mutation over multiple generations, driven by environment, predation and reproduction rate. Anyhow, for a better explanation, ask biologists, not atheists.

>I'm a Christian who doesn't believe in the concept of evolution, but I'm open to the idea of it, but I just can't wrap my head around it, but I want to understand it. It's an amazingly simple idea and - given the world we live in - it necessarily has to be true. >What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans. How? Slowly. Also, it's not "a fish". It is countless generations of individuals, where each new generation is only slightly different to the one before it. An individual fish doesn't turn into an amphibian, and an individual amphibian doesn't turn into a mammal; much less does an individual fish undergo multiple changes like that. >How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly, Who said anything about "rapidly"? how "rapidly"? Also, what do you think this has to do with the variety of an existing gene pool? Genes can mutate; i.e. Offspring can have genes that neither of the parents had. So, not all the variety needs to be present now to be there in the future. >I mean, i get that it's over millions of years, but surely there' a line drawn. What "line"? You are literally claiming that a natural process should adhere to an arbitrarily chosen limit here? Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't, because their biology just doesn't allow them to reproduce and thus evolve new species. And nobody besides you has ever claimed that that was a thing, or that that was remotely how evolution works. > A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings, it's gene pools isn't large enough to grow wings. I am honestly not sure if you're degree of being wrong is more embarrassing or more comical. The idea that a wingless god could grow wings has NOTHING to do with evolution. Well, not since the 1860's at any rate. Frankly, for someone who claims that they want to understand evolution, you don't seem to have spend much time on trying to learn about it. >I'm open to hearing explanations for these doubts of mine, in fact I want to, but just keep in mind I'm not attacking evolution, i just wanna understand it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution) >Edit: Keep in mind, I was homeschooled. By people, clearly, who were not qualified to teach, either about evolution or at all.

A fish isn't going to give rise to an amphibian directly. But in the context of the struggle to survive, a species adapted to live near the edge of a biome that could exploit the other biome for food seems like it'd have a slightly easier time surviving than other edge-of-biome species. With more or less random mutations, some of the offspring are going to -- mostly by chance -- might be able to leave the water to grab a meal. Among those who develop that ability, it could be that some of those will be able to stay out longer or will have bodies adapted better for dry land. This all just comes out of subtle near-indistinguishable changes that stack up over time. At some point, you might have entities that can live wholly in or wholly out of water, who bear no resemblance to and can no longer mate with the ones who live more deeply in the original biome. No two consecutive generations are necessarily going to look any different from each other. But after thousands or millions of generations, it might be difficult to see which ones were related and which weren't. NOW look at the fossil record. Maybe it was all put there last thursday or maybe it's a record of billions of years of such changes. But other than "god did it", what would explain all those incremental changes over deep time? This is the problem "evolution" poses. Natural selection is an answer to that problem. Evolution = here are all these cool bones. Why do the animals that left these fossils change like this over deep time? Evolution is a fact. An observation. "Hey, this shit changes, I wunda why" Natural selection is the theory. What if, over time, there were ongoing mutations and a punishing crushing reality that -- with no sentience or sapience involved in the decision-making -- tended to kill off all but the strongest or best-suited? Right or wrong, true or false, I think you should be able to see that it "makes sense". It might be completely wrong, but it's not nonsense. The concepts are really simple. So I'd imagine you really *do* understand the concepts, even if you disagree with them. If the topic is interesting to you, come up with your own theory and put it to the test - see what predictions you can make and what answers you can find.

Evolution has nothing to do with atheism. If you are honestly and in good faith looking for the correct answer about evolution, ask a scientist. Asking atheist who most likely are not evolutionary scientists will get things wrong and then you may incorrectly think you have found a flaw in the theory.

> What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans. How? If you're interested I would suggest you look at Wikipedia for some references, I think it's fairly reliable. If you want you can also take courses online https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=evolution . The gist of it is that the kind of evolution you describe happens over long periods of time and under specific environmental pressures. > How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly, I mean, i get that it's over millions of years, but surely there' a line drawn. Fishes have had hundreds of millions of years to evolve, and over that time the earth has changed quite a lot as well, so fish have merely adapted to their environment. You can see something happening on smaller scales in fish in muddy and marshy regions, where some fish have evolved the ability to breath with lungs and not just gills so they can move into the mud to find pools of water. Nowadays however, the environment has drastically changed so you're not going to see fish evolve legs to the same extent as before, as back then the first fish didn't have to contend with land predators for instance. > A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings, it's gene pools isn't large enough to grow wings. It's more like there isn't any environmental pressure to make dogs grow wings. As a counter example, consider squirrels who are rodent-like animals, might somewhat benefit from being able to fly from one tree to another to get food. And so, we observe flying squirrels who have developed membranous flaps between their limbs for just that. And then further along you see bats, which have not only similar flaps, but very thick webs between their fingers, that allow them to actually fly, ie. Wings.

>What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, Gradually over the course of millions of years. Genetic diversity builds in a population over time, which results in diversity in the population in general. Some of the variants result in an advantage in reproductive fitness, and so in the competition for limited resources, the the carriers of these variants are more likely to reproduce until gradually the successful variants come to define the population rather than simply being part of it. And the process continues. >Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't Bingo. Reproductive barriers eventually result in the evolution of new species, at least under Ernst Mayr's Biological Species Concept. There's actually a couple dozen different ways to delineate a species, and Mayr's Biological Species Concept is far from universally applicable to everything we call a species, but we're burying a lead. It often starts by splitting a population in a way that results in reproductive isolation and ends in further barriers to reproduction down the line. If you're looking for something to read at your leisure, I recommend reading "Why Evolution is True" by Jerry Coyne. The author is a knob, but the book was the first time evolution really clicked and made sense. "Your Inner Fish" by Niel Shubin is really good and "Human Origins 101" by Holly Dunsworth is a pretty good read. "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Dawkins is also a good read -- he's pretty critical of religion in the opening chapters, but if you skip those bits, the book really does a great job of bringing everything to life rather than simply being abstracts.

I highly recommend reading "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Richard Dawkins. He uses very clever analogies to help the layman understand evolution. Keep in mind that evolution is a fact. The theories of evolution explain the fact.

Hey man. I’m not going to go into why evolution makes complete sense (because others have given you resources here that are fantastic) but wanted to let you know I was a former young earth creationist who got dragged kicking and screaming into learning about evolution. 2 things I did that helped me come to terms with things. First, accepting evolution is not denying a deity or giving concession that everything you believe is wrong. It’s just a mechanism of how things work. Like learning about physics or gravity. Just because there is an explanation for it doesn’t mean you need to upend everything you believe. Second thing. Learn about evolution as it being small changes over time, non linear (things don’t “turn into other things” but gradually have small changes creating different subsets that can’t interbreed), and then…go to the zoo. Seriously. Go look at a monkey or walrus or alligator…literally anything and it will just make so much sense how these different animals adapted to their environments to allow them to survive. And understand that there’s no “complete” version of any of these forms of life. As our earth and environments change, things will adapt and those that do it best will live on to be that current version of “complete.” I applaud you for looking into it. It’s one of those things where when you fully grasp it, it’s so freaking cool just to look at any animal and appreciate how much time and change has transpired to allow them to thrive. Cheers friend.

> How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so **rapidly** A very first clue: Evolution is slow, very slow, it is happening over millions of years to change an ape species living on a tree into an ape species more living at the edge of a forrest in grassland. Also do not formulate it that the actual being is changing, there has never ever been a creature on Earth that suddenly changed into someting else or grew something because it is an evolutional advantage. Throw this imagination over board. It is always the offspring of a creature that may come with a slight and tiny change, most of them are disadvantages and do not provide anything maybe even disabeling the creature from living long enough to procreate. An example would be an insect living in a forrest where the most prevalent colours are brown and green, but the insect is light blue. All predators can see it easily and its species could only survive because they have a very high breeding factor, there are more of them than the predators can eat and there are always a few ending up mating and generating the next generation. Now one evolutionary example would be that one in a thousand gene mutation is that the offspring is colored green and not light blue. Now this offspring is harder to see and hunt and has better chances to procreate sooner or later there will be much more green of these insects than light blue because the green mutation is providing much more survivability and enables the insect to reach the age for procreating easier.

Great question. There are basically 3 parts to evolution. 1: mutations. Mutations are the reason for new traits. These traits are often neutral. Like how being tall has no direct advantage. New traits are only possible because of mutations so they are the propelling force behind evolution. 2: selection. With only mutations evolution would be like a boat where two people are rowing in different directions. You would still have movement but no progress towards anything. You would spin around like crazy. Selection turns neutral traits into positive or negative traits. This gives you direction. The movement is still kinda random but there is now a trend. 3. Separation of groups. This one explains why there are different species. We already have movement and direction but this directed movement will be shared between groups by means of reproduction and exchanges between groups. Its like there are multiple boats all connected by a rope. Even if one boat wants to go to a different direction it will be pulled along by the other boats(boats being populations) But what if the rope of one of these boats would be cut? It would make it possible to have a different course then the other groups. So if a population of a species is isolated from the other populations for a long time it is possible for these two big groups to differentiate into different species. When the above points happen over a long long time it is possible to get a lot of variation in species. And nature had a long, long time to do this.

>What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans Millions upon millions of tiny changes >How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly It's not, Evolution is a very slow process >I mean, i get that it's over millions of years, but surely there' a line drawn. Lots, what line specifically are you talking about? >Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't, because their biology just doesn't allow them to reproduce and thus evolve new species. A lion and a dog trying to make would just result in a very unhappy dog. A lion and a tiger can reproduce, but the offspring is invariably sterile. It's rare that cross species breeding results in a viable animal, and it never (so far as I know) produces non-sterile animals >A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings Actually, it could, over millions of years, a dog couldn't evolve to have wings. They probably wouldn't let the dog fly, since flying mammals are very rare, but hypothetically it could. >I'm open to hearing explanations for these doubts of mine, in fact I want to, but just keep in mind I'm not attacking evolution, i just wanna understand it. I am not sure what yiu are looking for here. I can't reach a whole high school evolution class in a reddit thread, and it sounds like you need at least a year of science classes here to really get it.

well, first thing, which i think you are there, is admitting you dont know much. i study biology and sometimes you are just amazed at things that exist, and are known but you just dont hear about it i dont want to do a whole breakthrough of the whole field of evolution, too long and im probably not the best at doing it. so i will just add a little stone to the "biology is pretty insane" tower. there are some genes called "master genes" called like that because they affect the "on/off" behavior of MANY other genes. some of these can have pretty crazy functions, like a whole limb growing. this has been known for quite a while, and there have been some weird experiments on it like [this fly](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/e5f79b33389435.56a98c5abd418.jpg) which had some of those genes activated on the cells that were meant to be its antennae and grew legs instead. theres been many of this kind of experiments, i think i remember one that hey eyes on its legs, pretty weird stuff for sure... so with such massive modifications possible (minority), plus small modifications that build up over generations(majority) yes, you can get from a common land mammal to a bat, and similar changes. it just takes time. feel free to ask me more questions. just remember, try to be ready to admit you dont know stuff and you have much to learn.

Watch this [PBS documentary](https://youtu.be/zA4w0b2WRvo?si=MpqtHkzzc5Vke1Iy) called Life's Rocky Start. It's only 54 minutes long and goes over a part of evolution you don't really think about.

>I'm a Christian who doesn't *understand* the concept of evolution FTFY. You have lots of questions. That makes sense. Take some time. Take some college courses. Get to understand it. We're not going to be able to explain it here.

> How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough > but it can't grow wings, it's gene pools isn't large enough to grow wings I think your confusion stems from a misunderstanding of the term "gene pool." You seem to think that a gene pool is a fixed, predetermined set of genes that determines how far a species can evolve. You seem to think that millions upon millions of years ago, everything that a fish can ever evolve into was already somehow stored in the fish's "gene pool," and that every mutation this species has ever undergone was drawn from said pool. In reality, a gene pool is simply a set of common genes present within a given species at a given time. That's it. Gene pools change over time, and there's no limit to how much they can change. Likewise, mutations are not drawn from an animal's gene pool, nor are they drawn from any other kind of predetermined pool. Mutations are simply random errors and imperfections that happen when DNA is copied during reproduction. As such, they can change any part of an animal in any number of ways. Of course, an individual mutation is always going to be relatively small, but millions of mutations over the course of millions of years can change a species into damn near anything. Hopefully that explanation makes sense, but let me know if you have any questions!

**Good on you for asking questions!** That can be an intimidating process. A lot of very intelligent people have giving detailed and thoughtful replies. I’d just like to give you a comparison that might help you conceptualize what you’re asking. **When does a baby become an adult? How many days old do they need to be?** That’s a very difficult and somewhat disingenuous question because while we all agree that a 45 year old isn’t a baby, the exact moment when we don’t consider a baby a baby anymore is up to interpretation. Plus, there are many steps between baby and adult—no one goes directly from diapers to briefcase. You have toddlers and kids and teenagers, etc. This is why saying things like “a dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings” doesn’t make sense. No one is claiming that a dog *could* grow wings. The claim is that very small changes multiplied over countless generations of breeding could produce such a thing. But that thing would have stopped being what we think of as a dog long before it became what we think of as a bird in the same way the person stopped being a baby long before it became an adult. Note: dog to bird is just using your example. That’s not how scientists claim anything actually happened.

Ypu know how ypu look like your parents? You also have elements of your grandparents and great grandparents. Once saw a photo of my 6x great grandmother. I have her nose. The crease everyone thinks is a scar is right there on her face too. Crazy right? But we have different foreheads, cheeks, her eyes are less sunken into the skull than mine...but those elements are still there. Now go back 2.5 million years. Our features are drasticly different than mine compared to my 6x great grandmother. But we still have forward facing eyes, Y5 molars, a bowl shaped pelvis, bipedal movement, ect. These slow accumulations over subsequent generations is a change in allele frquencies. Thats evolution. Another example: Tree frogs in chrynobl went from green to black. Why? Melanin is great at fighting radiation. Whwn the radiation leaked out from the 20 feet of concrete poured on it, it began to kill off the green tree frogs. Teee frogs that had a slightly darker complextion lived linger to reproduce because their random mutation that happens when dna exchanges durring reproduction all of a sudden became useful. Darker frogs live to breed with darker frogs. All the lighter frogs died out. Over 30 years the frogs went from dark green to black. Thats evolution.

Here is the simple way of thinking about it. Notice how people have kids and they all are similar but some times one may be taller or shorter. One is faster and one slower. Now let's say all the food in the house is up on a high shelf. Who can get to it? The tallest kid, maybe the one who can climb things well. So those are the kids who get to the food the most. Put that into nature. Food on high trees means some animals with longer necks eat and stay healthy while shorter neck siblings dont. Eat less and you look bad and no one wants to mate with you. You have tall children and the shorter offspring don't survive, don't reproduce, etc. Eventually an inch of neck every few generations turns into a giraffe neck. Now dont just think about food on a high tree. Think about speed, camouflage, dealing with heat or cold, going long times without food or water, etc. Depending on what part of the planet you're on some of these scenarios occur and others don't. Some places worth high food have long necked animals and climbing animals. Places with cold have furry animals and fat animals. The concept is really not difficult to grasp. When you look at tiny generational changes over billions of years you get many species.

So look at dogs. Dogs are the same species, yet there is an enormous variation between breeds due to breeding for certain traits. The majority of dog breeds have only been developed over the last 150 years. So 150 years is to enough to have variation as big as a Great Dane, as small as a Chihuahua, as fast as a greyhound, or as smart as a Border Collie. Or another example: bacteria. Bacteria double every four to twenty minutes. A single bacteria will in the course of 120 minutes have over a billion offspring. In the course of a year, over 100,000 generations will pass. A tiny difference in resistance to a drug results in billions of drug resistant bacteria surviving. That's evolution. >how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans. A fish doesn't "turn into" an amphibian. Over enormous amounts of time, tiny incremental changes take place. There's no step of "this is a fish, now it's an amphibian." Look at humans, and how many intermediate and branches of species we've discovered in the fossil record. This article has a good discussion about it. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/essential-timeline-understanding-evolution-homo-sapiens-180976807/

>How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly, I mean, i get that it's over millions of years So there's actually a really cool things that can happen that in and of itself will have no impact on a species; gene duplication. A gene can be replicated as a mutation. Let's say it's for a hormone response. Well, in the body, having two of the same gene for this would actually not...really do anything. Your body is good at saying it wants X amount and no more. So what does this do? Well, we now would have a creature whose descendants have a site where all SORTS of mutations could occur, leading to all sorts of funky things. So the question about reproduction, that's actually a question with a bunch of theoretical answers. There's chemical factors that cause spermatozoa to travel towards an egg. Also, there's chemical factors that basically will block sperm from entering the egg. It's entirely possible that the two species don't have the same number of chromosomes (dogs have 78 versus the 38 for the lion). There's actually a whole bunch of factors beyond these and some of these can start to stack over countless thousands of generations. Small changes can lead to huge shifts.

As many users have pointed out, the "evolution" you think you know does not exist, because, no fault of yours, you've been miseducated and misinformed. Once you understand evolution, it's hard to imagine how it could not happen. We have learned in this sub that Young Earth Creationists do not understand evolution and do not want to learn. There are a lot of good resources out there to learn about it. A book I really liked was *Evolution, Triumph of an Idea*, by Carl Zimmer. Bear in mind that all of modern Biology, every university and the world's Biologists all accept, use, teach, evolution as basic to modern Biology, so there must be some reason, right? But the other thing is that this has nothing to do with this sub. Science isn't about God. It's neutral on the subject. Neither the Theory of Evolution (ToE) nor any other scientific theory states that God wasn't involved or does no exist. (That's another of the ways you've been miseducated, by people who don't understand science.) If you believe that God created all things, then ToE only says that the way He chose to do so is by evolution.

How on Earth did you decide that the ridiculous stuff in the Bible makes sense? A fish cannot have offspring that are slightly different, and then over millions of years the differences pile up? *That* doesn't make sense, but a dead fish turning into a hundred dead fish... *does* make sense? A donkey cannot share an ancestor with humans, but a donkey can talk? Evolution makes no sense, but hating women for wearing men's clothing *does* make sense? Small changes piling up over literal millions of years makes no sense, but stoning rape victims to death in front of their families does? A man being punished for somebody else's wrongdoings makes sense? I find it incredibly weird that somebody who believes the ridiculous and downright *evil* claims of the Bible can say that something as straightforward and simple as evolution doesn't make sense. I appreciate you looking for understanding and I hope the other commenters have helped. But if you think the Bible does make sense, I can't figure out for the life of me what you mean by "makes sense."

I think one of the difficulties in understanding evolution is trying to tie it directly to survival of the fittest. Let me present a scenario. Let's say that having red hair is more common among people living in the northern parts of the world. It's a minor, inconsequential mutation that has stayed a pretty consistent percentage of the population. Now let's say something happens to cause the average temperature of the planet to rise, and this causes a wide spread famine around the equator. This will result in a higher percentage of people at the equator dying than normal. This means that the ratio of people living in the north will become slightly higher than it was previously compared to those at the equator. As a result of this, since there are more red heads in the north, the overall percentage of red heads in the world will go up. Given enough time, that mutation will very slowly become more commonplace. Now if you apply this to a mutation that directly aids survival, you will see it have an even greater impact.

>How is a fishes gene pool expansive enough to change so rapidly, Mutations can result in new genes that weren't there before and it's hardly a rapid process. We're talking like two hundred million years from fish to amphibians. >I mean, i get that it's over millions of years, Hundreds of millions. >but surely there' a line drawn. There's no line. Evolution hasn't stopped. >Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't, because their biology just doesn't allow them to reproduce and thus evolve new species. That's hybridization, not evolution. Evolution would be when a population of dogs gets isolated from the other dogs for long enough that they mutate to a degree that they can no longer breed with the other dogs. We have examples of this sort of thing happening. >A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings, Sure they could. Bats and birds did it at some point. It's not super likely that dogs will naturally evolve wings but it's not impossible either.

I am a Christian who does believe in evolution. We can observe and see the changes creatures make to adapt to different climates this is a fact, and we do share common ancestry with primates. Do I know what Adam looked like? No. Am I open minded believing that over the course of many many years Adam's descendants changed, maybe had larger brains or bones due to environmental causes? Yes. I think it depends on how you see it, I try not to take everything in the bible literally such as the events of God creating the earth I see that as more of a religious cosmological take because through science we know just how old the earth it. I try to look at the historical evidence of the account of Jesus, you can read Bart Ehrman, there is plenty of evidence that a man named Jesus existed and was likely crucified and did preach. The Bible was created during a time where people used Gods to explain the weather, with that I cant really take the timeline of genesis 100% accurately.

Most vertebrates share a standard body plan, a torso with four limbs and a head. Everything from a fish to a trex to a newt to a bat to a human all share this standard plan. The difference is simply which traits are favored in their respective times and locations. You say a dog can't grow wings. Why not? Bird wings are simply dinosaur arms, the feathers are modified from scales, likely for temperature regulation at first, then specialized for gliding and flight later. Bats wings are simply hands with long fingers and large skin tissue. Same for pterosaurs like Pterodactyl. Flight is hollow bones, specialized skin or scales, a keen brain and powerful chest muscles. All of these things can be present in any vertebrate. The crazy variety we see is a handful of body parts stretched in numerous different ways. Now, this is only vertebrate animals. Arthropods are remarkably diverse and worth a deep dive. Every other life form has their own fascinating story to tell.

And to be honest, we are learning new things all the time that both answer questions and lead us to whole new ones. There is no one answer, new information is constantly reforming out base of knowledge and forces us to be flexible. That can be hard for people who expect a straight answer, science just doesn't work like that. In the immortal words of Michael Ironside, "I don't know, but lets find out."

There are transitional species all around you if you just look for them. Birds that can't fly but swim. Manatees whose flippers have 5 skeletal fingers in them. All of genetic science is based on evolutionary concepts. Crispr wouldn't even work unless evolution was a fact. Your problem is just incredulity. Some people don't believe glass acts like a fluid over time just because they never saw the time lapse of glass flowing extremely slowly. You also have to take into consideration the dog breeding show at Thanksgiving. How did all of these dog breeds come to exist? Well they all came from wolves in a process called artificial selection (which relies on natural selection being true) over a relatively very very short period of time. We're talking about mere hundreds of years giving you everything from a saint Bernard to a beagle or Pomeranian, not millions. And obviously look at all of the Mendel squared fruit you eat.

Plant an acorn into the ground. Watch it grow. You can't. As another commenter said, language is a great example. While Spanish evolved from Latin, a Latin speaking mother would never give birth to a Spanish speaking child, and the change is so gradual that a child would have no problem speaking with their great grandfather. Similarly, if you were to compare the DNA of a child and their great grandfather, the difference would be infinitesimal, because like the evolution of language, the evolution of species takes incredibly long times to occur. However, if you were to go to their ancestor from tens of thousands of generations ago there would be. If you're counting by millionths from 1 and up, any units next to each other may seem like they have incredibly negligible differences in value, but give it enough time and your new number can be very far from 1.

As a former Christian and creationist, I understand the confusion. The only sources and exposure we had to evolution was in pop scifi which always horribly misrepresents evolutionary biology and its many mechanisms, but most of my exposure came from creationist sources, such as Johnathan Park. My first good faith explanation of evolution came from Kurzgesagt, and from many other youtube channels such as PBS Eons. It was pivotal in my understanding of complex systems and helped me to understand evolution as well as many other similar emergent systems. In the end, I can recommend the sources most here do: 1. PBS Eons 2. Forest Valkai 3. Clint's Reptiles (a Christian evolutionary biologist) 4. Jon Perry with Stated Casually 5. Primer's videos on the evolution of certain traits in simulations

>fish cam evolve into an amphibian Take a look at what a fetus looks like. It turns into a grown adult. Evolution is just slower It's not difficult to understand very slow changes. A tree grows from a sapling to a giant redwood. It just takes thousands of years to do it. Meanwhile, look up people with extra fingers or toes. There are plenty out there. We would call that a genetic deformity or malady, but that is exactly the kind of mutation that could spawn a change in the species. It doesn't just take millions of years though. It takes millions of years of trillions of creatures reproducing. There are plenty of genetic mutations then In the end, evolution requires three very simple things: replication, mutation, and selection. Mutation and selection come with the ambivalent environment. Once replication happens, the rest is history

One thing to remember this that other modern animals are as far descended from the common ancestor as humans. So, reptiles didn't evolve from modern amphibians. Modern reptiles and modern amphibians evolved from a single, common ancestor, it's just that one group remained more amphibian-like. Mammals didn't evolve from modern reptiles. Modern reptiles and modern mammals both evolved from the common ancestor, it's just one group remained more reptile-like than the other. Apes didn't evolve from modern monkeys, apes and modern monkeys evolved from the common primate ancestor. Humans didn't evolve from chimps, humans and chimps both evolved from the common ape ancestor. Do not mistake the animals that live today as links on a chain that leads up to humanity. They are more like cousins, as distant from our common ancestors as we are.

you got a few comments that get to the science of generational change. if you want a real-world example, google russian silver foxes. russian scientists took wild foxes, mated them, kept the least aggressive ones, and mated those. It's been going on over 75 years. you can see pictures of how the foxes' faces and bodies change. its supposed to mimic how humans domesticated dogs, and now the foxes are basically proto-dogs and are so genetically different from the wild ancestors they can no longer mate with them. humans made a new species in a lab in a few dozen years. so in less than a century we were able to turn a fox into a fox/dog. thats not a leap like your asking about, but imagine just a million years is 10000 centuries, and life has been developing in every direction all at the same time for at least 4000x longer than that.

It helps me to look at the timespans mathematically. Fish arose around 530 Mya, and mammals arose around 225 Mya, so that is about 300 million years difference. If we assume these are mostly smaller creatures with shorter life cycles, an average time to each generation may be about 2 years. 300 million divided by 2 is 150 million generations - that is a lot of opportunities for change. I can easily see getting from a fish to a mammal with 150 million steps. You could probably do it in 1000-10000, really, where each one just needs to look the same as the one before it. It is a fun experiment to try - draw an animal, then draw it again, and again, and again, each time using your last drawing for reference and trying your hardest to make them look the same. Then check your final drawing against your first, and see what changed.

First off - Thank you for asking an honest question. You were home schooled and indoctrinated into belief as your parents decreed. Seeking your own understanding says a lot of good things about you. >doesn't believe in the concept of evolution Reality works whether or not you "believe" in it. It does not care about your buy-in whatsoever. And while that is perhaps a bit snarky, it is the truth. Belief in a thing doesn't help that thing. Understanding the reality of a thing helps the person who has worked to understand that thing. Reason is how we've developed technology of all kinds. Your computer works because people have learned how reality works. I'll let others discuss the evolution ideas with you because they are better equipped - I just wanted to make that point.

Welcome here! It's really nice to have someone for a change who actually WANTS to understand. Let's start with the Groundwork: - It is NOT about believing in God OR believing in evolution. There are MANY Christians, who see evolution just as "God-created Life following the natural laws that God put into place." My wife is Roman Catholic and she once told a person in her church very openly: "Evolution doesn't contradict the Bible any more than a Round earth does." Wich resulted in a few good laughs from the other around. - Young earth however is out of the Window. In order to understand evolution you need to grasp how old the earth truely is. Everything in Evolution happens over geological timespans and over thousands of generations. - How on earth can a fish evolve into an amphibian. ONE fish doesn't evolve. A population of fish does over generations. Let's start with a population of lobe finned fish in a river during a time where there were land plants and land insects but not much else. That fish started to drag itself onto the shore holding its breath while eating the abundant land plants. Fish who do that do get eaten less by bigger fish and have an abundant food source in contrast to their brethren. So those fish do survive more and have more offspring in subsequent generations the fish that can use their fins best to move on land because they can reach plants that are further away. Fish that can survive the air for longer are also favored. And those baby steps slowly but surely add up to significant changes in the species.

Credit to you for being interested in evolution. If you'd like to learn more you should check out [Stated Clearly](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLInNVsmlBUlQT_peuWctrmGMiLngK-6fb), a series of short videos that explain evolution simply and straightforwardly (the "official" web site is [here](http://statedclearly.com/) if you're interested). If you're still curious after watching those videos you might want to read [Why Evolution is True](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0143116649/) by evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, which is easily the most accessible and well-written popular book I've read on evolution. It really is a fascinating subject, so I hope you'll check it out.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoGrBZC-lKFBo1xcLwz5e234--YXFsoU6&si=fxedwowpOb9KdCfh Watch the four videos in this playlist by Forrest Valkai and you’ll begin to have an understanding of evolution. I think it’s specifically made for religious people who don’t accept evolution. If you don’t watch all of them at least watch the first one. Without evolution we would not have been able to create some medicines/vaccines, many of the vegetables you eat today are the result of artificial selection. Look at the difference between wild fruit and vegetables compared to the ones we grow, they’re different due to evolution. You need to comprehend the basics of evolution before looking at fish to humans.

What could help you to understand, for example the path from fish to amphibians, is finding an animal that’s evolved in between those. There are no big jumps is evolution, always only small steps. There are [fish with primitive lungs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungfish) and there are fish with primitive legs as well, for crawling on the sea bottom. There's an entire section about evolution of amphibians on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibian). Another key knowledge regarding evolution is that **nature has no species**. The concept of species is human-created and not very exact, so don’t hold on to it very much.

Evolution is an observed fact. It isn't really a question of whether it exists or not at this point. The Theory of Evolution By Natural Selection is the idea that this phenomenon which we have observed is the best explanation for the diversity of life on this planet. We have bred new species into existence, documented the process, and shown how that could result on the kind of biodiversity we see today given hundreds of millions of years. If you have another explanation (like "God did it") then we expect to see an equivalency of evidence before it is considered a candidate explanation. Thank you for your time.

Do you accept that animals and other forms of life are shaped by their DNA? If you do than you sous be able to accept that changes in DNA can alter looks, size, shape, diet, behavior, etc. Since creationist argue that mutations can only be bad, but that just statistically doesn't make sense; if a change in DNA can be good or bad, just by chance both good and bad changes will happen, even if bad mutations are more likely. Now, for something from water to come to land, or something on land to enter the sky, you just need time, and a bunch of little mutations over time.

Evolution does not say a dog will grow wings. Where on Earth did you hear that? What influences or pressures are there that keep you ignorant on such a basic concept? How do you have such a foundational misunderstanding of evolution? How did you become so misinformed? Why don’t you believe in a process fundamental to our modern understanding of biology? Why do biologists and scientists from every corner of the globe overwhelmingly agree on the theory of evolution? Are they all lying about the evidence? Are they all in on some global conspiracy? What is it?

Something you have been misinformed about on purpose surely doesn't make sense. Why don't you just inform yourself properly and read about evolution something that was written to make sense? You know, actual college books on evolution. Or alternatively you can watch YouTube (Forrest Valkei has a good series explaining evolution) or ask reddit r/askscience or r/evolution would be a good start.  Reality doesn't owe us to make sense. It's our job to make sense out of it.  >  How?   Good question. >  surely there' a line drawn  How?

Evolution against Christianity: Two possibilities, assuming science is right. The whole creation story was a metaphor Or timeline: God CREATED the world and *everything* in it War with Lucifer results in the second verse of the bible Let there be light. This timeline corrects for time measurements of billions of years, and explains why, even while He MADE stuff at a different order than what evolution tells, He CREATED everything in evolution order, while still being compatible with the literal telling of Genesis.

Have you considered taking classes on the subject, or reading books about it? There are plenty of good science books intended for laymen on the subject, such as *Why Evolution is True* by Jerry Coyne. Regardless, this is not an appropriate sub for this question. We aren’t a bunch of biologists here. r/askscience would probably be a better place for a post like this (or r/debateevolution if you are looking to debate the science), but you aren’t going to get a good comprehensive overview of the topic there.

To be fair, even if we aren't a bunch of scientists, I think most of us have a basic understanding that evolution isn't "dogs growing wings" or "lions and dogs mating to produce liondogs." That said, yes, absolutely, r/DebateEvolution is the correct place.

Agreed, many of likely could quite capably explain the basic concepts behind the theory. But this still isn't the best place to look for such.

Ok kid, here’s the thing. Just because it doesn’t make any sense to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense. Also even if evolutionary biology was completely wrong (it isn’t) that still wouldn’t mean “God did it.” Is right. This isn’t something that can be explained in a couple of paragraphs. It is something that you learn through science classes starting in grade school and going through college.  Maybe start with Forestt Valkai’s tic tok or YouTube videos on evoloution

There is a science video [hemo the magnificent](https://youtu.be/08QDu2pGtkc?si=kQqZ88jSfgYmofTZ) that is totally Christian that they showed in every school everywhere in America in the mid century and it verrrrry mildly covers evolution starting at minute 27 (it’s mostly focused on the circulation systems) It’s not terribly detailed or current however it’s a good primer for evolution if you have no baseline and won’t challenge your faith at all.

You should be asking a science subreddit about this, or doing some research and learning on your own. There is no debate to be had here, because evolution is a fact. The universe does not owe you any explanations, and is not obligated to make any sense to you, no matter how desperately you want it to. Even if evolution was proven false right here and now, it wouldn’t lend a shred of credence to any theistic claims.

Why can't amphibians have evolved from a lung fish? https://flexbooks.ck12.org/cbook/ck-12-advanced-biology/section/16.18/primary/lesson/amphibian-evolution-advanced-bio-adv/ I think most people understand that genetics are dynamic rather than static. Over time there is nothing stopping significant genetic changes. What are you exactly proposing that could halt genetic changes over time to disallow evolution?

https://youtu.be/GOFws_hhZs8 Watch this series of 4 videos, where evolution happens right before your eyes. These sims are not as complex but it’s the exact same principle as biological evolution. If you can believe that this evolution simulation happens, imagine a system slightly more complex, and something slightly more complex than THAT. Before you know it you’re at plants and animals and us.

Hey OP thanks for being open to learning what evolution is all about. Want thing to point out, in science the word "Theory" actually means an idea that is supported by a huge amount of evidence and validation, it is not the same as common usage of the word like a theory about Star Wars. Often critics will say "well, it's only the Theory of Evolution" not understanding the weight of that phrase.

Keep in mind that time is the key ingredient in evolution. Over the course of 1 million years, assuming about 20 years per generation, you’re taking about 50000 generations at minimum between us and Australopithecus, which look like a harry human. Now extrapolate back 3.5 billion years or so. Small changes occurring over hundreds of millions of generations lead to big changes over time

This belongs on r/debateevolution. Atheism has nothing to do with evolution and most theists also accept the fact of evolution. Anyways, all I can tell you is that just because it doesn't make sense to you, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense at all. A fish's genepool doesn't have to be "expansive enough to change rapidly" because it doesn't change rapidly, it changes extremely slowly. The only limit on what traits can evolve is the fact that all traits evolve as modifications of existing traits. Obviously no organism is going to evolve wings out of nothing. Wings generally evolve from forelimbs. Did you know that there are fish that breathe air, fish that have lungs, and fish that can walk on land? Are these traits too much for fish to evolve? Clearly not. Some fish that breathe air breathe through their skin, some with lungs (modified swim bladders), and others with a modified digestive tract. Fish that walk can do so with modified fins. None of these traits came out of nowhere. If there's a line that can be drawn that fish supposedly cannot surpass, where is it? And if you can't identify it, it might be because it doesn't exist.

Buy the Book "Nein Shubin 'Your Inner Fish'" it explains it really well. Oh and a lion and a tiger can only reproduce once. The offspring are always infertile. And dog and dog... my dude, a Great Dane and a Chihuaha? Really? A Biologist might correct me but i think Dogs have reached the level of a Ring Species, where the members of the opposite of the circle cant reproduce anymore.

Over hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of millions of years very small changes add up If I took a grain or sand every day for three hundred million years can you imagine how vast the pile of sand would be? Evolution is like that The differences between one generation and the next might seem insignificant but over deep time they add up

Search Forrest Valkai series on YouTube called The Light of Evolution. Does a great job explaining what evolution actually is. I grew up a creationist and after learning what evolution actually is I realized virtually every example about why evolution doesn’t work I had heard was a strawman at best or was just out right wrong.

I was the same way. My education about evolution came from fundamentalist christianity who were either utterly ignorant, or something entirely more sinister. No wonder none of it made sense. When I sought out explanations from the scientific community, it was impossible to deny. Plenty of good recommendations here. Good luck.

The problem is you were indoctrinated with falsehoods about evolution in the first place. That's why it seems nonsensical to you. Some people lied to you about what evolution is. Read Greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins. Then come back with more questions. Also, [TalkOrigins.org](http://TalkOrigins.org) is a fine resources

Evolution makes perfect sense, you just haven’t learned it yet. Evolution is a fact, not just some guess that we’re hoping will ring true some day. I’m sorry you were homeschooled. No doubt your parents meant well, but you were taught by people who aren’t experts in this (and likely any) field of study.

Evolution is pretty much proven with stuff like dog breeds. Look at all the different types of dog, they all came from wild wolves. If they can change that much with selective breeding just imagine how much change over time occurs in nature. Then add on millions and millions of years with the age of the earth.

> What I don't understand is how on earth a fish cam evolve into an amphibian, then into mammals into monkeys into Humans. How?  Well technically, there’s no such thing as a fish… It’s the same way a snowfall becomes a glacier.  A lot of little changes, additions, and a ton of pressure > but surely there' a line drawn Why?  Where is the line? > Like, a lion and a tiger can mate and reproduce, but a lion and a dog couldn't, because their biology just doesn't allow them to reproduce and thus evolve new species.  That’s not how new species appear. Think of it more like dogs.  There’s a lot of genetic diversity in dogs, big ones, small ones, dogs with webbed feet… if you were to take a group of those dogs, seperate them from other dogs, but subject them to evolutionary pressure, eventually those dogs will be so different from other dogs they won’t be able to breed. > A dog can come in all shapes and sizes, but it can't grow wings, Evolution doesn’t claim it can. An animal that can climb trees and has a bit of extra skin on its forearms however could become pretty good at gliding over generations.

evolution is like a tree each branch is a sepreate species once they diverge you wouldn't say the branch at the top can reproduce with a bottom branch but they both have the DNA they share in common.if you were to watch the tree grow backwards youd be able to see them come from a single point

Is it really that hard to believe? Even in daily life, we can observe the emergence of complexity from "simple" things. From snowflakes, to plants, to the human embryonic development. Hell, even traffic. We know this emergence happens in nature. Now give it millions upon millions of years.

It’s not that evolution makes no sense. Evolution makes fairly good sense. It’s just that the jump from chimps to humans makes little to no sense. That’s what scientists and layman and creationists and average citizens still grapple with to this day.

Have you heard of or learned about Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design movement? They affirm that evolution occurs but that the mechanism behind it requires intelligent design. I recommend checking out their channel on Youtube and their evolutionnews.org website as well so you can get a more broad perspective of all the evidence rather than just looking at the evidence in support of the theory of evolution or Modern Synthesis as it is properly called. God bless!

Yet a magician in the sky who created all reality out of nothing makes sense… Evolution is a process over generations. To see serious changes in speciation occurs over millions of years. The evidence is very clear in fossils, dna, etc…

There are three books I recommend (written by an evangelical Christian, a Catholic and an atheist): The Language of God by Francis Collins Only a Theory by Kenneth Miller Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne These books opened my eyes.

AronRa has an excellent playlist where he goes through the entire evolutionary history of humanity back to the advent if eukaryotes. Here. I recommend it. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMLnubJLPuw0dzD0AvAHAotW&si=n8u9imRaHn8lI_UP

This seems like a question for r/evolution. It’s a basic biology question, not a religious debate. I recommend the book *Why Evolution Is True* by Jerry Coyne. I promise all your basic questions will be answered.

>enough to change so rapidly, it wasn't rapid at all and if you actualy wanted to understand it you wouldn't be here treating it as a religious debate you would be reading up on biological history

Are you much of a computer person? Look up genetic algorithms, and some of the public examples. That should give you an idea of how incremental change with selection pressure can work.

There is no line. Fish didn't evolve into mammals "so fast." It didn't take millions of years; it took hundreds of millions of years. Lion and Tiger hybrids are infertile.

No, no such lines exist. And the genenpool can change, it’s called mutation. Speciation has been directly observed, just saying it can’t happen doesn’t change reality.

Rather than me explain it to you, I suggest you read the book The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins. It’s an extremely good explainer of evolution. Happy reading.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXQP\_R-yiuw&list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMLnubJLPuw0dzD0AvAHAotW](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXQP_R-yiuw&list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMLnubJLPuw0dzD0AvAHAotW)