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Politics : Evolution
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To: longnshort who wrote (50693)3/25/2014 10:28:42 PM
From: TigerPaw  Read Replies (2) of 69300
 
that's the definition of natural selection j

You really don't understand this very well.

natural selection is a theory which explains why life has changed over time. It's not the only theory, there have in the last hundred years or so been modifications to natural selection. What's truly amazing is that the theory contained many requirements that Darwin did not know, he only knew that they must be present.

For example:
Natural Selection requires that an organism's child generation be a faithful copy of the parents characteristics, but not an exact copy. At the time Darwin knew nothing about genes or DNA or any other possible mechanism that would explain.

Natural Selection requires enough time and generations for the relatively small changes in each generation to add up to the observed changes in different animals and species. The great scientists of the time, using thermodynamics, estimated an earth that was too young. Darwin maintained that the Earth must be older, but he did not know at that time about radioactivity as an alternate source of heat for the interior of the planet (besides just sunshine which was what the reigning thermodynamic gurus of the time thought)

Darwin's theory also surmised that the similarities between fossils on different continents would be explained by descent from common ancestors. The trouble is he knew no mechanism which would allow mating of these organisms across the vast distance of different continents. He knew that the past fossils were the same, but the current organisms were diverging because of this distance. Nobody knew at that time that that the continents had once been joined together, yet Darwin knew that somehow life from different continents must have come together and procreated.

That is the mark of a very profound theory. The fact that it predicted that the requirements of natural selection would be eventually discovered, and they were!.
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