Evolution is the one issue that truly strikes a chord with me when someone denies its existence. From young earth creationists to the intelligent design crowd they all seem to have a completely wrong interpretation of what evolution is. I can only hope that this was a joke, but I have met people that seem to have misconceptions like this. A complete failure to understand that evolution is something that not only makes sense but that we have more convincing evidence for its existence than we do for Einstein's theories. I could write forever about why evolution is right but instead I will simply recommend that you read the greatest show on earth, it goes much more in depth than I ever would.
With such a large body of evidence for it where do we get the misconceptions about evolution? Well it has to do with a few factors: a bad science education system, constant pushback from religious groups, and our inability to grasp the truly massive amount of time that has passed since the formation of earth and life upon it. How do we correct these misconceptions? Well, fixing the education systems would go a long way towards fixing both reasons one and two, but the resistance to think in geologic time is unfortunately part of how our minds work. We just simply have not evolved to think about time in the billions of years.
There seems to be a lack of understanding about the difference between microevolution and macroevolution, and creationists will many times fall back to admitting that microevolution exists (because we can see it happening) but that macroevolution does not exist. But there is no dividing line between the two of them. Macroevolution is simply the accumulation of microevolution over very large periods of time. Microevolution is simply a small change that happens in a gene pool from generation to generation. Microevolution is as simple as a dog having puppies with slightly longer tails than it, or a bird with a wider beak. There are numerous examples of this that have happened within the span of humanity. Many refuse to believe that humans could possibly be involved in this, that we are immutable as a species. If that were the case then explaining the different features (like eye or hair color, skin color, etc) would be difficult. How could an original two humans create so many different human features if the genes did not slowly shift over time?
Creationists will also say that evolution does not explain where life came from, this is a given as evolution is not meant to explain where life originated. That has it's own theories. Evolution is used to explain where the diversity of life came from. The original concepts of evolution were in place before Darwin came along, the idea that animals changed over time. Darwin added the concept of natural selection, that living things compete with other members of their own species for food or mating rights. Those that do adapt to be better at getting food or passing along their genes will increase the likelihood that their children are going to also survive. It is not a competition between predator and prey, predators simply add pressure on prey to become better at hiding or not being eaten while prey add pressure on predators to be better at finding and catching the prey. They are not competing for the same resources like those within the same species do.
Some people will actually use the 'Only a theory' argument when trying to disprove evolution (aside from other crazier ways, with simple rebuttals). This is a complete failure to understand what a theory is. The germ theory of disease is ONLY a theory, relativity is ONLY a theory, reality itself is ONLY a theory. In science a theory has weight behind it, it is something that evidence supports and is not likely to be toppled. Most people think of 'theory' in the sense of a hypothesis, which is basically an educated guess. It is unfortunate that some people try to use the nomenclature to change how people think about some things (this is also seen a lot in politics, giving bills more positive names to try to increase support for them. Such as the patriot act, no child left behind, or the clean air act). In the end this is only a name, and regardless of how we perceive it the truth does not change.
Some creationists have said things such as 'I'll believe evolution when a chimpanzee gives birth to a human' or 'if evolution happened why are there no crocoducks then?'. Chimpanzees are not the ancestors of humans, they are our cousins, they branched off from the primates that eventually became humans. This argument is also mixing up the concepts of microevolution and macroevolution. As for the crocoducks… the argument is ridiculous, why would a crocoduck exist? What niche would they be able to fill and what pressures would have to be put on a species in order to create one? Evolution does not mean that every animal possible must exist, just that for every animal alive today there were intermediary animals to their ancestors. Just as your parents are intermediaries to your grandparents.
Moving on to other misconceptions is the idea that evolution is random. Evolution is an incredibly complex process but it is anything but random, the different pressures exerted by the environment, mates, lack of food, and predators create an incredibly complex system. It is not random, it is just not planned either. Not being planned does not mean that some things wouldn't be repeated if evolution were run again. if the same pressures apply then the same result is likely (but not definite). This is how we get features evolving in multiple groups, such as fins in fish and in dolphins. These certainly did not evolve at the same time or through the same method but they did evolve to fulfill the same role.
The last thing I want to talk about is the idea that evolution is impossible because the second law of thermodynamics holds that entropy always increases, not decreases. But this does not really have anything to do with evolution. This is more due to a misunderstanding of thermodynamics, then applying that misunderstanding to evolution. I could go into further detail but PZ Myers has done it better job of it.
I guess evolution is something of a sore spot for me because I find it to be the most beautiful field of science, things changing to adapt to fit into an environment that is ever changing. Growing up with a love of paleontology and reading books like this one probably doomed me into this mindset. Because the more we learn about dinosaurs the closer they come to modern birds.
Though science has had a couple of instances of fraud or exaggerations in the quest for knowledge of evolution, it was scientists who uncovered the fraud of Piltdown man and scientists who first questioned the hyperbole used to promote the Ida fossil (which is still a very fascinating fossil, but is certainly not the best transitional fossil we have for humans).
If you are wondering how we can fix these misunderstandings, the answer is to teach better evolution science in schools. Good and bad news there though…
If you have not already seen it, please do watch Judgment Day: intelligent design on trial. It does a great job showing how the creationists have tried to adapt their strategy to get into the public schools.
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