No pics today kiddos. I feel like exerting my powers of internet to do the following. EDIT: no i have to put pics this looks out of place.
Once again creationists are trying to push their religion into biology as 'Intelligent design'. their argument is that some features of organisms are just so perfect that they must have been designed by someone. Many creationists have only just got over their previous idea that the world was only 6000 years old; they cannot imagine that life on earth began 4.6 billion years ago and that the rules of evolution have been going on since then. Many of the quoted 'scientific' sources used by creationists are not from Biologists who have knowledge of a large range of groups of organisms but from "Dr..." or "Prof..." who is a Physicist or Doctor ot Theologian from an obscure religious college in the US.
Evolution has been shown to occur in thousands of species; rabbits in Australia have evolved because a few had a slight genetic immunity to the Mixomitosis virus. When its introduction, after WWII, changed the environment, most rabbits died but a few that carried accidental beneficial mutations survived and multiplied, passing on their mutations. The rabbits are different genetically from the ones brought here in the 1800's. They have evolved.
Creationists will say that this does not prove that a monkey evolved into a human. Evolution does not say this. Evolution says that about 10 mya, monkeys and humans had a common ancestor with a range of genetic variation. Natural selection has 'chosen' some to survive as environments have changed or our ancestors moved to different environments. Longer and stronger arms were an advantage in forests. Longer legs for walking and more dexterous fingers for collecting seeds are an advantage in grasslands.
The eye is often given as an example of one of these perfect 'intelligent designs', but a large proportion of the worlds population have genetic or early degenerative problems with their eyes. Natural selection has wiped out most of the variations along the way that did not produce a huge advantage for such a delicate investment. Only a few thousand years ago those people with genetic or early degenerative eye problems would have died out because they could not have hunted or gathered food efficiently, or would not have seen predators. The ones with better eyesight would have been more likely to survive, reproduce and pass on their genes. In some environments such as caves there is no advantage having eyes; they are just a liability. Natural selection has 'chosen' some totally blind species to survive.
