One of the most typical topics that cause debates between some theists and atheists is evolution. The type of evolution that is agreed upon by scientists is evolution via natural selection. To understand evolution, we need to understand what a few words and phrases mean.
Adaption – The adjustment or changes in behaviour, physiology, and structure of an organism to become more suited to an environment.
Natural Selection – A process in nature in which organisms possessing certain traits that make them better adjusted to an environment tend to survive, reproduce, increase in number or frequency, and therefore, are able to transmit and perpetuate their essential traits to succeeding generations.
Evolution – The change in genetic composition of a population over successive generations, which may be caused by natural selection, inbreeding, hybridization, or mutation.
Traits – Characteristics or attributes of an organism that are expressed by genes and/or influenced by the environment.
Genes – A segment of DNA (on a specific site on a chromosome) that is responsible for the physical and inheritable characteristics or phenotype of an organism.
Evolution – A simple explanation
The mystery of how life got here has been a question that was baffled scientists and scholars alike, for millennia. To explain this amazing concept, people throughout history have invented stories and fables, to try and explain it, however in the 19th Century, a person called Charles Darwin answered this question brilliantly.
For a simple, single celled organism to evolve into a complex organism, like ourselves, as taken millions upon millions of years, and has been a complicated process. It happens very slowly and gradually, but the result is amazing. To explain the concept of evolution, I must use an example.
Imagine two ant colonies, both equidistant from their food source. The first ant colonies ants’ have lots of strength, and time after time again, they reach the food and have enough of it to bring it back for the rest of the colony. The second ant colonies ants’ don’t have enough strength to provide the colony with enough food to help it survive. Slowly over time, the second colony dies out, and the stronger colony is now the only one left.
Now, imagine this on a population scale, with all the weaker colonies being wiped out. The gene pool now only consists of the stronger ants, and the population will therefor survive longer.
This is the basis of evolution via natural selection; it is survival of the fittest. This however, would be a more gradual process, happening over generations and generations. I will provide a more in depth description of evolution, as this was just a simple explanation that could be understood by anyone.
Max
Inside Atheism 