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Charles Darwin's Major Points

evidence against Darwin - 7 main objections 

  • evolution still just a theory - still has questions, lacking proof
  • no fossil intermediates - no evidence of transition between organisms
    • increasing fossil evidence says otherwise
  • intelligent design - organs too complex for a random process
    • organs develop as series of slight/tiny improvements
  • evolution violates 2nd law of thermodynamics - things tend towards disorder, not order
    • organisms shouldn’t become more advanced
  • proteins too improbable - 20 proteins, near countless number of arrangements
    • extremely low chance maybe, but still possible when given enough time
    • “give a monkey a typewriter…if given enough time, he will write Shakespeare”
  • natural selection doesn’t imply evolution - production of radically different organisms possible in laboratory now
  • irreducible complexity argument - each part essential to overall process, can’t evolve
    • each part considered to evolve as part of the working system

Darwin ’s major points - variation in all natural populations 

  • most have potential to reproduce at rate that can deplete all natural resources
  • resources limited >> those w/ most advantageous adaptations survive
  • natural selection - “survival of the fittest”
    • produces different reproduction rates
    • not necessarily directly related to death
  • fitness - number of surviving offspring left in the next generation
    • combination of survival, mating success, number of offspring per mating
    • usually involves female fitness (hard to determine father)
    • behavioral ecology - study of how natural selection affects behavior
    • adaptive significance - how behavior increase survival/reproduction

3 tenants of natural selection - number of fertilized eggs isn’t always the number of offspring

  • nonrandom survival - things don’t survive randomly
  • nonrandom mating - purposeful action
  • nonrandom fecundity - a reason to why certain creatures produce more offspring
  • survival strategies
  • altricial - unable to care for itself
  • precocial - born ready/mature
  • reproductive trait - number produced at each reproduction
  • parental care - needed for animal to grow/survive
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