You know, in the end you either read, understand and accept something like evolution or you don't.

There is no one piece of evidence. It doesn't work like that. You need to put in effort to understand it, like pretty much any scientific theory.

Sure, there will always be the attempt to deliver some potted summary, but it's just not that simple.

Currently, based on everything I've read (and then thought about) it is clearly the most persuasive and convincing argument of how every living thing on the planet came to their current place. But it remains a theory. The one that holds up the best, but of course open for further research and revision as more evidence comes to light.

Which brings up another point - to understand evolution as a theory, I believe it's also important to understand the scientific process.

It does not, by definition, answer all issues to do with living creatures - such as how life initially began, exactly how our brains work, etc.

Evolution is about how, given a known position very, very early in the appearance of life on Earth, the current forms around us came to be, slowly changing over millions of years.

So the proof you need to support macro evolution has to be one that can be observed within our lifetime? You can't say that to discredit evolution, fossil records are accurate enough to prove evolution. The observations can be seen repeatedly and the fossil records are strong.

How about macro evolution that has been observed within human history, with well documented records? Is that acceptable? Look up the evolution of the dog, humans domesticated wolves around 14,000 years ago. For years the wolves* hadn't evolved at a particularly fast rate because they were well adapted to their environment. But all of a sudden there was a major shift in their environment and evolution occurred extremely rapidly. From those few species of wolf that were domesticated 14,000 years ago we now have countless breeds of dog, because of the amount of different environments domestication brought. This has been recorded over the course of human history.

Ask yourself, does a chihuahua and a great dane look and act exactly the same? Because we have sufficient evidence to prove that they both evolved from a common ancestor in the space of only a few thousand years.

Source

* When I say wolves I mean an ancestor of the wolf.

A theory is a very high accolade that a scientific idea can reach. If evolution hadn't had testable methods or sufficient evidence to back it up then it would be the "hypothesis of evolution". I mean the idea behind a theory really is that is has been proven but we still gather evidence to further refine and understand the theory. If conflicting evidence is found then the theory has to be adjusted to conform. To me scientific theory is almost as good as fact as that is essentially what a theory is, a collection of facts based on evidence.

I know you know all that, obviously, you are a very intelligent guy. I was really saying it for the benefit of some of the other users because I find that I have to explain it at some point during every science thread, might as well get it out of the way now.

Yah, no problem.  I just find that it helps to understand the scientifc process, etc then understand a theory.  I always find half the problem when people discuss things like evolution, physics, etc. is they get confused with the notion of a theory and how the scientific process 'tests' a theory to prove or disprove it.

I also believe that unless you're just going to accept it at face value, you need to put in a little effort yourself to really comprehend anything.

But then, that requires a little effort which not everyone seems to want to make!

To be clear though, I accept evolution as being as close to definitive as possible currently.

Bacteria.

You can actually WATCH bacteria evolve... watch it's DNA change and it become totally different strains of bacteria.

I couldn't agree more Kasz.

E-Coli is a prime example of this.

You know Dogs are one of the things i don't get about the way we type our animals.  It really honestly seems like our naming is tenious when it comes to typing and I know there are movements to change it.

I mean.  Great Dane's and Chihuahua's for exaxmple are considered the same animal... yet wolves are different.  Yet wolves can just as eaisly interbreed as any other animal.

In all honestly Dogs should be part of Canus Lupus based on everything I know about it.  With the main difference i think... being that dogs are considered different becaue they're our pets.

Of course come to think of it.  That would include Coyotes too... and I think Jackals.  That's the thing.  The way we classify stuff is messed up.

Dogs are a good point though.  You can't tell a Great Dane fron a Chihuahua by looking at their DNA.  Yet they are clearly very different... which i'm guessing you didn't even realize, they have the same DNA to the point of where you can't tell the difference.

Or wolves from dogs actually.  DNA wise they're all the same.  Not sure about Coyotes and Jackals.

@Kasz actually species is just a rather aribitrary thing. It doesn't need to be impossible for them to breed physically and produce fertile offspring, it just requires some barrier to reproduction.

In the case of wolves and dogs it's the fact that the wolves live in habitats that the dogs (even the wild dogs such as dingoes) do not occupy. Hence they don't breed and as such are different species.

The species classification has its uses but it also has its limitations and most of those are a heck of a lot of grey area.

Yeah... it's... stupid honestly if you ask me.

How can you take two animals that are indistinguishable in DNA tests and say they are different species?

Vestigial organs?

Vestigial organs tell me evolution is true or the planning for life on earth was fucked.