Atheism, evolution and blah

Now, lately I have started reading Richard Dawkins, more specifically "The blind watchmaker" and, as always when I get enthralled with something, I have to devour as much knowledge and as many opinions as possible, which also lead me to youtube, where there are a lot of controversial opinions, and what better way to start a blig than with a discussion as controversial as atheism.

The first thing I noticed is that many people don't understand evolution(or at least not as I understand it). Evolution, in and of itself, is a very simple thing, and consists of three vital components, heritage, selection, and mutation. If these three components are fulfilled, then evolution takes place.

Heritage is so widely accepted that it is usually omitted from the list, but as it is important, I put it in for completeness. Without heritage, evolution were impossible, but I believe everyone with an education and most without know and understand that children gain their traits from their parents. Everyone who doesn't, please press Alt+F4 for a deeper explanation XD

Selection is basically a tautology and boils down to "Those that survive, survive." Of course, this is a simplification, but it better expresses the tautological character of selection. Selection, in and of itself, needs no proof or verification. More accurately, the sentence should probably be "Those traits, that allow a higher rate of producing offspring which themselves produce offspring, has a higher chance of becoming wider spread." Taking heritage for granted makes this sentence tautological as well, but it is harder to recognize. Let's examine it. Technically, it is not survival of the creature itself that is important, but it is essentially very similar in most cases. To make this clear, a creature that is devoured after ten minutes but births 100 offspring in this time has a very low survival rate, but is very good at passing on it's genes. On the other hand, a creature that lives to be one hundred years old but only births one offspring per couple will have a good rate of survival but the species, and therefore the genes of every member of the species, will go into a steady decline. Also, the offspring themselves must be able to produce, it is pointless to simply produce as much offspring as possible if they all die in infancy. Now, if this trait leads to a lot of offspring, that trait is in a lot of creatures, and therefore becomes more widespread. Alas, self-proving, but we should remember the word chance, as it is important in genetics. Genes are passed on in random, but randomization in great numbers lead to near absolutes.

Then we come to the last part, mutation. This is also well-proven, especially in the case of bacteria due to their short lives, and therefore the high amount of generations, but it is hard(and hardly ethical) to produce under tested circumstances and to view the effects of mutation, as in general, it only takes place very rarely, and only from the transition from one creature to it's child.

Some Christians argue with the difference of micro evolution and macro evolution, but effectively, the only difference is time. A longer time leads to a greater difference between the original and the endproduct, but that is the only difference. The key is small steps, or to say it in Brian Sapient from the "Rational response squads"'s words"You can only walk a mile in small steps." (or something similar, I'm quoting from memory here, but the video is on youtube, posted by rationalresponse for anyone who cares to look.

Next thing: People say it is incredibly unlikely that the universe came into being exactly the way it is, and that even the slightest change of the natural constants would have made it completely different and likely lifeless. There are 2 things I can retort to this. First of all, we don't know how many tries there have been "outside", "before" or "after" the universe(of course these three words are relatively meaningless in connection with the universe), we can, for obvious reasons, only register the one successful try, second of all, one chance still means there is a chance, and as every combination is equally unlikely, every result is practically incredible.

Enough for today, more tomorrow.
Good bye, James Blood.