I can recall that being the belief that I had, and that my then contemporaries had. For us, a genetic mutation was a fully-developed change of some kind. If it was beneficial, the organism in question thrived and his non-mutated brethren waned. Otherwise they died off because fully-functional bats wings wouldn't do much good to a human who was too heavy to lift off, and who otherwise would be burdened by them.
The lack of understanding of the fundamentals of evolution seems widespread in my experience. And it is one of the things that helps creationists cling to their dogma. If your understanding of evolution is so warped, then creation sounds like the obvious option and evolution can only be a clever distraction from Satan. How could otherwise rational beings believe it???
The lack of understanding of the fundamentals of evolution seems widespread in my experience. And it is one of the things that helps creationists cling to their dogma. If your understanding of evolution is so warped, then creation sounds like the obvious option and evolution can only be a clever distraction from Satan. How could otherwise rational beings believe it???
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
