(September 2, 2009 at 10:38 am)I_Fight_for_Jesus_Christ Wrote: So yeah, 1 in 100,000,000 has a benificial mutation. And the odds of the benificial mutations getting passed on to the next generation and spreading are small. And the process being repated is even smaller... And is 4 million years nearly enough for it all to happen?The odds of the beneficial mutation being passed on are not small, for the simple reason that beneficial mutations give the organism an advantage over the rest of the species. I fail to see how the process being repeated is smaller, given that once the mutation is passed onto the children (of which there is more than 1 usually), they can pass it onto more of the population (i.e. there is even more chance of it being passed on).
Populations grow exponentially under normal circumstances. 2 parents produce far more than 2 offspring (look at rabbits), which means all the children have the mutation, and are more likely to survive and reproduce.
4 million years is a long time. You only need to trace your family back a few generations before you come across ancestors that have well over 1 hundred descendants. My grandmother had 7 children, and each of those children had several children too, and some of those children now have children. That growth all happened within a century, and there are 40,000 centuries in 4 million years. Considering that the growth is also exponential, the further you go back, the more and more descendants you have (proportionally). That gives a lot of room for evolution to work in.
