Can an atheist here explain to me how evolution works?

Seems like a retarded theory desu.

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It's just a theory

a game theory

Just like antibiotic resistant bacteria.

This
Go contract some MRSA and take some penicillin
I'm sure you'll be fine

when a baby is made the dna is never coppied exactly right

a change in the dna is called a mutation

if a mutation increases the chance of a lifeform to survive and reproduce, it will probably become more common in the population

add thousands of generations of mutations and significant physical changes take place

this is called evolution. its really not complicated.

Like this: youtube.com/watch?v=ftpVA04_IFc

>Just a theory
Literally the most retarded thing a person can say

Evolution is simply a term to describe a processs - it's not necessarily directional or linear, it just describes how the end result was achieved. E.g. there's no inherent evolutionary plan for stronger/faster animals, but stronger/faster animals may be more successful in their environment. This is what Darwin refers to as 'survival of the fittest', which isn't related to physical fitness but how well certain things individuals fit into their environment.

The more 'fit' the individual, the more likely it will survive and be able to produce offspring which, due to the hereditary nature of passing genes, will also be fit to their environment. After many generations, you might find an entire population stemmed from a single individual with a particular trait which allowed it to survive better than it's competitors.

An example of this is a bottleneck evolutionary model. Imagine a disease wipes out 99% of a population like a mega-plague, but by chance of particular mutations in the genome 1% is unaffected. The result is that future populations will have stemmed from this 1%, driving a particular genotype for future populations differing them from their ancestors. This is kinda what happened to cheetahs.

Another type of evolution comes from isolated populations who adapt differently to suit their environment, e.g. Darwin's finches. Due to different abundancies of food in different islands there was an adaptive change in finch beaks over time. These finches came from a single population that would have had the same beak size. Random distributions of sizes m, however, would have been grounds for natural selection whereby a finch with a marginall smaller beak may have had more success to eat beetles for example. This increased fitness and so selection may have allowed smaller beaks to prevail over larger beaks, which may have been better for eating fruit but the fruit may have not been as abundant as beetles. Over time you get birds with smaller beaks on this island.

T. a biology/genetics major that did lots of evolution electives.

Also on phone so ignore all dem typos and shieet

>it will probably become more common
This is where it loses me. Why would it become more common? Why is survival even a thing? In the expanse of the cosmos our DNA is so minuscule and unimportant so why does it tend towards replication at all? Also why do things live instead of not live?

Mutations in DNA among populations cause physiological changes that may either harm/help an organism better survive in their environment. The organisms with higher survivability (via appropriate mutations) go on to produce offspring as they outcompete less-fit individuals, therefore passing on their own fitness traits. Rinse and repeat.

For example, a hypothetical bacteria culture is exposed to antibiotic X. After analysis, only 2% of bacteria remain, showing that the 2% of bacteria in question had a gene mutation that encoded for heat-tolerant proteins that wouldn't be denatured (broken) by high temperatures.

The heat-resistant bacteria divides (reproduces) over many generations, passing it's useful mutation to offspring and creating a new population of bacteria suited to living in that environment.

But why do they call this survival? What does it mean when a whole planet of species is doomed to one day be consumed by a bloated star? What mutations will help that?

You literally have all the knowledge of mankind at your fingertips and you want socially maladjusted autists in a troll board to educate and persuade you over the intricacies of life and its evolution?

Fucking darwin award here

This is a good question because it touches on how abiosis occurred and it's a complicated at heavily debated subject. Life kinda like the ability to reverse entropy and use energy from the environment to replicat yourself, like some bacteria use the sun for their energy. But maybe some of these bacteria have defects in their genetic makeup and can't use sunlight very well, and so the die. Some bacteria might use sunlight very well so are able to reproduce heaps and so 'survive' better. Maybe some bacteria use sunlight really well, but are succeptable to salt water, which randomly hits this bacterial colony and they die. 99% of survival is simply chance, but the persistence of populations to suit their environment over massive periods of time is anything but.

It becomes more common because the individuals with the helpful traits are able to live and pass them on via reproduction. Individuals without the trait are not as likely to survive long enough to pass on their genes, so their genomes become less common.

You don't need to be an atheist to understand evolution, there are plenty of christian biologists who study it.

Well something to understand first is that evolution does not have a "goal" that it is working towards, it just happens pushed by natural pressures.
A mutation isn't necessarily "better" but it can increase fitness.
Fitness is basically how well adapted you are to your environment, finding food, avoiding predators, surviving the elements, and ultimately reproducing.

If you can reproduce then your genes are passed on. If you have some variation that helped you reproduce, and pass it on to your children then they will likewise benefit and spread the genes further.

Consider polydactyl cats, it's a mutation that causes multiple toes. It's easy to imagine how that could be useless or even hamper a cat but in certain situations, we find a different story. When on snow the multiple toes help spread out weight to move better but more significantly the better balance made the cats better suited to life on ships. Thanks to humans and they've spread across seas and their paws aid them in snowy environments. Interestingly enough genetic evidence suggests that the mutation has actually occurred independently multiple times.

As for why life does what it does, because it can.

AI might 'survive', or some metal debris might 'survive'. Survival is simply relative to things that did not.

Now you're getting into unrelated philosophy.
Survival is still survival if it doesn't last forever, I mean you're alive even though you'll one day be dead.

As for what mutations would help survive being swallowed by the sun, any that get you out of the way first.

Thanks for all the thoughtful interesting replies anons I am coming down from a psychedelic trip and I'm glad my questions actually were responded towards rather than reacted to

All g lad. Take care

Make sure to hydrate with your trip.

As far as we know, the goal for all living things is to live; that's the base of it all. The instincts of organisms push them to continue living, and procreation secures that task.

As for your interesting question of being doomed to die, think of the evolution of the human race over millions of years since we were primates, and even long before then when the common ancestor of all of Earth's life was around. In the present day, we as humans have evolved enough to become so advanced that we can launch satellites into space and study other planets. Even now, there is a global effort to capture the first actual image of an event horizon.

We are still evolving. We are adapting to changes in our environment, continuously, in a desperate attempt to fulfill a primal need to exist. We have come so far and perfected our biology in such an incredible order of magnitude if only just to *be*, and only we can save us from ourselves.

A red pill for you:
The Pokemon Game series should ended with Soul Silver/ Heart Gold and Platin/Diamant/Perl

Diamond was my favorite game.