I’m not a religious person and I generally believe mainstream science, but a question popped into my head tonight and I’d love to hear a person with a science background address it.
The basic theory of evolution I think is that in each group of offspring, occasionally there will be slight mutations causing slight differences: such as wider nostrils or longer thumbs or whatever. The tough laws of survival dictate that animals with superior mutations are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on those mutations — potentially even crowding out their peers in the quest for scarce resources.
If all of this is true, wouldn’t each entire species have to be totally wiped out during each evolutionary change, but for a single surviving strain of superior mutations? I.e., if all the rats in Europe could not see in the dark in 50,000 BC, and then 1 rat mutated slightly better night-vision, how would billions of rats acquire this — they’d have to all die off, replaced by descendants of that one rat with good eyes.
Improbable, but …
Night vision doesn’t just appear … likely it is only slightly improved in each generation, and it would take hundreds or thousands of generations for rat DNA to change from no night vision to full night vision. So wouldn’t the total extermination I mentioned have to be repeated thousands and thousands of times. Like, in every inch of Europe, Asia and Africa all rats would die or be killed by rats with slightly better vision, so that their inferiority could not exist today?
This model does make sense with humans. We can see how in two tribes — one with better weapon-designing brains or fighting skills or whatever — one can eventually wipe the other out. But is evolutionary history made of waves of every-so-slightly superior rodents crossing Eurasia, murdering or crowding out their inferior cousins?
There must be a better explanation than my crude one.
