ICs2Xist said:
but try and offer some real evidence FOR evolution.
Over the years, people have taken pickaxes to the ground and found these wonderful bits of dead stuff we know as fossils. These fossils have different characteristics. Some of them have a ribcage. Others are bacteria or protists. Still others are plants. Many of them are dinosaurs. Did you know that dinosaurs have a ribcage and quite a few of the same organs that cows, manatees, etc. have? Well they do. A tyrannosaur? Ribcage. A Brontosaurus? Ribcage. Triceratops? Ribcage. And horns! These bunches of fossils were probably alive before coming fossils, as you might guess. And they do have very many common characteristics. But they are also quite different in important ways, and you'll especially see a trend that creatures that are alike in one way are very often alike in other ways. For instance: if something has a skull, it usually has a ribcage and four legs or two legs and two arms or wings-- or it's a fish. The four-appendage configuration is extremely popular, and as far as I know without exception the front legs are always distinguishable from the back legs by more than just placement; the hindquarters are usually bigger. You'll see this from rats to zebras to kittens and bunny rabbits. The most obvious exception is winged creatures: these have small legs and large wings rather than large legs and small arms. But you'll notice this pattern throughout every mammal that hasn't been somehow deformed: two pairs of appendages that look like mirror images. You'll also see a skeleton. And a stomach. And a heart. And a brain. These organs can come in wildly different shapes and sizes; but they share enough in common and tend to do the same things enough that we can easily categorize them as like things. But not every living thing does have a heart. And not every living thing does have a brain. And not every living thing does have a skeleton. But they all, without any exception, are comprised of cells which replicate and divide. Animals, plants, bacteria, all of them are made of cells.
One thing you'll notice about the fossil record is that when you date different fossils (using radiometric dating [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating]) is that the first living things to become fossils were bacteria, or one-celled organisms. And those organisms share a characteristic with all living things: that they are made of cells. Then you'll later see larger organisms: the first fungi, the first plants, the first animals, the first lizards. And these too have some universal similarities with later sorts of their kind, but they also have very strong differences from the other types: no plant has a skeleton. No animal can photosynthesize or put roots into the ground and soak water. No insect has a ribcage and no animal has anything like a larva->cocoon->butterfly lifecycle. You won't see opposable thumbs in anything but primates. Paths appear to have diverged many different times, even though there is the primal, cellular similarity. You see specific mutations within groups of different living organisms and not ever replicated in other populations--at least not in the same way: the legs of a centipede or spider are vastly different from the legs of a kangaroo, which are much closer to the legs of other animals. Legs seem to be one of those things that is both so simple and so useful that it is manifested in various ways. The wing seems to be another of those.
Now we know from genetics that traits can be passed down with each generation, and that mutations can occur. We also know that there are limited resources for consumption and competition between organisms to consume those resources. It stands to reason that those organisms which most successfully reproduce themselves are the ones which the next generation will most resemble. So, when a mutation happens, if it sucks (like, say, dwarfism) it doesn't happen as much and the population is dominated by non-dwarfs. But if it rocks (like, let's say, having eyes) then the advantage causes the freakish mutation to get passed down more than average and come to dominate.
I'm going to stop because this is getting huge. On the whole, I find this request for "some real evidence" both amusing and frustrating. I'm no expert on this stuff, but it makes every bit of sense to me. I wrote this off the top of my head. Read a damned book if you really want more than 0.001% of the available evidence because FUCK is it everywhere.
