I have a friend who is somewhat of a "evolution denier" (he's not religious and actually very intelligent). I was thinking about this from his perspective and would like someone else perspective.<p>"On human terms, the LTEE generations span the equivalent of well more than a million years of human evolution."<p>Haven't we evolved a lot more in 68,000 generations than the bacteria have? Or put another way, all the bacteria has done in this time period is go from consuming glucose to citrate, nothing else in its shape, structure, etc. So how did humans and other creatures evolve so much over 68,000 generations?<p>I am 100% on board with evolution, I'm just curious about this. This is only 6-7 times more generations than when humans split from chimps (quick google search said 6-7 million years ago).<p>Is it because we have way more interaction with our environment and these bacteria are just in a little petri dish? Sounds likely.<p>Has anyone ever heard of people questioning evolution? I think he was saying something about how impossible it would be to have every single thing we see in nature be pre-written in DNA - it has just been all expressed in genes over the millennia through natural selection.