Male and Female

This one is for my evolutionist friends that always humor me.

Evolution is obviously a belief of a species changing thur millions of years thur either natural selection or mutation. If everything came from a single cell, how do we get male and female. Obviously a single cell doesnt have a particular sex, neither does simple forms of life. Evolution i guess evolved these species into different genders, why? How does natural selection tell a species to turn male or female, something obviously new to the early species. Is, of course, gets into the question of sex and reproduction. Some animals lay eggs while others have a gestation period. How do you get male and female from evolution.
-What are the odds that of the millions of species of animals, birds, fish, and insects, a male of each species developed at the same time and in the same place as a female of the same species, so that the species could propagate?
-Why are there 2 sexes anyhow? This is not foreordained in the evolutionary framework. Is there some sort of plan here
-If the first generation of mating species didn't have parents, how did the mating pair get to that point anyhow? Isn't evolution supposed to progress when an offspring of a mating pair has a beneficial mutation?
Conclusion: No parents, no evolution. A species would have to jump from a primitive form to a fully developed male and female, each with the ability and instinct to mate.
-What are the odds that the evolutionary process, proceeding by random changes, would produce a system in human reproduction whereby exactly 50% of offspring are male and 50% are female? Again - is there some sort of a plan here?
Now given that evolution takes hundreds of years, it requires that if the female evolved before the male, at least one male must evolve within the first female's lifetime in order for pro-creation to occur (and us to exist) - this is vice versa if the male was first. What are the chances that a male and female went through the complicated evolutionary process at close to the exact time (in close vicinity as well because they must have been able to find each other before their deaths) in the same stages in order to be able to procreate?
Now, i know alot of you are asking yourself that stupid male nipple question. Your saying, males having nipples is proof of evolution. To that i say This is answered in Bergman and Howe's book “Vestigial Organs.” Fully functional males have nipples because of the common embryological plan followed during early embryo development. Embryos start out producing features common to male and female — again an example of ‘design economy’. Nipples are a part of this design economy. However, as Bergman and Howe point out, the claim that they are useless is debatable. What is the evolutionist's explanation for male nipples? Did males evolve (devolve) from females? Or did ancestral males suckle the young? No evolutionist would propose this, so males nipples are not evidence for evolution?

it probably started in backteria rather than complicated multicellular organisms like fish or monkeys.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...sexorigin.html
http://home.att.net/~dorak/evolution/sreprod.html

remember, google is your friend.

Jet Black, i read your articles, i was humored once again. I swear God laughs at some of the stuff you guys come up with. You say it started with backteria huh, k, no evidence supporting that though, not even in the links you sent. And then you agree, natural selection or mutation didnt start the genders, but backteria, the very bases of evolution being natural selection or mutation.

mutation and natuarl selection of bacteria started the "genders" though to say gender is misleading, really it would just be chromosome mixing. I doubt the idea of a gender appeared until much much later.

You know a lot of your questions could be answered by picking up a textbook on evolutionary biology. This stuff is explained there, in great detail and with more supporting evidence than is possible to present on a message board. Such as Futuyma, 1998 Evolutionary Biology. You could probably check it out from a university library. On the specific question of sex, you could try "The Evolution of Sex," Science 281(1988): 1979-2008.

What a great question, and fun to think about.

So, that's the beauty of evolution, it only had to happen once. Evolution includes the idea of common ancestors; all of those millions of species may have sprung from a single species that included the concept of male and female.

Sex promotes diversity. From Making Sense of Sex by David Barash and Judith Lipton, "Sex spins forth diversity. Without sex, individuals would be exact replicas of the parent who produced them: rather than carrying half the genes of one parent and half of the other, our decendants would have 100 percent of our genes."

Diversity is good, it allows the species to continue even in the face of a harsh and changing environment. Sex also helps spread beneficial mutations much more quickly, important for rapid adaptation to occur.

Finally, the original mixing of genetic material may have been much simpler than we see now. All that was needed was a mechanism for two organisms to swap genes. Once they did that, the differentiation into sexes could have occured over time.

I'm not saying that all this is true, but as a layman I can imagine it, and I'm sure that real scientists have much more complicated theories.

@w4e: Then god can laugh about himself - what a novel view.

For many species, having two sexes is very beneficient - which also tangents your previously raised doubt as to the quantity of mutations: Sex dramatically increases the amount mutations and thus favors evolution.

Well, let's think for a minute about what evolutionary theory would predict about the origin of sex. Worship seems to think it predicts that males and females would arise separately and simultaneously in every species that has sexual reproduction. I don't think it says that at all. Such hopeful monsters (two in this case) are not likely at all, and if only one arose, natural selection would have eliminated it rather quickly.

Evolution would predict that sexual reproduction predates sexes. The first sexually reproducing organisms produced only one kind of gamete. The next step would be a differentiating among the gametes to facilitate union (the origin of sexes). And the last step would be individual organisms specializing in producing one or the other type of gamete (the origin of male and female).

What kind of proof do we have? Well, there are some organisms even today that reproduce sexually with only one type of gamete. There are lots and lots of organisms which have two different gametes, but every individual is capable of producing both (hermaphrodites). Nearly all plants and a number of animals are hermaphroditic.

Add to that there are still organisms that reproduce asexually.

__________________
Hier sitz´ich, forme Menschen
Nach meinem Bilde,
Ein Geschlecht, das mir gleich sei,
Zu leiden, zu weinen,
Zu genießen und zu freuen sich
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Wie ich!

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Prometheus)

You guys hit all the points I think are relevant to sexual differentiation.

The only thing I could offer is that sex allows animals to be selective about passing on DNA. Amongst "higher" i.e. more complext animals, some sort of mating selection process occurs that reduces the "inferior" genes from a genepool by not allowing the inferiors to mate.

Take territorial bases for mating, or sex partners being selected on plumage, size, coloration, etc.

Heck, among humans the standard of beatury usually coincides with good health: clear skin, straight teeth, long thick hair, strategically placed body fat and muscle, symmetircal features. Each of these characteristics are usually indicative of good nutrition, hygene and disease resistance, all characteristics that give genetic advantage to the species.

For those who find this hard to accept at face value, I suggest Richard Dawkins "The Selfish Gene, and Robert Audrey's "The Territorial Imperative" as good reading on the subject.

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"Their single-minded devotion to self-improvement and the propagation of their own genes can strike other species as selfish and arrogant, yet in practice the Nietzscheans' boundless energy and willpower have made them valued contributors to Commonwealth society."-All Systems University Encyclopaedia entry: Nietzschean