No.
You are conflating some lay person’s definition of the theory of evolution with the scientific hypothesis. It is oversimplified and does not convey the actual science. The amoeba to whale is one facet of evolution but that is not where most modern interest is directed and it is far from the only kind of evolution. That was the infancy of the science, Darwin. Now interest is in phenotype and genotype and the development of behaviors like altruism, courting rituals, camouflage in butterflies and other species.
Evolution is driven by advantage to the organism such that the characteristics that enabled that organism to thrive will be passed on to future generations in greater number than the characteristics of less successful organisms. In time if they improve survival or mating success sufficiently they will dominate. Virus generations are very short so changes driven by vaccines are evidenced much sooner than with animal.
This is an interesting article. Complex organisms or behaviors is mentioned at one point but do not fail to put that into context. That is one type of evolution that is being studied: mating behaviors, bird songs ect.
Thanks for your response since in looking for a way to explain I stumbled on this very interesting article. Freegards : )
https://www.pnas.org/content/104/30/12235
Being a layman doesn’t mean I don’t know what I am talking about.
1. Evolution is a theory about origins of species. It rests upon the notion that life came at a long distant point in history from non life.
2. It theorizes that life began with single celled organisms that grew increasingly complex. Eventually, the algae became a fish or what have you. On to the most complex life form, mankind.
3. Adaptation requires only the thriving within species of certain traits. A bill good for seed gathering means that birds with more that type of bill will reproduce more and eventually that species will all have that bill. This is subtraction of genetic information. Not addition. It is adaptation. Easily illustrated through actual experiments.
4. Evolution requires millions of beneficial mutations (never actually observed in nature) with no negative mutations serious enough to kill a species off. Unobserved and impossible.
I have been taught evolution often enough to know what it is. I was raised and educated by enthusiastic evolutionists.