Darwin Theory Of Evolution

Appreciating Darwin Has Evolved

Creationists and evolutionists both see Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as the linchpin of all attempts to prove or disprove the existence of God. Darwin’s Pious Idea by Conor Cunningham turns this debate on its head. The subtitle says it all: “Why the ultra-Darwinists and creationists both get it wrong.”

Activist atheists and fundamentalist believers vehemently try to persuade others to adopt their way of thinking. Cunningham argues that both are wasting their time.

Darwin’s theory of evolution, he writes, “is frequently construed, by both its supporters and its opponents, as an attack on the idea of God and an attempted exposé of the frivolity of the piety of religious believers. On this account, both atheists and religious people alike tend to sing from the same hymn sheet: Darwinian evolution threatens to annihilate religion at its very root.”

Cunningham’s thesis is that the notion that “evolution threatens to annihilate religion at its very root” is a mistaken one, which means that both atheistic supporters and religious opponents of evolution are wrong. The question is not either the Darwinian model of evolution is true and therefore God does not exist or Darwinian evolution is false and therefore God does exist. The Darwinian model of evolution appears to be scientifically supportable, and God exists.

The Catholic Church, through at least three of its recent Popes (Pius XII, John Paul II and Benedict XVI), has already stated this numerous times. The classical Darwinian model of evolution, as described by Darwin himself in his writings, does not say anything contrary to religious faith, nor does the Church adhere to a literalist interpretation of the biblical creation stories.

What Cunningham calls “ultra-Darwinism,” promoted by atheist polemicists like Richard Dawkins, is hostile to religion because it states categorically that God cannot possibly exist. Cunningham convincingly argues that ultra-Darwinism is also hostile to science because it is, at its core, unscientific: It attempts to say much more than Darwin ever intended and much more than its scientific validity allows.

Perhaps Cunningham’s most intriguing and provocative argument, though, is that fundamentalist creationism itself is not authentically Christian. It is “a lapse into intellectual barbarism, a complete desertion of the Christian tradition.” Cunningham is not a Catholic, so his view of the Christian tradition may differ slightly from Catholic teaching; but on the subject of evolution and creationism, he appears to be sound.

[WU] 25 Greatest Science Books of All Time - ZiY Warez Forum

One of the most delightful, witty, and beautifully written of all natural histories, The Voyage of the Beagle recounts the young Darwin's 1831 to 1836 trip to South America, the Galápagos Islands, Australia, and back again to England, a journey that transformed his understanding of biology and fed the development of his ideas about evolution. Fossils spring to life on the page as Darwin describes his adventures, which include encounters with "savages" in Tierra del Fuego, an accidental meal of a rare bird in Patagonia (which was then named in Darwin's honor), and wobbly attempts to ride Galápagos tortoises. Yet Darwin's masterwork is, undeniably, The Origin of Species, in which he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection. Prior to its publication, the prevailing view was that each species had existed in its current form since the moment of divine creation and that humans were a privileged form of life, above and apart from nature. Darwin's theory knocked us from that pedestal. Wary of a religious backlash, he kept his ideas secret for almost two decades while bolstering them with additional observations and experiments. The result is an avalanche of detail—there seems to be no species he did not contemplate—thankfully delivered in accessible, conversational prose. A century and a half later, Darwin's paean to evolution still begs to be heard: "There is grandeur in this view of life," he wrote, that "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Principia marks the dawn of modern physics, beginning with the familiar three laws of motion ("To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction" is the third). Later Newton explains the eccentric paths of comets, notes the similarity between sound waves and ripples on a pond, and makes his famous case that gravity guides the orbit of the moon as surely as it defines the arc of a tossed pebble. The text is dry but accessible to anyone with a high school education—an opportunity to commune with perhaps the top genius in the history of science. Pope Urban VIII sanctioned Galileo to write a neutral treatise on Copernicus's new, sun-centered view of the solar system. Galileo responded with this cheeky conversation between three characters: a supporter of Copernicus, an educated layman, and an old-fashioned follower of Aristotle.

On evolution, the development of theory of natural selection

Darwin and the theory of evolution

The Origin of Species

Evolution, A Theory in Crisis

The descent of man