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Enjoying Wallace Arthur's posts on evolution? You're in luck. Here the author of Evolving Animals (2014) puts together a creative analogy for understanding natural selection.
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Graeme Finlay, the author of Human Evolution: Genes, Genealogies and Phylogenies, describes the complex ways in which cells—and thus entire species—are related to one another.
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Religion and science have long been seen as incompatible; it’s the view that Robert Asher grew up with during his deeply Presbyterian childhood in Western New York. But since then, through years of studying early mammals and exploring fossil records, he found that no other theory comes close to Darwin’s as an explanation for the world’s incredible biodiversity.
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Michael Ruse In 1981, the State of Arkansas passed into law a bill that demanded that if evolution was taught in state-supported schools, then something called "Creation Science" -- aka the book of Genesis read literally -- had also to be taught. This happened during the interregnum between Bill Clinton's first time in the governor's mansion and when he regained it two years later. The bill was debated for all of half an hour by the legislature and signed by the then-governor, a man as unqualified for the post as he was surprised at getting it. Obviously this law violated the First Amendment separation of church and state, and so the ACLU swung into action to get it declared unconstitutional. After a two-week trial, the federal judge ruled precisely that and so that was the end of the Arkansas "Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Scient Act," as it was called. I was one of the witnesses for the plaintiff, called in to testify on the history and philosophy of science, showing that whereas evolutionary theory is science, creation science is not science but religion.
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Science, after all, is supposed to be searching for absolute truths verifiable (in principle) by anybody who cares to. It is supposed to uncover Nature using mathematical or logical tools, of course to formulate theories and hypotheses but to treat these with deep skepticism. Faith is anathema to science. Please understand me. Faith, a moral compass, spiritual values, all have a vitial role to play even in the life of a scientist. When you are stuck on a problem you have to put forth a hypothesis. You have to have some faith in it to take it seriously enough to explore.
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The collector bug strikes early. At the age of twelve, in addition to being stinky, Charles Darwin reminds himself that if he is going to be a great naturalist, he’ll need a place for his stash. That’s right, he’s building a fort. In Summer, 1823, he says, the work must start! January 12th, 1822– remember […]
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