Group items tagged

In other words, the Pope could live with evolution, so long as the process of “ensouling” humans was left to God.

ope really said, “the theory evolution is more than one hypothesis,” not “the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis.”  If that were so, the Pope might have been suggesting that there are multiple theories of evolution, and all of them might be wrong.

  Perhaps, some creationists argued, the p

Darwin's Theory of Evolution - Slowly But Surely...

Darwin's Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor:

Ancient Greek philosophers such as Anaximander postulated the development of life from non-life and the evolutionary descent of man from animal.

  Especially important was his 5 weeks long visit to the Galápagos Islands in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.  It was there that he made the observations that eventually led him to comprehend what causes plants and animals to evolve, but he apparently did not clearly formulate his views on this until 1837.

Darwin was struck by the fact that the birds were slightly different from one island to another.

He realized that the key to why this difference existed was connected with the fact that the various species live in different kinds of environments.

On returning to England, Darwin and an ornithologist associate identified 13 species of finches that he had collected on the Galápagos Islands.  This was puzzling since he knew of only one species of this bird on the mainland of South America, nearly 600 miles to the east, where they had all presumably originated.  He observed that the Galápagos species differed from each other in beak size and shape.  He also noted that the beak varieties were associated with diets based on different foods.  He concluded that when the original South American finches reached the islands, they dispersed to different environments where they had to adapt to different conditions.  Over many generations, they changed anatomically in ways that allowed them to get enough food and survive to reproduce.  This observation was verified by intensive field research in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Those individuals having a variation that gives them an advantage in staying alive long enough to successfully reproduce are the ones that pass on their traits more frequently to the next generation.  Subsequently, their traits become more common and the population evolves.  Darwin called this "descent with modification."

An example of evolution resulting from natural selection was discovered among "peppered" moths living near English industrial cities.  These insects have varieties that vary in wing and body coloration from light to dark.  During the 19th century, sooty smoke from coal burning furnaces killed the lichen on trees and darkened the bark.  When moths landed on these trees and other blackened surfaces, the dark colored ones were harder to spot by birds who ate them and, subsequently, they more often lived long enough to reproduce.  Over generations, the environment continued to favor darker moths.  As a result, they progressively became more common.  By 1895, 98% of the moths in the vicinity of English cities like Manchester were mostly black.  Since the 1950's, air pollution controls have significantly reduced the amount of heavy particulate air pollutants reaching the trees, buildings, and other objects in the environment.   As a result, lichen has grown back, making trees lighter in color.  In addition, once blackened buildings were cleaned making them lighter in color.  Now, natural selection favors lighter moth varieties so they have become the most common.  This trend has been well documented by field studies undertaken between 1959 and 1995 by Sir Cyril Clarke from the University of Liverpool.  The same pattern of moth wing color evolutionary change in response to increased and later decreased air pollution has been carefully documented by other researchers for the countryside around Detroit, Michigan.  While it is abundantly clear that there has been an evolution in peppered moth coloration due to the advantage of camouflage over the last two centuries, it is important to keep in mind that this story of natural selection in action is incomplete.  There may have been additional natural selection factors involved.

The Galápagos finches provide an excellent example of this process.  Among the birds that ended up in arid environments, the ones with beaks better suited for eating cactus got more food.  As a result, they were in better condition to mate.  Similarly, those with beak shapes that were better suited to getting nectar from flowers or eating hard seeds in other environments were at an advantage there.  In a very real sense, nature selected the best adapted varieties to survive and to reproduce.  This process has come to be known as natural selection.

evolution occurs as a result of natural selection implied that chance plays a major role

He understood that it is a matter of luck whether any individuals in a population have variations that will allow them to survive and reproduce.  If no such variations exist, the population rapidly goes extinct because it cannot adapt to a changing environment

It was not until he was 50 years old, in 1859, that Darwin finally published his theory of evolution in full for his fellow scientists and for the public at large.  He did so in a 490 page book entitled On the Origin of Species

If natural selection were the only process occurring, each generation should have less variation until all members of a population are essentially identical, or clones of each other.  That does not happen.  Each new generation has new variations

. Today many scientists say there is no conflict between their faith and their work.

One would be hard pressed to find a legitimate scientist today who does not believe in evolution

Many scientists—and theologians—maintain that it would be perfectly logical to think that a divine being used evolution as a method to create the world.