AgentWillis
Puritan Board Freshman
Hello,
This is my first post here and I certainly hope to be more involved in the future.
On another note, I recently was approached by a friend of mine who has been struggling with his faith. Particularly, when it comes to the issue of evolution. Recently, he reached out with a selection of text from an article published in "The Guardian" newspaper and was curious for my thoughts. I'm no expert and while I've been working on a response. I'd be happy to hear other people's thoughts on the text below. From reading other threads on the matter prior to joining it's quite clear they're a number of individuals who may be competent to speak on this matter.
THE CONTENT:
“Charles Darwin hardly ever used the word “evolution”. He chose the phrase “descent with modification”. He did not coin the term “survival of the fittest”. He did not suggest that evolution was a form of progress. For him, an amoeba in a puddle of water was just as suited to its environment as a duck on a lake or a preacher in a pulpit. ….”
“ Gregor Mendel’s 1866 study of garden peas, which was to become the foundation of modern genetics, was published in German, in a Moravian journal, and was not widely known until the beginning of the 20th century. DNA was identified during the second world war, but its role in the replication of life and the transmission of traits was not known until 1953. Both pieces of research confirmed the Darwinian argument that all life had descended, with modifications, from a common ancestry, and that natural conditions tend to favour useful variations at the expense of handicaps.
If detailed scientific confirmation appeared so long after Darwin’s death, why did so many people accept his logic at the time? Because so many things – anatomical likenesses, skeletal similarities (the domestic dog, the farmyard animal and the garden vegetable, to name a few) – made it obvious that there had been some changes in species over time. Half a dozen great scientists, including Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus, had already proposed some form of evolution. What Darwin did was assemble, with a mass of evidence and close reasoning, the best argument for believing that it had happened by the action of natural selection on random mutation. When he first read this argument, his friend and supporter Thomas Henry Huxley is supposed to have clapped his head and said: “How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!”
Why does Darwin’s theory matter now? Because it is the basis of modern biology and much medical research; because it provides a tool with which to understand the natural world; because it offers a deeper, if imperfect, understanding of our behaviour, about where we came from and where we might be going. The philosopher Daniel Dennett once called it “the single best idea anybody ever had”.- Evolution and Darwin, The Guardian
END CONTENT
Appreciate any info.
This is my first post here and I certainly hope to be more involved in the future.
On another note, I recently was approached by a friend of mine who has been struggling with his faith. Particularly, when it comes to the issue of evolution. Recently, he reached out with a selection of text from an article published in "The Guardian" newspaper and was curious for my thoughts. I'm no expert and while I've been working on a response. I'd be happy to hear other people's thoughts on the text below. From reading other threads on the matter prior to joining it's quite clear they're a number of individuals who may be competent to speak on this matter.
THE CONTENT:
“Charles Darwin hardly ever used the word “evolution”. He chose the phrase “descent with modification”. He did not coin the term “survival of the fittest”. He did not suggest that evolution was a form of progress. For him, an amoeba in a puddle of water was just as suited to its environment as a duck on a lake or a preacher in a pulpit. ….”
“ Gregor Mendel’s 1866 study of garden peas, which was to become the foundation of modern genetics, was published in German, in a Moravian journal, and was not widely known until the beginning of the 20th century. DNA was identified during the second world war, but its role in the replication of life and the transmission of traits was not known until 1953. Both pieces of research confirmed the Darwinian argument that all life had descended, with modifications, from a common ancestry, and that natural conditions tend to favour useful variations at the expense of handicaps.
If detailed scientific confirmation appeared so long after Darwin’s death, why did so many people accept his logic at the time? Because so many things – anatomical likenesses, skeletal similarities (the domestic dog, the farmyard animal and the garden vegetable, to name a few) – made it obvious that there had been some changes in species over time. Half a dozen great scientists, including Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus, had already proposed some form of evolution. What Darwin did was assemble, with a mass of evidence and close reasoning, the best argument for believing that it had happened by the action of natural selection on random mutation. When he first read this argument, his friend and supporter Thomas Henry Huxley is supposed to have clapped his head and said: “How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!”
Why does Darwin’s theory matter now? Because it is the basis of modern biology and much medical research; because it provides a tool with which to understand the natural world; because it offers a deeper, if imperfect, understanding of our behaviour, about where we came from and where we might be going. The philosopher Daniel Dennett once called it “the single best idea anybody ever had”.- Evolution and Darwin, The Guardian
END CONTENT
Appreciate any info.
—Awesome! From Raleigh, NC.—Also very cool. 
