evolution

evolution as a general idea (e.g., Spencer) and as a particular theory (e.g., Darwin)

Biological classes and ancestries

Taxonomy is the science of classification. Taxonomy applied to biology is a systematic approach to classifying organisms. It can be applied to all organisms at a particular time, throughout time, or within any context. Once a classification is determined, other questions arise such as whether there is an independent reason that organisms are in the […]

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God the Creator and Designer

The Christian doctrine of creation declares that the reason there is something and not nothing is because God created something ex nihilo, out of nothing, and that is what it means to say that God is the Creator. This is the primary creation, since the secondary creation such as the birth of new organisms occurs

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Creation and evolution intersect

The controversy over theories of creation vs. theories of evolution is often treated as an either-or, one-or-the-other proposition. In fact the creation models of today contain much that would be classified as ‘evolution’ (change over time). Before the 19th century, theories of creation accepted a static model in biology, geology, and astronomy. That is, the

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Creation and evolution posts

Creation and evolution typology The first issue that arises in developing a typology for ideas about creation and evolution are the terms themselves: they are sufficiently ambiguous that their meaning differs even by the same author in the same work. This can be part of a fallacy of equivocation or it can simply mean the terms are

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Evolution posts

Evolution for everyone The word evolution is related to the terms evolve and evolute, and originally meant an unrolling. It acquired a sense of development in the 19th century and was associated with progress, especially as promoted by Herbert Spencer. Charles Darwin used it in print only once since his theory was not a theory

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Design and evolution

I last wrote about design here. What is the essential element of a design? Dictionaries define design in terms of a plan but that concerns how a design is recorded or communicated rather than the design itself. I suggest that the essential element of a design is the necessity of a trade-off. To define a

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A demi-creator for science

Creationists reject what might be called the Deep Time Postulate (DTP): that long stretches of time existed before the earliest humans ever lived. The DTP enables uniformitarianism in geology, evolution of all species in biology, and evolution of the solar system in astronomy. DTP enables science to insert a kind of history before history, that

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Change and stability

Evolution or alteration means change over time. Sameness over time is called permanence or stability. The study of change or the lack of change over time is called history or diachrony. Change happens. But sameness happens, too. One easily sees that sameness happens in the natural realm much more than change. That is not the

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Evolution for everyone

The word evolution is related to the terms evolve and evolute, and originally meant an unrolling. It acquired a sense of development in the 19th century and was associated with progress, especially as promoted by Herbert Spencer. Charles Darwin used it in print only once since his theory was not a theory of progress. “But

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Variationism vs. progressivism

Broadly speaking, there are two different paradigms concerning the history of the material world. One paradigm is that the material world has always been roughly the same as it is now. An ancient version of this said everything would eventually return to the same state. This cyclic version is rare now. What became more common

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