Apostle Paul (Romans 1:20)
Should reach the conclusion that there is a Creator
Belgic Confession, 1561
Guido de Bres, Spain
- The means by which we know God
- God’s words and works
1) By creation, preservation and government of the universe
2) God makes Himself known to us more clearly through His Word
Why Christians should study evolution?
By showing that the science of evolution is [or could be] a description of God’s processes and not a worldview in and of itself, Christians can expose atheism as secular philosophy and not part of science
Greeks and Romans
- (BC) Cyclical World
- Mythology
- Cycles of creation/ destruction/ recreation
Aristotle
Aristotle
(Greeks and Romans)
- Cyclic didn’t apply to plants/animals
- Chain of Being: Gods, Humans, Primates, Birds, Trees => => Rocks
- Hierarchy
- Organization
- Classification
Hebrew/Jewish/ Christian
- Genesis: theological interpretations of Genesis
- STATIC WORLD
St. Augustine (5th) + St. Thomas Aquinas (13th)
Creation: time period in which God infused the Earth with a necessary potency to produce living things by natural processes
Middle Ages
Split into two categories:
1) Physical Sciences: Astronomy and Chemistry
2) Natural Philosophy: “Biology”
Astronomy
- “Copernicus Universe”
- NOT Geocentric
- Earth revolved around the Sun
- Predict orbits/motions of planets
God
- Rational
- Created a rational universe
- Comprehension
- Humans rational since we were created by God who created a rational universe
Authoritarianism (of Catholic Church)
When authorities are sources of truth
AKA Inquisition
15th-18th Centuries
- Geology: study of the earth
- Stratification of land (distinct layers)
- Uniformatarianism/ gradualism
- TIME: Old Earth
-(discovery of) Fossils: cycles?/ forms not found on Earth anymore
EXTINCT vs EXTANT (still living today)
Cuvier
- fossils
- “father” of Paleontology”
- developed Paleontology: the study of fossils
- 1812: published his extensive studies of vertebrate fossils
Malthus
- mathematician
- interested in exponential growth
- lead to mass starvation due to limited resources
- 1798: published “Essay on the Principle of Population”
Lyell
- geology
- uniformitarianism
- 1830: publishes “Principles of Geology”
Wallace
proposed the theory of natural selection around the same time as Darwin
Darwin
- 1831-36: traveled around the world on HMS Beagle
- Observed Galapagos Islands and finches
- Natural Selection
- 1859: published “Origin of Species”
- evolution will change over time
Darwin’s theory of natural selection
Observed Galapagos Islands and finches
- Evolution: change over time
- Observed heredity and evolution
-> reproduce offspring similar to parents
-> selectively breed
=> in any variation/populations - offspring better off for environment
- finches similar appearance, but different ways of eating (cactus, insect, seed) since finches from S. America looked like ones on Galapagos
- how could this be?
Natural Selection
- Darwin and Wallace proposed
- Nature selected best genes to move forward
- Variation in form (artificial selection)
- Limited resources leads to competition
- Differential reproduction success
- Shape characters of succeeding generations
Evolution
acts at the level of populations
changing over time
Section acts
at the level of the individual fitness
high fitness: high reproductive success
low fitness: low reproductive success
Soapberry bugs
(example of microevolution)
- short beak ones took over long beak ones since short beaks produced fruit the long beaks couldn’t get into
Macroevolution
- changes in Speciation
- take long, period of time
i.e. monkey => human and _
Microevolution
Changes in a trait within a population
