Up@dawn 2.0

Friday, July 21, 2017

Darwinian evolutionary theory - experiment


Fellow classmates:

Darwinian evolutionary theory is a favorite subject of mine. I have been studying this theory for several years. I have read Darwin's book (3x) and I quote from it often. I would like to conduct an experiment for my own knowledge and I hope each of you will participate.



Drawing on your current knowledge of Darwin's theory and without doing any research, please respond to the following:

If you believe Darwinian evolutionary theory is true, please give me the one, single most compelling reason why you believe it, and please be specific. For example, if the fossil record is the most compelling thing for you, please tell me exactly which fossils in the fossil record you are referring to.



If you do not believe in Darwinian evolutionary theory, please give me the one, single most compelling reason why you don’t believe it. Again, be specific.



Thanks, I look forward to your responses 

3 comments:

  1. Well, let's see...

    Darwinian evolutionary theory (natural selection etc.) is true because a great evolutionist named Winterton Curtis once pulled $ from my ear when I was a child.

    Just kidding. (But that was my Dad's theory of why I've been a firm evolutionist for as long as I've thought I understood what it meant.)

    I think my answer is that I'm a convicted evolutionist because I agree with Dan Dennett: it's the single best idea anyone ever had, uniting the the world of purposeless, meaningless matter and the human world of meaning and purposeful thought and intention. And I agree with Stephen Jay Gould, it IS the meaning of our lives to the extent that a scientific understanding of life CAN be humanly meaningful. (Take a look at that video clip on Evolution (pbs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCOc7Xqj-kQ

    But really, Darwin himself said it best: "There is grandeur in this view of life... from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

    That makes evolution the only story of human origins that embraces every other story, and is thus (in Loyal Rue's phrase) Everybody's Story.

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  2. And there's also this: "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution"-Theodosius Dobzhansky,

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  3. Thanks for participating and…I like your sense of humor. BTW, I plan to watch the video you suggested. I noticed that it is 2 hours long, so I’ll have to schedule it and work it in sometime this week.

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