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Finding Darwin's God
Kenneth Miller
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Darwin noticed that all living species engaged in struggle for existence. And this struggle is greatestbt individs of same species, bc they are competing for exactly the same resources and mates.
Some try to argue that since can't inspect past directly, everything is just speculation. But scientific theories have to be backed up by evidence.
Police often have to deal with a crime where no witnesses available, so have to gather evidence to identify criminal.
We can't directly study the Sun. BBut scientists found that light from Sun is not a continuous spectrum, but is interrupted by hundreds of sharp black lines. Worked out that each line shows the presence of an element, which absorbs light ata specific wavelength. From this, worked out that the Sun mainly made of hydrogen. Then during solar eclipse of 1868 noticed a new line, which did not correspond to any known element. Predicted that it was a new element and named it helium., 25 years before it was found on Earth. By end of C19, Theory of Radioactivity explained where the sun's heliumhad come from - fusion reaction of hydrogen.
Science restricts itself to natural (as opposed to supernatural) explanations bc it works. It explains the Sun, it predicts future discoveries (helium) and it leads to further discoveries (radioactivity, nuclear power etc)
Canal and then railway cuts led to unified geological maps, and the realization that each layer had same unique fossils, and that fossils laid down in succession - ones closest to the surface most similar to today's; deeper you went, the more primitive the fossils.
The fossils that Darwin brought back from S America were giant versions of animals still found in same locality. Which made it unlikely that modern armadillo was a species which had been created out of nothing,if it was found in same part of world as fossils most similar to it.
Evo is both a fact and a . It is a fact that evolutionary change took place. And it is a theory that explains the mechanism behind those changes.
Religious simply have to accept that their creation story is not scientifically correct, just as people have had to accept that the Earth is not flat, and that it is not the center of the Universe, or even the solar system.
Genesis creation sequences don't make sense. Flowering plants only appeared after 2 billion years. The great coal deposits of the Carboniferous do not contain a single flower.
Every species shows a very long history of extinctions and emergence of variants with many aspects of former organisms. IDers require you to believe that the past was a time of magic - beginning with the creation of Earth and continuing through billions of years, a grand parade of species popping into, and out of, existence.
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