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Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution (the idea that species arose through descent with modification from a single common ancestor in a process driven by natural selection) initially met opposition from scientists with different ...
Professor of biology Jerry Coyne sums up biological evolution succinctly: [3]. Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.
The statement "evolution is a theory and not a fact" has been used as a tactic by creationists and intelligent design advocates, causing confusion over the difference between how theory is defined and used in the field of science and how the term is used colloquially to signify "conjecture", "speculation" or "opinion". [3]
Some people are indoctrinated against the theory of evolution and simply do not think about it. But evolution is a well-established explanation of how life developed on Earth.
The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" (German: "Anteil der Arbeit an der Menschwerdung des Affen") is an unfinished essay written by Friedrich Engels in the spring of 1876. The essay forms the ninth chapter of Dialectics of Nature , which proposes a unitary materialist paradigm of natural and human history.
The actual statement of the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism is a relatively mild one that expresses skepticism about the absoluteness of 'Darwinism' (and is in line with the falsifiability required of scientific theories) to explain all features of life, and does not in any way represent an absolute denial or rejection of evolution. [160]
Augustine suggests in other work his theory of the later development of insects out of carrion, and the adoption of the old emanation or evolution theory, showing that "certain very small animals may not have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have originated later from putrefying matter."
Marston [113] [114] has argued that, although the creationism argument (that because evolution is "merely" a theory, it therefore cannot also be a fact) reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the concepts, the scientific countering of the creationist position by the simple stipulation that evolution is a fact may be counterproductive; a ...