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Past human life does not seem relevant to present life for many people. Yet the scientific evidence for human evolution keeps piling up with many discoveries of ancient bones, stone tools, cave ...
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 theory of evolution by natural selection has also been adopted as a foundation for various ethical and social systems, such as social Darwinism, an idea that preceded the publication of The Origin of Species, popular in the 19th century, which holds that "the survival of the fittest" (a phrase coined in 1851 by Herbert Spencer, [1] 8 years before Darwin published his theory of evolution ...
Rejection of evolution by religious groups, sometimes called creation–evolution controversy, has a long history. [1] In response to theories developed by scientists, some religious individuals and organizations question the legitimacy of scientific ideas that contradicted the young earth pseudoscientific interpretation of the creation account in Genesis.
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]
The level of support for evolution among scientists, the public, and other groups is a topic that frequently arises in the creation–evolution controversy, and touches on educational, religious, philosophical, scientific, and political issues.
Probably the most frequent complaint about evolution by creationists is captured in the statement that "Evolution is just a theory". [4] [2] [5] For example, surveying many of the legal proceedings over the teaching of evolution, creationism and/or intelligent design in the school classrooms in the United States reveals that this claim has been used as part of official school policy [6] [7] in ...