Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Part 1
How could we make progress on questions involving the evolution of form without a scientific understanding of how form is generated in the first place? [By the 1970s] population genetics had succeeded in establishing the principle that evolution is due to changes in genes, but this was a principle without an example. No gene that affected the form and evolution of any animal had been characterized. New insights in evolution would require breakthroughs in embryology.
Series: Evolution Basics
Written by BioLogos Fellow of Biology Dennis Venema, this series of posts is intended as a basic introduction to the science of evolution for non-specialists.
Series: Biological Evolution: What Makes it Good Science?
Is the contemporary theory of evolution an example of good science? Biologist Michael Buratovich explore this question in a well-researched two part essay.
A Plea to My Shepherds
... I would exhort these, my fellow conservative evangelical shepherds and thinkers, to set aside all reticence and fear, emerge from anonymity, and storm the forum of discourse, engaging this most pressing matter with vigor, equanimity, and humility. In doing so, know upfront that there will be few handrails to guide; you will not be building upon an extensive precedence of published conservative thought.
Science and Scientism in Biology: The Origin of Morality
The problem is that as human beings, we know that goodness exists, so it must be accounted for, and if one is a staunch believer in scientism, it must be accounted for scientifically.
Where are the Transitional Fossils?
A common argument leveled against the theory of evolution is that scientists have not been able to produce transitional fossils that show the change of one species into another. In this podcast, we address a common misconception about what transitional fossils actually are.
Does Evolution Compromise Human Morality?
Once we have a scientific hypothesis for how something exists, it is tempting to make the philosophical inference that this is also why it exists.
Series: Harmonizing Science, Ethics, and Praxis
In this three-part series, Cal DeWitt offers insights and examples of why science and ethics must work together to help us make informed, practical decisions within our society. DeWitt’s science-ethics-praxis model provides a framework by which we can live more effectively as God’s stewards.
Series: To Serve and Preserve—Genesis 2 and the Human Calling
In this series, David Buller pays careful attention to the original language and cultural context of Genesis 2, revealing that our responsibility to care for creation is a sacred task given to us by God, not merely a modern secular activity. By taking Scripture seriously, we learn that we have a God-given mandate to be diligent stewards of His creation.
Oxygen and Co-Creation
In the mid-seventeenth century, John Mayow conducted a series of experiments in which he showed that burning candles in bell jars consumed one-fifth of the enclosed air before extinguishing. Remarkably, mice placed in bell jars did exactly the same thing...
Willing to be Wrong
The debate is often not about evidence, but about making sure that others do not transgress our interpretive boundaries and insist that we're wrong. We've bitten from the tree of knowledge and we love its taste.
Death and Rebirth: The Role of Extinction in Evolution
When they imagine evolution, many Christians picture novelty: new species arising over time, or speciation events. But as the most recent Southern Baptist Voices exchange makes clear, many Christians also focus on the role of death in evolution—something that can be a stumbling block.
Gracious Dialogue
Our desire to engage in gracious dialogue with fellow believers who reject biological evolution has been receiving increased attention in both the Christian and secular press. More importantly, we are being joined in this reconciling project by our brothers and sisters in Christ who have often been defined primarily as our “opponents”.
Series: Science and the Bible: Concordism
In this series, Davis identifies core tenets or assumptions about the view of concordism, beginning with propositions about the Bible before concluding with a short historical commentary.
The Fossil Record
There are two opposite errors which need to be countered about the fossil record: 1) that it is so incomplete as to be of no value in interpreting patterns and trends in the history of life, and 2) that it is so good that we should expect a relatively complete record of the details of evolutionary transitions within all or most lineages.
Understanding Evolution: Theory, Prediction and Converging Lines of Evidence, Part 1
In science, we don’t really know the true way things actually work. What we have are theories—broad explanatory frameworks supported by experimentation, which we can use to make testable predictions about the natural world.
Speciation and Macroevolution
A common challenge to evolutionary theory is that while life does indeed change over time (what is known as microevolution), no one has ever seen one species evolve into another species (macroevolution).
Series: Evidences for Evolution
This technical series, co-written by Darrel Falk and David Kerk, looks into the evidence for evolution in order to dispel doubts that people may have about this well-supported theory. They look at three things specifically: the separate methods which reveal of the age of the earth, the unfolding history of whale evolution, and finally the common trends of heart development in vertebrates.
Misconceptions About Evolution, Part 2
Evolutionary theory is not in crisis; scientists accept evolution as the best explanation for life's diversity because of the multiple lines of evidence supporting it, its broad power to explain biological phenomena, and its ability to make accurate predictions in a wide variety of situations.
Misconceptions About Evolution, Part 1
The website Understanding Evolution, hosted by The University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, offers its readers numerous helpful resources regarding the science and history of evolutionary biology.
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