Since Darwin's ideas were not about the origin of life itself but rather about the mechanism that produced...

Question

variations amongst species yet fundamentalist Christians often point at the theory as being about the origin of life, do you think the current tensions between Christian religions and evolution in the US might have been mitigated somewhat if he had titled his book, "On the *Variation* of Species"?

Answer 1

Darwin wrote a book. Darwin did some limited studies, which were based on something he already believed to be true. Of course, that is not research. Research is looking for the answer, not deciding what the answer is and then trying to prove that answer to be correct.

Darwin simply eliminated many ideas, offhand, and decided that because there were various species and sub-species and decided that one came from the other.

Evolution and Natural selection have yet to explain why thousands upon thousands of species of animals still exist yet come from each other.

Why any person would believe that they could look at what is, and tell of what was, is ridiculous.

Answer 2

No, because the fundamentalist Christians STILL would not read it. They have faith that he is wrong and that, by virtue of the fact that it is called Faith, is unshakable.

While many atheists read and study the Bible (after all it's a pretty good story), fundamentalists would wither if they came within 6 feet of a Darwinian text - they fear it will be right and that they will have lived their self-sacrificing pious lives for nought.

On a technical note, the book, 'On The Origin of Species' is correctly titled in my opinion, since he is talking about how species originate (speciation), not LIFE. On the origin of Life would have been a seriously misleading title for the text. And 'On the Variation of species' would have been unnecessarily vague. His discovery was so groundbreaking that it was rightly called the Origin.

Again, this is a distinction I would not expect creationists to grasp since they are blinded by faith.

Answer 3

I agree with others, I really don't think it would matter what title he gave to that particular book, it was what was inside that ruffled feathers


I mean 150 years later and though by and large the majority accept it as a universal truth, the minority still cannot or simply refuse to accept it

What's also sad is that of those that refuse to accept it, I'll bet most haven't even studied it to know what it is that they're rejecting

Answer 4

Perhaps, but what it leads to does deal with the origins of life, so changing the title would not have changed a thing.

Answer 5

No, because Creationism is about hatred and lies. They fight reality in favor of a doctrine that enriches the pastors at the expense of the masses they keep in ignorance.

Answer 6

variations lead to evolution through natural selection
so i don't think it matters whatever the hell he called book if the concept remained the same

Answer 7

No. Fundamentalists see evolutionary theory as a threat to their faith and to their idea of a moral society. They know that scientific and theological explanations for our origins are incompatible.

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Answer 8

You know, it doesn't matter. We as humans, at least.. western humans, have an all-or-nothing mentality. And I guess that's cool. Let's fight over it, let's hate eachother until one of the paradigms dies.

Answer 9

No.

Instead of dumbing down science texts, we need to raise the awareness of Christians to the power of science.

Answer 10

No, because "Darwin's theory" has gone far beyond what he wrote to include abiogenesis and the replacement of a Creator with "nothing".

The ancient cultures worshiped gods of wood and stone. It is difficult to comprehend the insanity of paganism: who can tally the blood that has been spilled on the altars of the gods who are not and the demons who are! We, however, in our contemporary paganism, have invented the most insulting "god" of all. Instead of ascribing the awesome magnificence of the Creation to any of the false gods of the past, we have chosen to ascribe it all to randomness, or chance. That has to be the most insulting ascription of all: we have decided that no Designer was necessary - it all "just happened." "First there was nothing. Then it exploded!"

Darwinists love to postulate the "simple cell." With the advent of modern microbiology, we now know "there ain't any such thing." Even the simplest cell is complex beyond our imagining.

As Michael Denton has pointed out, "Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, each is in effect a veritable microminiaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up of 100,000,000,000 atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world."4

The "simple cell" turns out to be a miniaturized city of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design, including automated assembly plants and processing units featuring robot machines (protein molecules with as many as 3,000 atoms each in three-dimensional configurations) manufacturing hundreds of thousands of specific types of products. The system design exploits artificial languages and decoding systems, memory banks for information storage, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of components, error correction techniques and proofreading devices for quality control.

All by chance? All without a Designer? (How do you define "absurd?")