“Windows To Spirituality”
History Of Molecular Evolution The history of molecular evolution starts in the early 20th century with “comparative biochemistry“, but the field of molecular evolution came into its own in the 1960s and 1970s, following the rise of molecular biology. The advent of protein sequencing allowed molecular biologists to create phylogenies based...
History Of Scientific Method The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, as distinct from the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers...
Institute For Creation Research The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is a Creationist apologetics institute in Dallas, Texas that specializes in media promotion of pseudoscientific creation science and interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as a historical event. The ICR adopts the Bible as an inerrant and literal documentary of scientific and historical fact as well as...
Scopes Trial The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded...
History Of The Creation–Evolution Controversy The creation–evolution controversy has a long history. In response to theories developed by scientists, some religious individuals and organizations questioned the legitimacy of scientific ideas that contradicted the literal interpretation of the creation account in Genesis. Interpretation of the Judeo-Christian Bible had long been the prerogative of an orthodox priesthood able to understand Latin who traditionally...
Scientist A scientist is someone who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of interest. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophical study of nature called natural philosophy, a precursor of natural science. It was not until the 19th century that the term scientist came...
History Of Science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. The earliest roots of science can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural...
Scientism Scientism is the promotion of science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values. The term scientism is generally used critically, implying a cosmetic application of science in unwarranted situations considered not amenable to application of the scientific method or similar scientific standards. Overview In...
Universal Darwinism Universal Darwinism (also known as generalized Darwinism, universal selection theory, or Darwinian metaphysics) refers to a variety of approaches that extend the theory of Darwinism beyond its original domain of biological evolution on Earth. Universal Darwinism aims to formulate a generalized version of the mechanisms of variation, selection and heredity proposed by Charles...
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Speciation Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within lineages. Charles Darwin was the first to describe the role of natural selection in speciation in his...
Scientific Revolution The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature. The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe towards the end...
Irreducible Complexity Irreducible complexity (IC) involves the idea that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive small modifications to pre-existing functional systems through natural selection. Irreducible complexity has become central to the creationist concept of intelligent design, but the scientific community, which regards intelligent design as pseudoscience, rejects the concept of irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity is one of two...
Specified Complexity Specified complexity is a concept proposed by William Dembski and used by him and others to promote intelligent design. According to Dembski, the concept can formalize a property that singles out patterns that are both specified and complex, where in Dembski’s terminology, a specified pattern is one that admits short descriptions, whereas a complex pattern is one...
Intelligent Design Movement The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific idea of intelligent design (ID), which asserts that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as...
Opium Of The People “Religion is the opium of the people” is one of the most frequently paraphrased and misinterpreted statements of German philosopher and economist Karl Marx. It was translated from the German original, “Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes” and is often rendered as “religion… is the opiate of the masses.” See Marxism The quotation...
Fine-tuned Universe This article covers the meaning of Fine-tuned Universe. The characterization of the universe as finely tuned suggests that the occurrence of life in the Universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physical constants and that the observed values are, for some reason, improbable. If the values of any of certain free parameters in contemporary physical...
Theistic Science Theistic science, also referred to as theistic realism, is the pseudoscientific proposal that the central scientific method of requiring testability, known as methodological naturalism, should be replaced by a philosophy of science that allows occasional supernatural explanations which are inherently untestable. Proponents propose supernatural explanations for topics raised by their theology, in particular evolution. Supporters of theistic...
Watchmaker Analogy The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument which states, by way of an analogy, that a design implies a designer. The analogy has played a prominent role in natural theology and the “argument from design,” where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God and for the intelligent design of the universe, in both Christianity and Deism. Sir...
Teleological Argument The teleological argument or physico-theological argument, also known as the argument from design, or intelligent design argument is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, for an intelligent creator based on perceived evidence of “intelligent design” in the natural world. The earliest recorded versions of this argument are associated with Socrates in ancient...
Intelligent Design And Science The relationship between intelligent design and science has been a contentious one. Intelligent design (ID) is presented by its proponents as science and claims to offer an alternative to evolution. The Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank and the leading proponent of intelligent design, launched a campaign entitled...
