The Problem With “Darwinism”

The term  Darwinism is often used by creationists as a pejorative term in place of referring to the science of evolutionary biology.  Evolution provides the foundation of modern biology and, as much as it owes to the work of Charles Darwin, evolutionary biology goes beyond the work of any one man.

Evolutionary biology began with Darwin, but Darwin was not even aware of many other scientific advances which further explained evolution, such as the work of Gregor Mendel on genetics.  To refer to evolutionary biology as Darwinism makes it sound more like a doctrine than a well established scientific theory. When prescribing penicillin we do not conduct a debate on Flemingism. We recognize the contributions of the scientists who contributed to our knowledge of a field, but science is a continuing process in which much more has often been added to the works of the earlier scientists.

Via Sandwalk, an article on this issue has recently been made available on line. From the abstract:

Evolutionary biology owes much to Charles Darwin, whose discussions of common descent and natural selection provide the foundations of the discipline. But evolutionary biology has expanded well beyond its foundations to encompass many theories and concepts unknown in the 19th century. The term “Darwinism” is, therefore, ambiguous and misleading. Compounding the problem of “Darwinism” is the hijacking of the term by creationists to portray evolution as a dangerous ideology—an “ism”—that has no place in the science classroom. When scientists and teachers use “Darwinism” as synonymous with evolutionary biology, it reinforces such a misleading portrayal and hinders efforts to present the scientific standing of evolution accurately. Accordingly, the term “Darwinism” should be abandoned as a synonym for evolutionary biology.

3 Comments

  1. 1
    DB says:

    The creationists are doing a great job framing this argument. They are demonizing Darwin and an entire field of science in their fight against evolution. By doing this they are able to rally their own supporters to their cause.

  2. 2
    Barry says:

    A great book on creationist foolishness:

    http://ABCDunlimited.com/ideas/evolution2.html

  3. 3
    Suzette says:

    If both sides would open their minds a little everyone would see that science and religion do not contradict one another.

    The beginning of Genesis is a repairing of the Earth and the beginning of todays humans and science verifies this.

    The very first sentence of Genesis[1:1] is a statement… “In the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.” PERIOD!

    Get a concordance and look up the words “was”, “without form”, and “void” in Genesis 1:2. You will see what is translated as the English word “was” should better be translated as the phrase ‘It came to pass’. Or if you want a word for word translation, instead of “was” it should be “became”. It’s only one of 2 places in the bible that it is translated as “was” out of the total of 75 times it was used, and the other place could also use “became”.

    Look up the original Hebrew for “without form” and “void”. They also mean “chaotic” and “empty”. As you can see, there is no word for word equivalence in English for the Hebrew words of “hayah”, “tohuw” and “bohuw”. Taking their full meaning it becomes clear that there was a lot of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.

    It is the events that are not mentioned between these two verses that led up to the earth becoming a chaotic wasteland. The missing information solves the mystery of “Evolution vs Creation”.

    The problem is that most people on either side REFUSE to open their minds to anythng other than what they’ve been taught or told for years.

    Wisdoms of Religion and Science:
    Faith:
    R-Faith is the substance reality is framed in. For all reality begins as thought before being manifested in the seen world… Faith is evidence of reality not yet manifested. Faith is more than believing, it is a knowing.
    S-The laws are treated as “given” (like the law of gravity) and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you have to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin.

    Infinity:
    R-Hindu Masters tell us that Brahma contained the infinities and all possibilities in his heart. One of the Seven Wisdoms is that the Infinite nature of God makes all things possible.
    S-Quantum Reality is composed of Infinity. Its called the many worlds solution, but it describes our physical universe perfectly by allowing an infinite number of parallel universes to be part of the solution set.

    Eternity:
    R-All that there is and always will be, is the Eternal Ever Changing Now. All the past is, is the memory of the pattern before and all the future is, is anticipation of the pattern to come. There is no time there is just now.
    S-Time is an illusion. It is relative to the motion of the observer

    Awareness:
    R-Masters teach that what we call reality is just our awareness choosing one of the infinite paths that lay before us. They teach that all life sprang from the Absolute Awareness and discovers its place in the Infinite.
    S-Unless you observe something, it isn’t real, it is only a potential set of probabilities that are not resolved unless observed.

    Balance:
    R-Wisdom begins with balance. All things come from a balance of forces. Yin and Yang energies are not seperate energies; they are one and the same energy with two different charges.
    S-All of the material physical universe is a balance of forces. Positive and negative energy in balance in an infinite array of forms and patterns. In fact, all of reality is a zero sum game.

    Oneness:
    R-There is but one God. All things belong to God and are one with God. It is our destiny to learn to connect and discover our Union with God.
    S-At the most basic level of reality there is no separateness. Everything is connected to everything else.

    Holyness:
    R-Holyness is defined as the presence of God. Only God can make someone or something Holy. To become holy one must draw nearer to God and learn to walk in his ways.

    Plese note that the only difference between the wisdoms of science and religion is Holyness.

    The one Understanding was split into the 7 Great Wisdoms. Each of these flames are burning among the religions. Understand the 7 Wisdoms and you will have true Understanding. —Chester

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    John 1:1 IN THE beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself.
    2 He was present originally with God.
    3 All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being.
    Amplified Bible

    These are the very words of Veda.
    Prajapatir vai idam asit: In the beginning was Brahman.
    Tasya vag dvitya asit; with whom was the Vak (or Sound)…
    Vag vai paramam Brahma; and the Vak (Sound) is Brahman”

    There is a Yogic Discipline called Shabda Yoga – The Divine Science of Light and Sound. This path helps one to become one with the light and sound of the supreme divine. The Masters of the Discipline teach how all of creation came into being. Creation came into being though the light and sound of the creator. This sound is called OM or AUM. It is part of mantras and chants used by tibetan monks and other meditative schools of thought.

    One of the criticisms science has had in the past with religious and spiritual thought is that none of the truths/wisdoms could be verified by experimentation. The mystic significance of OM may be the first spiritual truth to be proven by the penultimate Scientific Grand Theory of Everything.

    After Albert Einstein finished his Theory of General Relativity his next project was the Grand Unified Theory. He died with his dreams unfulfilled. The other great theory of Science is the Theory of Quantum Thermodynamics. Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity describes the Universe of the very large. Quantum Theory describes the Universe of the very small. Until recently, there was no way to bridge the Theory of Relativity with Quantum Theory. With the discovery of the Superstring Theory of Quantum Reality came a startling yet spiritually correct solution. At the sub-atomic infrastructure of reality, science discovered not points of infinity but incredibly small vibrating strings.

    In his book The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, Brian Greene describes how science discovered the music of reality.

    … [Albert Einstein’s] dream of a unified theory has become the Holy Grail of modern physics. And a sizeable part of the physics and mathematics community is becoming increasingly convinced that string theory may provide the answer. From one principle-that everything at its most microscopic level consists of combinations of vibrating strands-string theory provides a single explanatory framework capable of encompassing all forces and all matter. String theory proclaims, for instance, that the observed particle properties, … are a reflection of the various ways in which a string can vibrate. Just as the strings on a violin or on a piano have resonant frequencies at which they prefer to vibrate-patterns that our ears sense as various musical notes and their higher harmonics-the same holds true for the loops of string theory. But we will see that, rather than producing musical notes, each of the preferred patterns of vibration of a string in string theory appears as a particle whose mass and force charges are determined by the string’s oscillatory pattern. The electron is a string vibrating one way, the up-quark is a string vibrating another way, and so on. Far from being a collection of chaotic experimental facts, particle properties in string theory are the manifestation of one and the same physical feature: the resonant patterns of vibration-the music, so to speak–Of fundamental loops of string. The same idea applies to the forces of nature as well. We will see that force particles are also associated with particular patterns of string vibration and hence everything, all matter and all forces, is unified under the same rubric of microscopic string oscillations-the “notes” that strings can play. For the first time in the history of physics we therefore have a framework With the capacity to explain every fundamental feature upon which the universe is constructed. For this reason string theory is sometimes described as possibly being the “theory of everything” (T.O.E.) or the “ultimate” or “final” theory. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene; pp15-16. Vintage Books 1999

    Science and ancient Master’s agree, each with their own way saying it; All of Reality comes from The Quantum AUM /OM. — Chester Messenger
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    OPEN YOUR MINDS AND STOP BEING DIVIDED! WE WERE CREATED TO EVOLVE!

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