Evolution. Some quotes to begin:

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1 Evolution Some quotes to begin: [BYU I] can t skip teaching sensitive issues. We re a Church school and we must give the same education as one would get at another [university]. What better place could there be to deal with sensitive matters? [BYU I] has the difficult task of balancing the influence of the Church with the influence of academics. Max Checketts, former BYU-I academic vice president Studied all about it. Didn't bother me then. Doesn t bother me now. Gordon B. Hinckley If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys? If evolution is true, why do mothers only have two arms?

2 I give evolution two opposable thumbs up! Although many English scientists were themselves individuals of strong religious convictions, the impact of their scientific discoveries seemed consistently damaging to established faiths. Triple Threat Geology, by extending the history of the earth backward millions of years, reduced the stature of the human species in time.

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4 Astronomy extended our knowledge of stellar distances to dizzying expanses. Galaxies colliding, 600 million light years away from Earth. This dealio is 100,000 light years long/tall.

5 Pinwheel galaxy 27 million light years from Earth; it s 170,000 light-years in diameter.

6 The Pillars of Creation 3 light-years tall no longer exist. In 2007, astronomers announced that they were destroyed about 6,000 years ago by the shock wave from a supernova. Because of the limited speed of light, the shock wave s approach to the pillars can currently be seen from Earth, but their actual destruction will not be visible for another millennium.

7 The Helix Nebula (or Eye of God ), 8,000 light-years away. Estimated distance is about 215 parsecs (700 light-years) away. The Firefox Nebula. Any Explorer Nebula has yet to be discovered.

8 Combined, both sciences gave Victorians (and Moderns and Post-moderns... and everyone since) the same sort of bewildering view of the Exedrin-headache-inducing extent of time and space. Biology reduced humankind even further into insignificance. Darwin s theory of natural selection conflicted not only with the concept of creation derived from the Bible but also with long-established assumptions of the value attached to humanity s special role in the world.

9 Charles Darwin ( ) Chuck in Check Darwin s first book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution.

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12 How Natural Selection Works : Gary Larson s famous cartoon of the lemmings jumping off a cliff to prevent overpopulation.

13 Voyage route of The Beagle ( ) Darwin s theory of evolution is based on certain facts and the inferences drawn from them, which biologist Ernst Mayr summarized: Every species is fertile enough that if all offspring survived to reproduce, the population would grow (fact). Despite periodic fluctuations, populations remain roughly the same size (fact). Resources such as food are limited and are relatively stable over time (fact). A struggle for survival ensues (inference).

14 Individuals in a population vary significantly from one another (fact). Much of this variation is inheritable (fact). Individuals less suited to the environment are less likely to survive and less likely to reproduce; individuals more suited to the environment are more likely to survive and more likely to reproduce and leave their inheritable traits to future generations, which produces the process of natural selection (inference). This slowly-effected process results in populations changing to adapt to their environments, and ultimately, these variations accumulate over time to form new species (inference).

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17 It was Darwin's second great book (in 1871) on evolutionary theory, following his 1859 work, On The Origin of Species. In The Descent of Man, Darwin applies evolutionary theory to human evolution, and details his theory of sexual selection. The book discusses many related issues, including evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, differences between human races, differences between sexes, the superiority of women to men (evolution was a male-male competition over women; she chooses the winner), and the relevance of the evolutionary theory to society.

18 Result of both works publication: opposition from two major groups: fellow scientists, who challenged his theories on scientific grounds, and religious leaders who attacked his theories because they contradicted a literal interpretation of the Bible. Note: Darwin didn t actually or personally promote social Darwinism, the application of his scientific concepts to human cultures and societies (i.e., survival of the fittest ).