Page 95 - The Evolution Impasse 1
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           Darwin, Charles Robert                Darwin was highly influenced by the
                                               different species he saw during the cour-
              The first person to propose the the-
                                               se of this voyage, and especially by the
           ory of evolution in the form it’s accepted
                                               different species of finches he observed
           today was Charles Robert Darwin, an
                                               on the Galapagos Islands. He concluded
           amateur British naturalist.
                                               that the differences in these birds’ beaks
              Darwin never received any genuine
                                               stemmed from their adaptation to their
           training in biology and possessed only
                                               surroundings. As a consequence of this
           an amateur knowledge of nature and li-
                                               idea, he assumed that the concept of en-
           ving things. As a result of his interest he
                                               vironmental adaptation lay at the heart
           took his place as a volunteer on the dis-
                                               of all the variety among living things.
           covery vessel HMS Beagle, which sailed
                                                 Yet in making that assumption, Dar-
           from Britain in 1832 and traveled thro-
                                               win ignored the scientific facts, opposed
           ugh various regions of the world over
                                               the evidence that God created all living
           the next five years.
                                               species, and suggested that living things
                                                were all descended from some com-
                                                mon ancestor and became differentia-
                                                ted from another due over time, due to
                                                environmental conditions.
                                                   This hypothesis of Darwin’s was
                                                based on no scientific facts or experi-
                                                ments. However, with the support and
                                                encouragement that he received from
                                                eminent materialist biologists of the
                                                time, Darwin gradually worked up
                                                these hypotheses into a coherent the-
                                                ory, according to which all living
                                                things were descended from a single
                                                primitive ancestor, but had been sub-
                                                jected to minute changes over very
                                                lengthy periods of time, and thus di-
                                                verged anatomically from one another.
                                                   The ones that best adapted to their
                                                surroundings passed their characteris-
                                                tics on to subsequent generations, and
                                                these beneficial changes thus accumu-
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