Life in Darwin's Universe PDF Download

Author: Gene Bylinsky
Publisher: Doubleday Books
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Author: Steve Stewart-Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139490990
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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If you accept evolutionary theory, can you also believe in God? Are human beings superior to other animals, or is this just a human prejudice? Does Darwin have implications for heated issues like euthanasia and animal rights? Does evolution tell us the purpose of life, or does it imply that life has no ultimate purpose? Does evolution tell us what is morally right and wrong, or does it imply that ultimately 'nothing' is right or wrong? In this fascinating and intriguing book, Steve Stewart-Williams addresses these and other fundamental philosophical questions raised by evolutionary theory and the exciting new field of evolutionary psychology. Drawing on biology, psychology and philosophy, he argues that Darwinian science supports a view of a godless universe devoid of ultimate purpose or moral structure, but that we can still live a good life and a happy life within the confines of this view.

Author: Yan T. Wee
Publisher: Yan T Wee
ISBN: 9789811826757
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Darwinists hope to bury God in an avalanche of a causeless universe and a godless evolution. But instead of liberating us, they plunge us into a cosmic depression. We are reduced to: From Nothing, By Nothing, For Nothing - an accidental leftover from the Big Bang, evolved by a lucky chance, and are here for no ultimate purpose. We are just walking molecules, birthed through a cosmic accident, dancing to the music of our DNA, and destined to disappear in a cosmic blink - nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. And when we look to science and evolution for answers, all we get is a blank look. Life has no real purpose dude - it is about the survival of the genes in us - feeding, fending, fleeting and fathering - just live through it and get it over. Our final destination is the hole in the ground. But is it true? Perhaps we are: From Someone, By Someone, For Someone. Perhaps there is an unexplored and awesome universe beyond the Darwinian world of survival for nothing. Science encourages us to think critically and let us place Darwinism in the crosshairs and examine it in the light of empirical science - is it observable, falsifiable and repeatable? If not, it is not experimental science. And, as we shall see, Darwinism is an unobservable and unreproducible pseudo-science. This book will walk us through cosmology, biology, philosophy and end with theology, the queen of the sciences. Empirical science buries Darwinism and resurrects Creationism. We are more than cosmic orphans lost in an accidental, uncaring and dying Universe; we are living souls, made in the image of God, and designed to have a wonderful relationship with an awesome Creator. Yan T Wee, the founding Pastor of Shalom Baptist Church, Singapore, writes from his fascinating research into the latest skirmish between speculative Darwinism and deducible Creationism. He concludes that Darwinism, when viewed in its entirety, is not only disingenuous, but a guaranteed, one-way ticket into the universe of ultimate meaninglessness and despair.

Author: Mario Livio
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439192383
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Drawing on the lives of five great scientists, this “scholarly, insightful, and beautifully written book” (Martin Rees, author of From Here to Infinity) illuminates the path to scientific discovery. Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein all made groundbreaking contributions to their fields—but each also stumbled badly. Darwin’s theory of natural selection shouldn’t have worked, according to the prevailing beliefs of his time. Lord Kelvin gravely miscalculated the age of the earth. Linus Pauling, the world’s premier chemist, constructed an erroneous model for DNA in his haste to beat the competition to publication. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle dismissed the idea of a “Big Bang” origin to the universe (ironically, the caustic name he gave to this event endured long after his erroneous objections were disproven). And Albert Einstein speculated incorrectly about the forces of the universe—and that speculation opened the door to brilliant conceptual leaps. As Mario Livio luminously explains in this “thoughtful meditation on the course of science itself” (The New York Times Book Review), these five scientists expanded our knowledge of life on earth, the evolution of the earth, and the evolution of the universe, despite and because of their errors. “Thoughtful, well-researched, and beautifully written” (The Washington Post), Brilliant Blunders is a wonderfully insightful examination of the psychology of five fascinating scientists—and the mistakes as well as the achievements that made them famous.

Author: Gene Bylinsky
Publisher: Doubleday Books
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Author: Philip Kitcher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199724997
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Charles Darwin has been at the center of white-hot public debate for more than a century. In Living With Darwin, Philip Kitcher stokes the flames swirling around Darwin's theory, sifting through the scientific evidence for evolution, Creation Science, and Intelligent Design, and revealing why evolution has been the object of such vehement attack. Kitcher first provides valuable perspective on the present controversy, describing the many puzzles that blocked evolution's acceptance in the early years, and explaining how scientific research eventually found the answers to these conundrums. Interestingly, Kitcher shows that many of these early questions have been resurrected in recent years by proponents of Intelligent Design. In fact, Darwin himself considered the issue of intelligent design, and amassed a mountain of evidence that effectively refuted the idea. Kitcher argues that the problem with Intelligent Design isn't that it's "not science," as many critics say, but that it's "dead science," raising questions long resolved by scientists. But Kitcher points out that it is also important to recognize the cost of Darwin's success--the price of "life with Darwin." Darwinism has a profound effect on our understanding of our place in the universe, on our religious beliefs and aspirations. It is in truth the focal point of a larger clash between religious faith and modern science. Unless we can resolve this larger issue, the war over evolution will go on.

Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439126291
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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In a book that is both groundbreaking and accessible, Daniel C. Dennett, whom Chet Raymo of The Boston Globe calls "one of the most provocative thinkers on the planet," focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, showing how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe. Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and then extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions, challenging the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day.

Author: Steve Stewart-Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108776035
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages :

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The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our altruistic tendencies, and our culture? The book tackles these issues by drawing on two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, travelling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we're but a tiny, fleeting fragment. Featuring a new foreword by Michael Shermer.

Author: Stephen C. Meyer
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062071491
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 605

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When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue, but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the “Cambrian explosion,” many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock. In Darwin’s Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life—a mystery that has intensified, not only because the expected ancestors of these animals have not been found, but because scientists have learned more about what it takes to construct an animal. During the last half century, biologists have come to appreciate the central importance of biological information—stored in DNA and elsewhere in cells—to building animal forms. Expanding on the compelling case he presented in his last book, Signature in the Cell, Meyer argues that the origin of this information, as well as other mysterious features of the Cambrian event, are best explained by intelligent design, rather than purely undirected evolutionary processes.

Author: New Scientist
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
ISBN: 1473658446
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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How did we get here? It's the journey of a lifetime. All cultures have a creation story, but a little over 150 years ago Charles Darwin introduced a revolutionary new one. We, and all living things, exist because of the action of evolution on the first simple life form and its descendants. We now know that it has taken 3.8 billions of years of work by the forces of evolution to turn what was once a lump of barren rock into the rich diversity of into plants, animals and microbes that surround us. In the process, evolution has created all manner of useful adaptions, from biological computers (brains) to a system to capture energy from the sun (photosynthesis). But how does evolution actually work? In How Evolution Explains Everything, leading biologists and New Scientist take you on a journey of a lifetime, exploring the question of whether life is inevitable or a one-off fluke, and how it got kick-started. Does evolution have a purpose or direction? Are selfish genes really the driving force of evolution? And is evolution itself evolving?