Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

as the God who created it. Of course, Charles Darwin’s suggestion
that species developed over time challenged the church’s account in
radical ways.
Darwin showed that the plans according to which organisms
in accordance with selection procedures that determine from
the outside, not the inside, which features of the species will
remain. Further, these changes are not progressive; they do not
proceed according to some larger plan in which things become
more perfect. Species merely adapt themselves to the current
circumstances, which themselves will change for no reason and in
accordance with no plan.
Darwin’s theory can be set out in terms of four basic principles,
each one based on experience: (1) Children look like their parents.
(2) Children don’t look exactly like their parents. (3) You must
be alive to have children. (4) You must get a date before you
have children.
Certain family resemblances exist that are not widely shared outside
the family and, thus, come from being part of the family.
Although many traits are heritable, the second principle tells us that
offspring occasionally exhibit new traits for seemingly no good
reason. Random mutations occur, some of which are good and
some of which aren’t. Sometimes, these mutations could be passed
to offspring, and sometimes they couldn’t.
Because he raised pigeons, Darwin knew that he could breed
for a certain mutation and, eventually, would have a group of
pigeons who shared the mutation.
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