Science Foundations: Evolution, Worldviews, and Origins

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering worldviews, historical contributors to evolutionary thought, Darwinian natural selection, Christian origins paradigms, and methodological naturalism.

Worldview

set of beliefs, values, assumptions that a person uses to understand the world

Natural Theology

belief that we can learn about gods existence by observing nature

Naturalism

richard dawkins and e.o wilson the view that the natural world can be explained thru natural causes and processes without supernatural explanation

Theistic Worldview

A worldview that god or a divine power exist and play a role in the creation of the universe

Non-Theistic Worldview

A worldview, exemplified by atheistic naturalism, that explains the world and existence without requiring belief in God or a divine creator.

Francis Collins

A Christian geneticist who led the Human Genome Project and stands for god and scientific discoveries could co exist

charles darwin

naturalist who developed the theory of evolution through natural selection

darwins natural selection theory

organisms with traits that give them an advantage in there enviorment are more likely to survive and reproduce over time those traits will become more common

orgins of species

species change over time from natural selection

Uniformitarianism

the same earth process that happen today such as erosion and volcano eruptions happened through out all years of earths history

descent of man

human evolutions and how humans are related to other animals through common ancesty

darwinism

term that discribes darwins theory of evolution

evolutionism

a broad term that describes beliefs about evolution

modern synthesis

combination of Darwinism and modern genetics to explain how evolution happens

Natural Selection

The mechanism of evolution in which individuals possessing advantageous inherited variations are more likely to survive and reproduce in the presence of limited resources.

On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin's foundational scientific work published in 1859, focusing on biological evolution, common descent, and the mechanism of natural selection.

The Descent of Man

Charles Darwin's book published in 1871 that specifically applied his evolutionary framework to human evolution and introduced the concept of sexual selection.

Darwinian Evolution

The specific biological framework of evolutionary change formulated by Charles Darwin, driven primarily by natural selection and common ancestry across generations.

Evolutionism

A broad term denoting ideological or philosophical systems built around evolutionary ideas, distinct from the objective biological process of evolution itself.

Modern Synthesis (Neo-Darwinism)

The unified framework that combines Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian genetics, accounting for mutations, genetic variation, population genetics, genetic drift, and gene flow.

God of the Gaps

A theological fallacy where God is invoked to explain phenomena currently unexplained by science, leaving faith vulnerable as scientific discoveries close those gaps.

god of gaps

when science has not explained something yet people just assume that it is rooted to god