Analysis Of Stephen Gould's Evolution As Fact And Theory

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In the essay, “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” Stephen Gould defenses Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution over the beliefs of creationist on God creating all organisms in the world. To further his support, he states his three arguments which are observational evidence, the imperfection of nature, and transitions found in fossil records to demonstrate that even though evolution is just a theory, there are plentiful evidence of facts that supports it. The essay was not just about justifying the theory of evolution to the creationist but also to reject the ideas of blindfolded views on scientific creationism. Throughout the essay, Gould acknowledges many of the major perspectives of the scientific world to support the theory of evolution that …show more content…
It is also true that many of the living things on earth now were not all existing during the past with dinosaurs, such as, birds and mammals. Since, dinosaurs don’t exist in the present time and birds do, then it must be correct that all life on earth evolved from previous ancestors such as birds from dinosaurs and humans from apes. On that note, Gould’s argument on evidences from the fossil records suggests one of the most famous example of fossil transition called Archaeopteryx. It is a genus of early bird that has a combination of feathers and structures of a bird with features such as teeth, pony tail, and legs of a small coelurosaur dinosaur. Additionally his third argument outshines the beliefs of creationist over the evolutionist because it questions that if God created human species long time ago, then why God added more modern features in a chronological sequence such as reducing face, teeth, and etc. to humans. I felt the argument was needed to question the creationist that, “Did he create to mimic evolution and test our faith thereby?” (Gould, 256). In his last argument, he not only proves the evidence of evolution in an efficient way, by pointing out fossil records and evolved features, but also by questioning the logic to why God would add more revolutionary features to organisms over the …show more content…
However, I felt that Gould was little harsh to the creationist by his writing style and some choice of words but the constant adding of creationist views and explanation on the theory was needed to prove that there is more logic in the evolution theory over the religious belief. Everyone should believe in religion but not blindly that you start calling it science without no facts to support it. Religion and science should be kept away from each other and religion should be there to learn the values and traditions rather than questioning the existence of science because if it gets out of hand then one day it will put stop to all new discoveries made by scientist. Throughout his essay, Gould was trying to portray that, “We must infer them from results that still surround us: living and fossil organisms for evolution, documents and artifacts for human history”, which is spot-on because the world runs on proofs than on your opinions (Gould, 255). Gould’s presentation of evidences and his disagreement towards the creationist is very logical and written in a straightforward manner for the audience to know that there is more creditability of Darwin’s theory than the creationist

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