Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-27-2016
Abstract
Evolution has always been considered a battleground between religion and science. Despite that perception, there are some indications that religious beliefs have in uenced and continue to in uence some current interpretations in evolutionary biology. To that end I present evidence on how pervasive the theological idea of predestination, which has been long discussed in the the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, has in uenced some of the elucidations of the nature of biological evolution. I will concentrate on the history of ideas about the evolution of cave organisms to epitomize the strong in uence of religion on some evolutionary ideas as shown not only by some of the interpretations but also by the terminology still used today. I conclude that scientists need to understand the historical and philosophical framework of their research if they really want to claim that their work is really value-free.
This paper discusses the in uence of religious thought on evolutionary thinking particularly regarding cave biology.
Comments
This work was originally published in Research Ideas and Outcomes, available at doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e9015.