ACTIVITY NO: 3.

1. Discuss the key points of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

Primary and secondary sexual characteristics refer to specific physical traits that set apart males
and females in sexually dimorphic species; that is, species in which the males and females look
different from each other. Primary sexual characteristics are there from birth (for example,
penises vs. vaginas). Secondary sexual characteristics emerge at puberty (such as low voices and
beards in human males, and high voices and no facial hair in human females).

Primary Sexual Characteristics

Primary sexual characteristics are those that are present at birth. In mammals, sex is
determined through hormonal events in utero that under normal circumstances are controlled by
the combination of X and Y chromosomes. If an egg is fertilized with a sperm carrying the X
chromosome, the gonads should develop into ovaries and the offspring will be female; if the egg
is fertilized with a sperm carrying the Y chromosome, the gonads should develop into testes and
the offspring will be male. (There are many exceptions to this, but these are considered
anomalies.)
Some reptile species, including most turtles and all crocodilians, utilize temperature-
dependent sex determination to control the sex ratios (number of males to females) of their
offspring. In these species, eggs incubated within a low temperature range typically produce one
sex and eggs incubated within a higher temperature range produce the other.

Secondary Sexual Characteristics

Hormones secreted through the hypothalamus initiate the development of classically male
or female secondary sexual traits. These secondary sexual characteristics are not used in
reproduction, but are apparent in most sexually dimorphic species - species having two forms
that are determined by their sex. Secondary sexual characteristics include human female breasts,
human male facial hair, the mane on a male lion, and the bright, flashy plumage of many male
birds and fishes.

Female Mate Choice

The persistence of male ornamentation in animal populations is thought to be driven by
female mate choice and/or male-male competition. The choosy female theory purports that
females choose males with bigger, brighter and better ornamentation to increase the viability of
her offspring by choosing a mate with good genes. This increase in viability can take place
through two mechanisms.
In the sexy son’s hypothesis, the female chooses the flashy male because his
ornamentation will be passed to her sons, thereby giving her sons a greater chance of
reproducing and perpetuating her genes. The good genes hypothesis supposes that the female
chooses the flashier male because his ornamentation may represent increased disease resistance
or other fitness benefits that may be passed to her offspring.

Male-Male Competition
Some secondary sexual characteristics give a dominant male an advantage, such as the
ability to overcome his opponents in physical battle, which may win that made the right to mate
with a female, thus increasing his genetic contribution to the population. This dominant male will
be able to mate with more females than less-dominant males, presumably due to superior
characteristics like tusks and antlers, that can be used as weapons when fighting other males.
Because he will be able to mate with more females, the genes for the superior fighting
characteristic will become prevalent in the population; in other words, that characteristic will be
naturally selected.
https://sciencing.com/primary-secondary-sexual-characteristics-8557301.html

2. Why does Darwinian Theory become controversial?

Everyone agrees that Darwinian evolution is a controversial topic. But not everyone agrees
on why.
Many advocates of Darwinian evolution promote the stereotype that the theory is
controversial only because a small religious segment of society has social, religious, or political
objections. These advocates claim that there is no credible scientific disagreement with
Darwinian evolution. This, however, is not true. The Scientific Dissent from Darwinism list
shows that there is credible scientific dissent from Darwinian theory. The Scientific Dissent from
Darwinism List includes 1,000+ PhD scientists who are skeptical of Darwinian evolution. The
list shows that it is possible to hold legitimate scientific doubts about Darwinian evolution from a
strictly scientific standpoint.

Of course, there are some people who have religious objections to Darwinian evolution.
Conversely, some people make religious (or anti-religious) arguments for accepting Darwinian
evolution. Religion isn’t the issue here. The issue is whether it’s possible to be a scientific
skeptic of Darwinian evolution. The Scientific Dissent from Darwinism List shows that it is.

What Is “Evolution”?
Whenever talking about challenges to “evolution,” it’s vital to carefully define terms, otherwise
confusion can result. There are three common usages of the term “evolution”:
Evolution #1 — Microevolution: Small-scale changes in a population of organisms.
Evolution #2 — Universal Common Descent: The idea that all organisms are related and are
descended from a single common ancestor.
Evolution #3 — Darwinian Evolution: The view that an unguided process of natural selection
acting upon random mutation has been the primary mechanism driving the evolution of life.
No one doubts Evolution #1, which is sometimes called “microevolution.” Some scientists doubt
Evolution #2. But the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism list only concerns Evolution #3, also
called Darwinian evolution or Darwinism. The scientists who have signed the dissent statement
say this:

We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for
the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be
encouraged.
We defined Evolution #1 by equating it with “microevolution”—small-scale changes in a
population of organisms. Collectively, Evolution #2 and #3 might be termed macroevolution,
which is defined as follows:

Macroevolution: Large-scale changes in populations of organisms, including the evolution of

fundamentally new biological features. Typically, this term also means that all life forms
descended from a single common ancestor through unguided natural processes.
Unfortunately, evolutionists sometimes purposefully confuse these definitions, hoping
you won’t notice that they have overstated their case. They will take evidence for microevolution
(Evolution #1), and then over-extrapolate the evidence and claim it supports macroevolution
(Evolution #2 or Evolution #3). Indeed, sometimes evolution advocates will equate
microevolution and macroevolution, the idea being that macroevolution is just repeated rounds
of microevolution added up. (Such inaccurate claims are addressed at The Scientific Controversy
Over Whether Microevolution Can Account For Macroevolution.)

What Scientific Evidence Challenges Darwinian Evolution?

The signers of the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism List have many scientific reasons for being
skeptical of Darwinian theory. In writing this, we do not intend to speak for any of them in
particular, but the following section briefly lists some of the types of scientific data that are often
cited by those challenging Darwinian evolution:
Genetics— Mutations Cause Harm and Do Not Build Complexity: Darwinian evolution relies
on random mutations that are selected by a blind, unguided process of natural selection. This
undirected process has no goals. Being random, it tends to harm organisms and does not improve
them or build complexity. As biologist Lynn Margulis, a member of the U.S. National Academy
of Sciences until her death in 2011, said: “New mutations don’t create new species; they create
offspring that are impaired.”1 Similarly, the past president of the French Academy of Sciences,
Pierre-Paul Grasse, contended that “[m]utations have a very limited ‘constructive capacity’”
because “[n]o matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of
evolution.”2

Biochemistry— Unguided and Random Processes Cannot Produce Cellular Complexity: Our
cells are like miniature factories using machine technology but dwarfing the complexity and
efficiency of anything produced by humans. Cells use miniature circuits, motors, feedback loops,
encoded language, and even error-checking machinery to decode and repair our DNA. As Bruce
Alberts, former president of the U.S. National Academy of Science, observed: “[t]he entire cell
can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines,
each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines.”3 Darwinian evolution struggles to
explain the origin of this type of integrated complexity. Biochemist Franklin Harold admits in a
book published by Oxford University Press: “There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts
of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”4

Paleontology— The Fossil Record Lacks Intermediate Fossils: The fossil record’s overall
pattern is one of abrupt explosions of new biological forms, and generally lacks plausible
candidates for transitional fossils, contradicting the pattern of gradual evolution predicted by
Darwinian theory. This non-Darwinian pattern has been recognized by many paleontologists.
University of Pittsburgh anthropologist Jeffrey Schwartz states: “We are still in the dark about
the origin of most major groups of organisms. They appear in the fossil record as Athena did
from the head of Zeus — full-blown and raring to go, in contradiction to Darwin’s depiction of
evolution as resulting from the gradual accumulation of countless infinitesimally minute
variations.”5 Likewise the great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr explained that “[n]ew species
usually appear in the fossil record suddenly, not connected with their ancestors by a series of
intermediates.”6 Similarly, a zoology textbook observes: “Many species remain virtually
unchanged for millions of years, then suddenly disappear to be replaced by a quite different, but
related, form. Moreover, most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record, fully
formed, and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group.”7
https://dissentfromdarwin.org/resources-for-students/why-is-darwinian-evolution-
controversial/
 3. How does Darwin’s Theory of Evolution transform the societies?

A century and a half after the publication of The Origin of Species, it’s difficult for us today
to appreciate the seismic shift in attitudes that began with its publication. Most of us have grown
up having been taught Darwin’s theory in our schools. Many people accept it unquestioningly.
Few questions the teaching of his ideas in our public schools. But it was very different in 1859.
Richard Weikart, head of the history department at California State University, Stanislaus,
describes how some viewed the book’s initial publication: “A good deal of the initial resistance
to Darwinism sprang from a perceived threat to the moral order. Adam Sedgwick, Darwin’s
former mentor in natural science at the University of Cambridge, expressed this fear poignantly
in a letter to Darwin in 1859, shortly after reading The Origin of Species. He stated, ‘Passages in
your book…greatly shocked my moral taste’ ” ( From Darwin to Hitler, 2004, p. 1).
Warning of the consequences of the book’s publication, Sedgwick added that “humanity, in
my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it, and sink the human race into a lower
grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its
history” (ibid.).

Where did Darwin’s ideas lead?

Enthused with his new theory, it’s doubtful that Charles Darwin gave much thought to
the possible moral consequences of what he was writing. He certainly could not have foreseen
that less than 75 years later, his ideas would lead to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, the Nazi
attempt at exterminating the Jews. But Professor Weikart’s detailed book documents the
connection, with plenty of quotes from mostly German philosophers and scientists in the
intervening years.
Dr. Richard Evans, professor of modern history at the University of Cambridge and
author of The Coming of the Third Reich, says that Weikart’s book “shows in sober and
convincing detail how Darwinist thinkers in Germany had developed an amoral attitude to
human society by the time of the First World War, in which the supposed good of the race was
applied as the sole criterion of public policy and ‘racial hygiene.’
“Without over-simplifying the lines that connected this body of thought to Hitler,
he demonstrates with chilling clarity how policies such as infanticide, assisted suicide,
marriage prohibitions, and much else were being proposed for those considered racially
or eugenically inferior by a variety of Darwinist writers and scientists, providing Hitler
and the Nazis with a scientific justification for the policies they pursued …” (From
Darwin to Hitler, back cover)
Many have asked how the nation that produced Beethoven, Bach, Goethe and Schiller could
have allowed a man like Hitler to become their supreme leader. Weikart’s research helps us
understand how this happened, by showing the gradual change in thinking that took place “from
Darwin to Hitler”—a degeneration in appreciating the value of human life that continues to
this day.
It wasn’t only Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) movement that was heavily influenced by
Darwin. “After reading Darwin’s Origin of Species, Karl Marx [the founder of the communist
movement] wrote to Friedrich Engels, ‘Although developed in a coarse English manner, this is
the book that contains the foundation in natural history for our view.’ Furthermore, many
pacifists, feminists, birth control advocates, and homosexual rights activists—some of whom
were persecuted and even killed by the Nazis—were enthusiastic Darwinists and used Darwinian
arguments to support their political and social agendas” (p. 4).

A new morality takes hold

Darwin’s ideas led to a radically different worldview on the part of many European
thinkers. “In 1904 one of the leading German Darwinian biologists, Arnold Dodel, proclaimed,
‘The new world view actually rests on the theory of evolution. On it we have to construct a new
ethics … All values will be revalued’ … Their moral relativism implied that some moral values
might have been valid in the past, but may no longer apply under modern conditions” (p. 43).
Interestingly, a contemporary of Dodel, the famous American anti-evolutionist William
Jennings Bryan, “was largely motivated by concern over the moral implications of Darwinism.
As a pacifist, Bryan was outraged by the Darwinian rhetoric of German militarists, whom he
held responsible for the outbreak of World War I” (p. 1).
Bryan’s concerns were proven right, as their thinking was just a stepping-stone to Hitler’s racial
theories leading to a second global conflict a quarter century later.
Darwin’s theory did not just alter political thinking, contributing to fascism, communism
and two world wars. It also changed the thinking of huge numbers of people within Western
societies. Values based on centuries of Judeo-Christian teaching on the sanctity of marriage and
human life in general began to erode. Darwin’s theory did not just provide an alternative
explanation to the biblical account of creation, it effectively led to doubts on everything in the
Bible, including the moral laws.
Today, many in the West view marriage as a quaint but outdated custom, while the idea
of fidelity—sexual commitment to one partner for life—is held by only a small minority. In the
minds of many, sex is solely for pleasure, and children are an inconvenience. Without realizing
it, one of the inevitable consequences of Darwinism is a very real threat to the very existence of
the Western European peoples who have embraced his teaching.

Rejection of Judeo-Christian values

Weikart explains how accepting Darwinist dogma shifted society’s thinking on human
life: “Before Darwinism burst onto the scene in the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of the
sanctity of human life was dominant in European thought and law (though, as with all ethical
principles, not always followed in practice). Judeo-Christian ethics proscribed the killing of
innocent human life, and the Christian churches explicitly forbade murder, infanticide, abortion,
and even suicide.
“The sanctity of human life became enshrined in classical liberal human rights ideology
as ‘the right to life,’ which according to John Locke and the United States Declaration of
Independence, was one of the supreme rights of every individual” (p. 75).
But that was to change. “Only in the late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth
century did significant debate erupt over issues relating to the sanctity of human life, especially
infanticide, euthanasia, abortion, and suicide. It was no mere coincidence that these contentious
issues emerged at the same time that Darwinism was gaining in influence. Darwinism played an
important role in this debate, for it altered many people’s conceptions of the importance and
value of human life, as well as the significance of death” (ibid.).
This progression in Western thinking is not surprising to biblical readers who are familiar
with the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, written 18 centuries before Darwin. In it, the apostle
showed how people’s rejection of the true God, in spite of the abundant physical evidence of His
existence all around them in His creation, led inevitably to the worship of things and, in turn, to
casting off moral values and restraint.
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities … have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they
knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him … Although they claimed
to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to
look like mortal man and birds and animals … and worshiped and served created things rather
than the Creator” (Romans 1:20-25, New International Version).
In the ancient world, the peoples who rejected God soon found the need for something to
replace Him. Thus, they came up with the pagan gods of their imaginations—many of which
reflected man’s own blood-lust and sexual appetites that are so much the opposite of the true
Creator of the Bible.

Consequences come from rejecting God

Rejecting the true God also had social and sexual consequences, as Paul showed in
subsequent verses. “For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women
exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise, also the men, leaving the natural
use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is
shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due” (verses 26-27).
Just as man’s earlier rejection of God led to throwing off morality, once Western
societies began to reject the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, people no longer saw any
justification for their nations to be governed by God’s moral laws. Many enthusiastically
embraced Darwin’s theories as it gave them an excuse to reject the laws of God and live sexually
liberated lives.
 Some well-known evolutionists admitted as much. The famous author Aldous Huxley,
for one, wrote: “Those who detect no meaning in the world generally do so because, for one
reason or another, it suits their [purpose] that the world should be meaningless … For myself, as,
no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an
instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was … liberation from a certain system of
morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom …” (Ends
and Means, 1938, pp. 270, 273).
Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous and also a leading proponent of evolution, later wrote,
“The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a superhuman being
is enormous” (Essays of a Humanist, 1966, p. 223).

No restraints
Anything and everything can be justified once you take God out of the picture.
Paul in Romans 1 went on to say: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their
knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness,
maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness” (verses 28-29). Sadly, this
reads like a vivid summation of today’s Western world.
Perhaps the next verse sums it up best, with Paul writing that men became “haters of
God” (verse 30). Darwin may not have started out with any idea of rejecting Judeo-Christian
morality, but that’s where his theory ultimately led. Living in Victorian England, Darwin would
no doubt have been appalled at Nazi ideology—but without the theory of evolution, Hitler’s
Third Reich could not have justified itself.
Weikart concludes: “Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without
Darwinism, especially in its social Darwinist and eugenics permutations, neither Hitler nor his
Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves
and their collaborators that one of the world’s greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.
Darwinism—or at least some naturalistic interpretations of Darwinism—succeeded in turning
morality on its head” (From Darwin to Hitler, p. 233). GN
https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/how-darwins-theory-changed-the-world