en español

en español

by Peter M. J. Hess, Director, Religious Community Outreach

Opponents of evolution often claim that their opposition is based upon a lack of supporting scientific evidence. In reality, their objection frequently stems from a separate issue: how to read the Bible and interpret the view of nature it projects.

en español

by Steven Newton, Public Information Project Director

The age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years (Ga or Gyr), a number which geologists have determined by several independent methods. Because of the recycling of crustal rocks by plate tectonics, no direct material from the earliest Earth still exists. However, geologists are able to analyze meteorites and lunar rocks returned by the Apollo missions.

Methods

This section features articles that offer commentary on religious issues relevant to the creationism/evolution controversy. We try to provide a variety of views, including some nonreligious views, as a way of encouraging the broadest understanding of the many and complex issues of faith and science, and especially of faith and evolution.

by Kevin Padian

Department of Integrative Biology & Museum of Paleontology

University of California, Berkeley CA

What is Paleontology? The Fossil Record and Evolution

A bit of history: the progression of life through time, as shown in the fossil record, was well known and generally accepted in the early 1800s, long before Charles Darwin ever sailed on the Beagle. People in England and on the Continent knew that life had changed through time, and that the deeper one went in the rock column, the more different from living forms the fossils became. Since that time the fossils have always documented evolution; the question in Darwin's time was the mechanism or mechanisms that could cause the change.