What is Darwin’s point in chapter 12? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=234570#p234570 In chapter 12 is just a continuation of chapter 11 and discusses about life being distributed around the planet. This is summarized in the following paragraph (and it’s perhaps one of the longest sentences in the entire book). “The relations just discussed, namely, low and slowly-changing organisms …

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What is Darwin’s point in chapter 11? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=230003#p230003 In chapter 11, Darwin discusses the patterns of distribution of life on the earth. This chapter again seems to address more the prevalent “theory of creation” (where species are fixed and placed at specific points) rather than give substantive support for natural selection. “These cases of relationship, …

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What is Darwin’s point in chapter 10? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=228445#p228445 Chapter 10 is a general discussion of the appearance and disappearance of species in the fossil record. He states that species once lost do not reappear. “When a species has once disappeared from the face of the earth, we have reason to believe that the same identical …

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What is Darwin’s point in chapter 9? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=225497#p225497 In chapter 9, Darwin asks a very good question – “Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which …

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What is Darwin presenting in chapter 8? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=224716#p224716 In chapter 8, Darwin addresses the fourth problem of his theory – sterility of cross breeding of species. The main question he is trying to address is why is there generally sterility when crossing species. Natural selection cannot explain this since, by definition, sterility is not inheritable. …

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What is the point of chapter 7? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=222384#p222384 In chapter 7, Darwin goes into a discussion about instinct and how it changes. He specifically narrows the topic of instinct change to members of the same “class”. And also he does not talk about how instincts arise in the first place. “I must premise, that I …

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What is Darwin presenting in chapter 6? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=221581#p221581 In chapter 6, Darwin presents two problems to his theory and tries to address them. The first problem is why do we not see a continuous gradation between all life, especially in the fossil record? “But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why …

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What is the point of chapter 5? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=220760#p220760 This chapter discusses some of the (nonrandom) causes of variations. “I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations so common and multiform in organic beings under domestication, and in a lesser degree in those in a state of nature had been due to chance. This, of …

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What is Darwin’s point in chapter 4? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=219381#p219381 In the longest chapter of the book, chapter 4, Darwin introduces the concept of Natural Selection. “This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.” “Natural selection can act only by the preservation and accumulation of infinitesimally small inherited modifications, each …

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What is Darwin’s point in chapter 3? How well does it support his theory? https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=217209#p217209 His point, which is key to his theory, is that there is a competition among life and that those with advantages will over time dominate others. “Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause …

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