101 - The Fossil Record vs. Evolution

A look at the fossil record to see if it supports the idea that humanity evolved from a chimp like ancestor.

1 ratings, 20 students enrolled

Course Overview

This course will equip you to be able to answer questions about evolution and creation regarding the fossil record.

The class includes a follow along note sheet, articles with questions to answer, and an optional ten question multiple choice quiz at the end.

The course is approximately 1 hour.

This course will help you understand why the Bible's claims about the origins of people and living organisms is not refuted by the fossil record.

What are the requirements?

There are no course requirements. This is lesson #1 in the Created on Purpose or Evolved by Chance class series.

What am I going to get from this course?

Understand why the fossil record does not support evolutionary claims.

What is the target audience?

Although anyone will benefit from this course, it will be most beneficial for those who have an open mind regarding the origins of humanity and the Biblical worldview.

About the Author

With a focus on cinematic beauty and human connection, Sam specializes in capturing peoples’ cultures and lifestyles. His affinity for traveling has led him to work on productions of all types and sizes across the United States, Western Europe, Central and South America. His travels abroad have taught him invaluable lessons in rural cinematography, multilingual interviews, and what it takes to capture stories while on the road.

Born and raised in the skateboard and surf culture of Santa Cruz, California, Sam found his passion for photography and filmmaking at a young age while making extreme sports videos with his friends. At Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television, he was educated in many aspects of filmmaking but focused on cinematography, directing, and documentary film.

Today, Sam looks to further explore the art of photography and new technologies of cinematography, expand his production company, Will Call Cinematic and continue to explore cultures around the world.

Course Curriculum

Section 1: Start Here

Introduction

Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations.[1] Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules

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History of evolutionary thought

The proposal that one type of organism could descend from another type goes back to some of the first pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, such as Anaximander and Empedocles. Such proposals survived into Roman times. The poet and philosopher Lucretius followed Empedocles in his masterwork De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). In contrast to these materialistic views, Aristotle understood all natural things, not only living things, as being imperfect actualisations of different fixed natural possibilities, known as "forms," "ideas," or (in Latin translations) "species." This was part of his teleological understanding of nature in which all things have an intended role to play in a divine cosmic order. Variations of this idea became the standard understanding of the Middle Ages and were integrated into Christian learning, but Aristotle did not demand that real types of organisms always correspond one-for-one with exact metaphysical forms and specifically gave examples of how new types of living things could come to be.

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Heredity

Evolution in organisms occurs through changes in heritable traits

Section 2: Variation

Variation

An individual organism's phenotype results from both its genotype and the influence from the environment it has lived in. A substantial part of the phenotypic variation in a population is caused by genotypic variation. The modern evolutionary synthesis defines evolution as the change over time in this genetic variation. The frequency of one particular allele will become more or less prevalent relative to other forms of that gene. Variation disappears when a new allele reaches the point of fixation
Mutation

Mutations are changes in the DNA sequence of a cell's genome. When mutations occur, they may alter the product of a gene, or prevent the gene from functioning, or have no effect. Based on studies in the fly Drosophila melanogaster, it has been suggested that if a mutation changes a protein produced by a gene, this will probably be harmful, with about 70% of these mutations having damaging effects, and the remainder being either neutral or weakly beneficial

reviews

super Admin

I thought this class was very helpful and useful. This course was recommended by someone close to me to take it and I am very glad I did! I learned new things and improved my skills. I hope to keep improving after this course! The instructor's are amazing! Always giving feed back, details, and were there if you needed any help. Thank you! I really enjoyed this class!
9 years ago