15 September 2008
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| Question | Darwinism | Creationism/ID | Cosmic Ancestry |
| Origin of life? | chance (1) | God/unspecified intelligence (1) | undemonstrated (2) |
| Source of life? | the cosmos | ||
| Origin of genetic programs for higher life forms? | chance (1) | God/unspecified intelligence (1) | undemonstrated (2) |
| Source of genetic programs for higher life forms? | the cosmos | ||
| Can mutation and natural selection produce microevolution? | yes (1) | no/yes | yes |
| Can mutation and natural selection produce macroevolutionary progress? | no | not without HGT (3) | |
| Has life inhabited Earth for more than 3 billion years? | yes | no/yes | yes |
| Did higher life forms descend from lower ones? | yes | no/maybe | yes with HGT (3) |
| What existed before the [standard] big bang? | nothing | God | something |
| Was there life before the [standard] big bang? | no | no | yes |
| Can miracles be scientifically proved? | no (4) | yes | no |
| What caused the cosmos to exist? | the big bang | God | science cannot answer |
| What caused life to exist? | chance | God/unspecified intelligence | science cannot answer |
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(1) The answering philosophy sees these two questions as the same question. (2) The origins of life and genetic programs are assumed events with weak logical grounding and no firm supporting evidence. (3) HGT = Horizontal Gene Transfer (4) But the superastronomical unlikelihoods that darwinian evolution claims to overcome are effectively miracles. | |||