SCIENCE FOR BIBLE BELIEVERS

Glossary

• believe: When Job believes something, that means he is highly confident, not absolutely certain, that it is true.
• biased randomness: Biased randomness is situation where some possible outcomes are more likely than others. In other words, at least one possible outcomes has a different probability of occurring than another possible outcome.
• bigger: See increase.
• book of science: The book of science is a metaphorical book with all of the scientific theories that are generally accepted by scientists.
• creature: A creature is an animal or human.
• decrease: See increase.
• environmental fitness: Environmental fitness is the probability that a creature will survive to reproduce.
• faster: See increase.
• histogram: A histogram is a vertical bar graph in which the items on the x-axis represent different events, and the height of each bar is the number of occurrences of the corresponding event.
• increase: When Job uses the word increase in the context of evolution by saying something like, "The giraffes' neck length increased," he doesn't mean that a particular creature's (giraffe's) feature (neck length) increased during that creature's lifetime. What he means is that, with high probability, the average value of the feature of the creatures in each generation was greater than their average value of the feature in the previous generation. For the example, Job means that, from one generation to the next, the average neck length of the giraffes increased. Other words, like decrease, bigger, smaller, faster, slower, etc. have similar meanings.
• Job: In this book, Job is a word used to represent any scientist.
• know: When Job says, “I don’t know,” in response to one of your questions, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have stumped him, and he’s ready to believe your answer. He doesn’t mind not knowing something.
• life: A life is a plant, animal, or human.
• natural selection: When I say natural selection, I mean “the theory of evolution by the process of natural selection”.
• pure randomness: Pure randomness is a situation where every possible outcome is equally likely. In other words, each possible outcome has the same probability of occurring.
• reproductive tactics: Reproductive tactics are the things that a creature does in order to survive and reproduce.
• slower: See increase.
• smaller: See increase.
• species: Species is a word that I avoid using in this book, because there are problems with defining it, as explained here.
• theory: For Job, a theory is “a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena.” [dictionary.com, 2021]