Darwinian Articles:

Text of  Charles Darwin - The Voyage of the Beagle
Text of  The Origin of Species - by Charles Darwin
Text of   Charles Darwin - The Descent of Man
The online searchable writings of Charles Darwin




Article/Webpage Title or Topic
 Brief Summary
Summary Article:
Darwin Proved Right by Experiment with 'Alien' Life
By Robert Roy Britt
 The summary article concisely lists several weaknesses in Darwin's Evolutionary Theory.  (These are the reasons that some people do not "believe in" evolution.)  It does not go into details explaining the consequences or implications.  Rather, the point of the article is to discuss researchers who have created an artificial life form (a computer program) and allowed it to replicate and fill memory space or to be reduced based on certain criteria such as its ability to solve math formulae.

Actual Article: The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features
Richard E. Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert T. Pennock, Christoph Adami
Nature (Vol. 423, 2003, pp. 139-145)
[Download pdf file.]
Summary of an Experiment in the evolution of Lizards
by:  Jeff Poling

Regarding work by Thomas Schoener, and Jonathon Losos
(who has a variety of PDF and HTML versions of many of his publications)
 Indicative quotes from this summary article:

An experiment with lizards in the Caribbean has demonstrated that evolution moves in predictable ways and can occur so rapidly that changes emerge in as little as a decade.

The experiment bears on two theories of evolution, that of punctuated equilibrium and that of gradualism.[...].

The experiment involved the introduction of one species of lizard to fourteen small, lizard-free Caribbean island near the Exumas in the Bahamas. The lizards were left for fourteen years. [...]

A long-standing issue [i.e. controversy]  in biology is whether small evolutionary changes are the same as the large evolutionary changes seen over millions of years. In biology terms, the question is whether microevolution is the same as macroevolution.


The Talks.Origins Archive explores the Creation vs Evolution Controversy.
Most of these websites abased towards evolution, but there are a few informational sites here that also treat anti-evolution topics.  FAQ = Frequently Asked Questions.

Collection of Evolution FAQs, God FAQ, "Must Read" FAQ, 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, Evidence for Evolution, Discussion of Speciation, Examples of Speciation, and the Collection of "Arguments against Creationism" FAQs

This last also lists links that favor Anti-evolutionists:

Young Earth Creationism FAQ, Another Young Earth Creation Organization, A Geocentrist for Creation Science, Intelligent Design.

This also has a list of pro-evolution and anti-evolution organizations with summaries of who these people are and (as if that's not enough) they provide a page of Other Links that will send you to a plethora of additional discussions.
Discovery Institute
 Summarizes some controversies with evolution and distinguishes between Intelligent Design and Creationism.  It also sells videos on ID:  Icons of Evolution based on the book by Jonathan Wells and Unlocking the Mystery of Life, which we watch in class.

This site references Jonathan Wells who is criticized in the article by Gishlink mentioned below.  This site also has a response to Gishlick by Wells.
Speciation
 Several webpages that describe and define speciation:  Biology Century,  Kimball's Biology pages.
Speciation in Progress by: Charles Brown
 Seven subspecies of salamander are gradually becoming unable to hybridize --- are becoming independant species.  Site includes the abstracts to related papers on Enzyme Analysis, Mitochondrial DNA, and Taxonomy.  The full paper abstract is also available.
The Beak of the Finch: A story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
 Rosemary and Peter Grant make annual trips to the Galapagos Islands to watch Darwin's finches evolve and speciation occur.  The book is available in our campus library.
Summary of the arguments by: Don Lindsay
 Lindsay gives a fairly thorough review of the ideas and much of the literature:  He has pages on Evidence for/against various ideas, a review of Behe's book, a review of Denton's book, and  a review of Wells' book.
NCSE: The National Center for Science Education
The Elusive Scientific Basis of Intelligent Design Theory by George Gilchrist
and
A Critique of "Icons of Evolution"  by: Alan D. Gishlick  (Wells responds)

This web-article evaluates a book ("Icons of Evolution" by Jonathan Wells) that criticizes evolution.  The author begins with
Evolution is the unifying paradigm, the organizing principle of biology. Paradigms are accepted for their overall explanatory power, their 'best fit' with all the available data in their fields. A paradigm functions as the glue that holds an entire field together, connecting disparate subfields and relating them to one another. A paradigm is also important because it fosters a research program creating a series of questions that give researchers new directions to explore in order to better understand the phenomena being studied. For example, the unifying paradigm of geology is plate tectonics; although not all geologists work on it, it connects the entire field and organizes the various disciplines of geology, providing them with their research programs. A paradigm does not stand or fall on a single piece of evidence; rather, it is justified by its success in overall explanatory power and the fostering of research questions. A paradigm is important for the questions it leads to, rather than the answers it gives. Therefore, the health of a scientific field is based on how well its central theory explains all the available data and how many new research directions it is spawning. By these criteria, evolution is a very healthy paradigm for the field of biology.
and then summarizes seven common examples that are criticized by Wells and discusses problems with Wells' arguments.  This article emphasizes what is taught and justifies why certain topics ought to be taught, rather than why we should "believe in" evolution.  He concludes with

In conclusion, the scholarship of Icons is substandard and the conclusions of the book are unsupported. In fact, despite his touted scientific credentials, Wells doesn't produce a single piece of original research to support his position. [...] Wells seems to think that scientific theories are supported by certain "keystone" pieces of evidence, removal of which causes the theory to collapse. Paradigms in science work when they provide solutions and further research; their health is not tied to single examples. The paradigm of evolution is not tied to a single piece of evidence.

[...]

When Alfred Wegener first proposed his theory of continental drift, he was laughed at and ridiculed. What did he do? Did he form a non-profit advocacy group and lobby state school boards and lawmakers to force teaching of "evidence against" geosynclinal theory? Write a book called Icons of Uniformitarianism? Evaluate and grade earth science textbooks and demand that they be rewritten to remove examples of "borderlands"? No. He went back and did more research. He found like-minded colleagues and they produced research. He fought in the peer-reviewed literature. He produced original research, not polemical popular tracts or politics. Eventually his ideas were adopted by the whole of geology -- not through politics but because of their overall explanatory power. If Wells and his colleagues want "intelligent design" to succeed, they need to produce that research. Until they do, evolution remains the reigning paradigm and the "icons" are perfectly acceptable teaching aids.