For a hundred and fifty years a revolutionary idea has been spreading all over the world. It has helped us unravel the mysteries of creation. Transforming our understanding of life on Earth. And our own place in Nature. But this idea has implications that go far beyond science. Its legacy reaches deep into every area of our lives. Andrew Marr, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, BBC 2009
In September 2008 the Church of England issued a belated apology for its attack on Charles Darwin. Darwin hasn’t killed God: religious people have simply found different ways to justify their faith. Has he destroyed morality? Again, no. To understand the origin of morality doesn’t mean you must cast it aside. But Darwin has changed the terms of trade. He’s returned us to Nature. To its wonder, to its glory, and to its danger. Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution questions almost everything we thought we knew about ourselves. Where we come from. Why we behave as we do. The origins of our morality. It isn’t comfortable and it isn’t easy but the more science looks at this theory, the truer it turns out to be. Man is the truth-seeking primate. Darwin has given us a great truth. And there is no going back. ibid.
Darwin had an argument about slavery with the captain of the Beagle, and became so angry he was almost thrown off the expedition. ibid.
During the rest of his voyage Darwin would encounter a vast variety of plants and animal species he’d never seen before. He’d discover fossils of giant extinct species that seemed to resemble the living animals around him. And in the Galapagos he’d encounter different species of birds and tortoises uniquely adapted to the conditions on each of the islands. Everywhere he looked he seemed to find evidence that Life on Earth was constantly changing. ibid.
Malthus’s warnings helped push a draconian new poor law through parliament. The poor were now forced into an even sharper struggle for survival. Compete for work or off you go to the degradation of the workhouse. Malthus would help Darwin find the key to explaining the diverse and ever-changing nature of life on Earth. Malthus’s notion of perpetual struggle is really the breakthrough for Darwin. As he squares up to the notion that in Nature, only one thing really counts: survival. Darwin proposed that keener eyes, a bigger beak, better camouflage can be decisive for an individual’s chances of surviving long enough to reproduce ... By 1842 Darwin had a name for this mechanism – Natural Selection. But he spent nearly twenty years testing and refining his revolutionary theory before finally publishing On the Origin of Species in 1859. Darwin’s theory quickly took on a life of its own, beyond the world of science. ibid.
Survival of the fittest – Darwin’s adoption of those four words [see Spencer] would have consequences for a hundred years. He meant them as a description of the evolution of life on the planet over countless millennia. But they were seized and turned into a prescription, scientific justification for political ideas, some of which were vile. Charles Darwin was a naturalist. But the would-be engineers of humanity were delighted by what he said, and they were waiting. ibid.
In 1922 Haldane came here to Trinity College, Cambridge, and concluded that genes were the mechanism by which natural selection worked. This meant that Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection wasn’t so much about the survival of the fittest individuals, as the survival of the best adapted genes. This changed the focus entirely and began a new line of enquiry into what the scientist Richard Dawkins would call The Selfish Gene. Haldane then applied this to human behaviour and morality. ibid.
In 1953 a British and American scientist working together in Cambridge announced they had discovered the structure of DNA. It confirmed Darwin’s theory that all life is linked by common decent. Including humans. ibid.
After leaving England, Darwin had immersed himself in the world south of the Equator. There the vivid exoticness of its people, animals and landscapes had started him on an extraordinary journey towards a revolutionary theory of the Evolution of Life. Darwin’s Brave New World, CBC & ABC 2009
December 1831: The Beagle’s mission was to map the coast of South America ... And when the ship anchored at the Galapagos Islands, Darwin discovered a natural treasure trove. ibid.
On the 14th of May 1856 Charles Darwin embarked on the long and meticulous process of writing his enormous book on evolution ... The publication of the Origin would be only the beginning of the controversy that Darwin was yet to face. ibid.
Charles Darwin died in 1982 aged 73. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, thanks to the intervention of Huxley. It was the final destination on a journey that began in the southern hemisphere. ibid.
Darwin was very aware that these were dangerous ideas socially, politically, because evolutionary theory suggests everything can change. Professor Janet Brown, Harvard University
He changed the way human beings think about themselves. We are just part of Nature. Professor Janet Brown
So what else is new? If there is no more to Darwinism than a truism then the whole theory rests on very shaky ground. Brian Leith, The Descent of Darwin: A Handbook of Doubts About Darwinism
It may be true that scientism and evolutionism (not science and evolution) are among the causes of atheism and materialism. It is at least equally true that biblical literalism, from its earlier flat-earth and geocentric forms to its recent young-earth and flood-geology forms, is one of the major causes of atheism and materialism. Many scientists and intellectuals have simply taken the literalists at their word and rejected biblical materials as being superseded or contradicted by modern science. Without having in hand a clear and persuasive alternative, they have concluded that it is nobler to be damned by the literalists than to dismiss the best testimony of research and reason. Intellectual honesty and integrity demand it. Conrad Hyers, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science
In all their polemics, the anti-creationists invariably avoid discussing the actual scientific evidence for macro-evolution. If there were any such evidence, they could easily settle the whole conflict, merely by presenting the evidence! Instead they seem compelled to resort to bombast ridicule, defamation, intimidation, and distortion. Surely that great body of working scientists, largely uninvolved so far in the creation/evolution conflict will soon begin to see that a two-model approach to all scientific study is salutary and will persuade their more emotional brethren to open their minds to potential truth wherever it might be found. Henry Morris, founder Institute for Creative Research
In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutation plus natural selection – quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology. Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up
It is absurd for the evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything. G K Chesterton, St Thomas Aquinas
The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory, has itself become an orthodoxy preached by its adherents with religious fervor, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers, imperfect in scientific faith. Marjorie Grene, Encounter, November 1959 p48
Darwin theorized that mankind (both male and female) evolved alongside each other over millions of years, both reproducing after their own kind before the ability to physically have sex evolved. They did this through asexuality (‘without sexual desire or activity or lacking any apparent sex or sex organs’). Each of them split in half: ‘Asexual organisms reproduce by fission (splitting in half).’ Ray Comfort, Nothing Created Everything
New Rule: You don’t have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap. President Bush recently suggested that public schools should teach intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution, because after all, evolution is ‘just a theory’. Then the president renewed his vow to, ‘drive the terrorists straight over the edge of the earth’.
Here’s what I don’t get: President Bush is a brilliant scientist. He’s the man who proved you could mix two parts booze with one part cocaine and still fly a jet fighter. And yet he just can’t seem to accept that we descended from apes. It seems pathetic to be so insecure about your biological superiority to a group of feces-flinging, rouge-buttocked monkeys that you have to make up fairy tales like, ‘We came from Adam and Eve’, and then cover stories for Adam and Eve, like intelligent design! Yeah, leaving the earth in the hands of two naked teenagers, that’s a real intelligent design.
I’m sorry, folks, but it may very well be that life is just a series of random events, and that there is no master plan – but enough about Iraq.
There aren’t necessarily two sides to every issue. If there were, the Republicans would have an opposition party. And an opposition party would point out that even though there’s a debate in schools and government about this, there is no debate among scientists. Evolution is supported by the entire scientific community. Intelligent design is supported by the guys on line to see The Dukes of Hazzard.
And the reason there is no real debate is that intelligent design isn’t real science. It’s the equivalent of saying that the Thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold because it’s a god. It’s so wilfully ignorant you might as well worship the US mail. ‘It came again! Praise Jesus!’
Stupidity isn’t a form of knowing things. Thunder is high-pressure air meeting low-pressure air – it's not God bowling. ‘Babies come from storks’ is not a competing school of thought in medical school.