Monitor staff



Yesterday was largely given over to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. But Feb. 12, 1809, was also the birthday of naturalist Charles Darwin, a titan of science whose seminal theories are accepted as fact by most scientists and scorned by half the public.

This year also marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin's great work was printed on Nov. 24, 1859. It is a book that still fuels investigation, thought and intense debate about the origins and mechanisms of life.

Darwin's theory of evolution is, of course, evolving. Life's mysteries, thanks to advances in genetic research and technology, are being solved at an accelerating pace. But humans may never know, with the certainty that they yearn for, exactly how life came into being and how species, including homo sapiens, arose from earlier life forms.

"It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, wherever and whenever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress . . . " Darwin said in The Origin of Species.

That statement, in its essence, remains true. Its hot-button word is "insensibly." It means that evolution has no goal in and of itself. It is a process.

It's hard to overstate the contribution Darwin made to science and human understanding with his insights. He was a prodigious thinker, a clear and convincing writer and a man of widespread curiosity and expertise.

Despite libraries, laboratories and museums full of evidence for its validity, evolution has yet to be accepted by the majority of Americans or Britons.

Every year, the Harris Poll measures the level of the theory's acceptance. In 2008, evolution was embraced as true or mostly true by 47 percent of Americans, up from 42 percent in 2005. But it has never been the majority belief.

The theory's main competitor for popular belief, a non-scientific, faith-based belief in a single creator that's appeared first as "creationism" and later as "intelligent design" was seen as true by 40 percent of Americans in 2008.

Darwin knew his ideas would challenge not just religion but also people's faith in who and why they are. That's why, odd is it might seem in the age of the double-helix and genetic engineering, the theory remains so controversial. Resistance is, however, slowly eroding.

Earlier this week Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, in discussing next month's Vatican conference on the 150th anniversary of The Origin of the Species, said the Catholic Church accepts Darwin's theory as compatible with its beliefs. A slight majority of Catholics, last year's Harris Poll found, believe in evolution.

The Catholic Church's position is a recognition of the power of scientific evidence. It's also a reconciliation of science and faith that's likely to spread to other religions. Though he's been dead for 127 years, Charles Darwin's famous theory still has people thinking and arguing, but it is slowly being accepted as the truth.








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well, you have the think. evolution has fact and religion has fantasy, as in not real. all think have evolved and adapted over time. or you can choose the nonsense that poof, there was man, poof, lets turn one of that man's rib into a woman. reality is so much easier to believe than harry potter insanity. But, we all have