Charles Darwin was born today in 1809 (198 years ago). As we approach his 200th birthday and we see continued debate about his theory of evolution, more and more people are recognizing Darwin on his birthday as one of the most noteworthy scientists of the 2nd millennium. There are various celebrations and events going on around the world and a site that tries to tell you about all of them (http://www.darwinday.org).
At this point Darwin’s “theories” have turned into the widely accepted beliefs of evolutionary biology and have been applied to other fields as well. It is a rare (and probably misguided) scientist or intellect who does not believe in the basic theory of evolution. In Darwin’s times there were a number of unproven elements that Darwin himself was unable to resolve before his death; virtually all of those have since been resolved and his theories have stood the test of time better than any others.
It is shocking then that only 14% of Americans think that evolution is “definitely true” (pretty much the lowest in all “western” countries) and over a third think that the world was created “as is” 6000 to 10000 years ago and is immutable. America is falling behind in science and technology while there are people trying to turn it into a Theocracy. These are very frightening facts to me and they should be to you as well.
One of the difficulties with evolution is that it just isn’t intuitive; you look around and can’t see any evolution happening at all and to say that we have a vast majority of our definition (DNA) in common with a rat is, frankly, insulting. Finally though there is a modern example of evolution in the making. The HIV virus has evolved in recent years into two distinct strains (HIV-1 and HIV-2) that are no longer capable of mating (combining) and this is one of the distinctions of two separate races. Scientists have seen the variations happening and have seen how some variations are more successful than others; evolution in the making. The reason this can happen with a virus is the shear numbers of reproductions that occur.
It took us going into space to finally convince the Catholic Church that the Earth revolves around the Sun (something Galileo almost died for in 1633) and maybe this modern proof that life is not immutable will help prove once and for all that evolution is fact.
How this fits into Religion is debatable and not really relevant to this blog. But the fact is that we are connected, each and every one of us, to every other Human (after all, genetically, there is no such thing as race) and also to every other living organism on the planet. That is an astounding thought and hopefully one that makes you look around at the world in a different light.
Thank you Darwin!
If you are interested in reading up on the modern view of Evolutionary Biology, try Steve Jones' Darwin's Ghost, The Origin Of Species Updated from Ballantine Books.
