The Darwin Debate

David Masci writing for The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life noted "almost 150 years after Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Americans are still fighting over evolution."



He went on to say,if anything, the controversy has recently grown in both size and intensity. In the last five years alone, for example, debates over how evolution should be taught in public schools have been heard in school boards, town councils and legislatures in more than half the states. Throughout much of the 20th century, opponents of evolution (many of them theologically conservative Christians) either tried to eliminate the teaching of Darwin's theory from public school science curricula or urged science instructors also to teach a version of the creation story found in the biblical book of Genesis.



Charles Darwin, a biologist developed the theory of natural selection which concluded, All living things derived from simple forms, through a gradual process of descent with modification, to paraphrase. He proposed the idea that all things must adapt to their environments, and yet only the fittest survive. His book The Origin of The Species (1859)discusses natural selection and the process of evolution. To explore the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church regarding evolution, and in order to understand fully the foundations of it, one needs to reflect back to the encyclical Humani Generis (1950) written by Pope Pius XII. The encyclical was clear in that it rejected the theory of evolution, but rather supported the monogenism, a belief connected to the notion that human beings are literally descended from one set of parents-Adam and Eve.



In his theory of evolution Darwin attempts to explain how creation came about. Someone wise once said God created man, and Darwin explains how God did it.



The Darwin Correspondence Project was founded in 1974 by an American scholar, Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith, a zoologist in the University of Cambridge (UK). They originally set out to locate, research, and publish summaries of all letters written by Charles Darwin (1809-82). The Project has been able to bring to light Darwin's personal connection to the church via a series of letters.



According to The Darwin Correspondence Project, In 1842, within six years of his return from the Beagle voyage, Darwin moved to Down House, in the village of Down, Kent. There was no Unitarian chapel in the vicinity, and the family went dutifully to the local Anglican church of St Mary’s each Sunday. All the children were baptised and confirmed in the Church of England. The whole family took the sacrament, although Emma used to make the children turn around and face the back, on occasions when the rest of the congregation recited the Trinitarian Creed. The Darwins placed a large gravestone near the entrance to the church, and over the years they buried their children Mary, Charles and Elizabeth, Darwin’s brother Erasmus, Emma’s sister Sarah, and Emma herself, in the churchyard at Downe (Moore 1985).



It is interesting to note that clergymen with whom Darwin corresponded were his personal friends, and also provided him with data he used for his publications.



The Science-Religion debate seems not have been abated in more recent times. Kevin McGill writing for The Associated Press pointed out there are disagreements on what exactly will result from policy language the state education board adopted for teaching science in Louisiana public schools, but one thing looks pretty clear: sooner or later Louisiana is going back to court in a case that will look like a descendant of the 1987 argument over "scientific creationism."



The story went on to say, Barbara Forrest, staunch opponent of anything that might bring the religious-based concept into science classes, thinks such a fight is just what some supporters of the new state policy have in mind. She points fingers at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a think tank that backs, among other things, the idea of intelligent design -- the concept that there is scientific evidence that living organisms were designed.