Darwin's Birthday Renews Evolution Debate
Pete Schaff
Issue date: 3/24/09 Section: News
Feb. 12 marked the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, the man responsible for founding the belief in evolution. That is the belief that life on earth evolved by means of natural selection, a process through which plants and animals change over time by adapting to their environments.
Groups have sought to ban the teaching of evolution in schools since the early 1960s, when the U.S. Supreme Court imposed severe restrictions on state governments that opposed lessons in evolution. The results of these rulings said that school boards, legislatures and government bodies were banned from prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
Last month, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press stated that 63 percent of Americans believe in creationism, the idea that that the creation accounts in the Old Testament of Genesis are true and akin to a scientific explanation for the creation of the earth and development of life. Creationism, as stated by the Pew Research Center, includes the idea that humans evolved over time under the guidance of a Supreme Being.
"Seriously…only in America," said Robert LaMarche, junior biology major and evolutionist, upon hearing the survey's results.
Charles Darwin grew up in a conservative era when repression of revolutionary Radicalism had displaced the 18th century Enlightenment. Darwin went to Edinburgh University in October 1825 to study medicine. He attended the official university lectures, but complained that most were stupid and boring, and found himself too sensitive to the sight of blood. He was disgusted by the dull and outdated anatomy lectures. His father was unhappy that his younger son would not become a physician.
Darwin's father therefore enrolled him at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1827 for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the qualification required before taking a specialized divinity course and becoming an Anglican parson. Charles had concerns about being able to declare his belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England. In his spare time, he studied divinity books. From there he started working in the zoological society and began to speculate about the possibility that "one species does change into another" to explain the geographical distribution of living species such as the bird rheas, native to South America. The bird, as theory dictates, split into two species, the greater rhea and the lower rhea, as one adapted to its environment.
Groups have sought to ban the teaching of evolution in schools since the early 1960s, when the U.S. Supreme Court imposed severe restrictions on state governments that opposed lessons in evolution. The results of these rulings said that school boards, legislatures and government bodies were banned from prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
Last month, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press stated that 63 percent of Americans believe in creationism, the idea that that the creation accounts in the Old Testament of Genesis are true and akin to a scientific explanation for the creation of the earth and development of life. Creationism, as stated by the Pew Research Center, includes the idea that humans evolved over time under the guidance of a Supreme Being.
"Seriously…only in America," said Robert LaMarche, junior biology major and evolutionist, upon hearing the survey's results.
Charles Darwin grew up in a conservative era when repression of revolutionary Radicalism had displaced the 18th century Enlightenment. Darwin went to Edinburgh University in October 1825 to study medicine. He attended the official university lectures, but complained that most were stupid and boring, and found himself too sensitive to the sight of blood. He was disgusted by the dull and outdated anatomy lectures. His father was unhappy that his younger son would not become a physician.
Darwin's father therefore enrolled him at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1827 for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the qualification required before taking a specialized divinity course and becoming an Anglican parson. Charles had concerns about being able to declare his belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England. In his spare time, he studied divinity books. From there he started working in the zoological society and began to speculate about the possibility that "one species does change into another" to explain the geographical distribution of living species such as the bird rheas, native to South America. The bird, as theory dictates, split into two species, the greater rhea and the lower rhea, as one adapted to its environment.
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professional resumes
posted 12/30/09 @ 8:59 AM EST
Charles Darwin was an outstanding scientist.
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