"From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful"

   

February 12, 1809 isn't just for fans of Abraham Lincoln. Another great man whose legacy — like Honest Abe's, larger than life — inspires and enlightens ever more with the passage of time, was born the very same day in the very same year. Darwin's Shrewsbury (graphic image from their site, above) invites fans to send birthday wishes to Shrewsbury's favorite son, British naturalist extraordinaire Charles Darwin, blogged here early and often.

While Leader of the Free World-Elect Barack Obama channels Abraham Lincoln as "the world" looks on in shock and awe, admirers of Charles Darwin are getting ready to celebrate their hero's 200th birthday, together with the 150th anniversary of publication of the great naturalist's earthshaking On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (full text available online here).

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one," we quoted from Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in a caption accompanying this image taken from the deck of the schooner "Friendship" heading out of the Chelsea Creek on a sunset cruise three years back, "and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

We're delighted to note that that greatest of great men of our own day, Pope Benedict XVI, reiterating a point he has made before, has sent his own good wishes Darwin's way at a recent conference:

In agreement with his predecessors Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II, the holy father stated that there is no opposition between faith’s understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences. He stated, “Belief in the creator does not exclude accepting the theory of evolution.” In fact, the pope bluntly asserted that the antithesis that some assume exists between the concept of creation and the theory of evolution is absurd, “… because there are so many scientific proofs in favor of evolution which appears to be a reality and enriches our knowledge of life and being as such.”

Which brings us to something David Brooks said in that February 2007 NYT op ed we cited in our previous post, something that's been puzzling us for years:

And here’s another perversity of human nature. Many conservatives resist the theory of evolution even though it confirms many of conservatism’s deepest truths.

We suspect it has to do with our species' primal hard-wired fear of being watched and the concomitant — do you love that word as much as we do? — "natural tendency to believe." We are not at all surprised to find faith-based protestations on both sides of the aisle. Compare the Young Earth Creationists who "believe that God created the Earth in six 24-hour days on the right with the similarly willfully anti-scientific Al Gore-allied Anthropogenic Climate Changeists on the left whose fire-and-brimstone sermons declare that "the debate is over" and "scientific consensus" is the last word. The coldest winter in years be damned!

“'It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives,' wrote Charles Darwin," we captioned this image last April, adding "Yes, you, Ben 'No Intelligence Allowed' Stein."

How sadly predictable. We had thought that Ben Stein's loony anti-Darwin movie was an aberration, just as we had thought Susan Sontag & Company's anti-American post-9/11 rantings and ravings would soon pass. But no. They're here to stay. This from Reason was enlightening:

Opponents of Darwin traditionally have been led by biblical literalists, whose "arguments" on the subject have been generated mostly by the Book of Genesis. Now their camp includes some of the most prominent thinkers in the conservative intellectual movement.

As a matter of historical curiosity, this new turning of neocon eyes toward heaven comes just as Pope John Paul II has officially recognized that "the theory of evolution is more than an hypothesis." Indeed, it comes as evolutionary thinking itself is shedding considerable light on an array of questions and problems, from brain growth to the development of immune systems, from sociobiology to economics, from ecology to software design. Such research is yielding anti-designer results. F.A. Hayek long ago recognized the phenomenon of "spontaneous order" and described how it arose in markets, families, and other social institutions. Now, ingenious computer models are confirming Hayek's insights. It is increasingly obvious that social systems, from commerce to language, evolve and adapt without the need for top-down planning and organization. Order in markets is generated through processes analogous to Darwinian natural selection in biology. In other words, we can indeed have apparent design without a designer; the world is demonstrably brimming with just such phenomena.

Forget about the impotent Ben Stein. Is Baracko Bama listening?

Comments

[Connecticut Yankee]

Benedict XVI (and Tiny) would doubtless approve of the fact that the Laboratory of Genetic Diversity at the National Cancer Institute has an official Cat Genome Project (its sub-project, the Genome Annotation Research Fields Felis catus is known as GARFIELD). The LGD decided to research the cat genome because its evolution sheds new light on the evolution of the human genome. The researchers think that the domestic cat is the most useful animal model at present for gaining a better understanding of human hereditary diseases and human infectious diseases as well as the evolution of genome organization in general. Wonderful photo of a cat pondering a diagram of the feline genome.

Did Darwin like cats too, I wonder?

[Barbara Lee]

Ben Stein not only produces loony movies. He also gave the maximum allowable political contribution to Al Franken's senate campaign, talking about intractable looniness. The man's reputation as a intellectual is highly suspect, wouldn't you say?

[Sissy Willis]

Connecticut Yankee: I'm not sure about Darwin himself, but a quick googling turned up this fabulous quotation from his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin:

"To respect the cat is the beginning of the aesthetic sense."

[goomp]

"Natural tendency to believe." These words open an understanding of the nature of mankind, which is to be rewarded for what we do that is good and forgiven for the wrong. The Judeo-Christian philosophies which contain the most successful moral codes for living in a civilized society are the accumulated wisdom of mankind's recorded history. They were developed and written in a style that was able to reach people living in a far less understood physical world than that in which we live today. Unfortunately many today think their understanding of the physical development of mankind precludes the necessity of understanding the needs of the spiritual nature of mankind. Benedict XVI points in the right direction.

[Joan of Argghh!]

Like many say of Christianity, "it's not Jesus I have a problem with, it's his followers," I find myself in a lonely camp in this debate.

Raised Catholic, I've never had a problem with the sciences or Darwin. What I do have a problem with is the "darwinist" or scientistic views that seek to shut out any consideration of an Intelligence beyond what can be merely observed.

Indeed, as our physical eye grows keener through atomic microscopes, we are amazed at the still-unfathomable knowledge that is holding it all together, even as we observe it. Had we not suspected something beyond what we could see, we would have not delved deeper.

The outright rejection of what is Unseen causes scientific inquiry to stop. I choose to encourage the scientist to keep moving forward, to see even more, not less! But to ascribe some sort of purity or superiority to the Darwinist who sneers at any thought of the divine is to hobble free thought, lest it discover something uncomfortably unknowable.

[Sissy Willis]

Joan --

A beautiful exposition of a point of view I totally admire.

I carry no water for those atheists who insist on imposing their lack of faith on others.

[Jason A.]

Joan, you don't seem to understand.

We don't 'shut out consideration of an intelligence beyond what we can observe.' It's been considered, it still gets considered. The thing is, we *don't find any evidence for it*.
We don't entertain ideas for the simple fact that they make some people feel good. We prefer to spend our time on ideas that produce knowledge.
'Free thought' does not mean 'pursue every idea that is possible with equal commitment, no matter how unlikely or unevidenced.' That's a sure-fire way to waste your time.

Don't you see how your call to use knowledge to seek the 'unknowable' is crippled from the outset?

"I carry no water for those atheists who insist on imposing their lack of faith on others."
And I have no idea why people think faith is a good thing. If we were talking about any topic other than religion, and you told me all the evidence points toward one conclusion, but I said I believed in the exact opposite conclusion for no other reason than 'I just know it, I have faith' you would think of me as an ignorant, close minded moron. And rightly so.
Why is religion different?

[Joan of Argghh!]

Why Jason, how did you come to have a thought about your thinking? You have only barely begun to think. You have certainly ingested information.

You assume that those with faith have such faith without a reason for it, just "a hunch." I always find that to be a fallacious start to the discussion, as you have never assumed a position other than your own, or have given no more than a cursory nod to what others have parroted about actual Logic. Logic and Reason are fearless.

I ask no one to take anything on "faith". Indeed, there can be no real faith without Reason and Evidence.

You say there is no evidence, but there never will be if you do not suspect enough to look for it. Apples fell even when the invisible force of gravity was unknown. Thankfully, Newton was unafraid of what he didn't know, and was fully prepared to use logic to get to the invisible gravity of the universe.

In law school, one must learn to reason and deduce from both sides of an argument. This has been lost in the casual public discourse about matters of metaphysics and global warming. A yawning gap of ignorance exists where one side simply refuses to engage the hypotheses of the other.

Centuries of disciplined thought, logic, and sound reason can easily lead someone to an entirely reasonable conclusion of an Intelligence that working to make itself known. Christians have more readily faced the assumptions of a non-existent Creator more than any Darwinistic or scientistic (please note the separation from true Science in the "scientistic" manner of thought) frame of mind has ever deigned to consider such an existence.

Loon or not, Stein's main point stands as an affront to those who are afraid to argue against their own prejudices. That fear is no complement to Darwin or to Science.