020090212 10:31 • 
Today is Darwin Day! Charles Robert Darwin was born on this day in 01809. As a birthday present, a Gallup poll today announces 39% of Americans “believe in” evolution, with another 36% holding no opinion. Not great, but it is worse for the deniers: a comparatively scant 25% of the American populace, mostly the religious and uneducated, do not understand the evidence laid out before us.
Here’s some clarification for all of us, including the media who don’t understand what they are saying when they exclaim over evolution’s “believers”. The scientific theory of evolution is not in any way like religious faith. For starters, a scientific theory is “a unifying principle that explains a body of facts and the laws based on them.” It is not made up from thin air… there must be factual data available. There are hard facts showing evolutionary processes at work, with more discovered every day. Not a single supporting fact is available for the religious belief of creationism.
And here’s the beauty of science and the scientific method: belief is not required. Unlike religion, science may change course and continue to pursue truth if new data leads the way, invalidating ideas which no longer fit more complete observation. Most religion cannot do this without eventually destroying the foundation of unquestioned dogma on which it is built.
Darwin himself would not publicly wade into the fray. He skirted all questions regarding evolution versus religion. I often wonder how he would react now, seeing the modern cultural battlefield playing out as a perfect example of his theory. I think he would experience frequent and wonderful belly laughs.
Here’s a beautiful quote from The Origin Of Species, Chapter 4: Natural Selection.
Under nature, the slightest difference of structure or constitution may well turn the nicely-balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder, then, that nature’s productions should be far ‘truer’ in character than man’s productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?
It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, 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, whenever and wherever 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, until the hand of time has marked the long lapses of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.
020070212 18:41 •
One of my favorite days of the year is here: Darwin Day! Happy birthday Uncle Charles… 198 years young, and many more to come!
For those of you questioning humanity’s status as a primate and our relationships to other members of our family tree, here are a few things to think about-
Consider the primate form: all primates, including humans, have five digits on each hand and foot. We all share the same basic physical structure.
Look at the genetics: we share 94%+ of our genome with chimpanzees.
Look at the practical use we’ve made of the physiological similarities between humans and other primates: we’re so alike, clinical tests are conducted using chimpanzees, apes and other primate members as stand-ins for for humans during drug development. A wide range of treatments and cures modern humans take for granted, such as the polio vaccine, were developed and tested on monkeys. Humans and other primates are afflicted by many of the same or similar diseases.
When looked at rationally, a mountain of other examples all point to our shared evolutionary path. Human embryos have a tail which is absorbed during development. Just as other tailless primates, human adults have a tail bone, the vestigial remnant of what swung behind our ancestors. The upright gait is still in development, giving rise to knee and lower back problems in many humans. Apes have a limited ability to learn human language. Chimpanzees laugh… they also use tools.
If you’re someone who has been taught to consider evolution a preposterous theory with no basis in fact, I urge you set aside your bias and read Uncle Charles with an open and rational mind. All of his writings are available on the web.
A passage from The Origin Of Species:
Numerous instances could be given of characters derived from parts which must be considered of very trifling physiological importance, but which are universally admitted as highly serviceable in the definition of whole groups. For instance, whether or not there is an open passage from the nostrils to the mouth, the only character, according to Owen, which absolutely distinguishes fishes and reptiles—the inflection of the angle of the lower jaw in Marsupials—the manner in which the wings of insects are folded—mere colour in certain Algæ—mere pubescence on parts of the flower in grasses—the nature of the dermal covering, as hair or feathers, in the Vertebrata. If the Ornithorhynchus had been covered with feathers instead of hair, this external and trifling character would have been considered by naturalists as an important aid in determining the degree of affinity of this strange creature to birds.
020060212 23:36 •
Today is Darwin Day. As I generally post late in the evening, for most readers this will effectively extend Darwin Day from the actual date of Charles Darwin’s birth, February 12th, to February 13th, thus claiming another day for the celebration of rational thought.
I read Darwin’s The Origin Of Species when I was nine, and it changed my life. I already knew this story of men being made from earth and women from ribs was a fairy-tale, so when Darwin gave me his grand scientific explanation, everything fell into place. I was overwhelmed by the logical sense of the world, and by the power of my mind to comprehend it.
I credit Uncle Charles with pointing me to the rational path which eventually became my rocket ship: humanism paired with a deep, logical agnosticism. There are many things I don’t know, and perhaps cannot know. I don’t know how life itself began… no-one does. Beyond that flash point, I know the likely way all life differentiated and continues to change, because Charles Darwin shared his thoughts on evolution with me.
Here are some Darwin resources:
The official Darwin Day Celebration site
DailyKos’ groovy write-up on evolution
The Panda’s Thumb, a great forum on evolutionary theory
The Talk.Origins archive
Charles Darwin Has A Posse, evolution awareness stickers designed by Colin Purrington (print and paste ‘em everywhere… I do.)
One of my favorite passages from The Origin Of Species:
“On the ordinary view of the independent creation of each being, we can only say that so it is;—that it has pleased the Creator to construct all the animals and plants in each great class on a uniform plan; but this is not a scientific explanation.
The explanation is to a large extent simple on the theory of the selection of successive slight modifications,—each modification being profitable in some way to the modified form, but often affecting by correlation other parts of the organisation. In changes of this nature, there will be little or no tendency to alter the original pattern, or to transpose the parts. The bones of a limb might be shortened or flattened to any extent, becoming at the same time enveloped in thick membrane, so as to serve as a fin; or a webbed hand might have all its bones, or certain bones, lengthened to any extent, with the membranes connecting them increased, so as to serve as a wing; yet all these modifications would not tend to alter the framework of the bones or the relative connection of the parts. If we suppose that an early progenitor—the archetype as it may be called—of all mammals, birds, and reptiles, had its limbs constructed on the existing general pattern, for whatever purpose they served, we can at once perceive the plain signification of the homologous construction of the limbs throughout the class. So with the mouths of insects, we have only to suppose that their common progenitor had an upper lip, mandibles, and two pairs of maxillae, these parts being very simple in form; and then natural selection will account for the infinite diversity in the structure and functions of the mouths of insects. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the general pattern of an organ might become so much obscured as to be finally lost, by the reduction and ultimately by the complete abortion of certain parts, by the fusion of other parts, and by the doubling or multiplication of others,—variations which we know to be within the limits of possibility. In the paddles of the gigantic extinct sea-lizards, and in the mouths of certain suctorial crustaceans, the general pattern seems thus to have become partially obscured.”
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