Charles Darwin's 200th birthday
Being the Gringo-centric nation that we are, we can easily forget that another luminary besides Abraham Lincoln was born on exactly the same day as our 16th President. Maybe--dare I say it--somebody even more important, because he helped to define how we view ourselves in relation to nature and the universe.
Certainly, Charles Darwin’s legacy is argued more vehemently in current affairs than Lincoln’s. We’ve settled the slave issue, and the Confederacy lives on only as a welling-up in the eyes of its sons and daughters.
Why is it that evolutionists and creationists can’t live together in harmony? This isn’t a football game, where only one team can win. My view (and not an unusual one, I’m sure) is that the concepts are not mutually exclusive.
I imagine that sitting in heaven listening to celestial choirs of angels and archangels can get a little tedious after a while, even with the likes of Mozart and Bach writing the score. Maybe He set up Natural Selection as a kind of combination ant farm and demolition derby to keep Himself occupied.
Before you go labeling me as an Intelligent Design type, by extension He would have had to set up the system so that it would be random and unpredictable, otherwise He would know how it was going to turn out (see celestial choir, above). Now we’re getting into the doctrine of Free Will, which is beyond my pay grade.
CHAN LOWE has been the Sun Sentinel’s first and only editorial cartoonist for the past twenty-six years. Before that, he worked as cartoonist and writer for the Oklahoma City Times and the Shawnee (OK) News-Star.
Comments
It has been wisely said that sometimes people can be judged by the kind of enemies they make.
The same can be true of ideas. Intelligent Design has been roundly denounced by both Creationists and by the anti-religious.
Posted by: Edgar R. Schneider | February 13, 2009 10:56 AM
darwin's "theory" is the biggest crock ever foisted on humankind...you are correct in saying the theory is simple...as in simple minded...while there may or may not be "a missing link" with the feathered dinosaur there is certainly much missing from the fairy tale...and there are many many complex biological systems contained in each cell that darwinism just can't explain...and while biologists may froth at the mouth over the fairy tale of evolution the field of bio chemistry has cast major doubts on the theory that haven't (and can't) be explained by darwinism...the foremost periodical in the field is called the "journal of molecular evolution"...no one has ever explained in detailed, scientific fashion how mutation and natural selection could build the complex structures...in fact none of the papers published in the JME over the entire course of it's life has ever proposed a detailed model by which a complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual step by step darwinian fashion...such as intramolecular transport or phosphoprotein signaling pathways...the fact that none of this is even addressed is a strong indication that darwinism is an inadequate framework for understanding the origin of complex biochemical systems...and to date any attempts to explain the evolution of highly specified, irreducibly complex systems (like blood clotting) by a gradualistic route have so far been incoherent...bottom line is that darwinism can't explain complex biological systems that make up all life and as such is an incomplete theory without a scientific foundation
Posted by: HEY MIDDLE AMERICA | February 16, 2009 7:50 AM
I liked your cartoon. Good drawing! Thanks for recognizing how important Darwin is to homo sapiens. If it weren't for him, we'd probably still be swinging in the trees. Scientific American dedicated the entire January issue to evolution.
Posted by: Ron Werner | February 16, 2009 7:01 PM
I was fascinated by the photo you ran last week celebrating Charles Darwin's 200th Birthday.
The photo showed Darwin's grave inside Westminster Abbey with a priest laying flowers on his grave.
How the "Father of Evolution" ended up buried in the "House of God" fascinates me.
Maybe he relalized that he was just a great explorer of evolution that "God himself created".
Posted by: Michael J Dart | February 17, 2009 11:04 AM
and there are many many complex biological systems contained in each cell that darwinism just can't explain...
GOD DID IT!!!! That settles it! Hope they never can explain it or another "god of the gaps" will be closed...
Posted by: Mike | March 4, 2010 9:22 PM