Happy Birthday Mr. Darwin!

We love birthdays and anniversaries , especially ones that end in zero. This year there are two such numbers related to Charles Darwin-200 years since his birth and 150 years since publication of Origin of Species. Of course there is all sorts of commentary and there should be. After all Darwin's way of looking at the world really did revolutionize biology and society as a whole.

What was it really that Darwin did that was so great? After all he wasn't the first person to speculate that evolution happens, or even to propose how it might happen. Maybe he was just the right person at the right time to be remembered. But I think there is more. Perhaps the best way to answer the question from my perspective is to briefly contrast Charles Darwin with Jean Louis Agassiz. Agassiz was one of the most popular scientists of the 19th century, especially in biology, Harvard Professor, did lots of important work on fossils and glaciation. Yet he never accepted evolution.

I encountered Agassiz in Edward Lurie's biography, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science. Lurie observed, as I recall, that Agassiz was a proponent of the notion that the geological features of the Earth were molded mainly by a series of catastrophic events and that that the distribution of species could be best explained by a series of creation events. As new data about geology and the distribution of species came out-Agassiz would simply postulate a new catastrophe or a new creation event. So the data are explained.

Darwin was different. Not only did he synthesize masses of data to support his ideas, but he confronted the weaknesses in his ideas head on. After all, Darwin knew that contradictions between observation and theory are not to be feared but provide new opportunities to learn by empirical means what makes the universe work. Agassiz was an accomplished scientist as well and probably understood this idea as well. The difference is that Agassiz did not understand the universality of the principle that contradictions provide new opportunities in all spheres of science, and, I argue, life as well.

So happy birthday Mr. Darwin and here's to biologists today who see contradiction as something not to be feared, or glossed over with rhetorical tricks, but as opportunity for understanding.

Fossils and Faith

I have been laid up with a virus-you know those unsung tools of the intelligent designer-but today my blogging energy got a boost or a kick from an article called "Resurrected Life" about an artist who uses fossils as the basis for religious art. At first read the article might seem to be a sincere attempt to reconcile religion and science through art. A noble idea and one I endorse.

The article left just a few questions in my mind as explained in the following excerpt from my Lawrence Journal World Blog:

"...there are just some things about it that really bother me as a scientist and as a religious person. For instance, Mr. Detrich thinks that non believers have nothing to live for. Personally I don't believe it is in my ken to say whether or not someone else has anything to live for based on their beliefs. Granted I don't know what is going on in the depths of atheist Richard Dawkins' psyche, but he certainly seems to think his life has a point.

Second of all I am bothered by this statement about nonbelievers:

"They might just accidentally come to the conclusion that life would be better if they believed in a super being, in a creator, rather than life would be better if your actions didn’t matter."

This is a kinder gentler version of Pascal's wager which basically says you should believe because the reward is eternal bliss and the penalty eternal damnation. I have never been impressed by this wager in it's original form and I am even less impressed with Mr. Detrich's kinder gentler version. Also, does Mr. Detrich's kinder gentler version extend to devotees of, say, Krishna or for that matter any sort of belief in a supreme being?

Next, I wonder why is the notion of God "creating" incompatible with scientific explanations of how life came to be and evolved? Mr. Detrich seems to at least accept the geological time scale. Well, if that scale is valid then why could not God's actions to bring change be seen from our end as being-well - evolution?

Finally what am I to make of the concluding statement in the article where he says it is "better to be on the side of good than on the side of bad." Well what about that? Is some one automatically good because they believe in a higher power and some one automatically bad because they don't? Or is some one automatically bad because they believe that evolution happens? Does Mr. Detrich still think we are "evilutionists" as he writes in his "musings"?"

Check out his musings for yourself at:

http://www.spearofjesus.com/musings.html

Remember Darwin's Day is February 12.

Conservatives and Evolution

Lest you are one of those people who think that belief in evolution is restricted to the "liberal elite", what ever that is, then I would urge you to take a gander at Darwinian Conservatism, the newest blog on my blogroll.

http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/

I don't agree with everything there of course, but Larry Arnhart is one conservative who is out there tackling the demons from the Discovery Institute. See for instance:

http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2007/12/questions-and-answers-for-john-west.html

and response to questions from the DI's John West:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/12/the_questions_larry_arnhart_wo.html#more

Also see this interesting exchange:
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/ArnhartDarwinDesign.shtml

Over at Gay Species...

Check out this wonderful autobiographical post on Darwinism and Gays by D. Stephen Heersink. I don't think I am spilling anything by giving his conclusion because there is so much great stuff in his post.

"Darwin is every Gay and Lesbian individual's HOPE for the future, for every individual "queer's" HOPE for diversity and pluralism, because Darwin's theories insist upon it. Can Queers not correlate the denunciation of GLBT and the denunciation of Darwin as having a related "associated basis?" Are you that dense? Are you "excluding the middle" of inferential reason? Reasons, invalid though they be, exist for the shared denunciation."