Bicentennial of the Botanist

Campus Report ^ | February 20, 2009 | Daniel Allen

[bs9021]

Bicentennial of the Botanist by: Daniel Allen, February 20, 2009

Last week, Charles Darwin would have turned 200. To celebrate the occasion, the Center for American Progress (CAP) hosted a panel of experts to discuss the impact that Darwin has made on society and how to reconcile faith and evolution. The discussion was founded on the premise that in order for the U.S. to compete globally, we must teach our children science at home, including evolution.

Susan Thistlethwaite, a senior fellow at CAP, opened the discussion by insisting, “Whether or not you believe in evolution…it is not a belief system. Evolution is happening to you whether you like it or not, and so the question is how do we interpret that. It is not a question of whether or not one believes it.”

The different interpretations of the panel were representative of the wider debate between science and faith. This debate often takes shape as creationism and intelligent design vs. Darwinism and evolution. There is a range of questions, however, that provoke conflict between the empirical and the spiritual.

According to Arthur Caplan, the Director of the Center of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, “Science doesn’t have oodles of room for faith.” He explained that a major concern among religious opponents of evolution is that they believe evolution diminishes the dignity of the human race, which was created in God’s image....

[Niuhuru]

Strange considering that by the time Darwin turned 200, he would have been euthanized at say, 101 when he wasn’t being ‘useful.’