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On Darwin's Birthday

By purepedantry on February 12, 2009.

I don't have much to say about the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. I have always accepted the notion of evolution as a precondition to all other understanding in biology. Without evolution, all the patterns and apparent unity in life is rendered into incomprehensible gibberish.

Darwin did much to facilitate our understanding of evolution, but he did not do it alone and much has happened since his death.

All that I would recommend on this anniversary is that you read (or reread) evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky's 1973 essay "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." It makes two important points. One, biology without evolution is a pseudoscience. It would be like trying to identify a pattern in the grains of a sandstorm while denying that the grains had anything to do with one another. Two, evolution is not in conflict with religion and never has been -- it is misreading of both evolution and religion that makes it so.

Definitely worth a read today.

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evolution

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Also an excellent occasion to note that the Catholic church has finally declared its full support for Darwin and the theory of evolution this week.