Why Darwin Matters

Why does Darwin matter? It is because he cut through so much chaff with one of the most simple, beautiful and exquisitely sharp ideas. Evolution is Life's greatest and truest legacy and he was its most brilliant student.

Read Dawkins celebrating Darwin on the occasion of Darwin Day.

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The gang of prevaricators behind Ben Stein's Expelled movie had their own way of celebrating Darwin Day: they wrote a blog post that was a solid wall of lies and nonsense. In a way, I'm impressed; I'd have to really struggle to write something that was such a dense array of concentrated stupid,…
The Minneapolis Star Tribune published a very foolish editorial in their Faith and Values section, carping about that Dawkins fella and his atheistic Darwinism. It's typical creationist dreck, I'm afraid. If you want just one good argument against religion, it's that it seems to promote idiots to…
Over at Science Progress, I've been involved in putting together not one but two items timed for Darwin Day. The first is an op-ed coauthored with my prof here at Princeton, D. Graham Burnett, who teaches Darwin. We argue for historical nuance, which leads one to reject the idea that Darwin should…
Just before the winter solstice brings autumn to an end, here's a chance to blog about the great evolutionary biologist--and student of fall foliage--William Hamilton. Hamilton, who died in 2000, has never reached the household-name status of other evolutionary biologists such as E.O. Wilson or…

Darwin's importance goes well beyond science, however. Darwinism was used (properly or improperly; it does not matter) to further "scientific racism" and other evils in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See for example Darwin day: a time to reflect, where I discuss various historian, political, and religious pundits views on Darwinism.