Today is Charles Robert Darwin’s 208th birthday.
Small ground finch (Geospiza fuliginosa), Tortuga Bay, Santa Cruz (iStock)
Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809; he died in 1882. In between, he visited the Galápagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador and developed what became not only one of the most groundbreaking theories of all time, one that glues biology together and leads us still to lifesaving discoveries, but also one of the most debated theories in the history of argument, especially with non-scientists getting into the action.
Students at Salem State University in Massachusetts are having a weeklong party for Darwin’s birthday. Other schools may mark the occasion in special ways as well, but the 38th annual event at Salem State will include lectures, video presentations, and panel discussions. Highlights include a talk by Nobel Prize winner William C Campbell, a panel discussion titled “The Henrietta Lacks Case: The Intersection of Race, Science, and Ethics,” and a talk about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
Polls today show that many people, especially in America, harbor doubts and have lingering questions about what we know in the field of biological evolution. Many people have been told, especially by Christian church leaders, that our understanding of evolution is incorrect or, at least, incomplete or in doubt, authors write in the 2008 book Science, Evolution, and Creationism (National Academies, $15). Two prominent non-scientific and non-religious organizations in the debate have been the libertarian Heartland Institute of Chicago (which also supports school vouchers) and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
And some Christians do prefer the story of how the different species of animals and plants came into existence that opens the Book of Genesis and therefore the entire Christian Bible. In that book, it is written that God created the different species de novo, but it is also consistent with the story in Genesis that the Earth is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old, a tenet that is provably false. Even Pope Francis (and a few Roman Catholic pontiffs before him) have put our stewardship of the planet and of its people above a literal reading of the story in Genesis, but doubts and arguments persist.
Right from the beginning, Francis promulgated the apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium (The joy of the Gospel). In it, he declared the evangelical basis of his commitment to environmental protection. “An authentic faith,” he wrote, “always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it. We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us. … The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters.” Later, in May 2015, he issued an encyclical entitled Laudato sí (Praise be to thee), and that one brought a great deal of attention, both good and bad.
He said, ultimately, that the degradation of the environment was a matter of life and death, maybe not for us but certainly for our children or grandchildren. But it has become, he notes, difficult to tell the difference between objective fact or science and ideological bias in determining public policy, especially when the motive of profit enters the mix for businesses. On the objective side of the debate, organizations like the Ecological Society of America welcomed the encyclical, calling it “an eloquent plea for responsible Earth stewardship.” The Hearland Institute, on the other side, may accept the fact of climate change but supports research aimed at challenging the official doctrine advanced by organizations like the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that global warming is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet, as with climate change, our understanding of biological evolution has led to technological and engineering advances that have been remarkable. Conservation efforts are thriving around the globe: as we reported, the American black bear has seen a substantial recovery in its population in the North American West. Molecular biology, using some of Darwin’s theories, has led us to develop medicines that cure diseases that once killed millions but are now unknown in the US and in the developed world. As with all science, these new discoveries lead to many fascinating questions.
That’s how science works, and Darwin knew it. Francis also showed us how we can continue to question and still keep our faith. But fleeting challenges to the underlying scientific assumptions of biological evolution and climate change are destructive to our stewardship of the Earth.
