Happy 203rd Birthday, Charles Darwin!

It is instructive to look at the work of Darwin, and recognize that careful observation, interpretation and analysis form the basis of his body of work -- ideas which are still relevant to the science of Biology and all the disciplines that stem from it.

There have been many detractors, particularly in education, in the presentation and teaching of the science of evolutionary biology. The most famous of these cases perhaps being the "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925, and the more recent case of the Dover School Board provide an overview of how thinking on evolution has progressed. Interestingly, I know of no equivalent attempts in Canada to mandate the exclusive teaching of a creationist perspective.

In more recent times, mainstream religious institutions, including such entities as the Roman Catholic Church, have incorporated Darwinian ideas of biological evolution into their belief structures. But there are still some holdouts, as this critique makes clear:

"...the list of churches that have signed up for Evolution Weekend are mainly theologically liberal churches, and I added, with an inordinate number of women clergy. The particular Sacramento-area church the writer reported on has a woman pastor—who obviously doesn’t understand the difference between operational (observational) science and historical science. When clergy like this make the comment “science and faith,” they really mean that “biological, geological, and cosmological evolutionary belief” is supposedly compatible with God’s Word. "

The condemnation is clear -- only "theologically liberal" churches would advocate any co-existence with what I would call the real world. And of those churches, it is the women clergy who are at fault, presumably because they don't conform to the patriarchal model that the author of this piece would like to be the universal norm. The "Evolution Weekend" reference is to an event which encourages religious institutions to discuss the co-existence of faith and science on the weekend closest to February 12. The fact that I find this ironic will undoubtedly cause the creationist author of the critique to insist that I burn in hell.