Happy Birthday Charles Darwin

[Churchill]

To Slashdot

"Today is the 197th anniversary of the great biologist Charles Darwin's birth. In response, some 450 Christian churches are celebrating Darwin's birth, saying, 'Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.

Your thoughts Chico?

[Lucifer Box]

I'm disgusted. He should be beheaded.

[Lucifer Box]

It's never too late for a good beheading.

[sasguru]

Re Darwin not being the first:

Yes partially true. The theory of "transmutation" of species was around well before Darwin published the origin of species. However it was Darwin who provided hard evidence from specimens and observations he had collected from the voyage of the Beagle in South America and Australia, that species could, in fact, transmute.

Unfortunately for the Chicos if this world the evidence for evolution is overwhelming - if only they bothered to assess it, before spouting their verbiage.

[EternalOptimist]

Darwin was not the great originator.
Indeed, If I remember correctly, Charles Darwin got his interest in evolution from his dad. Charles refined this with some ideas of his own like 'survival of the fittest' plus he added a lot of empirical evidence.
A bit like Einstein really who also refined an earlier theory, his was not 'the theory of relativity' but 'the special theory of relativity'.

[sasguru]

Darwin was not the great originator.
Indeed, If I remember correctly, Charles Darwin got his interest in evolution from his dad. Charles refined this with some ideas of his own like 'survival of the fittest' plus he added a lot of empirical evidence.
A bit like Einstein really who also refined an earlier theory, his was not 'the theory of relativity' but 'the special theory of relativity'.

Didn't Einstein come uo with both the General and Special Theories of relativity? I'm not aware of anyone who even thought of this before?

[sasguru]

But... but... I thought the presence of seashells at the top of the Alps was because of the Greate Floode, as in Noah...

Incidentally there is plenty of evidence that a great flood did in fact take place. Not sure what that has to do with evolution, though?

[DaveB]

The seashelss at the top of the alps are there due to the tectonic upheaval that created the alps in the first place. Now't to do with either evolution or floods of any description.

[EternalOptimist]

sasguru

sasguru

chech this out

relativity before einstein

I aint an expert on this but I know theres not much new under the sun, not since the first amoeba said 'eek'. everything after that is just a variation on a theme

[sasguru]

I read this book a few years ago:

Noah's Flood : The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History (Hardcover)

Interesting theory but wasn't totally convinced by the evidence.