03.13.09
Charles Darwin Year?
Yes, evidently 2009 marks the 150th year since the publication of Charles Darwin’s book, Origins of Species, and the 200th anniversary of his birth. The University of Cambridge is even advertising a festival July 5-10 in honor of Charles Darwin. Oh my! Perhaps it’s a normal thing, but for some reason it strikes me kinda funny. I mean I wonder if they also have festivals in honor of Einstein or Newton? I’ve not heard of them, but maybe they have them, too? Having a festival in honor of Darwin sure makes it seem like they worship the guy. . . While Darwin did popularize the theory of evolution by writing his ideas of how species appeared to have evolved from one another, technically, the idea of evolution without God had preceded him by people such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck believed in the idea of soft inheritance, and his ideas were known as Lamarckism. Darwin’s ideas brought the idea of evolution out from the philosophic circles to the scientific circles. As I understand it, there were people who wanted to explain our existence apart from the existence of God, and so thought up ways that life might have arisen apart from God. Some believed that the world always existed, that there was no original creation and thus no God to create it. From that line of reasoning, I had read that when the “big bang” theory was presented (years after Origins of Species was published), many objected because a big bang alluded to the idea that there was an original creation. My have things changed, tho!
With such a shindig planned for Darwin’s anniversary, one would think that an overwhelming majority agreed with his theories on evolution. However, there have been interesting polls recently which showed otherwise. One example is a poll that was conducted by ComRes, which suggested that 51% of the U.K. public had, at the very least, doubts about evolution. This is what they found:
“Last week, a new poll came to light, commissioned by the liberal theological think-tank Theos. The headline in the Daily Telegraph suggests that “Four Out of Five Britons do not believe in Creationism. The impression is given that this is in opposition to the previous poll. It is not. Even at face value, the new poll suggests that 20% of Britons actually believe in creation!
“There are, however, some other interesting factors involved in the new research. For example, more than half of those questioned did not know that On the Origin of Species was written by Charles Darwin. Indeed, 3% of respondents thought that the book had been written by Richard Dawkins!”
The rest of the article can be read here.
And then there’s this other strange poll which showed that More Americans Believed in the Devil, Hell and Angels More Than They Believed in the Theory of Evolution.
At any rate, Darwin’s Origin of Species certainly has caused much debate long after his death. The debates continue to rage today and will likely continue until the end of time. So in honor of Darwin Year, I’d like to present a little something to the ongoing debate. This video is a clear explanation of Robert Gentry’s work on radio halos found in granite. Gentry is a distinguished scientist who has had several papers published in several respected scientific journals. One particular subject he has presented is already about 25 years old, and is a challenge to anyone to reproduce granite complete with the radio halos that hundreds of his sample have contained. It is his contention that all granite was created in the beginning as the Bible says in one day, not millions of years. Or even less than one day as the polonium isotopes are still caught within the rocks. Twenty-five years later, there has not been one person who has been able to disprove Gentry’s theory on radio halos and instead have only referred to it as “tiny mysteries.”
Gentry offers a free video which can be viewed immediately online, which explains his observations on his website entitled Fingerprints of Creation. Absolutely brilliant man!
And finally, what difference does all this hullabaloo of evolution vs creationism make? Some evolutionists claim that scientists who believe in creation are not scientists! Does the belief in evolution make a better scientist? Well, here’s a recent article regarding that called, The Dangers of Overselling Evolution, Focusing on Darwin and his theory doesn’t further scientific progress,
Marlakins
