Happy Darwin Day?
by Jonathan Wells
Washington Times Daily
February 12, 2009, p. A18 (Commentary)
Today marks the bicentennial of two notable birthdays, Abraham Lincoln’s and Charles Darwin’s. Lincoln is a hero to many Americans, but an international campaign is now under way to declare Feb. 12 Darwin Day.
According to many of his modern followers, Darwin is the world’s greatest scientist, and his theory is the cornerstone of modern biology — if not the whole of modern science.
What, exactly, is Darwin’s theory? It is not just “evolution.” Evolution can mean “change over time,” which no sane person denies. Or it can mean life on Earth has a long history, documented by the fossil record. Yet the general outlines of the fossil record were established before “The Origin of Species” appeared in 1859. And biblical chronology did not play a major role in the 19th-century Darwinian controversies, because by 1859 most educated Christians had accepted geological evidence for an old Earth.
