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Charles Darwin Online
eldavojohn writes "The entire works of Charles Darwin have been made available online. It includes scanned works that were owned by his family — many of which were signed by the author. The University of Cambridge hopes to have this completed by 2009 and is only estimated to be about half way done. If you have any love for books whatsoever, I suggest you take a look at how they present the user with each book. Take the very first edition of On the Origin of Species, for example, where they use frames to display the text on the left with the original image on the right. From the Reuters article: 'Other items in the free collection of 50,000 pages and 40,000 images are the first editions of the Journal of Researchers, written in 1839, The Descent of Man, The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle, which includes his observations during his five-year trip to the Amazon, Patagonia and the Pacific, and the first five editions of the Origin of Species.'"
Please respond with generic evolution flame.
Blah blah blah, talkorigins.org.
Wow. Glad we've got that out of the way. We've spared this thread a good thousand posts now :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
All of the published works are online. They are still working on the notebooks etc.
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (ISBN 0393059812) is a great recent (and concise) biography that picks up on his return from the Beagle adventure and takes the reader on an interesting journey past dangling duck's feet, barnacle gonads, and earthworm poop. And the publications, of course.
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Sadly, since estimates of the opinions/beliefs of the US population usually hit around 40% "young earthers" and 45% "guided by the great spirit in the sky," this may be of interest to only a relatively small segment of the population
Trusted by cats.
Contrariwise: Darwin's theory made no mention whatever of God, as he felt it unnecessary to postulate the involvement of such an entity. What more do you ask of atheistic evolution? It's evolution happening without the involvement of a god. That's the whole point. If you're going to allow for evolution 'helped over the jumps', in Dawkins' phrase, by some magician, then why bother at all? Why not have the magician create the universe last Thursday? It's just as scientific.
As Darwin wrote in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell,
"If I were convinced that I needed such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish ... I would give nothing for the theory of natural selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent."
(see Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p.249)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
From what I see around me in the US these days, I thought your estimate of the Young Earthers is far too low. The OP's 40% is probably closer.
The "guided by the great spirit in the sky" camp isn't much of a problem; I believe that's the Catholic Church's position as well, that there's nothing saying the G/god didn't have some part in guiding the process, or setting it in motion. Darwin's theory doesn't concern these anyway, it just describes the evidence and makes predictions.
Luckily, you're right about them being a small percentage of Christians in the world. However, they're also in the most economically powerful (for now) and influential country, and have great support with the political administration currently in power. Bush himself probably believes in Creationism.
Also, I mentioned Catholics and you call them a small percentage of Christians, but I'd just like to point out to people not aware of this that here in America, Catholics are not considered Christians because they worship statues and believe that good works will get you into heaven. Don't argue with me about the worshipping statues bit either; argue with all the fundamentalists, since that's their position.
You mean like:
Tetrapods:
Panderichthys, Sauripterus, Elginerpeton, Obruchevichthys, Hynerpeton, Densignathus rowei, Ichthyostega, Acanthostega and Pederpes finneyae, Tulerpeton, Elpistostege, Tiktaalik roseae.
Land to air: birds, perhaps?
Eoraptor, Herrerasaurus, Ceratosaurus, Allosaurus, Compsognathus, Sinosauropteryx, Protarchaeopteryx, Caudipteryx, Velociraptor, Sinovenator, Beipiaosaurus, Sinornithosaurus, Microraptor, Rahonavis, Confuciusornis, Sinornis, Patagopteryx, Hesperornis, Apsaravis and Ichthyornis.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
It is the worst kind of sophistry to argue that Darwinism can't be true because it makes you feel bad. Boo hoo! I was pretty upset when I found out that earth was not the center of the universe. But then I got over it-- in grade school.
Darwin did not "degrade life to an accidental tissue mass." He only made some observations about nature, and formed some theories based on those. As it turns out, these theories do a pretty good job of explaining how species change over time, and how new species are formed-- in fact, they've pretty much become the backbone of evolutionary biology.
Darwin himself was not a fascist or a rightist as you allege. In fact, he was a Christian, and he was as much troubled by questions of how to reconcile faith and reason as others. Hitler came to power almost a century later, and was influenced as much by nationalism and mysticism as by science. Stalin never accepted Darwinism-- in fact, he strictly prohibited it from being taught in Russia while he was in power. Instead, he favored the pseudo-scientist Lysenko. Try reading something about history before you spout this kind of nonsense. Assuming that history doesn't hurt your feelings too much!
Finally-- there is a lot of good evidence that man has transcended biological evolution. The whole point of having a big brain and a complex social structure is so that you don't have to make up a new gene each time you learn a new trick. And of course, in the future, genetic engineering will allow us to have whatever genes we desire.
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
Darwin was not a Christian.
Darwin was on the verge of becoming a minister in the Church of England before we went on the Beagle.
You cannot reject the Bible, or any portion of it, and claim to be Christian.
Sure you can. All you have to do, like many sensible Christians have already done, is realize the Bible is not meant to be taken word-for-word literally. Even the Pope admitted that evolution happens, unless you want to say the Pope isn't Christian?
it was to point out the *consequences* of that belief.
Evolution is not a belief.