@ porphy

interesting, not read the biography thing tbh, mayhap I ought to have mentioned the comment as being specific to his studies as a young man. I'm pretty sure (from what I remember anyway) that he was not so dispirited with faith as he was beginning his career as a naturalist; this only came later, and as the subject of much debate he chose to not get too side-tracked with?
It's not something I've studied in quite some time, but I remember the other guy, Chambers, and his view preceding Darwin. Was this not, initially, a basis that Darwin himself began with, at least in spirit if not in word and belief?

According to some theories, there may not be a real dsitinguishable link at all. Remember, evolution is nothing more than genetic variations favoring those variations that enhance survivability. In essense this means that perhaps one day a "freak" ape was born. That ape may have been what is known as the Mitochondrial Eve.

A lot of people mistake "survival of the fittest" to mean as though there's some kind of plan to it. There really isn't. In fact, it is nothing more than a genetic accident that happens to have a favorable net result on survivability. And because of that favorable result, the mutated genes are typically passed along.

They did, read it .

http://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthe.../dp/0684869136

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/home.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trt1ZWR5PqQ

Intelligent Design is becoming very popular in conservative Christian countries like Poland, and throughout eastern Europe, as well as in islamic countries, namely Turkey. An islamic version of creationism has been invented by a relatively small handful of authors that masisvely spread their enlightend concepts via internet, having copied them from the american model of creationism and adapted it's details to the cultural specifics of Islam.

In Germany the "Forum Deutscher Katholiken", that is especially loyal to an orthodox understanding of the institution of the pope, jujst days ago has released an official declaration where the organisation expresses that Catholics feel as natural allies of Islam, and therefore help Islam to grab hold in the Western society, since it wants the same what the Catholic church should want: the prevention of misled freedom and amoral scepticism regarding the God-Allah, and an influencing of the population so that it should return into the obedient submission under the authority of religious institutions. their latest congress with one thousand delegates also said that they must explicitly protect and support the religious practicing of other religions and namely Muslims, no matter what the belief is, and even if this other belief does not return this tolerance and does not respect in return the free practicing of christian religion.

If you think these two things describe strange company and odd allies, think twice. It is not strange, but almost logical. In the end the Christian church accepts even the spreading of Islam since it thinks that even Islam is better than having no religious dominance at all.

Bescheuert. Total balla-balla. Meschugge. Plem-plem. Ga-ga.

We had totalitarianism several times in this place. The religious tyranny of the medieval. The era of the thirty-years-war. The Nazis. The Soviets in Eastgermany. - Don't want any of that stuff back, it's all offsprings of the same inhumane mind.

Yes, his early years might very well include a more spirited view on natural life. After all he was a child of his time as everyone else, and he did start a half-hearted attempt to go through education to be a priest, but that was mostly by initiative from his father who wanted his butterfly-catching and bird-hunting son to get somewhere in life, if I remember correctly. Also, being a priest was often combined with the chance to continue work along naturalist interests. This was after his failed medicine studies in Edinburgh. I'm not really sure about his younger days and his thoughts about religion and science from then. But it is certainly true that he most of his life shunned public debates on topics like that.

A physico-theological view of nature was the standard outlook among many British scientist at that time. Ideas of natural transmutation was not that uncommon in Darwins times, although often controversial and associated with materialism and revolutionary politics. Darwin had plenty of inspiration around for some kind of evolutionary concept, and Chambers was certainly one of the possible sources. There are loads and loads of investigations into Darwin and how he reached his theory, going through his letters, contemporary publishing, his personal libraray and notebooks. It really is a complex thing to track down, I doubt Darwin could do it himself at the end of his life!

As I see it, Darwins really big breakthrough was that the managed to see struggle for existence as something that has a part in producing positive adaptation and change through natural selection, and not only as means of explaining how species could go extinct or why individuals perished.

This conclusion and combination was entirely new, although all the pieces of the puzzle were recognised well before. Transmutation, struggle for existence, extinction of species, and artificial selection etc. were all in place, but it took Darwin some 20 years to put all the pieces together and combine them with all the examples from nature that he do discuss in Origin of Species.

That was quite a feat, although Alfred Russell Wallace came up with very much the same idea, himself claiming that all the bits and pieces came together during a tropical fever! :)

cheers porphy

Honestly, I would not use the internet as a source of data for that. :nope:

Not really realated but still amusing

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/h...chandstate.jpg

Saw it today too, made me chuckle:D