Knox.edu/EU-Digest: Lincoln, Darwin at 200: share more than a birthday

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Lincoln, Darwin at 200: share more than a birthday

Lincoln and Darwin shared opposition to slavery. It was during Lincoln's riverboat journey down the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1830-31 that the 21-year-old for the first time witnessed the horrors of a slave market. One record states that Lincoln "was stirred with a righteous indignation, and told his traveling companions: 'Boys, if ever I get a chance to hit that thing [slavery] I'll hit it hard!' " Likewise, it was on a voyage -- Darwin's trip around the world aboard the Beagle in the 1830s -- that the young scientist "was outraged by the suffering he saw inflicted by slavery." According to a review of the newly published book, "Darwin's Sacred Cause," Darwin "was driven by the great moral cause of his day: opposition to slavery... his family was passionately abolitionist and he continually mixed with people devoted to the cause."

Note EU-Digest: Darwin is best known as the father of evolution, the man who traveled the world on a British survey ship, the Beagle, taking notes and collecting specimens, then later introducing the world to the concept of natural selection - survival of the fittest, as some call it. His book, On the Origin of Species, published 150 years ago, drew on his careful observations as the naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle, especially as it sailed around the South American coastline. Darwin, who during his education in Edinburgh was greatly influenced by physician Robert Grant, introduced Darwin to marine biology, which became his lifelong passion. Grant also introduced Darwin to the ideas of French evolutionist Jean Baptiste Lamarck, whose theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is now somewhat disregarded, but was accepted by Darwin until his death. Today, regardless of the fact that many people in the religious community and even some outside those communities disagree with Darwin's theories, most people will agree that his research has been of an exceptional quality. The "proof of the pudding" is that there are now more than 900 churches in the US alone, who believe that religion and science are compatible ... and they will say so from the pulpit during what they call Evolution Weekend (February 13-15). Their stated purpose for doing so is to "elevate the quality of the discussion on this critical and controversial topic - to move beyond sound bites," and "to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations understand that evolution is a sound science and poses no problems for their faith."