Almost 150 years since Charles Darwin published his ideas in The Origin of Species, a senior Anglican clergyman has written that the Church of England owes Darwin an apology for misunderstanding his theories of evolution. The church official, Reverend Malcolm Brown, was writing Monday on a church Web site launched to mark Darwin’s bicentenary next year. The Church of England says his statement reflects its position but does not constitute an official apology [AP].
The apology may be a bit late, but Brown wrote that it’s both relevant and necessary, as some religious groups continue to scoff at evolution. “Charles Darwin – 200 years from your birth (1809) the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still,” he wrote on the Church of England website. “We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends” [The Independent].
When Darwin first published his theories, the Anglican Church reacted with outrage and horror over the suggestion that modern humans had evolved from beasts, and had not been created by God in their present form. One of the most venomous clashes over his ideas took place in 1860 during a debate at Oxford University. The Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, asked the evolutionist and Darwin champion, Thomas Huxley, whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed to be descended from a monkey. Huxley replied that he would not be ashamed to have an ape for his ancestor but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his gifts to obscure the truth [Daily Mail].
Brown’s apology was meant to distance the Church of England from more fundamentalist Christian denominations that believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, and maintain that the Earth and all its creatures were created in six days. As such, the apology has failed to impress Darwin’s descendants. Andrew Darwin, a great-great grandson of the scientist, said: “Why bother? When an apology is made after 200 years, it’s not so much to right a wrong, but to make the person or organisation making the apology feel better” [Telegraph].
Image: Wikimedia Commons
September 16th, 2008 at 4:32 am
So glad I’m a fundamentalist without the need to apologise in this particular instance :o)
September 16th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Biblical literalists miss most of the wonderful & rich material laid before us in the Holy Bible because they’re such concrete thinkers.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:05 am
This move at least does something to weaken the sheer opposition that the media usually presents between belief in God and belief in evolution. In fact, there is a whole spectrum of positions on the subject.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:09 am
See:
http://home.comcast.net/~earlwajenberg/onlinestorage/InFAQ.html
for an introduction to this spectrum of opinions.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
From the age of five, I always knew that religion was a load of rubbish. As I got older, I realised a lot of the things that religious people forced, or TRIED to force on us was just pure rubbish.
My Honest opinion is that these people are totally brainless, ignorant and have absolutely NO will of their own.
How anyone can believe that LIFE was “created in six days” is beyond me. It just HAS to be a joke! EVOLUTION IS REAL, people. USE your Brains!! That’s what they’re there for.
A Perfect example of Evolution, although not visually obvious, are the Sheep found on Pitt Island in the Chathams. They have been there for over 150 Years, after being left there to breed to be a food source for passing ships in the 1800′s. These sheep are TOTALLY FREE of parasites and other pests. They adapted over the years to the extreme climate by altering their wool growth, and they even shed their wool as the months get warmer in the Southern Summer.
There is a farm on Banks Peninsula, in the South Island of New Zealand, that now has 7000 of these Pitt Island Sheep out of an original stock of only 8, broughgt in from the Chathams for the purpose of breeding them. ALL of these Pitt Island Sheep are totally free from parasites, etc. and have NEVER required drenching and other treatments. Their bellies are free of wool as are their normally wooly butts, which also means daggless bums and no mess.
These sheep are being raised, at the moment, for their Wool, which is highly prized by Japanese Hand Spinners who use the wool, in all it’s varieties of colour, for Knitting and other uses.
The Meat from these sheep is very FAT FREE and is expected to fetch a premium price in the Meat Markets, but, more of these sheep need to be produced before the market is ready for them.
They may LOOK like ordinary multi-coloured sheep, but, these sheep have EVOLVED to be able to live under the extremes of the New Land they occupy since they were dropped off there in the early years of the 1800′s or late 1700′s. Adapted? Yes, that’s one way of looking at it, but that is only a PART of Evolution.
DON’T argue with me! Use your Brains and think for a change! Geez, religious people are so bloody THICK! THAT’s not evolution! That’s STAGNATION!!! Remaining IGNORANT and submisive to the dictatorial churches.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
The Pitt Island sheep are still sheep. Your argument is totally invalid in proving macroevolution (species changing into new species). It shows microevolution or adaptation, which Christians understand. The totally unproven theory (no missing link found yet!) that sheep (or any other species) turn into other species is what Christians reject. I would love an evolutionist to explain to me how organisms evolved from asexual to sexual beings? How could that huge leap in reproduction happen? A mutation to sexual reproduction would require two perfectly “mutated” beings to mutate perfectly in sync with each other, somehow “halve” their needed number of chromosomes,” and somehow, by accident, their mutated bodies would fit together to make offspring. Talk about needing faith to believe in that! If evolution is ‘random”, this could not happen. God created male and female. It was His design, and it is beautiful. Look at your child sleeping in his or her bed and tell me that this superb wonder is not the creation of a loving God.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:36 am
thanks lauren
for at least explaining to fulla.one does not need a scientist to use their brains.you dont need to pay money to get the truth.it there for everybody to see.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
The problem with such blanket statements as that by Fulla Jase is that for such folks “religion” means Christianity and Christianity means biblical literalism. “Religion” is a huge word. A number of people with some sort of religion can live happily with Darwin. We are not all idiots, but that isn’t my point, which is that you simply can’t equate “religion” with one segment of one biblical faith.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:45 am
I humbly suggest:
Darwin Extended Beyond His Own Horizon,
and
Rethought Unified Field Theory And Evolution
in
“EVOLUTION Beyond Darwin 200″
at
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/100/122.page#1407
Dov Henis Feb. 16, 2009 (sciencenews.org)
February 19th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
It seems we lose our points in ranting our politics. I often wonder why both cannot coexist, evolution be the part of G-D that is in us? Why can’t the “change” in us, our world, ideas, beliefs be G-D? Since none of us have see “Her” (or Him), all we have is faith to tell us that “She” exists, nearly likewise for evoultion. to really evolve would take more than twenty generations, quite a long time. Science can explain almost anything, and in this case, earth’s creatures seem to come from a single path and can be traced back to single-celled organinsms, and the difference between each animal closest to in Genus, Family or Order is so slight. The variation in each of us screams this, a person born in Ethiopia, Manitoba, Bolivia, Mongolia are all human, but we are all different. Not just by culture,but by the variation of our skin colour, nostril size, hair texture and many other physical attributes. Why our bodies did this, changed, could be the presence of G-D? The Catholic Church has a great many things to apologize for, Witch Trials for one, siding with Racists in believing that Africans are not Human for two, but to apologize to Darwin at this point…he may have to wait, the list is way too long.
BTW, how can you judge a day’s length if no one was on the planet with a sundial?
And, Many people wrote the Bible, left to one man to edit and omit important passages and whole books to bring out certain story/ideas for all of us to read nd convey his message. Who told him we wanted THIS version? I want the version where Jesus gets away to learns yoga, meditation and spirituality in India, says your body is the house of G-D, not the church, marries the girl and has two kids, Sar’h and Joshua!