Darwin's Birthday

Darwin's birthday evolves into holiday

Amid challenges, supporters stick up for evolution on Sunday

... To show religion and science are not at odds, more than 400 churches of many denominations -- most of them in the United States -- have agreed to participate in "Evolution Sunday" by giving a sermon, holding classes or sponsoring discussions. ¹

In The Evolution-Creation Struggle, Michael Ruse tries to explain this [evolution-creation controversy]. He is well known as a committed darwinian philosopher, experienced in gutting claims that creationism and 'intelligent design' can be a form of science. ...

The purpose of Ruse's admittedly streamlined history is to identify two divergent responses to a crisis in Christianity arising from Enlightenment critiques. ...

Ruse's argument is that these antithetical responses graduated into the two competing world-views that lie at the heart of the contemporary conflict. His thesis leads to a radical conclusion. Although we are used to speaking of a conflict between science and religion, to do so misses the point: it is rather a conflict between religion and religion, he claims. There is a sense in which it is an intra-family feud, and this explains its bitterness.

... It is evolutionism that has repeatedly functioned as a secular religion, offering seductive images of progress and translating naturalistic methods of enquiry into doctrinaire assertions about what can and cannot be believed about the meaning of human existence. ²