Charles Darwin at 200

How the naturalist Darwin's theories hold up

Two hundred years have passed since Charles Darwin’s birth, said Verlyn Klinkenborg in The New York Times. But the famed naturalist's central idea—“evolution by means of natural selection”—has aged well. “It is absorbed, with adaptations, into the foundation of the biological sciences. In a very real sense, it is the cornerstone of what we know about life on earth.”

Is it? asked Jonathan Wells in The Washington Times. Darwin’s theory wasn’t just evolution, or change over time, which “no sane person denies.” His point in “On the Origin of Species” was that “all living things are descendants of a common ancestor.” That remains an unproven assumption, yet "militant atheists" will tolerate no disagreement from those who see God's hand in these matters.

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