The father of evolutionary theory

Charles Darwin was not an atheist. He became an agnostic, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as ‘a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God.’ Darwin therefore did not deny God, only that knowledge of God was a human impossibility.

A progressive theological view is that Darwin always left open the possibility of divine providence, which is the idea of God creating the laws of, rather than the products of, nature, which human beings can study and comprehend. Today it bears the name of Intelligent Design, a kind of theological evolutionism.

What appeared to move Darwin’s thinking along was the role of pain in nature. He wrote: ‘There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designed the Ichneumonidae (a wasp) with the express intention of their feeding within the bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.’

The death of Darwin’s beloved 10 year old daughter Annie, likely of tuberculosis, traumatized him to the point of disbelief, for why should a innocent child be made to suffer so much? Ill himself, with what we suspect was Chagas disease picked up in South America, Darwin came to terms with the pain of animals only later in his life.

Change comes...

A spectacular moment of inspiration builds toward the inauguration and Presidency of Barack Obama. The son of a Kenyan father and white American mother becomes President of a country populated by the descendents of European immigrants, African slaves, Native and immigrant Latin Americans and the Native Americans who survived the ravages of guns and germs.

He is well-educated, well-spoken, intelligent, graceful, practical and, as his career testifies, in command of considerable political talent. The question is how he will deal with the mess left by his predecessor who systematically set the USA back on a number of fronts. This includes George W Bush’s science policy, which as a matter of fact was an anti-science policy, that Obama believes ‘handcuffed’ scientists to medieval ideology.

The first task for him in this area is therefore to restore scientific integrity to the White House, by using evidence-based science to guide policy. The Obama-Biden policy statements read: ‘Good policy in Washington depends on sound advice from the nation’s scientists and engineers and decision-making based on the needs of all Americans.’

Perseverence...

Ingrid Betancourt gives gripping and deeply moving interviews of her extraordinary time as a captive of Columbia’s guerillas. Held for six years, she spoke about how she was witness to just about every perverse and cruel nuance of human nature there is.

Betancourt was taken in 2002 with 15 others at a roadblock and released in July 2008. Over the course of the six years, Betancourt was abused, humiliated, insulted and tortured. She has great difficulty talking about the torture.

She tried to escape six times. She paid the price for her daring, chained to a tree for one night, and after the next attempt, throughout night and day. Once, she says, she was made to stand for 3 nights and days chained by the throat to a tree.