Lincoln and Darwin
Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on this day 200 years ago.
Today, Republicans are celebrating with Lincoln-themed meetings. They remind us that Lincoln’s emphasis on the Declaration of Independence as a kind of mission statement for America has done more for the cause of human liberty than anything else since our founding era.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
There are those that try to point out that Lincoln’s views of blacks were not entirely modern, that he thought they were inferior, but still entitled to equality. The evidence for this is scant, but history is told and re-told with various slants and nuances by each generation. But no matter, we know that Lincoln was right to bring to prominence once again America’s reason for being: to secure the God-given rights possessed by every man.
Those interested in science recognize the contribution of Darwin to understanding origins and note that evolution and related sciences underpin nearly every aspect of modern life. DNA sequencing has convinced many skeptics that in the overall sense, Darwin was right.
There are some who take Darwin’s lessons further and seem to take evolution as a kind of secular religion. They would do well to remember that science is always wrong.
The very nature of science is that it is self-correcting and self-modifying, and therefore, at any point in a theory’s past, you can find errors. Critics use this noting that Social Darwinism, with its racial overtones, grew out of the theory and that Darwin himself held views we would consider racist today (for instance, that blacks are inferior in his 1871 book, The Descent of Man).
Darwin, like Lincoln and the founders before him, were visionary and great men. They were also men of their times. The fact that they were mortal, and held views we find uncomfortable doesn’t mean that everything they held was wrong.
Ken Brown at the popular blog C. Orthodoxy provides a quote from Darwin that might shock his more secular followers today, but one that resonates with me:
There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
