Toronto (ECN) - The battle between Darwinists and creationists is far from over, and carries on full-swing till today, close to the scientist’s 200th birthday later this week. While the world gets busy with the bicentennial celebrations, Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection continues to arouse controversial uproars, majorly focused on the issue of whether or not life is the result of luck and natural processes or God’s intention.
On one hand, Darwinists are gearing up for the perfect occasion to praise the scientist. They want to rejoice in the human achievement of Darwin and praise him rather than the usual Christian idea of praising the Lord.
On the other hand, followers of creationism, intelligent plans and theistic progression still bet on a super-intelligent planner of the concept of life itself.
Creationists, who think the Earth is only about 6,000-years-young and believe that life is God’s creation over billions of years, still swear by a literal explanation of Bible parts describing the beginnings of life. Be it an intelligent cause, or be it God’s hand, neither concept has faith in Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
The war rages on. New York Times best-selling author Dinesh D'Souza, who wrote "What's So Great About Christianity" is of the opinion that atheist fundamentalists have a universal pursuit of compelling people to select between evolution and Christianity. He thinks this is a great time to expand the ongoing debate about the origin of life and the proof of a possible creator.
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, believes that though scientists today have a rather good framework about how life progressed over the last several billion years, they are still not sure about how it really started.
While Jerry Coyne, author of "Why Evolution Is True" thinks it an astonishing proof of evolution that we are seeing forms foretold by the theory of evolution in the forms of fossils, Ken Ham, president and founder of the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis, thinks of fossil records not as proofs of evolution but as confirmation of Noah's Flood. He is of the opinion that Darwin might have been right about natural selection and process of species change due to gene pool activity, but he definitely does not agree with the scientist that the same procedure could have changed dinosaurs into birds or any one kind into another.
Across the Atlantic in England, a group of churches in Oxford is playing host to a conference to mark Darwin’s bicentennial year, in order to explore the scientist’s role in our view of the world, thereby also making this the perfect opportunity to explore the relationship between science and religion. Organizer reverend Tim Stead believes that evolution was one of the "most influential scientific ideas ever" and said that one of their conference goals “is to go some way towards redressing the impression that some of the general public have that Christians are anti-science and anti-Darwin.”
