Not everyone is celebrating the 200th
anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Some are protesting. A Christian
ministry called Answers in Genesis is holding anti-Darwin conferences
on the East and West coasts this month, aimed at helping Americans
"understand that Darwinian evolution is wrong and that it has
undermined the Christian faith and has fueled social ills like racism
and abortion." Faith-based opposition to Darwin is hardly consigned to
the religious fringe. A recent Pew survey found that fewer than 10
percent of evangelical Christians believe life evolved through natural
selection. Secular Americans were the only respondents who voiced
majority support for the theory.
A new book, Darwin's Sacred Cause, argues that
Christian antagonism toward Darwin is misplaced. Acclaimed Darwin
biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore portray a Christian Darwin
who was driven by his faith-based opposition to slavery to prove the
common origin of the human race. A theory of common human decency,
Darwin believed, would undermine a key precept of the slave trade: that
blacks comprise an inferior race separate from whites.... (Interview
with Moore)