Albion

The guy sounds just like a typical middle-class nineteenth century white man, really, doesn't he? Wonder where science would be if we ditched every theory formulated by such monsters.

According to one of Stephen Jay Gould's essays, Wallace was a far more extreme natural-selectionist than Darwin and much less inclined to accept the contributions of sexual selection because it involved - gasp - female choice!!! Yeah, we'd be SO much better off with Wallace's evolution - inferior females, God-given evolution of the human brain - real science, that!

MrDarwin

I'm not quite sure I understand the point of the closing lines:

You are suggesting that it is the character of Charles Darwin that creationists and other people object to, more than his ideas about evolution and natural selection? While I've seen this idea raised occasionally, it has been my experience that this is a minor factor in opposition to evolution, and is rarely raised in debates about evolution.

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

Albion

Yes, it's a symptom of the creationist dependence on argument from authority rather than from evidence. Discredit the authority, and you've somehow discredited the argument.

bluefugue

I agree with lpetrich that the Origin holds up rather well. It is probably the most accessible of the seminal science texts, and I find Chapter 6 ("Problems on Theory") to be good brainfood even today. Darwin seriously, and thoroughly, grappled with the same questions that creationists have continued to raise for 140 years.

Blinn

To expand on Darwin's incredible range of works, he also published on human emotions, carnivorous plants, earthworms, orchids, the movement of plants, and the descent of man. And I believe he averaged a book about every two years! Truly a genius.

Kosh

Was the entire post just an ad Hominem?

We know that evolution is a fact. Afterall, it was endorsed by Harley-Davidson when they named an engine after it....

MrDarwin

I don't believe Motorcycle Mama is arguing against evolution; she is arguing against attributing the idea to Darwin.

tgamble

Darwin dated a black woman.

Enough said.

pz

Errm, what? Where did that come from?

I hope this isn't an echo of one of the <a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z5CA21632" target="_blank">most hilarious threads I ever saw on talk.origins</a>, in which a creationist responded to a quote from Darwin ("The American aborigines, Negroes and Europeans are as different from each other in mind as any three races that can be named; yet I was incessantly struck, whilst living with the Feugians on board the Beagle, with the many little traits of character, shewing how similar their minds were to ours; and so it was with a full-blooded negro with whom I happened once to be intimate.") by saying:
Nah, probably not. If it were, instead of saying he'd dated a black woman, you'd say he'd had sex with a gay black man.

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: pz ]</p>

Ergaster

Just for some insight on Motorcycle Mama:

She is a he and is involved in this stuff:

<a href="http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/" target="_blank">http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/</a>

For further info, go to the journal SEED:

<a href="http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/pages/SEED_Journal.html" target="_blank">http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/pages/SEED_Journal.html</a>

and check out stuff by Jack Maze (= Motorcycle Mama).

He referred me there via an email (actually, to the article by him and Cyril Finnegan in Volume 2(1)); I hadn't an inkling about the anti-Darwin-as-a-person viewpoint, though. And of course I don't agree with him.