Monday, March 9, 2009

The Faces of Darwin

I am glad that the blog has gone back to the topic of evolution. I do not know if I should admit this but my blog is a little late. But late is better than never. A few weeks ago the campus along with millions world wide celebrated the publication of the book Origin of Species and Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. I had the opportunity to attend several lectures presented by the Biology Department on the topic of evolution. Some lectures were even on religion and evolution. I did not attend those. I attended one Dr. Fairbanks entitled The Many Faces of Charles Darwin.
I had the opportunity at the beginning of Darwin week to hear Dr. Fairbanks speak at a lecture series presented by the Biology Department. Before he began to lecture Dr. Fairbanks presented a professor in attendance a beautiful drawing of Charles Darwin. I was very impressed with his artistic ability just from the drawing. I later found out after the lecture that Dr. Fairbanks was going to lecture during Darwin week and sculpt a clay bust of Darwin while he gave a lecture.
The lecture was very informal due to the Dr. Fairbanks sculpting Darwin as he spoke. I learned several things during the lecture that made me really ponder long after the lecture was over. First I have to say that I found it amazing that Dr. Fairbanks sculpted Darwin in one hour. I had front row seats and could not take my eyes off the sculpting for a second. In regards to what I take home from the lecture was the misunderstanding of Darwin and his contributions to biology. Charles Darwin made an observation and discovered a mechanism to describe his observations. He did not understand the complexities of genetics or molecular biology as we do today. It saddens me to read people really disrespect a man that did not like confrontation and was doing what most biologist hope to do in their life time which is be recognized in the field of their study. The lecture also made me ponder my views on evolution. To be honest I could careless how we evolved. I think that when it is all said and done everyone will know the truth and I hope that if Darwin’s theory of evolution is correct people will apologize to the man and tell him that he made a great contribution to human kind.
If God wanted us to know how the world was created and by what mechanism he would tell us. Gaining knowledge and understanding is part of his plan for us here on earth. I can help but think of the countless times that President Hinckley instructed us to attain as much education as possible. Our intelligence is the only thing that we as children of our heavenly father will be able to take with us when we enter the next part of life.

9 comments:

  1. I think the idea that evolution has validity, but what ultimately matters is what we as individuals come to know, and believe is what really matters, and that we should respect the conclusions of others. Whether they be the conclusions of Darwin or of a strict Creationist.

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  2. I think that sculpting Darwin while talking about his life was an interesting juxtaposition. I find it comical that the man that created the theory of evolution and the thought of a common ancestor (apes) would be created out of the "dust" by the hand of a master. I know that Darwin was religious at one point and never intended to undermine religion or God, but the comparison seemed funny to me. I agree that he was a good man trying to do the best he could in the only way he knew how. He gets a thumbs up from me.

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  3. I don't know if this is true or not, but I once heard that a general authority said that the First Presidency of Hell was made up of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. I guess Hitler just wasn't evil enough. It saddens me to see how Darwin is demonized by some religious elements. Darwin wasn't trying to destroy religion. He was just trying to explain certain facts he had noticed.

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  4. Thank you for the blog. It is sad to know that many people believe that Darwin set out to undermine religion and dethrone God. But he simply did what any good scientist would do, observe what he saw and make a darn good hypothesis about it. why people jump all over him is just poor education on their part.

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  5. I went to the lecture and also couldn't stop watching the sculpture evolve while he spoke. The visual was really good but unfortunately I thought the actual lecture was really uninformative and lacking in general. The info that he was giving was pretty much known among the crowd and nothing new or interesting really came out.

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  6. You'd be surprised to find out how little the majority of people actually know about Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution. We had the good fortune of hearing this lecture at a university biology forum, so this was a unique situation. However, if you went around to the general public and asked them to explain evolution, most of them would give you the monkey-to-man scenario. I enjoyed the lecture, and i thought that it was important to remember a lot of the mundane and seemingly uninteresting things about Charles Darwin.

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  7. While I was in Evolutionary Biology the professor (the infamous Dr. Jeffery) cracked the best Darwin joke I've ever heard, but it also made me think a little bit. He was teaching about evolution-like thought prior to Darwin, and spent a few minutes talking about Jean-Baptiste Lemarck. Dr. J said that in many ways, Lemarck "paved the way" for Darwin, and noted that Lamarck had a very appropriate name for being Darwin's precursor. A little irreverant perhaps, but it inspired a bit of reflection on my part.

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  8. I liked your comment about President Hinckley's advice. He often said to members of the Church to seek knowledge and invite all of our brothers and sisters not of our faith to bring what light and truth they possess. Charles Darwin definitely had much to offer to the table of biology. I do not know all of what he wrote about, but I am aware of the major impact he has had on our professors, scientists, archaeologists, and history buffs. What a more tolerant people we would be if we simply followed the Spirit and gleaned knowledge out of good books and accepted the light and truth from scientists such as Darwin.

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  9. Sometimes I think that people are intimidated by the topic of evolution, because they feel it may take credit for Gods creative power. The bible states that "God created the heaven and the earth." (Although the original translation stated that the "Gods created...") We understand the meaning of this word create, to mean organize, which means all the elements could have come from all different places. Iv taken the view that God organized this world to be capable of reorganizing in order to cope with the many pressures placed upon it, and how wonderful is that. Science I have learned is truly all about equilibrium, and with good reason, reasons God will reveal to us if we are willing to look, much like Darwin devoted himself doing. Great blog!

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