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Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor. In other words humans are related to cockroaches! (Yuk) But that’s the way it is folks.

The theory of evolution is different from “Primordial Soup” Theory or Abiogenesis that investigates the origin of life on Earth. According to Darwin life started with non-life and evolution is a totally natural phenomenon. From movies to books the theory of evolution still feeds the stuff of imagination.

The theory investigates how life evolved on earth over millennia through the process of natural selection. His theory of natural selection, conceived in 1838 suggests that certain favorable heritable traits become common in successive generations. In short the survival of the fittest.

He was a marine biologist cum geologist. At Edinburgh University Darwin neglected medical studies to investigate marine invertebrates. Then the University of Cambridge encouraged a passion for natural science.

Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the five-year voyage on HMS Beagle, Darwin investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection.

He spent most of that time on land investigating geology and making natural history collections. On the Gal pagos Islands, comparatively geologically new, he focused on how life evolved. This was Darwin’s natural laboratory.

He found mockingbirds allied to those in Chile but differing from island to island.

He heard that slight variations in the shape of tortoise shells showed which island they came from.

He published The “Voyage of the Beagle” based on these excursions, in 1839 and his 1859 book “On the Origin of Species” established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.

He examined human evolution and sexual selection in “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, “first published in 1871, followed by “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals “the next year.

Darwin had said, “Light will be thrown on the origin of man”, but the first review of the theory of natural selection claimed it made a creed of the “men from monkeys” idea from “Vestiges. “In “Essays and Reviews” published in 1860 by seven liberal Anglican theologians, Baden Powell argued that miracles broke God’s laws, so belief in them was atheistic, and praised Darwin’s ‘masterly volume (supporting) the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature’.

Evidently the church or rather the clergy completely turned around to imply that evolution was in fact God’s instrument!

It is strange that even in the recent past, a good century after Darwin, some still believe in creationism ? that humans were created by God some 10,000 years ago ? when it has been proven beyond doubt that humans evolved from a common primate ancestor in a process that stretches back tens of millions of years.

In 1925, William Jennings Bryan falsely contended that evolutionary science was on the verge of collapse. Pope John Paul II reaffirmed his Church’s commitment to the theory of evolution in 1996. At the time, newspapers in Mississippi wrote that this proved the Pope was senile and should be ignored!

Although US is considered one of the most technologically advanced countries it’s one of the nations that acutely affected by ‘creationism’. Luckily most attempts to block teaching of evolution have thus far failed.

The most famous example is the Scopes trial in 1925, where John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching Darwin’s theory in his class. He was fined $100, but this was overturned by Tennessee’s Supreme Court on a technicality. Yet the state kept its anti-evolution laws on the statute book until 1967. When anti-evolutionists couldn’t ban evolution, they tried to get creationism taught alongside it.

However according to new researches it’s the teachers more than court cases, that determine what is presented in science class. ‘Creationism’ was dubbed ‘Creation Science’ in a desperate hope to popularize it. Now the newest term is ‘Intelligent design’, presented as a scientific ‘alternative’ to evolution, though its scientific basis is vague, perhaps intentionally so.

Yet the evidence for evolution is stronger than ever. The dilemma of the Theory of evolution is very ironic indeed, especially since the 21st Century has been recognized as the century of biology, in which genomic, medical and biotechnological discoveries are bound to be revolutionary.