Darwin, A Good Man

Many fundamentalists depict Darwin as some kind of monster. But, as explained by French scientist Pierre Jouventin (in his book The Hidden Face of Darwin), this cannot be true, because Darwin was a good man. First I give the quote in French, then a partial translation.

“...loin de conseiller l’abandon ou l’élimination des plus faibles, il allait jusqu’à encenser une civilisation où l’on protège “les idiots, les estropiés et les malades”! Darwin ne se contentait pas de l’écrire, il pratiquait quotidiennement la charité chrétienne sans pour cela croire au paradis comme son épouse. Les témoignages et les biographes concordent pour reconnaître que c’était un homme de bien, bon fils, bon époux, bon père de famille, ami fidèle et tolérant (comme l’il a montré avec Wallace et Fitzroy pourtant opposés à ses idées sur l’évolution de l’homme), préférant ses enfants et ses recherches aux honneurs et à l’argent, aimant passionément la nature, les plantes et les animaux, un être extrémement sensible qui a abandonné ses études de médecine pour ne pas voir couler de sang, assister aux dissections et entendre crier les patients, ému par les misères et les souffrances du monde humain aussi bien qu’animal.”

“Far from counseling the abandonment or elimination of the weakest, he went as far as praising a civilization in which one protects “idiots, cripples, and sick people”! Darwin did not content himself with writing; he practiced daily the Christian charity without believing in paradise as did his wife. Researchers and biographers agree in discovering that he was a man of good, good son, good husband, good father of the family, faithful friend and tolerant (as he showed with Wallace and Fitzroy even while they opposed his ideas about human evolution), preferring his children and his research above honors and money, loving passionately nature, plants and animals, a being extremely sensitive who abandoned his studies of medicine so that he would not have to see blood flowing, or assist at dissections, or hear the cries of patients, touched by the misery and suffering of the human as of the animal world.”

Remember that Jesus said that you can tell a good person by what he or she does: "By their fruits you shall know them."

A Brief Message to the White House

Here is a short entry. I just sent this message to the White House where I know it will never be read, or if it were read, would not be understood.

“I know that nobody ever reads these letters, so even if I had Russian state secrets to reveal in them, they would go unnoticed. Well, I have no Russian state secrets, but I can tell you something that is really going to help the Russians prevail over us. It is global warming, which you refuse to admit and refuse to do anything about. Global warming will enhance Russian agriculture. They will have longer growing seasons, and they will be able to grow wheat further north. Meanwhile, it will harm American agriculture. Global warming, to which America is the principal contributor, will boost Russian agriculture while harming ours. There are a few setbacks for the Russians—the heat wave and drought of 2011 caused Russia to suspend its wheat exports—but only temporary ones. So, thanks to global warming, America may soon be buying grain from Russia. Thanks a lot, Trump.”

How Religion "Advances"

Today it is relatively rare to find racist Christianity. Nowadays, fundamentalist megachurches proclaim that members of any race are equally invited to donate money to their coffers. But it wasn’t so long ago that many white fundamentalist Christian groups did not want to associate with members of other races.

It is even rarer to find Christians who insist that the Earth is the center of the universe. The only example of which I know is fixedearth.com. But it was not very far in the past that churches all insisted on geocentrism as a fundamental belief.

In these and in many other cases, the advances in belief—advances toward racial harmony and a scientific understanding of the universe—were the result of forces and processes that were not inherently religious. After slavery was abolished, people began to gradually realize that people of other races were fully human and deserved the same rights as one’s own race. Partly this was due to the utter failure of supremacists to find scientific verification for their beliefs, but mainly, I believe, because more and more people became acquainted with members of other races and discovered, usually pleasantly, that people they might once have disdained were actually nice, ordinary people. In many cases it was devout people who led the push toward racial harmony—and there is hardly a better example than Martin Luther King Jr.—but it was not religion itself that led these advances. None of the leaders, or followers, of racial integration re-read their Bibles and discovered, “Holy Moley! Right there is a verse that we’ve been overlooking for two thousand years.” The Bible did not change. There were, or so the fundamentalists claim, no new revelations from God. The advances in racial harmony, inside and outside of churches, came from accumulated experience which most religious groups have now acknowledged. Reason and experience led the way; religion followed.

It is clear that the conversion of religious people to heliocentrism occurred because science advanced, and religion followed.

Science, experience, and reason are the head of the animal of society; religion is the tail, sometimes wagging, sometimes dragging.

This essay also appeared in my science blog.