Today is the 200th Anniversary of Charles Darwin’s Birth… (I love Darwin… so this was a fun topic to look into) It is said that Darwin waited 20 years to release his work due to his internal debate of love and religious beliefs of his wife versus his theory and personal beliefs… In fact before he got married he wrote a list, essentially pro and cons titled… “Marry or not marry; this is the question” In which one of his more famous pros is that "a wife would be better than a dog…" I think that is personally my favorite reason. Though a good dog really rocks… And needless to say this list makes me adore this man even more than I already do…

What was the straw that made him publish the On the Origin of Species… The death of a child… his favorite child, Annie… “everything dies, and things die for no reason and to no apparent end. And their death is painful. And, that process of living and dying produces something amazing and beautiful and astonishing.”

What is amazing is that while in the UK Darwin is a considered a brilliant biologist, his birthday celebrated in manner similar the way that we Americans hearld Martin Luther King. In American he is still the source of heated debate. There are actually 34 states in the United States that have passed anti-evolution laws of one kind or another… UGH. Which I don’t really understand because science and religion seem to address different things… Science looks at what we known and asks "how" while the spiritual side the is the presence to live each moment and the question becomes not "how" but "why" or "what".…

I think that Darwin’s work is so beautiful and insightful yet so brutal and honest… I really enjoy it and think I need to re-read (or more completely read) the “On the Origin of Species” immediately. I think it looks at the pure brilliance of the evolution. How every cell and every molecule that we are relates back to and has evolved from everything that ever was… that knowledge to me is so incredible. And while it is scientific, it is also completely spiritual and relates to the amazing truth of all being one…

And, Darwin himself writes, "There is grandeur in this view of life … from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."


So Happy Birthday Charles Darwin…

Here are some Quotes…

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world”

“We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin”

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed” – (yay,,, makes me think of Dianovo)

“I love fools experiments. I am always making them.”

“It is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man.”

“I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animal, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important....It is the most noble of all the attributes of man.”