EVOLUTION: was Re: Salt

[Guest guest]

wrote:

>One thing that I find interesting is that Darwin was a " self

> >taught " geologist. And I am probably far less an expert in

>evolution as you are, but isn't geology the study of rocks and of the

earth's crust and such?

-------------------------

Whatever he learned on his own about geology, he also studied it in

university. Darwin got a degree in theology after studying medicine

for a time. However, he refers to himself repeatedly in his book, _The

Origin of Species_, as a naturalist (kind of like an ecologist of sorts).

> Christianity, which is why millions of Christians believe in

> evolution.

>

> Chris

" I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock

the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how

transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest

discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of attraction of gravity,

was also attacked by Leibnitz, " as subversive of natural, and

inferentially of revealed, religion. " ~ Darwin in _The Origin

of Species_

Ha ha, this cracks me up. Perhaps Darwin was unaware that Leibniz and

Newton both independently invented calculus, and that Leibniz was

accused of stealing it from Newton. So you know, the guy had bad

feelings about all things Newtonian <g>.

Oh, and the last sentence of Darwin's book (written long after he

became agnostic):

" There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,

having been originally breathed by the Creator into a new forms or

into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according

to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms

most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. "

Deanna