Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist.^[I] After becoming eminent among scientists for his field work and inquiries into geology, he proposed and provided scientific evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from one or a few common ancestors through the process of natural selection.^[1] The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and the general public in his lifetime, while his theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary explanation of the process of evolution in the 1930s,^[1] and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin’s scientific discovery remains the foundation of biology, as it provides a unifying logical explanation for the diversity of life.^[2]

Darwin developed his interest in natural history while studying first medicine at Edinburgh University, then theology at Cambridge.^[3] His five-year voyage on the Beagle established him as a geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell’s uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection in 1838.^[4] Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, his other work had priority and he needed time for extensive research to meet anticipated objections.^[5] He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described a similar theory, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.^[6]

His 1859 book On the Origin of Species established evolution by common descent 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, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.^[7]

In recognition of Darwin’s pre-eminence, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.^[8]

With Demons

Undergoes a Revival

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 11, 2008; A09

POCZERNIN, Poland — This wind-swept village is bracing for an invasion of demons, thanks to a priest who believes he can defeat Satan.

The Rev. Andrzej Trojanowski, a soft-spoken Pole, plans to build a “spiritual oasis” that will serve as Europe‘s only center dedicated to performing exorcisms. With the blessing of the local Catholic archbishop and theological support from the Vatican, the center will aid a growing number of Poles possessed by evil forces or the devil himself, he said.

“This is my task, this is my purpose — I want to help these people,” said Trojanowski, who has worked as an exorcist for four years. “There is a group of people who cannot get relief through any other practices and who need peace.”

Exorcism — the church rite of expelling evil spirits from tortured souls — is making a comeback in Catholic regions of Europe. Last July, more than 300 practitioners gathered in the Polish city of Czestochowa for the fourth International Congress of Exorcists.

About 70 priests serve as trained exorcists in Poland, about double the number of five years ago. An estimated 300 exorcists are active in Italy. Foremost among them: the Rev. Gabriele Amorth, 82, who performs exorcisms daily in Rome and is dean of Europe’s corps of demon-battling priests.

“People don’t pray anymore, they don’t go to church, they don’t go to confession. The devil has an easy time of it,” Amorth said in an interview. “There’s a lot more devil worship, people interested in satanic things and seances, and less in Jesus.”

Amorth and other priests said the resurgence in exorcisms has been encouraged by the Vatican, which in 1999 formally revised and upheld the rite for the first time in almost 400 years.

Although a Vatican official denied reports in December of a campaign to train more exorcists, supporters said informal efforts began under Pope John Paul II — himself an occasional demon chaser — and have accelerated under Pope Benedict XVI. A Catholic university in Rome began offering courses in exorcism in 2005 and has drawn students from around the globe.

One of the recruits is the Rev. Wieslaw Jankowski, a priest with the Institute for Studies on the Family, a counseling center outside Warsaw. He said priests at the institute realized they needed an exorcist on staff after encountering an increase in people plagued by evil.

Typical cases, he said, include people who turn away from the church and embrace New Age therapies, alternative religions or the occult. Internet addicts and yoga devotees are also at risk, he said.

“This is a service which is sorely needed,” said Jankowski, who holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. “The number of people who need help is intensifying right now.”

Jankowski cited the case of a woman who asked for a divorce days after renewing her wedding vows as part of a marriage counseling program. What was suspicious, he said, was how the wife suddenly developed a passionate hatred for her husband.

“According to what I could perceive, the devil was present and acting in an obvious way,” he said. “How else can you explain how a wife, in the space of a couple of weeks, could come to hate her own husband, a man who is a good person?”

Jankowski said that an archbishop granted him the authority last October to perform exorcisms and that he’s been busy ever since. As for the afflicted wife? “We’re still working with her,” he said.

Exorcists said the people they help can be in the grip of evil to varying degrees. Only a small fraction, they said, are completely possessed by demons — which can cause them to display inhuman strength, speak in exotic tongues, recoil in the presence of sacred objects or overpower others with a stench.

In those cases, the exorcists must confront the devil directly, using the power of the church to order it to abandon its host. More often, however, priests perform what some of them refer to as “soft exorcisms,” using prayer to rid people of evil influences that control their lives.

Exorcisms remain a touchy subject even among priests who perform them, aware that the rite is associated with medieval witch-burnings and the 1973 Hollywood horror film, “The Exorcist.”

More recent horror stories have also taken their toll. In Germany, memories are still fresh of a 23-year-old Bavarian woman who died of starvation in 1976 after two priests — thinking she was possessed — subjected her to more than 60 exorcisms. In 2002, a German bishop resigned after a woman accused him of sexually abusing her during an exorcism.

Exorcists said they are careful not to treat people suffering from mental illness, and that they regularly consult with psychologists and physicians. At the same time, they said, conventional medical therapy often neglects spiritual ailments.

“My remedy is based on spiritual means, which cannot be replaced by any pharmaceutical remedies,” said Trojanowski, the priest who is overseeing plans for the new exorcism center. “I do not stop at the level of just treating symptoms. I’m very much interested in the soul of a person. As a priest, I keep asking questions a doctor will never ask.”

Trojanowski is a priest in the northwestern Polish port city of Szczecin. He said that he sees as many as 20 people a week who are under the influence of evil spirits, but that he needs more space to treat them properly. At his exorcism center, he said, people could check in for a few days and receive ministrations.

Plans for the center were announced in December after an archbishop gave approval to build it on church land in Poczernin, a village surrounded by cabbage fields about 20 miles outside Szczecin.

The news came as a bit of a shock to the villagers, who said they hadn’t been consulted and weren’t sure they liked the idea of demons coming home to roost.

“People are worried about the potential for crazy people coming here,” said Ksawery Nyks, 50, a longtime resident. He said most people were opposed unless the church could guarantee the exorcism center would have adequate security.

Others were more sympathetic. “I don’t think it’s going to harm us,” said Romnalda Banach, 46, who runs a food shop on the muddy street that runs through the heart of the village. “Every person, if he or she needs help, should be able to get it somehow.”

Special correspondent Sarah Delaney in Rome contributed to this report.

Alex Godden (OJ), Viewpoints Editor

This is going to be a real rant. Today I am really, really angry. So angry that I’m afraid this article probably won’t be funny (at least, not intentionally).

Over the past few six months, the Atheists and Agnostics Group has been hacked, restricted and twice deleted from MySpace because they professed views that upset various religious groups. With over 35,000 members this was thought to be one of the largest self-organized groups of atheists and agnostics in the world (atheists being by nature a group not given to large-scale organization). This group has been insulted and threatened, despite doing nothing but openly discussing their beliefs with others who share them in a forum that everyone else is quite at liberty to ignore, if they wish.

So why, you may ask, has there not been an uproar? When major search engines started censoring content in China at the behest of the Chinese government, newspapers and pundits across the world started screeching from the rooftops about freedom of speech and the role of the internet. So why, when MySpace (part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire) starts effectively curtailing people’s freedom of religion, is there not more fuss? Why are the only articles so far in the Boston Globe, The Cleveland Plain Dealer and now in an obscure and irrelevant business school newspaper?

I would hope that a country that prides itself on upholding freedom of religion would be equally concerned about people’s right not to have a religion, but it seems not. In a 1999 Gallup Poll more Americans said they would vote for a Presidential candidate who was Mormon (79%) or Jewish (92%) than one who was openly atheist (49%). Given that these percentages are far higher than the proportion of Mormons or Jews in the population it seems that people are far more distrustful of people who choose not to believe in God than those who believe in a different one.

Would Satanists be more acceptable, in that at least by worshipping Satan they accept his existence, and therefore by extension take at least some of the Bible seriously? Or is it just an expectation that by having any kind of religious belief a leader would be more tolerant of those of other beliefs? A rather naive and flawed conclusion, given the historical evidence.

Am I overreacting? After all of the horrors perpetrated in the name of religion; after centuries of persecution of various religions by other religions, sects and governments, I’m annoyed because someone’s widdle webpage got deleted? Well, yes, because in many cases the ability to freely discuss one’s religious beliefs is one of the first things to go. Then it’s the freedom to practise your religion, and finally the freedom to believe. Or not, as the case may be.

I am coincidentally* writing this as I am halfway through reading Richard Dawkin’s ‘The God Delusion’, which I personally believe should be a required text for anyone who wishes to express a religious opinion. I don’t agree with Dawkins 100% percent, but at least he is prepared to a) defend his beliefs with logical argument b) agree to change his mind if presented with compelling evidence and c) take a remarkable amount of vitriolic, inaccurate and occasionally frightening criticism with good grace. He also prefers to describe himself as a scientist rather than an atheist, as he does not seem to believe that the questions are at all separate.

The events on MySpace were originally brought to my attention through a mailing list I inadvertently ended up on last year after attending the Harvard Humanists Chaplaincy conference last year, to which several of the most active members of the Atheist and Agnostic Group were also invited.

This conference was an extremely eye-opening event for me in many ways. I attended along with a broad variety of my friends who classify themselves as, variously; agnostic; Christian but curious; tentatively atheist; humanist; secularist; and ‘I don’t know what I call myself, but it looks interesting and Salman Rushdie is going to be there’.

The discussion was equally varied: an ex-Rabbi talking about the difference between community, morality and faith; a Humanist Chaplain talking about humanist funerals and ‘birth celebrations’ as a way of bringing families together and many people confessing to missing the traditions of holidays such as Easter and Christmas, which they feel as atheists they may not have a right to enjoy. This wasn’t a place for people who hated religion, but people who loved intellectual inquiry and valued honest scepticism, and wanted to explore different ways of leading a fulfilling and moral life.

One of the things that struck me about the whole event was how very ‘religious’ the proceedings seemed. The atmosphere was very church-like. There were readings. There were various humanist speakers who, for want of a better word, ‘preached’ to us from what looked remarkably like a pulpit. On the other hand, there was a lot more humor, a lot more disagreement and a lot more uncertainty in much of what they said than I have ever found in any church service.

It did amuse me that because most of us have grown up used to religion having certain trappings and structures, we like having them as a kind of comfort blanket, even if what we are talking about is the non-existence of God.
I have never formally studied theology, and I am certain that many people reading this have a far deeper knowledge of the various relevant theological doctrines and theories than I. However, I hope that by bringing the subject up I can at least encourage some of the Future World Leaders™ here at HBS to consider their response to atheism and agnosticism.
One final note – this seems an appropriate week to publish this story, as February 11th is Darwin’s birthday and as such celebrated around the world by Humanists who are as eager to have a holiday as any religious group. So, Happy Darwin Day, guys.

*Coincidence, or divine providence..?

Do you believe in God? Thanks for voting. You chose ‘No’ Yes (16%) No (84%) Total so far: 25146

DISBELIEF QUIZ

THE ATHEISM TAPES: JONATHAN MILLER IN CONVERSATION

BBC Links

Atheism
bbc.co.uk/religion guide to the history and rituals

Devout Sceptics
Website for the Radio 4 programme with audio interviews

Miller: Master of all Trades
profile of Jonathan Miller

External Links

The Atheism Web
Articles and links on the subject

British Humanist Association
For ethically concerned but non-religious people in the UK

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites

Here’s the scenario. The church has overwhelming social and cultural power and influence through its incorporation into state institutions, its performance of ceremonies such as marriage and funerals, delivery of education and participation in legislative councils. But many of its adherents are unhappy at the failure of the church to live up to its precepts, or to include everybody within its communion. A rapidly growing population and economic expansion, coupled with globalisaion of trade, has fuelled inequality, undermining many of the basic social structures of which the church is a part. A growing humanist movement is critical of many of its doctrines and practices, and an explosion of scientific activity is threatening its world view. Meanwhile Islam threatens to make inroads into its European heartlands.

It is, of course, the situation in Christian Europe in the early 1500s, just before a driven and intellectually remorseless critic, Martin Luther, posted his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, setting in train what we now call the Reformation, which was to cleave Europe in two – not just religiously and politically, but socially, culturally and intellectually.

However, it could just as well describe the situation we currently live in. In Britain, for instance, bishops in the Lords, a head of state who is also head of the main church, leaders who claim to be guided by God; expanding numbers of faith schools and a compulsory act of Christian worship in all schools. On the other hand, gay people and women excluded from full communion and a church veto, through the Lords, on social legislation, such as gay rights and adoption. We have a population explosion, rapid economic growth and social dislocation caused by globalisation. Science is now a core academic and corporate activity, central to developed economies. And despite a widespread humanist commitment to race, gender and sexual equality, religious institutions refuse to incorporate these fully in their own practices.

On top of which, there is the fear of a worldwide Islamic revival, fuelling the “war on terror”.

So is a there a new figure on the horizon to decisively shift the intellectual paradigm among all this turbulence? The urbane – and venerable – Oxford don Richard Dawkins is a long way from the driven young monk from Eisleben, yet he seems to have travelled something of the same intellectual journey. From a searching quest in his scientific research to understand the world, to critic of conservative bureaucratic institutions which seem to deny that reality and reject its implications, to outright scourge of those organisations and all their works – from faith schools to creationists in education, to university theology departments. And now he has moved on, in effect, to proselytising for a whole new ideological basis to western society with his decision to actively campaign for atheism in the US.

While any historical parallel can only be approximate, this seems to fall down completely in that Dawkins in his atheism and scientism seems to be already well outside of the dominant religious framework of western society. A fringe heretic rather than a mainstream Reformer; a Giordano Bruno rather than a Luther.

But this is deceptive. The historian Tristram Hunt has argued persuasively in his current BBC4 series that western society has been driven since the Reformation by a dynamic conflict between radical and conservative Protestantism – from the Peasants’ Revolt of 1525 (denounced by the politically conservative Luther), to the struggle between Cromwell and the Levellers, to the arguments over the American constitution between egalitarians and slave-owning landowners, and beyond.

In the contemporary world, it is obvious who the religious conservatives are: the fundamentalist evangelicals who back the neoconservatives and the born-again Bush. But where are the radicals?

While it is true there are many religious people who hold a commitment to values such as peace and equality and human rights, they have nowhere near the profile of the right.

However, this is deceptive, because, in the postwar world, what has happened is that radical Protestantism has slipped the anchor of religion altogether, becoming secular and humanist. (As the scientist Laplace is reputed to have said to Napoleon when asked the place of God in his theories: “I have no need of that hypothesis.”) But western secular humanists remain, even so, direct inheritors of that religious and intellectual tradition. Oxford, is after all, the heart of the Church of England establishment still.

But one man does not make a revolution – political or intellectual; Luther tapped into all the sources of dissatisfaction in his world and very quickly found enthusiastic adherents. And what is interesting about Dawkins is that there seems to be a growing following for his uncompromising views. Over the past two or three years, for instance, Dawkins’ assaults on religion have generated more letters to the Guardian by far than any other single topic. As the religious communities have united to counterattack, secularists and members of the scientific community have become increasingly strident about “superstitious belief in unverifiable beings in the sky”. From being passive a-theists, they are becoming active anti-theists; no longer just critics of the existing religious superstructure of our world, but iconoclasts seeking to radically change or abolish it.

As the religious of all persuasions put aside their differences and huddle together in defence of religious privilege and preference in face of this new intellectual predator, it adds an interesting extra dimension to our current “clash of civilisations”.

Five positive statements, and one negative one about Atheism:

	Isaac Asimov, “On Religiosity“, Free Inquiry magazine: “Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.”
	Dan Barker, Author of “Losing Faith in Faith:” “I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil — you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself.”
	Annie Wood Besant: “No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.”
	George H.W. Bush, as presidential nominee for the Republican party; 1987-AUG-27: “No, I don’t know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.” 1
	H. Havelock Ellis: “And it is in his own image, let us remember, that Man creates God.”
	Doug Jesseph: “As an atheist, I deny exist of all Gods: those of the Mayans, the Hindu, the Ancient Egyptians, and the God of the Old and New Testaments. If I am right, all of these are fictional constructs invented by clever humans for purposes, a variety of purposes, ranging from psychological comfort to entertainment.”

This, in turn, seems to lead people to assume that atheism is itself a religion – or at least some sort of anti-religious ideology, philosophy, etc.

This is incorrect.

Atheism is the absence of theism; by itself, it isn’t even a belief, much less a belief system, and as such cannot be any of those things.

Atheism is Not a Religion, Philosophy, or Belief…

The incident is the second reported high profile cyberattack in recent months on a religion-oriented webpage. Last month, the Church of Scientology’s website experienced disruptions after it was threatened by a hacker group.

Bryan Pesta, a Cleveland State University assistant professor and the atheist group’s founder, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week that his 35,000-member webpage had been shut down twice by the social networking site since its 2004 founding.

More than 830 MySpace members have signed an online petition calling for the page to be reestablished and protected by the networking site, which is owned by international media conglomerate News Corp.

A MySpace spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday that the site was accidentally deleted in January, but restored this month following its November 2007 defacement by a hacker.

The restored page on Wednesday carried a statement thanking MySpace for reinstating the group.

The page also linked to a petition seeking an agreement “with MySpace to ensure that groups attacked by hackers, phishers, spammers and pinheads can be fixed quickly and effectively.”

Pesta could not be immediately reached for comment.

Last month, a hacker group calling itself “Anonymous” said in a video posted on YouTube that it would “systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form.” The church’s official website could not be accessed at various times in the days following the threat.

Jose Nazario, senior security and software engineer at Arbor Networks, said last month on his blog that researchers had detected nearly 500 DDoS attacks against the church, with an average size of 15,000 packets per second.

The incident followed the church’s copyright infringement claims following the spread of edited clips from a 2004 promotional video featuring actor Tom Cruise.

Anonymous also claimed that the church filtered anti-Scientology comments posted on YouTube, Digg.com and other websites.

Ken Pappas, security strategist at Top Layer Networks, an intrusion-prevention provider, told SCMagazineUS.com at the time that cyberattackers were likely using botnets to attack the church.