Charles Darwin

In November 1859, the English naturalist Charles Darwin published his book, On the Origin of Species, and the world was never the same again. Darwin's theory of evolution, based on his plant and animal research from a five-year voyage around the world on the H.M.S. Beagle, posed the idea that all species had evolved from a limited number of common ancestors through a process known as natural selection. Through natural selection, only those animals that possessed the random mutations necessary to adapt to changing environments were able to reproduce often enough to pass on their genes successfully. Viewed over a long timescale, these mutations could cause one species to evolve into a totally new species. Darwin's theory had horrible implications for the religion. If humans had evolved, they said, it challenged the idea of a human creation by God and, some said, the very existence...