Today is Darwin Day! Charles Robert Darwin was born on this day in 01809. As a birthday present, a Gallup poll today announces 39% of Americans "believe in" evolution, with another 36% holding no opinion. Not great, but it is worse for the deniers: a comparatively scant 25% of the American populace, mostly the religious and uneducated, do not understand the evidence laid out before us.

Here's some clarification for all of us, including the media who don't understand what they are saying when they exclaim over evolution's "believers". The scientific theory of evolution is not in any way like religious faith. For starters, a scientific theory is "a unifying principle that explains a body of facts and the laws based on them." It is not made up from thin air... there must be factual data available. There are hard facts showing evolutionary processes at work, with more discovered every day. Not a single supporting fact is available for the religious belief of creationism.

And here's the beauty of science and the scientific method: belief is not required. Unlike religion, science may change course and continue to pursue truth if new data leads the way, invalidating ideas which no longer fit more complete observation. Most religion cannot do this without eventually destroying the foundation of unquestioned dogma on which it is built.

Darwin himself would not publicly wade into the fray. He skirted all questions regarding evolution versus religion. I often wonder how he would react now, seeing the modern cultural battlefield playing out as a perfect example of his theory. I think he would experience frequent and wonderful belly laughs.

Here's a beautiful quote from The Origin Of Species, Chapter 4: Natural Selection.

Under nature, the slightest difference of structure or constitution may well turn the nicely-balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder, then, that nature's productions should be far 'truer' in character than man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapses of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.

Related: Determining The Degree Of Affinity, Charles Darwin Has A Posse