On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were both born, in very different world.  Charles Darwin, whom evolutionists celebrate today with “Darwin Day,” as some kind of quasi-religious holiday to secular humanism [1], was born to a wealthy family, raised into privilege as the heir of a freethinking doctor and a society heiress to the Wedgewood pottery fortune [2].  Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, was born to a poor family on a hardscrabble farm in the wilds of Kentucky.

Despite their differences, though, both of these men played a major impact on the world.  Charles Darwin was the right person in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the trends toward humanism and the desire to be free of the confines of biblical morality.  Darwin’s epic trip on the Finch was similarly the result of good fortune, serving as the captain’s companion at a time when he was aimless but of good breeding and connections.  Abraham Lincoln was the right person at the right time to take advantage of a dividing Democratic party and the need for a principled stand against the spread of slavery that was threatening democracy and freedom in a North tired of domination by the minority South.

The result of both Darwin’s and Lincoln’s contributions was warfare.  For the release of Darwin’s work On The Origin of Species in late 1859 triggered a culture war in science, philosophy, religion, and culture that has waged on now for more than 160 years.  Likewise, Lincoln’s election in late 1860, one year later, triggered a civil war in the United States whose reverberations in politics and philosophy (and the application of religion to both) has not ceased yet.  Hitler was a fan of both Darwin and the Confederacy–and Confederates like Alexander Stephens (in his “Cornerstone” address) sought to use the “new biology” to justify racist political views.  Clearly science and culture connected together to make war between the standards of freedom and equality enshrined in scripture and the use of science to justify inequality and hierarchy and privilege.

Nonetheless, whatever the baleful results of both Darwin’s publication and Lincoln’s reaction, or one’s opinions on the work of either, I have a lot more respect for Charles Darwin than I do for most of his followers.  For example, Charles Darwin said the following about errors in his work Descent of Man (on page 385 of the 1871 edition):  “False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.”  Truer words could not be said about Darwin’s theories, for it is the falseness of the “fact” of evolution rather than the falsity of his theories themselves that has done such nature to science.  Bad science has become dogma, in need of a paradigm shift.

Likewise, despite my great fondness for Abraham Lincoln, that fondness does not extend to those who would use his name to support the bloating of government by turning wartime and emergency measures into the precedents for peacetime socialism.  Whether one agrees with the philosophies of either man (or neither, or both) does not mean that one supports everything their name has been dragged into.  Likewise, it is easier to respect both men than it is those who have distorted the record or used them as the banners for causes with ulterior motives.  Nonetheless, both bear a certain amount of responsibility as the people whose actions and words and stands prompted the cultural warfare that still wages for the soul of Western civilization.  For that responsibility alone, if nothing else, both men deserve to be remembered as having a supreme importance on the course of world events.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Day

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln