Leading Edge - 04/06/2009

Geoff Watts examines attitudes to Darwin and his theory of evolution, both during his own time and now. Even today, 150 years after it was first published, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection arouses passions. Indeed, for some it seems just as controversial now as it was in Victorian times. Geoff is joined by Dr Eugenie Scott, Director of the US National Center for Science Education, which has challenged attempts to teach creationism in American schools, and by Dr Denis Alexander, Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge. He is co-author of a recent report in which he seeks to 'rescue Darwin' from the crossfire between atheists and creationists. Dame Gillian Beer, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge and author of Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, describes how Darwin's own cautious attitude to human evolution and the value of religion changed over the years. Plus a report from a Darwin exhibition in Turkey and a creationist museum in the USA, highlighting the front line in the battle for public acceptance between evolutionary science and creationist religion.