200th Anniversary of Darwin-Lincoln Birthdays February 12, 2009

The parallels in Lincoln's and Darwin's lives are also useful for the rest of a nation, which remains as bitterly divided over issues of homosexuality as we are about creation and evolution, and as we once were over human slavery. Lincoln and Darwin were two great men whose visions and life work ultimately served humanity but polarized people enormously.

Lincoln was right, both about the need to come together as a single nation and not just a collection of states, and about the need to end slavery. But he took America, perhaps needlessly, into the bloodiest war we ever fought and only arrived at his views about the evils of slavery late in the game.

Darwin was right, too. At the very least, he developed an approach about how life grows and differentiates that inspired generations of cutting-edge scientific inquiries. But, like Lincoln, his views created a bloody cultural war in which we remain fully engaged.

It's well known that Charles Darwin's groundbreaking theory of evolution made many people furious because it contradicted the Biblical view of creation. But few know that it also created problems for Darwin at home with his deeply religious wife, Emma.

Darwin held back the book to avoid offending his wife, said Ruth Padel, the naturalist's great-great-granddaughter. "She said he seemed to be putting God further and further off," Padel said in her north London home. "But they talked it through, and she said, "Don't change any of your ideas for fear of hurting me.'"

The 1859 publication of "On the Origin of Species" changed scientific thought forever - and generated opposition that continues to this day. It is this elegant explanation of how species evolve through natural selection that makes Darwin's 200th birthday on Feb. 12 such a major event.

A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. “In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God,” said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. The Vatican also dealt the final blow to speculation that Pope Benedict XVI might be prepared to endorse the theory of Intelligent Design, whose advocates credit a “higher power” for the complexities of life.

Organisers of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species said that at first it had even been proposed to ban Intelligent Design from the event, as “poor theology and poor science”. Intelligent Design would be discussed at the fringes of the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, but merely as a “cultural phenomenon”, rather than a scientific or theological issue, organisers said.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, will be honored in 2009 with a series of new pennies depicting his life and rise to the presidency.  The new designs for the Lincoln series pennies were unveiled Monday by the U.S. Mint.  The U.S. Mint also announced the 2009 release of a commemorative Lincoln silver dollar.

The four new pennies will depict various images from the life of Abraham Lincoln; a log cabin to mark his legendary Kentucky birth, portraits of the president at work on the rails in Indiana, and emerging as a political force in Illinois, and finally, a representation of the half finished Capital dome, which was built during his term in office.