• Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12 February 1809. He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father's side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's side, both from the Darwin — Wedgwood family, a prominent English family which supported the Unitarian church. His mother died when he was only eight.[8A]

• When he was sixteen, Darwin left Shrewsbury to study medicine at Edinburgh University. Repelled by the sight of surgery performed without anesthesia, he eventually went to Cambridge University to study to become a clergyman in the Church of England.[69] While at Cambridge, Darwin befriended biology professor John Stevens Henslow and his interest in zoology and geography grew.[8A]

• After receiving his degree, Darwin served as naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle on a British science expedition around the world from 1831 to 1836. In South America he found fossils of extinct animals that were similar to modern species. On the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean he noticed many variations among plants and animals of the same general type as those in South America. As the expedition visited places around the world, Darwin studied plants and animals everywhere he went, collecting specimens for further study.[9]

• On returning to London Darwin conducted thorough research of his notes and specimens. Out of this study grew several related theories: Evolution did occur; Evolutionary change was gradual, requiring thousands to millions of years; The primary mechanism for evolution was a process called natural selection (determined by an organism's ability to adapt to its environment); The millions of species alive today arose from a single original life form through a branching process called "specialization."[9]

• He set these theories forth in his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or he Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, that was first published in 1859.[9]

• His evolution-related experiments and investigations culminated in five books on plants, and then his last book returned to the effect worms have on soil levels. Darwin died in Downe, Kent, England, on 19 April 1882. He had expected to be buried in St. Mary's churchyard at Downe, but at the request of Darwin's colleagues, William Spottiswoode (President of the Royal Society) arranged for Darwin to be given a state funeral and buried in Westminster Abbey.[8A]

• Darwin devised his theory of unlimited change from observations of limited change in various species, extrapolating them back into the distant past - which, of course, he had not observed. It was a bold speculation since neither Darwin nor anyone else has ever actually witnessed evolution occurring. It is a conjecture, an extrapolation going far beyond any observed facts.[15]

• Charles Lyell, in his Principles of Geology, published in 1830-1833, promoted the faith of evolutionary time of millions and millions of years and extremely slow change. It is well documented that Lyell gave Charles Darwin the background used to develop his theory of evolution by natural selection. This gave Darwin the amount of time he needed to develop his theory.[82]

• Darwin's work had a tremendous impact on religious thought. Many people strongly opposed the idea of evolution because it conflicted with their religious convictions. Darwin avoided talking about the theological and sociological aspects of his work, but other writers used his theories to support their own theories about society.[74]

• One of those who did the most to spread Darwin's theories was Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895), sometimes called "Darwin's bloody-fanged bulldog." He shocked the prim Victorian society of his day with his "Devil's gospel" of evolution and put "agnostic" into the vocabulary and cave men into the public consciousness.[41]

• Huxley was not a religious man. He coined the word "agnostic" to describe himself since, in his day, the word "atheist" was used to describe those who rebelled against current society and sought revolutionary reform. To use the word 'atheist' in Huxley's day, even though it only means non-theist, would have lumped him, and others like him, in with the socialists. Huxley created the word "agnostic" in response to this environment. Other freethinkers quickly adopted the word, and it has remained a part of English vocabulary to this day.[41]

• Early in life, Huxley sailed on a scientific voyage aboard the ship Rattlesnake that was similar to Darwin's on the Beagle. Even though this experience helped to launch his career, it was, in many scientific ways, wasted (due to his falling in love with his future wife midway through it). Yet, after this journey, Huxley began moving his way up in the scientific community.[41]

• Although Huxley was evolution's champion and close friend with Darwin, he didn't advocate Darwin's co-discovery of Natural Selection. He concentrated on phylogeny - the historical (paleontological), homological, and archetypal evidence since it was these "hard facts" that were convincing to him. Huxley, as a paleontologist and physiologist, didn't seem too concerned with the mechanism by which evolution occurred.[41]

• Darwinism is Naturalism, that is, undirected natural causes are solely responsible for the origin and development of life. In particular, Darwinism rules out the possibility of God or any guiding intelligence playing a role in life's origin and development.[42A]

• "Geologist Adam Sedgwick, a mentor of Darwin's at Cambridge University, took immediate issue with Darwin's Origin after reading it in 1859. He told his former student that it 'greatly shocked my moral taste,' and elaborated in a passage that proved prophetic: 'There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly. Tis the crown and glory of organic science that it does thro' final cause, link material to moral; . .. You have ignored this link; and, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it possible (which thank God it is not) to break it, humanity, in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it-and sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history.'"[15]