Torch, Fall/Winter 2009

2 TORCH | Fall–Winter 2009 Darwin’s Legacy Replacing his faith in Creator God with misplaced certainty in the power of science, Darwin subjected himself to a disquieted life and a hopeless death. by Dr. Bill Brown I n Greek mythology, Procrustes, the villainous son of Poseidon, kept an iron bed he claimed would magically adjust to the proper size of anyone who slept in it. He then enticed passersby to spend the night on this bed…only to discover to their horror that Procrustes made the visitors fit his bed by either cutting off their legs or stretching them on the rack. Today, we call the practice of making evidence fit a predetermined conclusion or worldview a “Procrustean solution.” Charles Darwin never intended to be a modern-day Procrustes, but his theory of evolution has become the intellectual bed on which all views of human thinking, feeling, and living are made to fit. Born the same day as Abraham Lincoln in 1809, many consider Darwin to be the “great emancipator of the human mind.” SCIENCE AND SOCIETY / SUPERSTOCK