{"id":1304,"date":"2009-02-01T22:08:59","date_gmt":"2009-02-01T21:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1304"},"modified":"2009-02-01T22:08:59","modified_gmt":"2009-02-01T21:08:59","slug":"charles-darwin-and-the-tree-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1304","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Charles Darwin And The Tree Of Life&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I confess that I&#8217;ve never had a biology lesson in my life because, for most of my school years, my school did not have a biology teacher. But, of course, over the subsequent years I&#8217;ve read things around the subject. I&#8217;ve always been utterly unpersuaded by the notion of creationism &#8211; it makes no sense and there is no supporting evidence. Conversely, I&#8217;ve always found the idea of evolution totally convincing &#8211; it is an elegant explanation and it is supported by masses of evidence.<br \/>\nThis evening, I watched a television programme that was the clearest and most illuminating that I&#8217;ve ever seen on the theory of evolution: &#8220;&#8221;Charles Darwin And The Tree of Life&#8221;. It was written and presented by the brilliant David Attenborough. You can read more about the programme, see when it will be repeated, and find more information on evolution <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b00hd5mf\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nFootnote (2\/1\/09): Today it is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/science\/2009\/feb\/01\/evolution-darwin-survey-creationism\">reported<\/a> that, here in the UK, only one quarter of people believe that Darwin&#8217;s theory of evolution is &#8220;definitely true&#8221; with another quarter holding that it is &#8220;probably true&#8221;. Some 10% are young earth creationists while another 12% back intelligent design. The final quarter are unsure. This is why I wrote my essay on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/weirdthings.html\">&#8220;Why people believe weird things&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I confess that I&#8217;ve never had a biology lesson in my life because, for most of my school years, my school did not have a biology teacher. But, of course, over the subsequent years I&#8217;ve read things around the subject. I&#8217;ve always been utterly unpersuaded by the notion of creationism &#8211; it makes no sense [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}