real life wrote:Charles' tailoring of his evidence to interpret it as supporting evolution should come as no surprise.
Leaving aside that horseshit about evolution being "trendy" in Darwin's time, and without evidence (read a bio of Jean-Baptiste Larmarck sometime, the man who first used biology in its modern sense, and preferably a bio that is
not from a rabid creationist site)--this is laughably absurd.
Check out Alfred Russell Wallace sometime. He was from a working class family, and was born about the time that Darwin matriculated at Edinb. He received only a grammar school education, a few years which ended when he was 14. He learned surveying and geology from his brother, in the hope that he could find gainful employment. He later became a junior school master, when he met the naturalist Henry Bates.
Wallace did not move in trendy circles. He did not attend university. He was not in the social circles in which Darwin moved. He left school when Darwin was still on
Beagle, and before Darwin published the account of his voyage. Not long after Darwin returned, and before his account of his voyage was published, Wallace went to Brazil to collect samples of flora and fauna, a means by which poor men interested in "natural philosophy" could make a scant living while pursuing their interest. He was in the Malay islands when he came to the same conclusion as Darwin from the evidence of the samples he was collecting. Like Darwin, he came to his conclusion based on his observations of morphology.
There is a train of scientific speculation and observation which lead from Lamarck to Darwin and Wallace and which lead to the theory of evolution. There was no "trendy" thinking which people sought to prove. A theory is far different than speculation, not least because a theory is predictive. Neither Darwin nor Wallace knew the first thing about genetics--no one did, and Larmarck's speculation about inherited traits happens to have been wrong. But a theory is only valid if it is predictive, and they could not have known that the theory would be confirmed by genetic studies. If the theory were correct, it would predict that the evidence would be found in areas other than morphology, and genetics has confirmed it.
Darwin and Wallace came to the same conclusions based on morphology while living and working on opposite sides of the planet. That is how science works--one bases one's conclusions on the evidence at hand, which is precisely what Darwin and Wallace did. If it had only been a case of confirming a "trendy" view, than Darwin would have sought to confirm what Lamarck speculated--but that is not what happened.
What is most pathetic about your goofy claims is that it is you who is attempting to cram evidence into your personal and idiosyncratic point of view. It is you who is willing to deny the abundant evidence unless you can twist if to make it appear to confirm your belief in the silly fairy tales of the Bobble. How charming and clever is your method.
