Wrong Wrong Wrong

http://www.jdnews.com/articles/unattributed-74224-issue-article.html

My response to a letter to the editor in the Jacksonville News:

Darwin never refuted his theory. Why do people continue to insist on propagating this lie?

“`Shortly after his death, Lady Hope addressed a gathering of young men and women at the educational establishment founded by the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody at Northfield, Massachusetts. She had, she maintained, visited Darwin on his deathbed. He had been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, had asked for the local Sunday school to sing in a summerhouse on the grounds, and had confessed: "How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done." He went on, she said, to say that he would like her to gather a congregation since he "would like to speak to them of Christ Jesus and His salvation, being in a state where he was eagerly savouring the heavenly anticipation of bliss."

`With Moody's encouragement, Lady Hope's story was printed in the Boston _Watchman Examiner_. The story spread, and the claims were republished as late as October 1955 in the _Reformation Review_ and in the _Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland_ in February 1957. These attempts to fudge Darwin's story had already been exposed for what they were, first by his daughter Henrietta after they had been revived in 1922. "I was present at his deathbed," she wrote in the _Christian_ for February 23, 1922. "Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A. . . . The whole story has no foundation whatever."' (http://www.holysmoke.org/cretins/darwin2.htm)

Please, for the sake of your own credibility do not use this myth as an argument against evolution.

You are half-right when you say neither evolution nor creationism can be tested scientifically. Creationism cannot be tested as the claims it makes are completely unscientific and cannot be falsified. Creationism relies on supernatural entities which exist outside the realm of science. Evolution, on the other-hand, is testable.
“Evolution is observable and testable. The misconception here is that science is limited to controlled experiments that are conducted in laboratories by people in white lab coats. Actually, much of science is accomplished by gathering evidence from the real world and inferring how things work. Astronomers cannot hold stars in their hands and geologists cannot go back in time, but in both cases scientists can learn a great deal by using multiple lines of evidence to make valid and useful inferences about their objects of study. The same is true of the study of the evolutionary history of life on Earth, and as a matter of fact, many mechanisms of evolution are studied through direct experimentation as in more familiar sciences.” (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#b6)

I’m stunned (though maybe I shouldn’t be) that you would bring up the Hitler argument. Hitler was not influenced by the theory of evolution as scientists know it. He was a supporter of Social Darwinism yes, but, that is a twisted view of evolutionary theory. Even if this pathetic and overused assault against people who accept evolution had any basis in reality it wouldn’t actually undermine the theory itself. The truth of science is not affected by the ideas it may give rise to.
You clearly have no understanding of what evolution is given your view that it is faith.