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The Lincoln-Darwin Myth Revisited

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February 12 is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln as well as Charles Darwin, and last year at this time I wrote an article exploring Lincoln’s support for evolution by intelligent design. A day later, I published a second article exposing a mythical account of Lincoln and Darwin being circulated by Wikipedia. Wikipedia erroneously claimed that Lincoln was greatly interested in Darwin’s Origins of Species and was “deeply impressed” by Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

The dust-up that followed finally led to a correction, more of less, of the Wikipedia entry at issue (at least, when I checked the entry last night it was much better than when I originally wrote about it). If you are interested in Lincoln’s real views on intelligent design, today would be an appropriate day to read about them.

Image by Alexander Gardner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

John G. West

Senior Fellow, Managing Director, and Vice President of Discovery Institute
Dr. John G. West is Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and Managing Director of the Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Formerly the Chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle Pacific University, West is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker who has written or edited 12 books, including Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, and Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s. His documentary films include Fire-Maker, Revolutionary, The War on Humans, and (most recently) Human Zoos. West holds a PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University, and he has been interviewed by media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, Reuters, Time magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.

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