Rapprochement…
On Monday of this week, the Church of England premiered a new web site focused on the work of Charles Darwin. It includes a statement written Dr. Malcolm Brown, an official of the Church, that concludes:
Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.
As we dust off our copies of C.P. Snow, we might recall that it was on this date in 1900 that Robert LeRoy Parker (alias Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longabaugh (aka, The Sundance Kid) robbed the First National Bank in Winnemucca, Nevada. While both had larcenous histories, this was their first bank job, and the beginning the period of celebrity that capped their careers.
The Wild Bunch (Sundance Kid, seated far left; Butch Cassidy, seated far right)