Actually, both were about equally wrong and for the same reason. Both assumed there was no living planet in all the Cosmos but Earth.

That was then. This is now. As we await the HARPS project's confirmation of Gliese 581d as a living planet, we know only one thing. Life did not originate on this planet.

Does Martinus Beijerinck and Laurens Becking's "Everything is everywhere the environment selects," create problems for both Darwin and Genesis? If not, why not?

Spot on Pluto....sometimes science is not entertaining.

Even if we came here as a microbe from outer space...

there is still evidence of millions of years of evolution

My Beagle is a Darwin supporter .

,,,so is my Border collie/dalmation....

Maybe the animals are more aware of evolution than their owners...
or some of their owners.

I'm afeared that many animals are more aware of everything than their owners.

Lovely review. Stephen Marche himself is a beautiful writer.

Adam and Eve? Now them I recognize. He lives in a lonely paradise. She wants the only fruit she can't have. In Eden, they manage to make themselves miserable.

That human quality has never changed, never evolved. We, today, in whatever paradise we find ourselves, can still manage to make ourselves miserable.

"We, today, in whatever paradise we find ourselves, can still manage to make ourselves miserable."

AND it is also possible that we can be happy even in HELL! (Maybe with a little help from our friends.)

I enjoyed the article, but I disagree with that last sentence:

"It's just that Genesis is a pack of lies that has served the cause of bafflement for millennia, while The Origin of Species is true and has done more to liberate us from ignorance than any other book."

Perhaps if we look at High School Science text book discussions, then we are left with the opinions of people who understand neither Genesis nor Science. However, with a little deeper understanding it is possible to reconcile these two different accounts of reality. Or even if we can't reconcile these two World Views, we as humans have the capacity to hold contradictory views at the same time!

To dismiss Genesis as a "pack of lies" is itself a LIE!

I see several people here that appear by there words to KNOW the answers. I do not. I also do believe once you know you close your mind to any other possibility. Is this not the same narrow mindedness that has brought about so many problems in this plane of existence.

Oops someone still believes Genesis really happened, just once….