Yesterday I mentioned Charles Darwin. He was never quite able to include Man in his natural selection argument, but others did, especially Thomas Huxley who wiped the floor spectacularly with Bishop 'Soapy Sam' Wilberforce of the Church of England in Oxford in 1860. The question of the authority of the Bible was much talked about and today in 1864, the Conservative Party's 'hatchet man', Benjamin Disraeli, famously said, 'Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, am on the side of the angels.'
Except that William Gladstone, the Liberal Party and an awful lot of Conservatives, disagreed with that.
In other news ...
The KKK got back together again today in 1915 in Georgia. The original Klan targeted the newly-freed slaves after the Civil War but this one targeted:-
- Blacks
- Jews
- Catholics
- Immigrants
- Communists
- Pacifists
- Darwinians.
The Klan is in decline today because there is almost nobody who is considered fit to join.
