Who Was Charles Darwin?

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Charles Darwin was born February 12, 1809 in England, and died April 19, 1882 also in England. He was an English naturalist. He proved that all species descended from a common ancestor over a very long period of time. He also provided evidence in his book, On the Origin of Species, that evolution occurred because of a pattern called ‘natural selection’. Darwin was educated in medicine, but he decided to oversee it and go on to investigate marine invertebrates. He studied at the University of Cambridge, and then became very passionate about natural science. He went on an almost five year voyage, known as the Voyage of the Beagle, spending most of his time studying the land. He found fossils of animals that were extinct and realized they were very similar to modern animals. This began his fascination in evolution. While he was on the Galapagos Islands he noticed there were many variations of plants and animals of the same type that were in South America. This voyage went all over the world and he studied animals from all over. When he returned to England he came up with four theories; evolution is occurring, evolutionary change was gradual taking thousands or millions of years, the main cause of evolution was natural selection, and every species today came from single original life form through a process called speciation. His theory of evolutionary selection states that variation in a species is completely random. Also, the survival or extinction of an organism, is determined by ‘survival of the fittest’.
On his voyage, Darwin studied finches. These special birds played an important role in his theory to evolution by natural selection. They helped him understand that simple, minute differences can separate an organism into a completely different species.
Charles Darwin was a teacher, a scientist, and a writer. After he published On the Origin of Species, he continued to write on botany, geology, and zoology. He was very passionate about everything he did. Although he was very successful in his studies and many people believed him, I do not agree with what he studied and believed. I am a Christian and do not believe in evolution, more specifically speciation. I do think that evolution with in a species is possible because animals have to adapt to their environments.


References
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96feb/darwin.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
http://www.crystalinks.com/darwin.html