Who are your heroes? Your real heroes? People you admire beyond all others. Or have admired, cos they can certainly be historical. Maggie Thatcher? Churchill? Mozart? Da Vinci? Paul Weller? Jeremy Corbyn? Isaac Newton? Donald Trump? Carl Marx? Groucho Marx?

My heroes are, in no particular order: Einstein, Glenn Hoddle, Taylor Swift, Charles Darwin, Paul Simon. There’s probably more. But I’m drawn to people who do things extraordinarily and way ahead of their time. And if someone attacks one of your heroes, it hurts you. You become very protective of them and try to defend them, or their memory.

So when I read the other day that AN Wilson, pompous history writer and arguably the most Godly atheist in the world, has written a scathing biography of Darwin, my hackles indeed did rise. I felt it. In my hackle-place. Not saying. And then I read his little ‘precis’ in the Standard lovingly entitled “its time Charles Darwin was exposed for the fraud he was” and my blood did boileth over.

Wilson accused Darwin of, basically, nicking an idea that had been out there for decades and using it as his own. That’d be evolution then. And it had been, in one form or another. A Frenchman called Lamark had an almost evolutionary theory and another Englishman called Wallace was about to ‘go live’ when Darwin finally agreed to publish ‘The Origin of Species’ to pip him at the post. Why did he have to be persuaded? Because Darwin, trained originally as a priest, knew that his ‘theory’ would blow the fucking lid off the whole ‘God thing’. At least it was bound (and did) cause massive problems for and in the church. Who weren’t placed to accommodate a theory of billenia with ‘God done it in 7 days’, and one of them was to chillax.

Darwin’s accomplishment was in stating a theory that is an unquestionable truism. That the more offspring you produce, the more your genes get to future generations, which then get to more future generations of their progeny. And if, whilst basically shagging everything that moves to try and impregnate (I’m thinkin’ ANIMALS here, but feel free to include your own family, they’re animals too), you have a gene that makes you stronger, faster, more beautiful, better plumage, sharper teeth, better vision, any possible advantage, then that advantage MAY get passed down. And because you are ‘better’ in that way, it may put you up the (literal) pecking order and you’ll get to reproduce more. Its just pure logic. And that’s what ‘survival of the fittest’, the most misunderstood phrase ever written, means. Reproductive ‘fitness’. Not gym workout fitness, nor, ‘cor, what a fit babe’ fitness. What made Darwin the genius was that he didn’t have the advantage of the word ‘gene’. It didn’t exist back then. He knew there was ‘a mechanism’ but had no framework of what that might do. So he guessed how it would work.

Wilson also blames Darwin for the Nazi’s ‘Eugenics’ theory whereby population is controlled qualitatively by selective breeding. In other words: sterilise all ‘undesirables’ and shag all the blondes quick. Which is a bit like blaming Newton for the dropping of bombs. Because if he hadn’t rationalised gravity it probably wouldn’t be there, right?

I don’t know why, specifically, Wilson decided to pick on Darwin. But now he’s upset me and that’ll… that’ll… I have no idea, but I’m not happy with him.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx