[[Image:darwin.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Charles Darwin]]
'''Charles Robert Darwin''' (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1883) was a famous naturalist born in [[England]]. He is best known for the [[The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection|theory of natural selection]] which has since been almost universally accepted by biologists secular scientists as an essential aspect the foundation of [[Theory of Evolution|evolution]]modern biology. The concept is that organisms are modified over vast amounts of time by natural selectionnaturally occurring processes, branching originating from common ancestorsthat lived tens of millions of years ago. Outside of evolution in particular, he was regarded as an expert on barnacles, as well as being credited with discovering how coral [[atoll]]s were formed.
==General Biography==
Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England in 1809 to his parents Dr. Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgewood. Darwin's mother was a religious woman but his father was, for the most part, a weak deist. Despite his lack of theistic religious belief, Darwin's father allowed Charles to be baptized into the Anglican Church and encouraged him to become a clergyman. Darwin's mother died in 1817. In 1825 he went on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. There, he became horrified with the brutality of surgery before anesthesia was invented and quit his medical studies. In 1831 he graduated from Christ's College at Cambridge with a BA degree in the classics and theology. On December 27 of the same year he departed on the ''HMS Beagle'' for a five year voyage of exploration. The ''Beagle'' returned to English shores on October 2 1836. In 1837, Darwin drew his now famous depiction of common ancestry in the form of a branching tree <ref>Charles Darwin, Transmutation Notebook B 1837:36</ref>. The following year he discovered the concept of ''natural selection.'' Darwin insists that naturally occurring phenomena and factors working together in blind tandem have prodcued nature and eventually mankind. However, he originally based the idea of human evolution on a racist assumption<ref>Milton, Richard ''Shatttering the Myths of Darwinism'' 1997:186,287 says "Darwin [was] openly racist"</ref>, [after God was rejected as Creator], made in the late 1830s<ref>Barlow, Nora (editor) ''The Autobiography of Charles Darwin'' 1958:130</ref>, that Fuegians (natives of Tierra del Fuego) resembled primates that he had observed in the London zoo<ref>Larson, Edward J. ''Evolution: The Remarkable History Of A Scientific Theory'' 2004:66,67</ref>. In 1842 he wrote out a ''sketch'' of his theory but did not publish it. Again, in 1844 he produced what is known today as an ''essay'' of the same theory more developed but he still chose not to publish. Finally, in 1859, Darwin publishes his famous theory about how life may have been produced without any aid from a Divine Creator, he titles his book: ''On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection Or The Preservation Of Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life.'' In 1871, well after his theory enjoyed widespread success, Darwin published his ideas on human evolution in a two volume book titled ''Descent of Man.''