It doesn’t matter how well you’ve served the Black Rider. Sooner or later, you will be cast from his high horse, even if you are a secular saint as revered as Charles Darwin has been:
The UK’s Natural History Museum is reviewing options for its Charles Darwin exhibits, including possible removal, after an internal review ordered amid Black Lives Matter protests found that they could be deemed “offensive.”
The museum’s directors are scrutinizing collections that may be considered “problematic,” which could lead to removal or lesser remedies, such as renaming, The Telegraph reported, citing internal documents. Artifacts from the father of evolutionary theory are among the suspects because Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos Islands on HMS ‘Beagle’ was one of the UK’s “colonialist scientific expeditions.”
“In light of Black Lives Matter and the recent anti-racist demonstrations around the world,” the museum is re-evaluating room names, collections and statues to root out any that “could potentially cause offense.” A large wing of the museum is named after Darwin, and a statue of the naturalist stands in the museum’s main hall.
As a Christian who has seen the way Darwin’s work has been used and abused to attack the Faith, I won’t mourn the man’s academic defenestration. As a philosopher who has logically and mathematically destroyed even the most remote possibility of his primary hypothesis, I’m not bothered by his scientific diminishment.
But as a student of history, I am deeply concerned about his historical erasure by the Year Zero barbarians.