TLS on "Evolution Myths"

Relevant to our course, the TLS has this excellent article by historian Jim Endersby which encapsulates the theme our course & vector of lecture approach to the primary material. (Via the indispensible Arts & Letters Daily.)

On the morning of November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species made its first appearance and the world changed forever. An age of faith was plunged into profound religious doubt, and believers of every kind rose to pronounce anathema on Darwin’s godless tract, sparking a fresh battle in the long-running war between science and religion. But while the reactionaries raged, the scientific community soon came to accept natural selection, and the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s work in 1900 (which marked the founding of modern genetics) set the seal on Darwin’s triumph by providing the missing piece to his puzzle – a scientific understanding of just how inheritance works.
Unfortunately, everything in the previous paragraph is nonsense....