What would Darwin say?

You may not know it but this year is a special one for evolutionary biologists because, if he were still alive, it would be Charles Darwin's 200th birthday.

So, as humans are wont to do with their heroes, there has been widespread eulogising and pondering about Darwin would make of the world today is he could be here.

Sadly though, almost 150 years since Darwin's On the Origin of the Species was published, there is still remarkable resistance to his ideas, despite the fact that science has continually reinforced them. A Muslim scholar in Turkey, Adnan Oktar, says that millions of fossils exist that will prove within a decade that evolution is wrong. Exactly why nobody's found one of these fossils yet is still a mystery.

Another study has shown that more Americans believe in devils and angels than in evolution. In fact there are countless shoddy-looking websites dedicated to informing the public that Darwin was wrong and even some kind of threat.

The saddest thing about this bizarre debate is that religion has been pitted against Darwin. I know plenty of people who believe in a God and still believe in modern science and evolution, proving that there doesn't need to be a conflict.

Luckily history has shown than the right ideas always win out in the end. After all, people once believed that it was heretical to believe the earth wasn't the centre of the universe. Hang in there Darwin... give it another century.