by Russell Grigg
Images Wikipedia.org
Thomas Huxley (left) and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, the protagonists at the famous debate on the subject of evolution at the Oxford meeting of the British Association, June 30, 1860
On 30 June 1860, there occurred an event which, in the minds of many people, was the turning point for the public acceptance of the theory of evolution in its confrontation with Christianity. This event was the debate between the agnostic Thomas Huxley, who came to be known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’, and the Anglican Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, son of the famous anti-slavery politician, William Wilberforce. The debate was held at a meeting of the British Association, Oxford, of which Bishop Wilberforce was a vice-president, and was sparked by the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species seven months earlier, in November 1859.
