The Grandeur In This View of Life

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
                                                       -Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

February 12th would be the 207th birthday of Charles Darwin.  I made a bushy, branching tree of life green tea cake:

And here is "Endless Forms Most Beautiful", the symphonic rock version:

In Which I Assert That Yes, We Do Have the Right to Say Whether We Know Better Than Our Ancestors

Moral codes were not designed to be selective, nor indeed were they designed to be questioned.

Most morality, thought Mma Ramotswe, was about doing the right thing because it had been identified as such by a long process of acceptance and observance.  You simply could not create your own morality because your experience would never be enough to do so.  What gives you the right to say that you know better than your ancestors?  Morality is for everybody, and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it.  That was what made the modern morality, with its emphasis on individuals and the working out of an individual position, so weak.

                                        -Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls, p. 75

Sorry, book, but I will not silently swallow such fallacious assertions for the sake of the story.  I am going to examine these assertions.  I will even dare to question them.