This Christmas season of good will may soon be tested as the coming of the 2009 Darwin anniversary year will pit science against religion, as well as some religious folks against others. Charles Darwin was born two centuries ago on Feb. 12, 1809 (the same day as Abraham Lincoln) and published his landmark "The Origin of Species" 150 years ago next Nov. 24.

For scientists, 2009 will be the opportunity to celebrate evolution, one of science's truly "Big Ideas." In Pittsburgh, big plans are afoot (please see www.sepa.duq.edu/darwin/

For religious fundamentalists, 2009 will provide new challenges to "creationism" and its kin, "intelligent design," with their literal interpretation of the Bible that the world was created by God in just seven days. The struggle has been heightened by a 2005 ruling by a federal judge in a York County case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board, that intelligent design is "a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory" and cannot be taught in public schools.

In the past, evolution has aroused some intellectually unjustified distractions. "Natural selection" became "survival of the fittest," later tagged "Social Darwinism," which gave such titans of industry as Andrew Carnegie an excuse to ruthlessly exploit workers.

But many religious people have reconciled science as a field of physically based facts and religion as encompassing morals and values in ways that science can't. Even the Roman Catholic faith, long inimical to evolution, began to accept it with Pope Pius XII's 1950 encyclical, "Humani Generis." Pope John Paul II in 1996 affirmed that evolution "has been progressively accepted by researchers."

Why is science so certain about evolution -- "the process of species descending over time from other species and being adapted to their environments by natural selection"?

Dr. James Lennox, a Pitt professor of the history and philosophy of science, told me that discoveries in geology and biogeography between 1750 and 1830 led scientists to long for something that would tie puzzling facts together. Darwin satisfied that longing. Geologists and fossil hunters were finding that every stratum showed signs of extinctions and creations. New species were coming into being constantly and didn't just arrive all at once at the Earth's creation.

Second, explorers were finding weird ways in which contemporary plants and animals were distributed around the world, from kangaroos in Australia to finches in the Galapagos Islands. Jonathan Weinberg's "The Beak of the Finch," a book recommended by Dr. Lennox, describes not only current evidence of fast-moving evolution among finches in the Galapagos but also in the American South. Mr. Weinberg points to the Cotton Belt where DDT devastated boll weevils until a few mutated and the species began to evolve to become impervious to the insecticide. Similar evidence is apparent with diseases, such as tuberculosis, which was once thought to be conquered but has since evolved strains resistant to antibiotics.

Dr. David Lampe, a biologist at Duquesne University who is coordinating Pittsburgh's Darwin 2009 commemorations, says Darwin's theory unifies molecular biology, biogeography, geology, paleontology, taxonomy, physiology and psychology. This theme will be featured during Darwin2009, which will include a lecture series, teacher training and a display at the Carnegie Science Center in which a simulated Darwin will answer visitors' questions.

For a religious perspective, I turned to Dr. Steven Tuell, Old Testament professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. In his classes, he goes straight to Genesis, the basis for creationist claims, to point out that there are not one but two creation stories. In Genesis 1:1 through 2:4a, God describes the creation of man as the climax of his work. But starting with Chapter 2:4b, man is created first, then the plants and the animals. Yet even in Genesis 1 God calls for the Earth to bring forth plants (v. 11) and living creatures (v. 24) and the waters to bring forth sea creatures (v. 20). Thus, the theologian says, God is "empowering the world to participate in its own creation, which can be interpreted as setting evolution in motion."

As a religious person myself, I find Dr. Tuell's reading of the Genesis stories appealing. Moreover, it fits in my mind with a salient paragraph from "The Beak of the Finch" which discusses the genetic code of guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine, termed G, A, T and C.

Mr. Weinberg writes that "every living thing carries in code the same invisible characters, always these same four letters, because ultimately every living thing on Earth shares the same ancestor, about four billion years back, near the very birth of the planet."

Somehow, as a human being, I find this evolution-based kinship with every living thing an environmental inspiration and a solace.