Next year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his On The Origin of Species. The Natural History Museum and the BBC plan extensive education programmes. Anticipating the anniversaries, Professor Richard Dawkins is presenting a series on Channel 4. These are welcome ventures. On the evidence of its first episode, Professor Dawkins's exposition of Darwinism will be an important public resource.

Darwin founded a branch of learning that has remarkable explanatory power and also grandeur. That the mechanism of evolution is natural selection is one of the great discoveries of science, with implications far beyond evolutionary biology. As Ernst Mayr, the biologist, wrote: “No educated person any longer questions the validity of the so-called theory of evolution, which we now know to be a simple fact.”

It is an unfortunate wonder of the modern age that people who are highly educated in some areas may still be resistant to scientific inquiry. We customarily think of objectors to Darwinism as Protestant fundamentalists. There is in fact a worrying trend for Muslim children to be taught the myths of creation, and the pseudoscience of “intelligent design”, as an explanation of the origins of life.

Myths have beauty and narrative power. But their place is in art and literature, not science. The ideas of Darwin are also a venture of beauty and the imagination. And they have the merit of being confirmed by mountains of empirical data. Darwin's modern expositors have a difficult task but a noble calling. They merit an enthusiastic hearing and gratitude.