The response to the initial publication of Origin of Species was polarizing in the intellectual community of nineteenth-century naturalists, museum directors, and natural philosophers. From a publishing perspective, it was an immediate hit, selling out of the initial offering of 1200 copies within weeks, prompting the publication of another 3000 copies the next month. A second edition was already in the works the next year, making Charles Darwin, already a well-known writer, a best-selling author. The reviews by some were spectacularly positive, while others were more muted if not antagonistic. The controversy came to a boil in June the following year at the 1860 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, when the so-called Huxley-Wilberforce debate took place. In actuality, the debate concerned more than Thomas H Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, and the “debate” carried less scientific exposition than personal invective, but the meeting essentially set up the controversy of adherents of special creation and evolution. This controversy lingers on today, which is the focus of the rest of this book.