Charles Darwin would be 200 years old this week. And after all these years, people are still arguing about the theory of evolution that he fathered.

A primary reason: Some religious groups object to the notion that humans emerged millions of years ago from apes, or a common ancestor shared with apes, and that all life evolved over time, rather than being created as-is by God. This is the gist of it, though there are numerous variations on creationist arguments with evolution.

But there's another reason for the ongoing debate that may surprise you: The terms "Darwinian evolution" and "Darwinism" — used frequently by scientists, teachers and the media — are misleading.

Scientists have failed to let Darwin die, even as the theory he birthed grew up, some scientists now say. Evolutionary biology has evolved greatly since Darwin first generated the controversy with the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, and some think it's time to divorce his name from the theory's name.

The term Darwinism "fails to convey the full panoply of modern evolutionary biology accurately, and it fosters the inaccurate perception that the field stagnated for 150 years after Darwin's day," Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education wrote last month in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach.

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