Darwin Day

It's 12th February as I write this. Happy Darwin Day! (And, a day before my birthday)

Darwin Day celebrates the birthday of Charles Darwin and is generally used to promote science and the world-changing discoveries that he made.

I'm personally grateful for his insightful discovery of the theory of evolution. As Dobzhansky said:

“Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”.

It was a truly awe-inspiring discovery. And while Darwin didn't (and couldn't) know everything about evolution, his ideas have stood up remarkably well, but have obviously been fleshed out extensively in the 160+ years since he published On The Origin of Species.

However, to this day, evolution remains sadly controversial in many social contexts, especially amongst conservative religious denominations.

Education in evolution has improved, but many still have major misconceptions about it, and cling to various discredited pseudoscientific ideas about it. My own high school biology education in the late 70s and early 80s, as far as I can recall, completely left out evolution, and I went to a normal state secondary school.

Sadly, many religious folk still cling to the ideas of creationism. While most major religions accept the evidence for evolution (sometimes begrudgingly), the rank and file members often harbour creationist views - at least that's been my experience in talking to religious folk.

And creationism is still used to draw people into religion. As I showed earlier, tracts handed out in my visit to Queen Street use creationist ideas to sell Christianity:

The ideas are superficially appealing and confidently pushed. And, the aforementioned religious charlatans Ray Comfort and Ken Ham continue to foist their silly ideas on the public in the USA.

As Darwin so eloquently said:

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

So, do skeptics treat Darwin as something akin to a religious prophet, to be revered and never to be doubted?

No, that's obviously false. But in my opinion, it's certainly worth celebrating his achievements and the effect he had on the world.