Darwin Day Celebration

The Darwin Day Celebration is an international effort that is now an official program of the Institute for Humanist Studies. On or near Feb. 12, people around the world celebrate science and humanity on the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.

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This Feb. 12 is the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.

Hundreds of groups across the United States and the globe will celebrate the date as "Darwin Day" in honor of the discoveries and life of the man who famously described biological evolution via natural selection.

"Darwin Day promotes understanding of evolution and the scientific method," said Matt Cherry, executive director of the Institute for Humanist Studies which runs The Darwin Day Celebration. "This celebration expresses gratitude for the enormous benefit that scientific knowledge has contributed to the advancement of humanity."

Next year will mark both the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the 1859 publication of Darwin's "The Origin of Species", which presented the scientific theory that populations evolve over generations through natural selection.

The theory of evolution was controversial in Darwin's time and remains controversial in the United States today.

Recent Gallup polls show that 43 percent of Americans reject the theory of evolution and instead believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." And at least four 2008 presidential candidates have said they do not believe the theory of evolution.

The Darwin Day Celebration started with one event in 1995. Last year there were more than 850 Darwin Day events world-wide. Darwin Day festivities can include debates, lectures, essay contests, film festivals, museum exhibits, art shows and even an "Evolution Banquet" with "Primordial Soup" followed by a "Darwin Fish Fry."

For information, visit: www.DarwinDay.org

Course available (free):
SCH100: Evolution, Creationism and the Nature of Science (Cornerstone) Massimo Pigliucci, Ph.D.: Evolution, Creationism and the Nature of Science will use the contemporary example of the evolution-creation controversy to provoke critical thinking about the nature and function of science as a method for understanding the world we all share. Intelligent Design and other forms of creationism will be explained and rebutted, highlighting the characteristics of empirical vs. anti-scientific and pseudoscientific thinking.

Darwin quotes:
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I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars—Charles Darwin

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I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection— Charles Darwin

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