Celebrating Darwin's 200th

[inbhirnis]

NPR today has a good bit on the commemorations of Darwin's 200th birthday in the UK. Lots of documentaries on the telly, special coins minted, etc. Apart from NPR joining in with a series of pieces over the last few weeks, not a peep from the rest of the media. And I think this quote from NPR's piece today says it all: (you can listen to or read it here)

"In other words, Darwin is not the controversial figure in the United Kingdom that he continues to be in the United States. Bloomfield says the reason for this is science has proved Darwin right."

Pretty sad. Why are so many US folk freaked out by this? 'All' Darwin opined about was how things evolved, but (as far as I know) didn't tackle creation. So, it seems to me that religious folk can still hold to their creation myths at the same time as accepting that there is a hell of a lot of evidence that evolution has occurred. I guess that's too nuanced a position for the fundies, plus the inescapable conclusion is that we too have evolved, and that will never be accepted by them.

Comments

[paterson-si.livejournal.com]

Darwin is one of the reasons I am a proud atheist now. :)

[inbhirnis.livejournal.com]

It's so bizarre that he generates such a fierce reaction here.

[paterson-si.livejournal.com]

Bizarre is the word, yes.

[bear-left.livejournal.com]

I can barely express how exasperating it was to teach at UGA, & cover the Scopes Monkey Trial... and to have to figure out how to teach this material to students who fundamentally rejected the basic principle of evolution.

[inbhirnis.livejournal.com]

Ugh.

I guess it would be up to them to make a compelling argument to counter the FACTS OF THE TRIAL!

Good luck to them.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

I had to google the Scopes Monkey Trial. And this happened in the 20th century?!? I admit that it's difficult for me to understand the whole thing, legally and otherwise.

Excuse me (I live in a totally different culture), what was the problem of your students? The idea that THEY had evolved from a lower form of life or the idea that there was any evolution AT ALL or what?

[bear-left.livejournal.com]

Scary as it is that happened within the past century, it's way more scary that even today, there's a movement to teach "intelligent design" in high schools as a theory comparable to evolution.

You ask a very good question -- I think the answer is in part both of those. There are many religious people in this country who combine faith & reason judiciously -- and many who abandon reason for foolish, fearful superstition, and who insist on a literal reading of the Bible (as if it was written in English!)

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

They probably don't know how tricky "literal" reading of something written in a dead language is. :) And of course even the "original" of at least the Old Testament probably wasn't that original - who knows how many oral "editions" there were before it was written down.

I know even non-religious people who feel uncomfortable with the idea of being closely related to the chimpanzees and the other apes. It is humbling, isn't it? But it does promote a higher ecological consciousness. I feel quite comfortable with the idea of being an intelligent ape, but I am more or less a biologist, which helps.

The phrase "intelligent design" suddenly reminded me that Terry Pratchett has a God of Evolution in one of his books - I think it is The Fifth Continent. :)

By the way, what does FSM mean?

[bear-left.livejournal.com]

It's also hard to overestimage the hubris of Americans who treat, say, Jesus as an American nationalist.

FSM? The Flying Spaghetti Monster hasn't made it to Bulgaria yet, eh? This is such a wonderful rebuke to the "intelligent design" people.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

No, it hasn't.

LOL

[shirtlifterbear.livejournal.com]

"Have you been touched by His Noodly Appendage?"

It's SUCH a slap in the face of Kansas Christian Crazies!

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

I don't have enough imagination to imagine their culture shock! LOL

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

P.S. But I think it would be even better if it was HER Noodly Appendage! LMAO

[erstexman.livejournal.com]

My most recent issue of National Geographic has a cover story titled "What Darwin Didn't Know" that is pretty good. However you are correct - I have seen no other coverage other than NPR.

[stockykub1973.livejournal.com]

I always find it intriguing that the UK, whilst having a State sanctioned church, is far more secularist than a country like the USA that has secularism written into its constitution.

I am sure that you would agree that the way that some American politicians wear their Christian beliefs on their sleeves would never be countenanced by the UK electorate. In fact one of the things that did creep me out a little about Tony Blair was the shiney eyed evangelism he indulged in.

There was a big controversy a couple of years back when a Christian charity was awarded the contract to take over a failing school in the North East of England. It was found that it was teaching creationism. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3341240/Staff-and-parents-fight-to-stop-takeover-by-academy-that-teaches-'creationism'.html)(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-382694/Pupils-confused-science-lessons-creationism.html)

[inbhirnis.livejournal.com]

Yeah - but Tony knew that in Britain it would be political suicide to try and insert his religious beliefs into national politics (the reverse is true here, I feel at times). He waited until he was out of office to convert to Catholicism (another stupid remnant of the UK having an 'established church') and then started talking about his faith big time - most recently at a US "Prayer Breakfast" (not sure what that is - 'Oh Jesus, please pass the pancakes'?!).

And that's fair enough. People should be free to believe whatever creation story they want. But, it should not be allowed to be inserted into the science curriculum (social/religious studies - fine), nor into the political sphere. When I was back home, I caught a bit of a Sunday morning religious program that was taking about morality, and they also had Dawkins on to make the rather basic point that being religious, particularly Christian, does not give you a monopoly on morality. Again, something you'd never see on the telly here.

[shirtlifterbear.livejournal.com]

A prayer breakfast is a business meeting that has an invocation by an illegally lobbying minister at the beginning.

I used to have to attend at least two a week in DC.

I'm enjoying the Darwin anniversary, but the neatest thing I saw about it?

Abraham Lincoln was born on the exact same day.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

"There are actually 34 states in the United States that have passed anti-evolution laws of one kind or another," says Krishtalka, "whether it's stickers in textbooks or warnings that 'Reading this book with be injurious to your mental health," What the hell? This is MEDIEVAL!

When I was still in my previous university, I had a dorm roommate who belonged to some weird imported Christian "church" - she believed that dinosaurs never existed and their bones were just faked by the scientists.

When I was still in my previous university, I had a dorm roommate who belonged to some weird imported Christian "church" - she believed that dinosaurs never existed and their bones were just faked by the scientists.

I was taught the Theory of Evolution at school. Just for the record, the Communist rulers LOVED Darwin because they saw his theory as anti-religious, and I'm wondering if they didn't "edit" it a little to make it serve their aggressive atheism better.

I don't think many of the Christians here literally believe that Adam and Eve were created as the Bible describes it. When I was still in my previous university, I had a dorm roommate who belonged to some weird imported Christian "church" - she believed that dinosaurs never existed and their bones were just faked by the scientists.

By the way, there are many non-religious people too who feel uncomfortable with the idea that we are so closely related to the great apes. It is humbling, isn't it, to know that you are just an ape with a little more intelligence that a chimpanzee. But I have no problem with accepting this idea of myself.

[inbhirnis.livejournal.com]

Both Marxism and Darwinism, of course, developed in the mid 1800s in the UK, and both have the idea of evolution at their heart - for Marxists, it's the idea that a communist society is the ultimate evolution of an economy - that an industrial capitalist nation and society would be supplanted by the communist one.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

for Marxists, it's the idea that a communist society is the ultimate evolution of an economy - that an industrial capitalist nation and society would be supplanted by the communist one. Do you think that I don't know it? I was taught this very thing at school ad nauseam.

Once (we were already 16 or 17 years old, and already trying to think with our own heads, which wasn't encouraged) one of my classmates asked the teacher how could such a perfect society be created when people are imperfect, and she ordered him out of class as a punishment for his question. But later on we had a "heretic" teacher who talked to us about Freud in a favourable way, which was practically forbidden, and he taught us some more or less decent basics of psychology. And he made a point of encouraging us to think, for which I'm still grateful. That was at the very end of the Communist era, so he got away with it, but otherwise it would be only a question of time for him to get punished in some official or unofficial way.

[inbhirnis.livejournal.com]

--didn't mean to imply you wouldn't know that, having been brought up in that system. But I think the parallel idea of evolution (or revolution) in these 19th century ideas is quite interesting..

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it's past 3 AM here, and I'm still sitting in front of the computer trying to think in English. :)

Yes, the parallel is interesting, and it must have been irresistibly appealing to the Communists.

I'm just wondering why it was so difficult for them to accept genetics as a science. It doesn't contradict the theory of evolution after all, but maybe it contradicted their initial dogma about how exactly organisms were supposed to evolve and they were very dogmatic.

And there was much hypocrisy in their aggressive atheism - they just replaced religion with their ideology that we were obliged to believe in.