Posted on 02/09/2006 12:15:02 PM PST by LouAvul
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Thanks to the "intelligent design" movement, Charles Darwin's birthday is evolving into everything from a badminton party to church sermons this weekend.
Defenders of Darwin's theory of natural selection are planning hundreds of events around the world Sunday, the 197th anniversary of his birth, saying recent challenges to the teaching of evolution have re-emphasized the need to promote his work.
"The people who believe in evolution ... really just sort of need to stand up and be counted," said Richard Leventhal, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. "Evolution is the model that drives science. It's time to recognize that."
The museum's celebration will include birthday cake, a little badminton (reportedly a favorite game of Darwin's) and a reading of his "The Origin of the Species" by Penn junior Bill Wames, who volunteered to dress up as the 19th-century naturalist.
"Come to my party!" Wames, in costume, bellowed Wednesday while handing out fliers around campus. "Sunday at one o'clock!"
At the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, philosophy students will get a jump-start on Darwin Day on campus Friday by singing Darwin carols they composed.
Darwin, who was born in England on Feb. 12, 1809, and died in 1882, was 50 when he published "The Origin of Species." His conclusion that species evolve over time was based in part on zoological and geological discoveries made during a five-year voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle.
The intelligent design movement challenges Darwin's theory, contending that organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher being. Critics of intelligent design say it is creationism camouflaged in scientific language.
(Excerpt) Read more at modbee.com ...
Or, to the tune of Silent Night:
Shapeless blob,
Featureless blob.
Swimming in
The nutrient stew.
Join together,
Two cells into four.
Change the functions,
Then grow some more.
Climb up onto land.
Join the merry band.
Ahhh... no. Not even close.
When you get some free time, look up "sarcasm" and "satire."
_____________________________
Oh but there is truth to that sarcasm....
Problem is the Darwin religionists "can't handle the truth."
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt!
> Oh but there is truth to that sarcasm....
In that amphibian tetrapods evolved from fish, sure.
>Problem is the Darwin religionists "can't handle the truth."
Let us all know when Darwinism really becomes a religion. And not just when anti-Darwinists try to tar Darwinism with the "religion" label simply because they don't like Darwinism.
Here's a hint: Darwinism is every bit a religion as Newtonian physics.
> Basically they are sayng that Darwin replaces Christianity for them.
That notion is, and has been, easily demolished. On the other hand, there are people who take the fish symbol, and it's replacement, rather more seriously:
http://www.cafepress.com/buy/asatru/-/pv_design_prod/p_Raven_Myst.43860396/id_10586243/pNo_43860396/fpt_/opt_/c_/pg_
Leventhal has pegged it exactly right. Evolution is first and foremost a belief system for atheists and materialists. Darwin is their Moses, their Muhammad, their lawgiver.
It figures.
Creationists have festivals in Salem too. The last big one was when they hung the witches
Neodarwinists long to burn witches too. Their witches are people who refuse to believe that life can spontaneously organize out of dumb matter.
Duh....that's part of why I said it figures. Salem has gone way the other way.
I have heard it said that science can explain everything after the "Big Bang". You have to turn to G-d to explain the void of space and the big bang. To create something from nothing is a pretty good trick.
mega-dittoes
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