Humanists wish Darwin happy 200th

The Kingston Humanist Association threw a Happy Birthday Chuck celebration, marking the 200th birthday of the scientist who first posited the Theory of Evolution.

There was a cake with "200" spelled out in candles, a rendition of happy birthday and a lecture on evolution by Queen's professor Adam Chippendale, as well as the screening of a movie questioning the religious-based intelligent design movement put forth by evangelicals as a rival to evolution.

Darwin Day was celebrated around the world in February, and the fast-growing humanist movement, which attracted a full house to a meeting room on the third floor of the downtown Kingston Frontenac Public Library, is resonating with the increasing number of people who are turning away from organized religion while still trying to live good lives, said the head of the Kingston chapter.

"Our view is that people need to live in the here and now, rather than in a system that rewards them or punishes them after they die based on what they do when they were alive," said Laura-Lee Balkwill, who founded the Kingston Humanist chapter several years ago. "You can still live a good life, you can still live an ethical life, but we don't believe you need to believe in a supernatural entity to do so."

Evolution was the theme of yesterday's party - it is symbolic of the gulf between organized religion, elements of which still cite intelligent design or some sort of divine intervention to account for the growth and complexity of life on the planet.

"We're not all about evolution, but it is symbolic of humanism in that it is about critical thinking, and that applies to everything," said Balkwill.

"A scientist could say he has a machine that solves all the world's problems, but we would still ask to see proof."

Polls show that an increasing number of Canadians do not associate themselves with a traditional religion. In fact, around the world, a similar phenomenon is occurring, with the Darwin Fish - a takeoff on the Jesus Fish except with legs and the name Darwin inside - sprouting as the most visible symbol of the movement. Buttons with the logo were worn by many of the people who attended yesterday's event.

Balkwill said movements such as humanism are not an attempt to replace one orthodoxy or belief system with another, but they offer a different way of looking at life that doesn't require a belief in a god or the tenants of a particular religion. She said such movements provide a community for people who are trying to do so.

"It's not a belief system, it's more of a philosophy about how you should lead an ethical life," she said.

"At its core, it comes down to living your life by the idea of 'Do unto others as you do to yourself.' "

ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent."

Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], ", "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life", Abstract of Will Provine's 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.

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"It is no more heretical to say the Universe displays purpose, as Hoyle has done, than to say that it is pointless, as Steven Weinberg has done. Both statements are metaphysical and outside science. Yet it seems that scientists are permitted by their own colleagues to say metaphysical things about lack of purpose and not the reverse. This suggests to me that science, in allowing this metaphysical notion, sees itself as religion and presumably as an atheistic religion (if you can have such a thing)."

Shallis, Michael [Astrophysicist, Oxford University], "In the eye of a storm", New Scientist, January 19, 1984, pp.42-43.

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"Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material."

Simpson, George Gaylord [late Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, USA], "The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of its Significance for Man," [1949], Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1960, reprint, p.344.

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"I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political."

Aldous Huxley: Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff.

“This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” —Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), The Principia

“Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us. ...the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.” —Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)

“The more I study nature, the more I am amazed at the work of the Creator.” —Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

“One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. ... The better we understand the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based. ... I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life, and man in the science classroom.” —Wernher von Braun, father of the American space program

“I have said for years that speculations about the origin of life lead to no useful purpose as even the simplest living system is far too complex to be understood in terms of the extremely primitive chemistry scientists have used in their attempts to explain the unexplainable that happened billions of years ago. God cannot be explained away by such naive thoughts.” —Ernst Chain, Nobel-laureate biochemist

“So if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design. ... The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.” —Sir Fred Hoyle, British astonomer (and self-professed atheist), from a lecture in 1982

“A superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.” —Sir Fred Hoyle

“The Darwinian theory has become an all-purpose obstacle to thought rather than an enabler of scientific advance.” —Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel-laureate physicist

“Much of present-day biological knowledge is ideological. A key symptom of ideological thinking is the explanation that has no implications and cannot be tested. I call such logical dead ends antitheories because they have exactly the opposite effect of real theories: they stop thinking rather than stimulate it. Evolution by natural selection, for instance, which Charles Darwin originally conceived as a great theory, has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong. Your protein defies the laws of mass action? Evolution did it! Your complicated mess of chemical reactions turns into a chicken? Evolution! The human brain works on logical principles no computer can emulate? Evolution is the cause!” —Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel-laureate physicist

“Can it be by accident that all birds beasts & men have their right side & left side alike shaped (except in their bowells) & just two eyes & no more on either side the face & just two ears on either side the head & a nose with two holes & no more between the eyes & one mouth under the nose & either two fore leggs or two wings or two arms on the sholders & two leggs on the hipps one on either side & no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel & contrivance of an Author? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom & the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, & within transparent juyces with a crystalline Lens in the middle & a pupil before the Lens all of them so truly shaped & fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light & what was its refraction & fit the eys of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These & such like considerations always have & ever will prevail with man kind to beleive that there is a being who made all things & has all things in his power & who is therfore to be feared?” —Sir Isaac Newton?

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