Posted on 01/13/2002 8:47:59 AM PST by aculeus
He was the originator of the most dangerous idea in history. He disenfranchised God as our creator and revealed the animal origins of humanity. Many believe his influence was pernicious and evil.
But now a campaign has been launched to establish an international day of celebration on 12 February: birthday of Charles Darwin, author of the theory of evolution by natural selection.
'Along with Shakespeare and Newton, Darwin is our greatest gift to the world,' said Richard Dawkins, honorary president of the Darwin Day Organisation. 'He was our greatest thinker. Any campaign to recognise his greatness should have a significant British contribution.'
The Darwin campaign was launched by US activists two years ago to resist the anti-evolution campaigning of fundamental Christians. Now the aim is to create global celebrations by 2009, the bicentennial of his birthday.
'We have little chance of getting a national holiday for Darwin in the US - there is far too much anti-science and pseudoscience,' said project organiser Amanda Chesworth.'We are more likely to get one established in Europe, particularly in Britain, his birthplace.'
Celebrations will include seminars and lectures, and the showing of films and plays on Darwin's life, though other ideas include an atheist giving Radio 4's Thought for the Day, and a lesson on evolution being preached at Westminster Abbey. 'I'd do it like a shot,' said Dawkins.
Darwin was originally religious. He saw nature's diversity as proof of God's existence. Only a divine creator could be responsible for such marvels, it was then thought. But, after travelling the world in the Beagle, and after years of thought and experiment at his Down House home in Kent, he concluded that natural selection offered a better explanation.
Life forms better suited to their environments live longer and so have more offspring, thus triggering an evolution of species moving into new ecological niches. As philosopher Daniel Dennett said, it was 'the single best idea anyone has ever had... ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else.'
It is also remarkably simple. 'You can explain natural selection to a teenager,' said UK biologist John Maynard Smith. 'You have difficulty with Newton and little chance with Einstein. Yet Darwin's idea is the most profound. It still haunts us.'
Nor is opposition to Darwin confined to religious figures. Sociologists, psychologists and others involved in social policy hate natural selection, said Maynard Smith. 'They deny human behaviour is influenced by genes and evolution. They want to believe we are isolated from the animal kingdom. It is damaging, intellectual laziness. That is why we need a Darwin Day.
This point was backed by biologist Steve Jones. 'If you look at Africa, US fundamentalism, and the Muslim world, you realise evolution supporters are outnumbered by creationists. Yet these are people who have deliberately chosen to be ignorant. They are flat-Earthers without the sophistication. We need a Darwin Day to counter that ignorance.'
Ignoramous is the Latin equivalent of agnostic. Just thought I'd repeat this fact.
Oh, sure, he IS a nut. Ignore most of his speculation because it is completely unproven. But his latest book (and his earlier ones) give pretty decent summaries of the conclusions that others have come to. That's the most interesting part of it, I think.
As soon as I hit his bits about "imaginary time" I got a *huge* headache. His problem (and his best feature) is that he's a positivist -- he says you can't ever say a theory is "correct", only that it does a better job at describing what we witness experimentally than other theories.
Take superstrings and M-theory -- there may or may not be 11 dimensions, but if doing the math that way helps us figure things out, who cares if it's "true"?
I figure I understand about 25-33% of what I read in a lot of these higher level physics books, so I think I'm doing pretty well for myself. The book that I think did the most to help me understand all these concepts was "The Elegant Universe - Superstrings and the Search for the Ultimate Theory" (or something like that) by Brian Greene. Hawking's descriptions of Hawking radiation (energy "emitted" by black holes) always left something to be desired, but the one in Greene's book actually made it make sense for me.
I don't like most formal religion. It's an intensely personal thing for me. I've never believed in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic style big-guy-up-on-a-chair sort of God, but I am spiritual. While we're still alive we're NEVER going to know, so for me agnosticism is the best. It admits that we don't know and that claiming to be "correct" is just depriving yourself of further learning.
But my God, with the wrath poured out upon me by the forum Evolutionary Clergy, you'd never know it. In their eyes, I'm a right wing bible thumping fundamentalist "Creationist". It's really funny, but hey, ignorance knows no bounds. At this point I'm never really surprised when someone makes assenine assumptions about me based on my perceived audacity in questioning Darwinian orthodoxy.
This is the first evolution v. creationism thread on FR I've ever bothered to read. I didn't expect to find this many Darwinists here, much less those as vehement as there are.
Question everything. All we have are Belief Systems, and when you start to believe your own BS is 100% truth your mind stagnates and you start arguing with people and saying that they're "wrong", which is counter-productive. I would rather be wrong and learn the truth than be dogmatic.
Now, if you want something really interesting, check this one out -- http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/index.htm .
I would just add that, even if the system were closed, it is still possible to have evolution. The Second Law is stated in probabilistic terms: the probability of going to a state with lower entropy is overwhelmingly high, but the reverse is still possible. As far as this law is concerned, the evolution in a closed system may be one huge, albeit very improbable, fluctuation.
The Second Law is stated in probabilistic terms: the probability of going to a state with lower entropy is overwhelmingly high, but the reverse is still possible. As far as this law is concerned, the evolution in a closed system may be one huge, albeit very improbable, fluctuation.
quite right! you do need, though a mechanism to RETAIN the chance fluctuations that are fitness enhancing. It's actually the road to a highly error resistant copy mechanism ala DNA that is the hardest step. Once you get there, the rest is math, given large enough numbers and long enough times.
The road to DNA (or it's logical equivilent) is even harder than it seems because without such a mechanism, evolution quickly loses what it creates thru the so-called "error-catastrophy". Indeed the road to DNA is one of the really open questions in theoretical biology.
Darwin studied African blacks supposedly to determine why they seemed to be immune to malaria, and commented that the Africans had a "offensive odor to the white man," he also commented that his theory would fail in society because, "through misplaced compassion" the inferior members (of whatever race or origin) would, "not only be allowed to breed, but would be encouraged to..." by the rest of society; this is precisely what we see today: societies that are marginally successful reproducing at a much greater rate than those whose members "plan" their offspring.
He broke completely with his father's religion and mused that there was no need for God except as it soothed the benighted.
Shortly after his last book was published, he died while still arguing against his cousin about applying the theory to socially ordered communities; what I call "social Darwinism extension" and what came to be known as eugenics.
Google has many links for Francis Galton this is one of them that relates Darwin and Galton
I'm an areligious agnostic theist!
glad to hear it! pretty much describes my metaphysics as well.
Thank you for the compliment!
I would just add that, even if the system were closed, it is still possible to have evolution. The Second Law is stated in probabilistic terms: the probability of going to a state with lower entropy is overwhelmingly high, but the reverse is still possible. As far as this law is concerned, the evolution in a closed system may be one huge, albeit very improbable, fluctuation.
Ah yes, I completely forgot that part.
That's the problem with an anthropic universe... by definition we sorta forget all about it. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.