Darwin Day
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Darwin Day is the anniversary of the birthday of Charles Darwin on February 12, 1809.
Darwin provided the first coherent theory of evolution by means of natural selection and so the name is used by a set of loosely-associated events, usually organized locally to take place on or about Darwin's birthday, whose aim is to acquaint the public with the theory of evolution by natural selection and its importance to biology.
The first event using the name "Darwin Day" appears to be one organized by The Humanist Community of Palo Alto in 1995. It featured a lecture by anthropologist Donald Johanson on Darwin and Human Origins. Starting in 1997, a series of larger events were organized at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville by members of the biology department. This came about in reaction to the consideration by the 1996 Tennessee legislature of a bill aimed at restricting the teaching of evolution in the public (state) schools. Darwin Day is now endorsed by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) as an official day of Humanist celebration.
Some advocates would like to have a public holiday declared for February 12, 2009. That day will be the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and the year will also mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
While the involved parts of the scientific community view the Darwin Day events as educational, and some in the secular humanist community view them as a celebration of the advance of rationality and science, some creationists have called them veneration or even worship of Darwin (see argument from evolution). Adding further confusion, as a joke some scientists and Darwin Day supporters have attempted to add ritual, pseudo-religious elements to their Darwin Day celebrations.
An unusual spinoff of the Darwin Day 2005 event in Birmingham, England was the creation of the Origin of Species in Dub, a celebration of Darwin's masterpiece realized through the medium of reggae and dub music.
Because Darwin Day 2006 was on a Sunday, 445 Christian Churches in the United States which felt that "for far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science" organized an "Evolution Sunday", the purpose of which was "to discuss the compatibility of religion and science [with their] congregations through sermons and/or discussion groups."
