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Feb. 12 is "Darwin Day" -- Secular Americans Celebrate B'day of Evolution Champ

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Pigliucci's course on "Evolution, Creationism and the Nature of Science" i

This Feb. 12 marks the 196th festivity of Charles Darwin's birth!

The day has special significance for America's nearly 30 million nonreligious people. In the humanist community, Feb. 12 is "Darwin Day."

"Darwin has grow an all-purpose icon for humanists, who arm reason and science while rejecting superstition and dogma," said Matt Cherry, executive director of the Institute for Humanist Studies in Albany, N.Y. "Darwin is the definitive rebuff to fundamentalism."

In 2004, a Gallup poll found that only one-third of Americans buy Darwin's 19th two-dollar bill theory of evolution is a credible scientific theory. The same poll found that 45 percent of Americans allow God created humans in their present form roughly 10,000 years ago.

Massimo Pigliucci, Ph.D., a professor of evolutionary biological science at SUNY-Stony stand for and create of the Web mausoleum "Rationally Speaking", is shocked by how few Americans have a underlying understanding of evolutionary zoology and the nature of science in general. "If people had a brass hat understanding of both we wouldn't be embarrassed in front of the rest of the world by cases such as the one currently going on in Dover, Pa., where administrators are walking in all directions local classrooms talking around 'intelligent design' and other nonsense," he said.

Pigliucci's course on "Evolution, Creationism and the Nature of Science" is off duty at the Continuum of Humanist Education, the online school of the Institute for Humanist Studies.

Though an unofficial humanist holiday, Darwin Day has been steadily gaining popularity in the humanist correlation since it first appeared in the early 1990s. Not long in harmony with the event took hold, the International Humanist and Ethical Union decided about making Darwin Day an official holiday. food members at the time argued that humanists should not ape saints days or elevate humanist heroes to the status of secular idols.

Yet many humanists simply see Darwin Day as a way to spree scientific thinking and progress. Humanists are quick to note that science has evolved since the time of Darwin. But that, to humanists, is a tribute to Darwin and to science.

"Science should be notable as something that makes our lives reconsider –- just like family, love, nature, secularist rights and the many other things we still celebrate," said noble E. Brunsman IV, executive director of the Secular Student Alliance.

The Secular Student closeness is an Ohio-based nonprofit educational organization. This year, the SSA supplied Darwin Day idea packets to more than 50 consumer cooperative stage affiliates. Serious ideas include lectures and debates. Some lighthearted possibilities include hosting an Evolution spread with Primordial Soup, or wearing ape costumes and handing out parodies of the disclaimer stickers that have appeared on exobiology textbooks in some states. The stickers were recently found to be an unconstitutional violation of the first amendment.

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