Subject: Darwin Day event at the American Atheists (DC)?

From: "Dr. R. Stephens" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 19:46:32 -0800

To our Darwin Day friends at the American Atheists (DC), 

In late 2002, Arthur Jackson sent you a long email about Darwin Day.  This is a reminder that the project is ongoing and growing.

Did you know that Charles Darwin had prepared for a peaceful career as a parson-naturalist, before his rational mind encountered evidence, during the voyage on HMS Beagle, that lead to the conclusion that there was no need for a supernatural Creator of living things?  We have maps, the story, and pictures at http://darwinday.org/life/beagle.html.  Darwin's spirit seemed like a modern scientist, exploring all things and drawing conclusions from real world evidence.  His family and the Wedgwoods also showed a social conscience, being early public opponents of slavery.

You may already realize that Darwin's 200th birthday will occur on February 12, 2009.  You may have held events to celebrate science and humanity in previous years.  For those who don't know, Darwin Day Celebration is a nonprofit organization designed to promote an international celebration of Science and Humanity each year on or near Feb. 12, as we proceed towards 2009.  Darwin and the theory of evolution are being used as symbols of scientific progress, and our goal is to achieve a global celebration by 2009.  Currently, events are being registered on our Web site for 2005.  The purpose of this letter is to invite you to visit our website at http://www.darwinday.org -- and then to consider joining many others in this constructive educational effort.  

If you are the leader of an atheist group, you might hold a discussion or talk related to Darwin and evolution.  Perhaps a comparison of how knowledge is obtained through traditional faith (receiving beliefs from earlier generations, gathering only supporting evidence, and avoiding challenges) versus how knowledge is obtained in science (guessing about truth expressed in falsifiable hypotheses, and encouraging attempts to disprove the hypotheses that might be untrue).  Perhaps you could recount Darwin's own evolution from a gentleman dabbler to a reluctant revolutionary, because the evidence he saw convinced him of a new truth.  Perhaps you could reflect on the likely consequences of the recent results of DNA sequence comparisons that show that all humans recently lived in Africa until about 100,000 years ago and we are VERY closely related.  Perhaps something about current events relating to Darwin's ideas, like the Georgia court's recent ruling that the schoolbooks could not be required to have labels denigrating evolution.  Or you can develop your own, better, idea.

We recently revised the DarwinDay.org site to emphasize science education and the very HUMAN story of Darwin's life.  Our Web site offers information to assist you in developing ideas for a celebration event that is suitable for your own unique circumstances.  To sign up quickly as a supporter, register at http://darwinday.org/register/index.php  and to publicize your event go to http://darwinday.org/regevent/index.php .  If you have reason not to register at our site, we'd still like to hear what you are doing, so feel free to e-mail to us at mailto:[email-masked] .

Supporters of Darwin Day include prominent scientists, educators, philosophers, and writers such as: Patrick Bateson, Provost, Kings College, Cambridge; Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University; Richard Dawkins, Oxford University; Daniel C. Dennett, Tufts University; Steven Pinker, Harvard University; Helena Cronin, London School of Economics; Eugenie Scott, National Center for Science Education; Steve Jones, Univ. College London; and many others.  We encourage you to join them and become an enthusiastic participant in this project. 

Sincerely yours, 

Robert J. (Bob) Stephens, Ph. D. 
Emeritus Director, Cell Biology Program, 
SRI International, formerly Stanford Research Institute. 
Chairman of the Board, Darwin Day Celebration, a nonprofit corporation 
http://darwinday.org 

P.S. If you do not want to receive additional e-mail from Darwin Day Celebration, simply reply to this e-mail at [email-masked].