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Darwin Day is a celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday, the theory of evolution and science in general. This year marks his 210th birthday and 160 years since the publication of The Origin of Species. Those looking to celebrate or learn more about Darwin and evolution will find a wealth of events going on, or if you'd rather not leave the house, try a Darwin Day card with designs generated by simulated evolution.
Recently, an important finding in man's evolution was announced; the so-called Missing Link was confirmed. Australopithecus Sediba fossils were found in 2010 but it took a decade of research and debate for scientists to confirm that this was indeed the missing link that connects man's evolution in an unbroken chain back to primate ancestors.
Not everyone is down with Darwin. The Pew Research Center reports, "In spite of the fact that evolutionary theory is accepted by all but a small number of scientists, it continues to be rejected by many Americans. In fact, about one-in-five U.S. adults reject the basic idea that life on Earth has evolved at all." In Indiana, senator Dennis Kruse introduced a bill that would, among other things, "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 11 2019, @04:18PM
Plate tectonics denial is another one of those topics where belief or disbelief has no effect on daily life for 99.999% of the population, although its highly effective at freaking people out.
I had a roommate who became a geologist... its funny to troll future little proto-wanna-be geologists with a dose of "I donno about this whole plate tectonics thing, what if they're wrong?". I bet the number of people automatically giving troll responses as a show of solidarity to their social group and/or for humor, vastly outnumber serious believers, for evolution, climate change, plate tectonics, etc.
Its basically the same situation as Magick. Magick is basically a system of psychotherapy or self-psychotherapy for self-improvement purposes (for various sometimes unusual definitions of self improvement) and it more or less works about as well as any pre-Renaissance science, which is to say "kinda sometimes doesn't fail". Then people latch on to minor details that don't matter that salesmen have regretted promising for centuries, one liners about turning lead into gold, completely missing the point that all along it was an analogy for "quality of human", as part of the effort to disprove the entire topic. "Ah see what a shitty chemistry textbook, so you should ignore it entirely and make fun of it while I see you my bag of tricks which surely is completely true LOL"
Kinda like I've never been able to find a marketing book (for apps, ya know?) that isn't fundamentally a self-help book. Which is weird. Like imagine if Calculus books were 99% about how convincing yourself you're a productive member of the STEM-master-race (meme). Anyway if you want to promote that those books are shit, then one way is to latch on to one stupid line in the entire book and preach how its dumb therefore disproving the entire book, like some quote by the marketing droid behind The Zune or MS Bob or similar. So, sure, the bible claims the value of the math constant pi is 3 (to one sig fig, yeah thats right) or the bible don't mention no evolution, therefore its all wrong. Which is kinda silly.