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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 AthanasiusKircher on Monday February 11 2019, @08:06PM (1 child)
What "findings"? The Catholic Church is not a scientific body. After the Galileo affair, primarily for political reasons, it put a ban on books teaching heliocentrism as proven fact, as well as on strong advocacy of the Copernican theory.
Which, to be clear, it was NOT proven fact at the time of Galileo, despite the fact that Galileo wanted to teach it as if it were true. It wasn't until nearly a century later with Bradley's observation of stellar aberration that we had the first empirical evidence that heliocentrism was correct. Within a decade his findings had been translated into Italian, and a few years later Copernicus was removed from the banned books list. In the early 19th century, after the final major arguments against heliocentrism were finally debunked (stellar parallax was finally explained and measured, Coriolis forces were observed), the Church raised no further objections against books that claimed heliocentrism to be fact. (See here [wikipedia.org] for the timeline; I can give citations for the rest if needed, though I've discussed this matter before here.)
I'm not defending the church's censorship actions, but once there was actual empirical evidence for heliocentrism, the church dropped its censorship soon after. And after there was clear resolution of the major (empirical) objections against heliocentrism that had been puzzled over by scientists for centuries, the church raised no further objection to teaching it as proven fact. The ruling there (over 150 years ago) clearly indicated that the church recognized the proven fact of heliocentrism, which can't be true if geocentrism is also true. I haven't looked at the detailed ruling from the 1800s, but I'm pretty sure it's no longer keeping "geocentrism on the books."
What more do you need?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @10:58PM
From the Wiki page: "It did not, however, explicitly rescind the decisions issued by the Inquisition in its judgement of 1633 against Galileo, or lift the prohibition of uncensored versions of Copernicus's De Revolutionibus or Galileo's Dialogue. "
Later: "Copernicus's De Revolutionibus and Galileo's Dialogue were then subsequently omitted from the next edition of the Index when it appeared in 1835."
Note no rescinding of the original judgments.