Darwednesday

This Darwin Day let's note a funny detail: have you noticed religious fundamentalists are far more obsessed with ol' Chuck than atheists are? Or even biologists? Hell, in a university biology curriculum, you'll probably discuss Darwin less than once a course, with maybe one full lecture on 19th-century evolution debates and excerpts from the Origin of Species to introduce evolutionary biology. And we're done. The 19th century ended 125 years ago. But you wouldn't know that from watching the religious mad scramble to defame Darwin by claiming his old-age ailments were divine punishment for contradicting Tha Bie-buhl, posting pictures of Darwin as Hitler, etc.

 

It just reconfirms that whether by innate stupidity or their communal mental disease, believers are incapable of grasping even the basic notion of reason. Interpreting non-religion the only way they know how, as just another religion, they interpret Darwin as its deity or patron saint, and go on the attack as though it would be some great victory to tear him down. And indeed, if you were to tear down Yahweh or Krishna, none of the nonsensical piles of gibberish comprising Christianity or Islam or Hinduism would retain their appeal, because only the mindless belief in holy books' supposed authors' supernatural power induces anyone to swallow their sadomasochistic ramblings.

 

But here's a shocker: free thinkers don't sleep with a copy of The Descent of Man under their pillows. It's not our holy book and its author is not our holy man. We don't have those things. We don't need them. We don't want them. We value the intellectual advancement of the concept of natural selection because it holds up on its own, and its author only insomuch as he was instrumental in clarifying an explanation of the surrounding world which that world itself evinces as true in a myriad examples. When religious reactionaries manage to erase lessons about Darwin's finches from schoolbooks, finches will continue to exist and their beaks will continue to adapt to local food sources, and anyone who pays attention will be able to rediscover those facts. Reality gives not the slightest shit about your idiotic need to pretend fairytales are real.

 

Neither is natural selection some singular revelation on which the entirety of biological science depends to provide a better explanation for life than a magic beardy man making his clay puppets move. It was a major step in an iterative assessment of evidence. Remember it was prompted as an explanation for the natural world based on Thomas Malthus' observations about the human world. A protestant priest. And a monk, Mendel, gave us the first serious notion of heredity. You think nobody will be able to plant some peas and look at their flowers after you erase those two from textbooks? Or nobody will look at a murder-ridden slum and note not every organism lives to procreate? In fact before Charles Darwin was even born, his gran'pappy Erasmus took part in similar arguments about the malleability of species. And if you're so obsessed with natural selection itself, why do you address none of your vitriol toward Alfred Russel Wallace who independently described and co-presented the concept alongside Darwin? Come on, fundies, up your game, show Alfie some love!

Yet if you erase every famous scientist's name, if you torture to death every existing thinker, better minds than yours among your own children will retort "e pur si muove" and realize their lot can only be improved by working in reality, not make-believe.

 

Wanna know today's greatest significance to atheists? It's a weekday.