Happy Darwin Day!
As you may have heard in the most recent episode of the podcast, Darwin Day is fast approaching. I was fortunate enough to take part in the Darwin Day event this past Saturday, February 7th at Ball State University. It was organized by the BSU Freethought Alliance. I'm not a BSU student, and therefore I'm not eligible for membership. In spite of this limitation I still attend the group's meetings and pretend to be a member.
I think we put on a pretty impressive event. My biggest complaint would have to be the lack of turnout. I guess it shouldn't be that much of a surprise. Also,I have the sneaking suspicion that 9am on a Saturday isn't the best time to ask people to come to a series of science lectures. Still I really enjoyed it, and I got the impression that everyone else there did as well.
Of course the highlight of the day was when Charles Darwin himself showed up. Craig Gosling of the Center for Inquiry in Indianapolis put on a great talk as Charles Darwin. As part of the show he had a panel several of us act as a panel of interviewers. We asked scripted questions, and he gave scripted answers. It was a little cheesy, but we had a lot of fun with it. The intersting thing about his scripted answers was that he actually used direct quotes from Darwin. This is great because it means he isn't really misrepresenting Darwin's opinions or making statements that Darwin himself wouldn't have made. Here's a photo of Darwin with the BSU Freethought Alliance:
Now that I think about it I do have a bigger complaint than the lack of turnout. The last event of the day was a panel discussion about teaching evolution. We had a handful of K-12 teachers who were cool enough to give us part of their Saturday to sit on this panel... and that's when the creationists showed up. Now, I don't mind that the creationists showed up. I wouldn't have minded having a debate, even. What annoyed me the most was that these guys waited until the very end of the day to show up and hassle high school teachers with their logical fallacies. These people weren't there to debate creationists, they were there to discuss education.
We did our best to keep the discussion on topic, but they did everything in their power to drag it back to "I've never seen a dog turn into a horse, therefore evolution is false" or whatever other ignorant bullshit talking point they found on Answers in Genesis. I had half a mind to ask them to leave, but that's just a trap. They come in and disrupt, and if you shut them up or throw them out they get to play the victim. Suddenly science is afraid of the truth and silencing its obnoxious competition.
It really sticks in my craw that the creationists didn't bother to show up for any of several lectures about the evidence for evolution. God forbid they learn something. Where were they during the entire hour of discussion about studies of natural selection in fish, or the other hour's worth of information about the fossil record? I find the willful ignorance of some people just plain astounding.
Still, that bit of annoyance aside we had a great time. I don't know if we'll be doing another event like this again any time soon. It's a lot of work. More work than I think any of us really have time for. I'm glad we did it when we had a chance, though. Science is fun, and I learned a lot about biology while celebrating something awesome.
If you want to find more photos of the event you can find them at my Flickr page.
