darwin day

Darwin Day 2021 – #DarwinDay

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Today, Friday Feb 12, is the official 2021 Darwin day. I’m not making this up, it really is. Charles darwin was born February 12, 1809. Today celebrates, not just his birth but his contribution to science. His proposition, that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, is now widely accepted, and considered a foundational concept in science.

I tend to have a Charles Darwin posting up to mark the occasion. Below are links to a few samples from previous years …

Modern evolutionary biology is very much founded upon Darwin’s big insight as described within his 1859 book – On the Origin of Species.

“There is grandeur in this view of life—that from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Charles Darwin

Religious Claim: “But But … Evolution is a lie“

Let me express it in very very simple terms.

  • You are not an exact copy of your parents. Instead you are slightly different. That is variation.
  • Brothers and sisters don’t do equally well. Some thrive, while others don’t do so well when faced with living in the modern world. That is natural selection.

It very simple terms, that is all there is to it. It beautifully describes why the complexity of life is the way it is. Generation after generation of the same over a vast amount of time gives us the diversity of life we see today.

If curious to learn more, then start here at the Berkeley University 101 page …

At the heart of evolutionary theory is the basic idea that life has existed for billions of years and has changed over time.

Overwhelming evidence supports this fact. Scientists continue to argue about details of evolution, but the question of whether life has a long history or not was answered in the affirmative at least two centuries ago.

The history of living things is documented through multiple lines of evidence that converge to tell the story of life through time. In this section, we will explore the lines of evidence that are used to reconstruct this story.

These lines of evidence include:

  • Fossil evidence
  • Homologies
  • Distribution in time and space
  • Evidence by example

Darwin Day – Further Reading

There are numerous events happening all around the globe to mark the occasion. You can click here to see if any are happening near you.

#DarwinDay – Tweets

https://twitter.com/NCSE/status/1359540280056307715

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