From scientist to saint: does Darwin deserve a day?

by Robin McKie, science editor Sunday January 13, 2002 The Observer

He was the originator of the most dangerous idea in history. He disenfranchised God as our creator and revealed the animal origins of humanity. Many believe his influence was pernicious and evil. But now a campaign has been launched to establish an international day of celebration on 12 February: birthday of Charles Darwin, author of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

'Along with Shakespeare and Newton, Darwin is our greatest gift to the world,' said Richard Dawkins, honorary president of the Darwin Day Organisation. 'He was our greatest thinker. Any campaign to recognise his greatness should have a significant British contribution.'

The Darwin campaign was launched by US activists two years ago to resist the anti-evolution campaigning of fundamental Christians. Now the aim is to create global celebrations by 2009, the bicentennial of his birthday.

'We have little chance of getting a national holiday for Darwin in the US - there is far too much anti-science and pseudoscience,'

said project organiser Amanda Chesworth.

'We are more likely to get one established in Europe, particularly in Britain, his birthplace.'

Celebrations will include seminars and lectures, and the showing of films and plays on Darwin's life, though other ideas include an atheist giving Radio 4's Thought for the Day, and a lesson on evolution being preached at Westminster Abbey. 'I'd do it like a shot,' said Dawkins. Darwin was originally religious. He saw nature's diversity as proof of God's existence. Only a divine creator could be responsible for such marvels, it was then thought. But, after travelling the world in the Beagle, and after years of thought and experiment at his Down House home in Kent, he concluded that natural selection offered a better explanation. Life forms better suited to their environments live longer and so have more offspring, thus triggering an evolution of species moving into new ecological niches.

As philosopher Daniel Dennett said, it was 'the single best idea anyone has ever had... ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else.'

It is also remarkably simple. 'You can explain natural selection to a teenager,' said UK biologist John Maynard Smith. 'You have difficulty with Newton and little chance with Einstein. Yet Darwin's idea is the most profound. It still haunts us.' Nor is opposition to Darwin confined to religious figures. Sociologists, psychologists and others involved in social policy hate natural selection, said Maynard Smith. 'They deny human behaviour is influenced by genes and evolution. They want to believe we are isolated from the animal kingdom. It is damaging, intellectual laziness. That is why we need a Darwin Day. This point was backed by biologist Steve Jones.

'If you look at Africa, US fundamentalism, and the Muslim world, you realise evolution supporters are outnumbered by creationists. Yet these are people who have deliberately chosen to be ignorant. They are flat-Earthers without the sophistication. We need a Darwin Day to counter that ignorance.'