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Atheists, Humanists
Push Campaign for ' |
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Thu Feb 12, |
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By Robert
Evans
GENEVA (Reuters) - Atheist, agnostic and humanist organizations in the Americas, Europe and
Asia are gearing up for a five-year campaign aimed at achieving international
recognition of Feb. 12 as "Darwin Day."
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Their target date is
2009 -- the bicentenary of the birth of British biologist Charles Darwin whose
own faith in a deity who created the world collapsed before the theory of
evolution he set out in 1859 in his ground-breaking "The Origin of
Species."
Why push for an annual
celebration of Darwin now? His ideas are widely shared and even religious
leaders from churches that once denounced him as a heretic accept that life on
Earth evolved over 3 billion years from primitive forms.
"Because a Darwin
Day would send out a signal that science matters in an era when pseudo-science
and fear of science seem to be gaining ground," argues the British
Humanist Association, which is playing a key role in the campaign.
In the United States,
where a survey in 2002 found that 45 percent of the population believe an
all-powerful deity created the universe and all life in it within the last
10,000 years, this concern has even stronger force.
Under the administration
President Bush (news - web sites), who says he is a born-again Christian, U.S. humanists and atheists
say there has been a broad offensive by "creationists" aimed at
undermining or even halting the teaching of evolution in schools.
The creationist stance
has been boosted by a newer movement arguing that, while the Earth may indeed
be billions of years old, evolution leaves open many questions that can only be
answered by the existence of an "Intelligent Designer."
CREATIONISM 'VERY SCARY'
"It is very, very
scary," says Amanda Chesworth, head of the U.S. Darwin Day movement which
works to counter the trend by organizing community festivals marking the
biologist's birthday. "Creationism is spreading further and further."
"Our nation went
from the Earth to the moon a few years ago and discovered these worlds date
back billions of years. Now it is sticking its head in the sand, claiming the
whole lot was made in a flash a few millennia ago by one entity."
In Britain, where,
unlike the United States, religious observance is weak, there are strong
concerns among secularist groupings over the promotion by British Prime
Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), a professed Christian, of "faith-based" education.
Blair's Labor government
has allowed creationists to take over funding and administration of at least
one state school where pupils are taught creationism.
Other schools may
follow, Keith Porteous Wood of Britain's National Secular Society says, unless
critics speak out.
In India, where humanism
and atheism have a strong tradition and are not so distant from traditional
Hindu thought, which rejects "ultimate truths," rationalists are
alarmed at the rise of an aggressively militant version of Hinduism.
Narisetti Innaiah, a
leader of the country's Rationalist Association, argues that children should be
taught about all religions in schools "but on scientific lines."
"They should be
taught that gods and demons, devils and apparitions, heaven and hell, are all
human creations, and that the world's scriptures are all human works,"
Innaiah says. "Children should have freedom to choose any religion, or
none."
Events marking Darwin's
birthday this year are scheduled in the United States, Canada, Mexico, India,
Nepal, Australia, South Africa, Zambia, Argentina, Brazil and Peru.
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LATIN AMERICAN CHALLENGE
Latin American
humanists, arguing that Catholic teachings of humility have done little to
encourage populations mired in poverty to fight exploitation, face a mounting
challenge from evangelical Protestant groups funded from the United States.
In a church a stone's
throw from the Darwin Research Station on Ecuador's Galapagos Islands (news - web sites) -- where the biologist gathered much of his evidence for evolution --
fiery evangelical sermons on hellfire awaiting unbelievers are on the daily
menu.
In Europe, humanists in
former Soviet-bloc countries where Catholicism is strong -- like Poland and
Slovakia -- are also struggling to raise their voices against what they see as
religious indoctrination in state schools.
Slovak humanists plan
protests around Feb. 12 over a concordat that their country's government has
just signed with the
But in Muslim countries,
proponents of Darwin Day say the idea is a nonstarter, for the moment. In many,
the nonreligious and even scientists who take a Darwinist view can face prison,
or death, for propagating agnosticism or atheism.
"However, even
there a change may come," says a former Asian Muslim who renounced his
faith and has written several widely read books, under the pseudonym Ibn
Warraq, questioning the basis of Islam.
"There are millions
of people across the Islamic world who hold rationalist views and will
hopefully one day be able to voice them in freedom."
