thinkevolution.net

What: Second annual Darwin Day and Teach-In

Where: University of Pennsylvania Museum

When: 1:00 to 4:00 PM on Sunday, February 10, 2008

Why: It’s Charles Darwin’s 199th birthday.

Who: You! The event is free and open to the public.

Next month the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology will host its second annual Darwin Day, in celebration of Charles Darwin’s 199th birthday. This event is part of International Darwin Day, which recognizes “the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.”

In addition to cake (first come first served), this Darwin Day celebration will have a “teach-in” lecture series. Speakers include Dr. Louise Krasniewicz, who will talk about about origin myths around the world, and attorneys Eric Rothschild and Steve Harvey, who were plaintiff’s counsel for the Kitzmiller vs. Dover School Board case. Don’t live near Philadelphia? Check here for other Darwin Day celebrations around the globe, or get tips on starting your own event.

The blog malcolmxpark.org describes a dubious upcoming event in the Philadelphia Free Library’s Summer Reading program. Author Jacob Schwartz, PhD has written books, magazine articles and computer software on asteroid symbolism and “maintains an active astrological practice in a Philadelphia suburb.” He will be speaking at the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library on August 8 at 4 PM, where participants can learn about astrology and create their own birth chart.

Schwartz makes some peculiar claims about his Asteroid Signatures software package, purchase price $350:

Strangely, the names of asteroids relate to Earthly events and persons with the names! For openers, when Bill Clinton was born, the asteroids Monica, Paula, and Williams formed a stellium opposite asteroids Hillary and Gingerich! When George W Bush was elected president in 2000 and 2004, the asteroid Busch conjoined asteroid Washingtonia!

Where are the asteroids relevant to you at significant dates in your life? The collective names in your life are as unique as your signature! That’s why we call this program Asteroid Signatures! Type in your name, or any other name, and the program provides the positions of those asteroids at any time you select, the discovery dates and discoverers are listed, along with the keywords used in their original citation by the Minor Planet Center.

You’ll discover an awesome level of personal connection between asteroid names important to you and important dates in your life when those names connected.

Schwartz and his associates at astrosoftware.com reject accusations of pseudoscience and make detailed claims to scientific legitimacy. In fact, Schwartz runs fairly far afield from his degree in communications with this claim:

Asteroids point to an evolutionary breakthrough for humanity. If we accept the premise that the naming of new planetary bodies correlates with new centers of consciousness within us, then suddenly there are thousands of new centers of consciousness lighting up in the cosmos and in our minds. If we are on the precipice of a quantum leap of consciousness where a greater proportion of the brain will be utilized, then the awareness of asteroid relevance can stimulate those newly utilized brain cells. Is asteroid symbolism the next step in our evolution?

There’s a comprehensive collection of expensive products for sale through astrosoftware.com and, presumably, Dr. Schwartz himself. I hope the Free Library does not end up enabling a scam artist.

On May 28, the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky will officially open. The museum co-opts the frozen-in-time, diorama style of actual factual natural history museums to portray cohabitation of prehistoric humans and “thunder-lizards,” according to an article in today’s New York Times. But that may be the least excruciating distortion of reality this museum showcases. According to the article, the exhibits portray a timeline of events succeeding Adam and Eve’s fall in the garden of Eden, including modern-day catastrophes that have resulted from increasing secularization. The message is pretty clear:

Start accepting evolution or an ancient Earth, and the result is like the giant wrecking ball, labeled “Millions of Years,” that is shown smashing the ground at the foundation of a church, the cracks reaching across the gallery to a model of a home in which videos demonstrate the imminence of moral dissolution. A teenager is shown sitting at a computer; he is, we are told, looking at pornography.

The Times article shows little restraint in discrediting the museum and describing its efforts as a troubling departure from reason. But I can’t resist criticizing one niggling detail: journalist Edward Rothstein writes that, contrary to the biblical creationism story exhibited by the museum, scientists assert “that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection.” Well, yes, many scientists do assert that life’s diversity is the result of natural selection. But that’s a problem in its own right, addressed in my most recent post about Michael Lynch’s recent PNAS paper. Lynch explains that biologists too often attribute phenomena like genome complexity—or taxonomic diversity—to natural selection, and overlook the importance of stochastic processes in evolution. It may seem too fine-grain a point among evolutionists who agree that the larger battle is over whether evolution is accepted at all. But misunderstanding the knowledge that science research provides is dangerous in itself, especially in an intellectual battle for hearts and minds.