Happy Darwin Day!

Charles Darwin was born 198 years ago today. He published On the Origin of Species fifty years after that and it still stands as the best explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on this planet. In this age of intolerance, where we face people who would stifle any questioning of their religious beliefs, it is important to take a stand for clear headed and rational thought.

The Humanist Society of Scotland has started a regular Thought for the Day podcast as an alternative to BBC radio version that still stubbornly refuses to allow non-religious speakers. Today's talk from the philosopher A.C. Grayling about the paradoxical limits of tolerance is particularly apposite. Future commentators will include Iain Banks and Stewart Lee.

“I was always told that extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof; religions make the most utterly extraordinary claims while offering no real proof whatsoever, and yet are allowed to go unchallenged even by those who ought to know better. It is this unthinking acceptance of religion′s absurd pampering that ideas like the Darwin day podcasts seek to challenge. Such ideas have rarely been more timely.”
Iain Banks

“It is wrong that ‘Thought for the Day’ refuses to have any but religious voices on it. The far richer and longer-standing humanist tradition, stemming from Socrates to our own day, is a treasure-house of insights and perspectives that our world is tragically lacking, oppressed as it is by mainly religion-fuelled divisions and atrocities. The Humanist Society of Scotland has done us a service in offering a real alternative to predictable pieties that now speak to minorities only in our society.”
A.C. Grayling

You can find more links about Darwin Day at the official website and for a bit of fun, here's a link to a reggae version of The Origin of Species in Dub