Sunday, February 22, 2009
Celebrating Darwin's Birthday (in church!)
Last weekend I had the pleasure and privilege of coordinating a Darwin's Birthday service at Headwaters Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. This year marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the "Origin of Species." Because several folks asked, I am posting Adobe pdf files of various components of the service below.
First-time visitors Shane and Kayla graciously volunteered to help me with a children's skit on the transition from from fish to amphibians: Ozzie and the the Snortlefish. This piece, and a whole bunch of other interesting resources is from thegreatstory.org, a site maintained by fellow UU Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd. I read an extended excerpt on religion from Darwin's Autobiography and my talk focused on the question of a why a church would (and should) celebrate Darwin's birth. Following the lead of Philip Kitcher in his paper Darwin and Democracy, I suggested that Darwin began the closing argument in the "Enlightenment case against supernaturalism" and that religion must be "naturalized" if it is to have a net positive effect in the world. We finished our celebration with a birthday cake featuring Ray Troll's "Embrace Your Inner Fish" featuring Darwin and Tiktaalik.
First-time visitors Shane and Kayla graciously volunteered to help me with a children's skit on the transition from from fish to amphibians: Ozzie and the the Snortlefish. This piece, and a whole bunch of other interesting resources is from thegreatstory.org, a site maintained by fellow UU Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd. I read an extended excerpt on religion from Darwin's Autobiography and my talk focused on the question of a why a church would (and should) celebrate Darwin's birth. Following the lead of Philip Kitcher in his paper Darwin and Democracy, I suggested that Darwin began the closing argument in the "Enlightenment case against supernaturalism" and that religion must be "naturalized" if it is to have a net positive effect in the world. We finished our celebration with a birthday cake featuring Ray Troll's "Embrace Your Inner Fish" featuring Darwin and Tiktaalik.
Labels: Biocentrism, Science and Religion
Friday, April 06, 2007
Blog against theocracy!
PZ has more on this at Pharyngula. A great idea and one that thinking people should embrace and employ.
See Karl Popper on why it is imperative that we do not tolerate intolerance and Lawrence Kohlberg on the meaning of relativism -- some explanations are relatively superior to others -- not all opinions are equally valid.
Compromising with patent nonsense is no virtue. /dps
Labels: Science and Religion
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