Celebrate by watching (and sharing) this great video about evidence for evolution.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://biologos.org/blogs/chris-stump-equipping-educators/happy-darwin-day
Pretty sure yesterday was an impromptu Einstein day. 
Simply put, because Kepler and Galileo aren’t rejected by tens of millions of people, as well as vast swaths of the religious establishment. Darwin Day is an opportunity to shed fresh light on the “conflict” between evolutionary science and religious faith. The fact that Darwin Day is mostly celebrated by atheists and humanists is a consequence of this unnecessary and divisive conflict in American culture. If people of faith don’t celebrate the work of Darwin, then it will be celebrated by the only people that are left. That’s why we think it’s important to Christians to celebrate it from the perspective of faith in a personal creator God and thus a purposeful cosmos.
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People actually celebrate Einstein’s birthday on the 14th of March every year (3/14), which also happens to be pi-day. Why do people celebrate pi-day? The number pi surely did not accomplish anything (although it is a good excuse to eat pie).
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If there is much “hoopla”, I confess to have missed it. However, that means nothing because I often find myself unaware of all sorts of cultural trends.
https://www.checkiday.com/ typically lists about a dozen “holidays” commemorating just about everything imaginable. Such holidays are ubiquitous within The Congressional Record, as various commercial interests and particular people groups are often being affirmed there in that way. (No doubt some people consider Latvian-American Day extremely important. And power to 'em.)
I would assume that Darwin gets more attention than Wallace for the same kinds of reasons that Thomas Edison gets more attention from the general public than N. Tesla. I assume it obvious that far more people recognize the name Darwin than Wallace. I also assume that most participants on this forum mention Darwin more often than Wallace in a typical year. But I can’t say that I lose much sleep over who gets the most honor. (Perhaps I should. But it just hasn’t been a priority for me. Yet I’m certainly fine with those who do care about such things. I just don’t feel like I have a dog in this hunt.)
So I probably don’t grasp or appreciate the full gravity of the problem. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not appreciative of those who do. (Of course, that also doesn’t mean that I’m all that cognizant of the converse. Consider me blissfully apathetic in general, I guess. As I grow older, I find blissful apathy to be one of my favorite pastimes.)
Other than the salvific work of the Lord Jesus Christ, I can’t say that I do all that much celebrating of any particular human’s work. So if there is a competition within the culture as to who celebrates who, I guess I will probably remain blissfully apathetic.
That said, I do celebrate and worship all of God’s amazing creations, including the evolutionary processes which Darwin explored. The Creator of this wonderful universe, and all that I observe within it, tends to excite me a lot more than my fellow human observers. However, I can certainly commend those fellow observers whose observations have helped me to appreciate and better understand that creation.
Should there be a holiday commemorating blissful apathy? I probably don’t see a need for it because lots of us tend to celebrate it all the year through.
(After being awake for about 36 hours, blissful apathy is not necessarily a conscious choice.)
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This animated short video tells the story of Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection at the same time as Charles Darwin.Co-directed by Flora Lichtman and Sharon Shattuck of Sweet Fern Production, the video tracks A. R. Wallace’s life from growing up in England to his voyages with Henry Walter Bates and later adventures in the Malay Archipelago. The 8-minute video ends with an examination of the naturalist’s legacy.
Well, one reason why Darwin is better remembered than Wallace is surely that Darwin was the one to write a best-seller that has remained so over the generations. And then of course there’s the fact (fair or not) that in class-conscious Britain of the nineteenth century, Darwin was of the gentry while Wallace was very much a hard-scrabble commoner.
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Darwin was never an atheist.
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Wallace is still remembered, just not as much as Darwin. In 2013, the American Museum of Natural History had a special event to mark the centenary of his death: Alfred Russel Wallace Centenary: Natural Selection and Beyond
(I didn’t go to this event, but it looked good)
Darwin’s religious views changed throughout his life, and at the end he was an agnostic. He never thought that evolution and Christian belief were incompatible. Wallace was a Christian, but he believed all kinds of other stuff. He was very much into spiritualism and he attended séances. Wallace and Spiritualism
Let’s just face it. “Darwinism” rolls off the tongue so much more easily than “Wallacenism?”. “Wallinian?”. “Wallanist?”
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So how many KINDS can we see in the long evolution of Whales?
At least 3 for sure - - the first KIND?: a fully terrestrial creature … like all the other larger mammals that were appearing without dinosaurs to eat them, or out-compete.
The 2nd kind? a mammal who spends most of its time in the water … but returns to land to bear children. This is the AMPHIBIAN kind.
The 3rd kind? a mammal who successfully gives birth and raises its chldren all in the water.
The “Independent Lines of Evidence” slide below comes from the excellent video in the link!
You are correct. Darwin may have been a liberal Christian, but he was no atheist as I see it.
Wallace was no orthodox Christian. Also, I would rather celebrate the birth of our Lord. Christians have eternal life because of him.
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