Richard Dawkins
Scary two think that we’re just two auld people away from the birth of the man who changed everything.
It’s only 200 years since CharlesDarwin was born. And just 150 years since his genius work, Origin of the Species, was published.
Which means, if you take the average 100-year-old (there’s more of them around thanyou might expect) , then their granny would probably have been caught up in the incredible fury and fallout which followed that particular event.
My, how polite Victorian society scoffed at the notion that we were all descended from apes. And there’s still laughs aplenty left in Darwin today.
Everything about the Darwin Deniers is funny, with the possible exception of the havoc wrought on American schools by teaching by the proponents of “intelligent design“. Creationists, meanwhile, are actually pretty scary. Reading the Bible and considering some people still consider it a relevant template for 21st Century life is the only explanation I need on why that should be.
The last time I luaghed out lout at a TV science show was during a programme presented by Darwinophile extraordinarie, Professor Richard Dawkins. He’s the boffin-philosopher who takes every opportunity to rail against the stifling of scientific excellence by the (usually political) antics of fundamental God botherers.
Quite sensibly he points out there is now such sheer, overwhelming weight of physical evidence to back the theory of evolution that it fills thousands of museums, science building and centres of learning excellence the world over.
Millions upon millions of fossils and samples from every corner of the globe and from hundreds of thousands of years of the earth’s history. All pointing, inexorably and overwhelmingly to the fact that life evolved from simple biological soup to the current riot of diversity.
To deny evolution as a scientific fact, Dawkins suggested, was to deny every other strand of scienctife understanding we currently take for granted. Hence his suggestion that those same Darwin deniers should also reject Sir Isaac Newton’s long-held explantion gravity – by stepping off the roof of a 10-floor building.
Funnier still is the fact that many of those Darwin Deniers might actually try it – since they genuinely have tried to suggest the scientific explanation of gravity is codswallop.
Anyhoo, enough of the serious stuff and back to the unashamed trivia. Epoch changing revelations aside, the best thing bequested to us by the father of modern science is the Darwin Awards. A tongue in cheek celebration of the dearly departed muppets, morons and miserably unfortunate whose deaths give us cause to, well, laugh.
Bummed to death
All of which brings me to this tale which has crossed my PC desktop twice in the past couple of weeks. It’s appropriate for this blog, which for the day I am going to rename Black and White and Red Down Under. There could also be a nice new stripey jersey and advice on where to find the cheapest safari tickets for anybody offering better examples of such schadenfreude.
As if that wasn’t enough belly laughs for one day, I’m also pleased to see that the design firm behind Pepsi’s new logo have solved another great scientific imponderable. Darwin might have been able to explain the evolution of life, but rather annoyingly for atheists scientists, even he couldn’t explain the origin of everything.
However, no need for any more sleepless nights asking the big question, why? Because Pepis has been shown to be the mystical hand behind life, the universe and everything – and they’ve produced a hefty document to prove it.
Who said science couldn’t be funny?
