Monday, February 11, 2008

What I did for Darwin Day

Tomorrow is Charles Darwin's 199th birthday. His contribution to biology is extremely important and today the facts behind the theory of evolution by natural selection contribute greatly to our quality of life. To celebrate this event Saturday I attended a lecture series at Rice University put on by the Houston Freethought Alliance with my friends from church. The lectures I attended were: So...What exactly is Evolution by Dr. Lesley Campbell, Darwin: The Man and His Work by Jim Ashmore, and The Evolution of the Eye by Dr. Graeme Mardon. All these lectures were great! I learned more about how evolution is studied in the first lecture; I was already very familiar with Charles Darwin's life but I wanted to see if I would learn any information I didn't know; but the last lecture was by far the most interesting. The construction of the eye is very complicated, no doubt, but Professor Mardon made a great point that the eye doesn't look unintelligently designed. In fact, he says, the human/primate eye is poorly designed and only evolution through hundreds of millions of years can explain it. His lecture was fascinating! It's a shame that creationists in our state are working hard to keep this information out of HS biology.

3 comments:

tina FCD said...

Interesting that you went with friends from church. :)

The Super Sweet Atheist said...

Tina:

The church I go to is the Houston Church of Freethought. A nice group of people who happen not to believe in god/gods.

tina FCD said...

Ohhh...sorry, In that case,tell everyone I said hi! :)