[Music]
Christmas Day I'm wrappin' presents,
takin' out trash on Garbage Day
Valentines I'm writin' cards
and thinkin' 'bout givin' my heart away
Halloween: costumes,
I'm dressin' as a tardigrade
A tardigrade?
Yeah, I'm really just all about Darwin Day
That should be a statutory holiday
if you're askin' me
Globally, not nationally,
a day off work to actually read
Comparative anatomy and biogeography
Genetics and paleontology
and some Teddy Dobzhansky
"Nothing in life makes sense
except in the light of evolution"
So February 12th is the birthday
of the first human with a solution
To the mystery of existence,
why the hummingbird, why the orchid
Why the rhinoceros, why the pine tree,
why the wasp, and why the porpoise?
Why the mass extinction
of the vast majority of life forms
That ever lived,
what did the dinosaurs have to die for?
Why god,
why did you have to take the triceratops?
And leave the mosquito intact?
Is that a theological paradox?
No, it's not,
Darwin gave us the master plan
Actually, the lack of a master plan,
the tragic dance
Of natural selection,
the struggle for existence
Where organisms compete,
but they don't recover from extinction
The tree of life
connected by lines of common descent
Amoebas, plants, fish, frogs,
snakes, rats, hominids and...
Humans,
diversified and adapted
to habitats as widely varied
as glaciers and savannahs
As molecular evidence is collected,
individual gaps vanish
Humans are now known to have
common ancestors with bananas
And cabbages,
and subject to the law of averages
Not every human is aware of
evolution's explanatory advantages
Some of us prefer particular
religious scriptures
Instead of scientific experts
to explain how all of this works
There are many versions,
from the ancient Egyptians
To the bible and Koran
and the Hindu Rig Veda's inscriptions
And this presents a challenge
to teachers of biology
Whose students believe in some of these
creation stories, probably
In some countries,
they have established state religions
Which dictate curriculums,
like in Saudi Arabia for instance
But in other countries,
the establishment of any one religion
By the government is constitutionally prohibited,
for instance
The American justice system
has shown a solid preferences
For science education
based on theories with solid evidence
And there's no alternative scientific theory
to Darwin's
Because all the others hit
miraculous explanatory problems, like
How does a creator create a dragonfly,
is it a mystery?
You need a causal explanation
to explain it scientifically
And Darwin gave us
the only causal explanation in history
That accounts for the origins
of all biological complexity
Without miracles,
we can study and map it
And track it back to the level of
deoxyribonucleic acid
But what we can't do is
teach religion and call it science
'Cause choosing among religions
can be a major cause of violence
So as a practical matter,
religions get equal treatment
With each other, not with science,
you have the right to believe it
But not the right to preach it
to young people with taxpayer funding
Unless you teach it in
comparative religion classes or something
So this is my salute
to the science teachers who get it
Who refuse to let a student pass a test with
"god did it"
And this is my salute
to the National Association of Biology Teachers,
for the consistent stand that they've taken
Again and again in defense of evolution
against attacks from creationists
who tell bible stories in science class
And this is my salute
to Charles Darwin on his Birthday
For his major contributions
to the human mental workspace
What Darwin discovered
is deeper than anyone's personal preference
I look forward to the day of its universal
acceptance
Happy Darwin Day
