Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809. The Secular Humanists of Houston
will have a 'Darwin Day Celebration' February 20th, 12:00 - 6:00 PM at the Border's
Books & Music (9633A Westheimer, Houston, TX 77063). Likely speakers include
Pflugerville science teacher John Koonz; Gregory Brown, Director of Graduate
Studies in the Department of Philosophy, University of Houston; Robert Dennison,
Houston biology teacher; and Keith Parsons, Professor of Philosophy at University
of Houston, Clear Lake. Contact Keith Irish
Atheists owe Darwin much. Descent of life with modification through a process of natural selection explains how living things came to be as they are. Evolution was a more accurate theory for the fossil evidence than religious mythology. So, go get that Darwin Fish for your car or tell the most irritating fundie you know that you're observing Darwin's birthday. Be glad you live in an age when scientific discovery continues to free us from supernatural mythology.
Reported by an Austin nurse. "I work for the Catholic church. Very strange set of circumstances, but I'm a nurse in the public schools in Austin. Seton [a Catholic owned hospital] has taken over school health in AISD [Austin Independent School District]. School nurses in the public schools work for the Catholic church. We have business meeting which begin with a prayer by a nun."
This nurse endures prayers as part of providing tax-funded services the Austin public schools buy from a Catholic hospital. Since the nurses are employees, they risk their jobs if they complain about the intimidation of what amounts to forced prayer. While this is probably illegal now, Federal 'Charitable Choice' legislation has been proposed to exempt religious charities from civil rights laws so that they can impose religious standards and doctrines on employees.
[From REakins513@aol.com] God's claim to all-knowing perfection doesn't extend to basic geometry, according to his 'divinely' inspired bible. "Then he made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from rim to rim, and five cubits high. A line of thirty cubits would encircle it completely." [NRSV 2 Chronicles 4:2]
God infallibly 'knew' that a circle of ten units diameter had a circumference of 30 units, not the correct 31.4159... humanity learned to compute as Pi. Isn't it curious that God 'knew' no more about geometry than the his people 'knew' at the time that story would have developed? Of course, fundamentalists could always insist that God is in fact capable of making a circle with a circumference equal to three diameters. It's another logically impossible divine mystery.