Darwin Day Is Celebrated by a Wide Variety of Groups - Religious and Secular, Scientific

Darwin Day Assembly

Introduction

Charles Darwin was born on the 12th February 1809 and every year his birthday is celebrated with an unofficial Darwin Day all over the world. It is a time to remember Darwin’s life and discoveries, a time to appreciate the benefits that science and scientific exploration bring, and a time to wonder at the curiosity and inventiveness of the human race.

Darwin Day is celebrated by a wide variety of groups - religious and secular, scientific and historical, educational and recreational - and in many different ways, but all with the aim of bringing people of diverse backgrounds together under the common language of science.

This assembly gives a very brief history of Darwin’s life and discoveries, and attempts – in a very simple way – to explain his ideas and why they have often proved controversial for religious people.

If you would like more information about Charles Darwin in general, and Darwin Day in particular, have a look at the International Darwin Day Foundation’s website here: http://darwinday.org/

Preparation

In preparation you will need to find two or three students with good reading voices who are willing to help. Make sure they have time to practise. If you are going to use microphones, then give your volunteers a run-through with them or they could be surprised or unnerved by the sound of their own

©CTVC / TrueTube 1 | P a g e amplified voices. Switch your readers regularly to help maintain your audience’s attention.

You might prefer to find participants for the two games before the assembly if you are not comfortable with picking suitable candidates out of the audience.

Instructions

Hand over immediately to your volunteers to read the Assembly Script, but be ready to take control of the games at the appropriate points (unless you have very confident students helping you) and stand by to play the film when the time comes.

Don’t forget to hide the chocolate for the first game!

Game 1 - Survival of the Fittest

BEFORE THE ASSEMBLY! - Place a bar of chocolate somewhere that would be inaccessible to one of your smaller students e.g. on a high shelf, on a high window sill, on top of a picture frame.

Pick two volunteers from the audience – one of your tallest students and one of your smallest (it might be a good idea to ask them before the assembly and obviously, be careful who you choose: some people are very sensitive about their height!). In front of the audience, tell your volunteers that you have hidden some chocolate somewhere, and it’s theirs if they can find it. Ask them to close their eyes or turn their backs so you can show everyone else where it is. Divide the audience in half. One side will help the tall student and the other half will help the small student by making more or less noise depending on how close or far they are from the prize in a “you’re getting warmer” or “you’re getting colder” style, only expressed through cheers and clapping! Pointing is not allowed, nor are specific directions! Alternatively (if you fear riotous decibel levels) you could assign each student a helper.

Even if the small student finds the chocolate first, it will be out of reach and the tall student will swoop in and get it first.

Ask the audience if they thought the competition was fair. Of course it wasn’t. Then ask them to imagine that the two volunteers were animals looking for food in the wild. Point to the loftier of your two students and explain that the taller animals will find the food high up in the tree branches, and so live long

©CTVC / TrueTube 2 | P a g e and healthy lives. They will have lots of children who will also be tall, and who will also be able to reach the food. Now point to the shorter of the students and explain that the smaller animals wouldn’t be able to reach the food, so they would starve and eventually die. Pause to get a pantomime style, “Ahhhh!” from the audience. However, point out that if there was another source of food lower down that was difficult for the tall animals to pick up, then the smaller animals would survive alongside the tall animals and they wouldn’t be fighting each other for the same food. Both kinds of animal would thrive. Present your small volunteer with a bar of chocolate as well. Darwin suggested that animals weren’t designed – the reason that they suit their environments so well is because the animals that weren’t suited for the environment died out.

Get the audience to give both volunteers a round of applause as they sit down.

Game 2 - Tongs and Tweezers

Ask for two more volunteers. Give one of them a pair of barbeque tongs (the bigger the better) and the other a pair of tweezers (the smaller the better). Direct them to a table on which you have spread two kinds of confectionery: large chocolate bars and small sweets like M&Ms or, even better, Millions (tiny little round chewy sweets in toxic-looking colours). Alternatively, you could lay out a clean sheet and spread your goodies on the floor. Tell the volunteers they have 30 seconds to collect as many sweets as they can and carry them to their own separate bowls, using only the pincing power of their tongs or tweezers.

Three, two, one... go! And get your audience to encourage the participants.

Count the sweets in each bowl and announce a winner. Ask the volunteers to say which of the sweets they found easiest to pick up. Depending on the implements you have given them, the tongs would have been hopeless at picking up the Millions whereas the tweezers would have found the larger chocolates more difficult.

Explain that in the wild, if the only food available was tiny seeds like the Millions, a bird with a large beak (like the tongs) would die out, leaving the bird with the small beak (like the tweezers) to live on. And vice versa.

©CTVC / TrueTube 3 | P a g e Tell the volunteers they can keep the sweets they collected, and get the audience to give them a round of applause as they sit down.

©CTVC / TrueTube 4 | P a g e Film Digest

Evolution: God to Science (2:43)

Topic: Ethics and Religion Sub-Topic: Faith

In the past we believed that God created the world. Nowadays most people in the UK believe that evolution brought us to where we are today. Science has taken over, but where is it going? With all our scientific advancements, are humans starting to play God?

Resources

 Digital projector (connected to the internet or you will need to download the films beforehand).  Microphones (if needed, or available).  Two or three volunteers to read the Assembly Script.  Enough copies of the Assembly Script for you and for each of your volunteers.  Two bars of chocolate for the first game – Survival of the Fittest.  More bars of chocolate and some small sweets (M&Ms or Millions) for the second game – Tongs and Tweezers.  Barbecue tongs (the larger the better).  Tweezers (the smaller the better).  Two bowls for the participants to place their sweets into.  A clean sheet to cover the floor, or a table to lay the sweets on.

©CTVC / TrueTube 5 | P a g e Assembly Script

February 12th is Darwin Day - an international tribute held every year on Charles Darwin’s birthday. Events are organised all over the world to teach people about Darwin, to explain his discoveries, and to celebrate science.

These days, most people accept the theories of evolution and natural selection, but for some, they remain controversial issues. But imagine what it must have been like in 1859 when Darwin published his ideas in the most famous of his books: On the Origin of Species.

At the time, most people in Britain were Christian and they accepted that every word of the Bible was literally true. They believed that God had designed and made everything in six days - as described in the book of Genesis - and that the world was only about six thousand years old.

They saw evidence of God’s work all around them: The reason that there is a sun to warm us, plants for us to eat, water for us to drink, bacteria to break down our waste, trees to provide oxygen and to suck in carbon dioxide is because God designed it all to work that way. It was proof that God existed.

For instance, if you asked someone, “Why do giraffes have long necks?” the answer was obvious. Most people believed that giraffes have long necks because God had designed them that way. He had given them long necks so they could reach the food on the highest branches. It made sense. It was proof that God existed, because how else could animals have become so well suited to their environments?

Charles Darwin was one of the first men to suggest an alternative explanation.

Play Game 1 Survival of the Fittest

Charles Darwin was born on the 12th February 1809 in Shrewsbury. He was eventually to become the most famous naturalist there has ever been, but his career began almost by accident.

Darwin’s father wanted him to become a doctor, so in 1825 when he was just 16, Charles was sent to Edinburgh University to begin his training. Unfortunately, he found the lectures boring and spent most of his time

©CTVC / TrueTube 6 | P a g e outside, walking in the country and studying the animals, plants and insects he found.

By the age of 19, it was obvious that Charles was never going to become a doctor. However, his father was still determined that his son should follow a respectable profession and sent him to Cambridge University where he would study to become a vicar instead. But Charles spent more time looking at the mysteries of the natural world than the mysteries of religion. When he eventually finished his degree in 1831, a friend recommended him for the job of “official naturalist” on a ship called the HMS Beagle which would soon be departing on a voyage around the world. Charles didn’t think he was qualified for the job, but the voyage appealed to his spirit of adventure and he was keen to join the crew.

The captain of the Beagle was a young Christian man called Robert Fitzroy. He didn’t want a naturalist on board his ship who would contradict the Bible, but he knew that Charles had trained to be a clergyman and so thought he’d be ideal. Fitzroy offered him the job, and Darwin - although very surprised - accepted immediately. But things didn’t work out quite as Captain Fitzroy had planned.

The Beagle sailed to South America. While the crew surveyed and mapped the coast for naval charts, Charles would disembark the ship and trek overland to the next port of call. He explored, collected specimens and filled notebook after notebook with descriptions of the incredible animals and plants that he saw. On some of his expeditions he discovered the fossils of extinct creatures and wondered what could have happened to them. Captain Fitzroy’s theory was that these were obviously animals that had not made it into Noah’s ark and had died in the Flood, as described in the Bible.

But Charles wasn’t happy with Fitzroy’s explanation. He had noticed that while the fossilised animals were similar to the living animals he’d seen, there were also important differences. Somehow, changes had taken place over time and he didn’t understand how this could have happened.

Three and half years into the voyage, the Beagle arrived at a group of twelve volcanic islands, 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador. The islands were named after the giant tortoises that lived there, called Galapago in Spanish. The Beagle stayed at the Galapagos Islands for five weeks and Charles went ashore for only 17 days, but it was here that his revolutionary ideas began to take shape.

The islands were only a few miles from each other and the animal life on each one was very similar. But it was the differences that fascinated Charles. The

©CTVC / TrueTube 7 | P a g e iguanas on one island were red, on another island they were black, on another they were green and yellow. The tortoises on one island had short necks, flat shells and ate food on the ground. On another island they had long necks and an arch at the front of their shells so they could reach up to food on higher bushes. Some of the sailors even claimed they could tell which island a tortoise had come from by the taste. Cooked tortoise was delicious.

But why were there so many different types of tortoise? How had the differences developed? Charles knew that a farmer could breed a dog or a horse to have longer legs or a shorter tail, but how could these changes take place in the wild? Captain Fitzroy argued that - of course - God had designed and created the different tortoises, but everything that Charles had seen in South America persuaded him that there must be another explanation.

Eventually, it was the islands’ birds that helped Charles to come up with his theory. He noticed that the finches from the different islands looked very similar apart from the shape of their beaks. His idea was that they had different shaped beaks because different food was available to them on different islands. On an island where a lot of nuts grew, birds with a beak that was a good shape for cracking nuts would get more food. They would be more healthy, live longer and have more chicks who would inherit the same shaped beak. Over the generations, the birds with beaks of other shapes would die out because they couldn’t crack as many nuts. This, thought Charles, must be what had happened to the extinct creatures whose fossils he had found. Only animals that were suited to their environment survived and the others died out. In this way they changed - or evolved. It was the beginning of Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection.

Play Game 2 Tongs and Tweezers

In 1836, the Beagle returned to England after a five year voyage. Charles continued his studies and began to publish his writings. He got married, had ten children - yes, ten children - and despite periods of illness, he continued to work on his theory of Natural Selection.

Finally, in 1859, he published the book that changed the scientific world forever. It was called On the Origin of Species, and it became a controversial best-seller. People talked about in the press, in the Houses of Parliament, in churches, in pubs and in the streets.

©CTVC / TrueTube 8 | P a g e Today, it can be hard to understand why Charles Darwin’s theories were so shocking, but they went against everything most people had previously believed.

If Darwin’s theories were true it meant that animals had evolved slowly over hundreds of thousands of years, with successful species thriving and unsuccessful species dying out. In this way, humans had evolved to suit the habitat; the habitat had not been made to suit humans.

The author Douglas Adams explained it like this: Imagine a puddle sitting in a hole in the road. The puddle says to himself, “This is fantastic. This hole in the road fits me perfectly. It’s exactly the same shape as me. It must have been designed and made just for me.” People assumed that because the world is the perfect environment for us, it must have been designed and made for us by God. But like a puddle adapts perfectly to fit a hole in the road, Darwin argued that life had adapted to suit its environment through Natural Selection.

The whole argument was turned on its head and this was very unsettling and even upsetting for a lot of people. And then there was the idea that human beings had evolved from ape-like creatures. For people who believed that God had created humans to be superior to animals, this was just insulting.

Show the Film Evolution: God to Science

Humans have always asked the big questions about who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

In the past, people always looked to Religion for the answers, but Science has gradually taken its place in providing explanations. The split between Science and Religion has got wider and wider.

It wasn’t always that way; in fact Science and Religion were once considered to be the same. Scientists were just finding out what God has done. For example, astronomy was begun by Islamic scholars trying to find out more about the universe that they believed God had created.

The narrator of the film said if people believed that God created the world they didn’t have to take responsibility for it, but there are many religious people who would disagree. Jews and Christians talk about being “stewards”,

©CTVC / TrueTube 9 | P a g e Muslims talk about being “khalifahs”. Both words mean that humans are looking after the world for God. Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists all believe that God’s spirit is present in nature and so humans should do their best to look after it. If we are going to care for our planet, we need to find out more about it and how it works - and that knowledge should then be used responsibly. Science and Religion can go hand in hand.

Charles Darwin did not write On the Origin of Species to prove there was no God. He didn’t try to explain where life had come from, only how it had evolved over the years. When he wrote the book he still believed in God as the first cause of the universe. He did have doubts, especially after one of his daughters died when she was only 10 years old, but he never denied God’s existence. He thought it was perfectly possible to believe in God and in evolution at the same time.

Pope Leo XIII, who was leader of the Catholic Church when On the Origin of Species was published said, “Truth cannot contradict truth”.