Hari Darwin 2012

Our first Darwin Day event was a success, despite a minor stir online.

Unscientific Malaysia held our first Darwin Day celebration on Sunday, February 12, to remember Charles Darwin — one of the most influential and misunderstood man in science.

Darwin Day usually celebrates the life and works of Charles Darwin, but also in general pays tribute to science and reason which guided his discoveries.

The event started with an introduction by Zurairi AR, our founder and editor, who recapped the earlier points made in his article “In denial over evolution, in denial over science“. He stressed the damning statistics that slightly over half of Malaysians surveyed in 2008 thinks that evolution is false.

He ended his brief with excerpts taken from notjustatheory.com explaining that evolution is not “just a theory”, which included the joyous final line:

“Evolution is not just a theory, it’s triumphantly a theory!”

The guest speaker, Dato Hamzah Majid was next. The chairman of Cempaka Holdings — which owns the Cempaka Schools — gave some remarks on the life of Darwin. He lamented that after two centuries, Darwin is accepted only by the world community of scientists, and not by the world at large.

Hamzah’s defiant quote resonated with the audience, “I do not just ‘believe’ in Darwin, since believing requires faith. That is not science, and with that we would not be scientists.”

Unscientific Malaysia’s resident biologist and co-founder Hawa O was supposed to present on the misconceptions about evolution, but wasn’t in good health. Instead, she recommended a TED talk by medical ethicist Harvey Fineberg on the next step of evolution:

Dodya Lim then promoted the play boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb which was described as an explosive comedy inspired by the wonders of science. Pik-Svonn Liew of ChowKit Kita also promoted the Religion Film Week 2012 which is going on along this week.

Among the most memorable moments was a plea by our writer Zeffri Yusoff, who urged fellow sceptics and science lovers to breed so their voices will not be lost. The audience also had the chance to hold a short video conference with the celebration of Darwin Day in Singapore.

One of the goals of Hari Darwin 2012 was to raise the awareness of science and evolution among the public, and we were glad to see many people tweeting about the day, with our without the hashtag #HariDarwin:

Selamat #HariDarwin semua,igt, hari Darwin bukan utk uncle Janggut sahaja.tapi sebagai apresiasi dunia sains

— Qusyairi Hashim (@qusyairihashim) February 11, 2012

Read Origins of the Species. It’s just RM9.90 since it’s a classic. Don’t worry. I still pray 5x per day after reading it. #HariDarwin

— Izwan Zakaria (@throngz) February 12, 2012

I do not agree that religion and Darwin’s theory is mutually exclusive. Doing so challenges the omnipotence of God. #haridarwin

— dyap38 (@dyap38) February 12, 2012

aku harap hari darwin tak akan jadi trend.bodoh ke apa kau salute orang yang cakap manusia dari monyet

— Danial Sharom Nizan (@Danialsn) February 12, 2012

Selamat #HariDarwin. I wish one of u guys jadi theorist/researcher/scientist yg proven.dont just sat there talk crap n feels educated..heh

— HafeezNazri (@HafeezNazri) February 12, 2012

We hope that in the future, we can work more in educating the public and ourselves on the theory of evolution, and combat the rampant misconception about it.

Thank you to Nook (@NookMalaysia), an anti-office co-working space, for lending a hall for us to organise the event. Find out more about them at nook.my