Public Meeting & Greg Laden on Darwin, Evolutionary Biology, & Race
Details
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Schedule:
1:00-1:15 p.m. – Social time
1:15-1:45 p.m. – February Public Business Meeting
1:45-2:00 p.m. – Break
2:00-3:30 p.m. – Presentation: Greg Laden speaking on Darwin, Evolutionary Biology, & Race
4:00-whenever – Dinner at Panda Garden (1706 Lexington Avenue North; Roseville, MN)
February's Speaker:
In celebration of Darwin Day (Feb. 12th), our speaker for this month’s public meeting is going to speak on "Darwin, Evolutionary Biology, & Race."
Anti-science and creationist rhetoric, coming from organizations like the Discovery Institute, often paints Darwin as handmaiden to the Nazis and founder of racist biology. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century is uncritically melded with Darwin’s writings that touched on race, and the genetic determinism of certain aspects of modern biology is uncritically melded with Darwinian theories. In this talk, Greg Laden will address Darwin’s racism (or lack thereof) and explore the relationship between concepts of race and racism and evolutionary biology of Darwin’s day as well as that of the twenty-first century. Darwin was a nineteenth century gentlemen who benefited greatly from his position in a world colonial empire, but it was his exploration of that world that led him away from religious dogma and soured him on certain racist concepts. He was the founder of much of the theory that was later to be used in rather nefarious ways, but those uses were never based on good biology. This talk will directly address the relationship between modern biology and modern race theory.
Greg writes and teaches about anthropology, race and racism, the biology of gender, evolution, human evolution, nature, birds, and open source operating systems. He is an active member of the skeptics community and an unabashed progressive liberal. He often interviews guests for Minnesota Atheists’ AtheistsTalk radio program. His website is http://gregladen.com/blog/ and he blogs at http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/ and http://freethoughtblogs.com/xblog . He also writes an article every month for http://10000birds.com/ .