Word: darwin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life By Adam Gopnik 211 pages; Knopf...
...more than 80 years, Dayton, Tenn., has had a monkey on its back. That monkey is the English naturalist Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday is being celebrated on Feb. 12 in hundreds of cities around the world. Darwin's treatise On the Origin of Species was instrumental to the town's famous 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted noted trial lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan against each other in a fight to determine whether evolution should be taught in Tennessee public schools. (Read TIME's original 1925 story on the Scopes "monkey trial...
...while most people in this town of 7,000 have been content to move past history, a Wisconsin-based atheist group, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, rubbed it in by purchasing a 12-ft. by 25-ft. billboard on the southern side of town to remind them of Darwin's legacy - and his milestone birthday. "Praise Darwin," the billboard reads. "Evolve Beyond Belief." (Read the 1955 TIME review of the original production of Inherit the Wind...
...sign. "Once we sent one advertising group our artwork for the sign, [the firm] cut off all communications with us," Gaylor says, adding that a company representative told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that he was a Christian and would not take money for any sign that supported Darwin or his birthday. In the end, the FFRF purchased a billboard on the outskirts of town from a company not based in Dayton...
Instead, at the end of the month, the nearby Bryan College (founded in 1930 and named for the victor of the Scopes trial) will be holding a symposium called "War and Peace: 150 Years of Christian Encounters with Darwin." The symposium will explore how Darwin's On the Origin of Species challenged creationist views. Retired professor Dick Cornelius says the town is committed to hearing all sides of an argument, "even if it doesn't favor our position." The motto of Bryan College is "Christ above...