Evolution Weekend February 8-10, 2008

Posted 27 January 2008 by Matt Young

Evolution Weekend has approximately 750 participants from 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 9 other nations; last year, Evolution Sunday garnered a bit over 600 participants (see my earlier posting at http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/02/evolution-sunda-3.html ). Here, for anyone willing to help publicize Evolution Weekend, is part of an e-mail I received from the organizer, Michael Zimmerman:

... I have posted two press releases that you can use. I’ll provide the two web addresses below. The first one is a general press release that explains what Evolution Weekend and The Clergy Letter Project are all about. It does not refer to any particular congregation. Whether you are participating in Evolution Weekend or not, please think about sending the press release to any media outlet you can think of – local, national or international. The second press release has been modified to easily enable participants to customize it for their own use. You’ll see that there are some places in red that need to be filled in with specific local information. Please modify the release accordingly and share it as broadly as you can with your local media. Here are the two web addresses: General Press Release: http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/pdf/press%20release%20-%20general.doc Local Press Release: http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/pdf/press%20release%20-%20local.doc

Professor Zimmerman asks clergy who are planning to participate in Evolution Weekend this year to take a minute to search for your name on the list of participants ( http://www.evolutionweekend.org ) and add your name if it is not there. As I wrote last year, the "Clergy Letter Project is terribly important because it counters the view that evolution is inherently atheistic, and the signers of the document are the natural allies of us who want to promote good science education and keep all species of creationism out of the public schools and indeed out of the public agenda." I have dutifully forwarded the general press release to my local newspaper.

8 Comments

bdeller · 27 January 2008

the links are going to a 404 notice at Butler university.

Matt Young · 27 January 2008

Yes, sorry, because, as I said, he used spaces in the URL's. See the square-bracketed text in the quotation. You have to copy and paste through the "doc" extender. Maybe I can fix that.

Bill Gascoyne · 27 January 2008

Change each space to %20 to make it all work.

Matt Young · 27 January 2008

Thanks, but I've already done that. I'm afraid I was kind of rushed when I posted the document and couldn't remember the code for a space. When prompted, I realized I could get the code by just going to the appropriate URL. My apologies for not spending just a little more time originally.

Bill Gascoyne · 27 January 2008

The %20's appear in the text label but not in the underlying links; they still have spaces.

Matt Young · 27 January 2008

I don't know what you mean - the links work when I try them, and there are no extraneous spaces.

Walabio · 28 January 2008

I converted the files into OpenDocument:

HTTP://WikiPedia.Org/wiki/OpenDocument

Here are the files in OpenDocument:

http://intactwiki.org/Image:Press_release_-_general.odt

http://intactwiki.org/Image:Press_release_-_local.odt

James McGrath · 28 January 2008

Let's have a blog-a-thon that weekend, and encourage bloggers to devote at least one post that weekend to the topic of evolution and religion. For many of us, the odds are we would have touched on the issue that weekend anyway, but it may encourage others to devote attention to the topic that might not have done so otherwise.

Thanks!