Time for a Schism with St. Dawkins?
I've rashly watched the latest television show by Prof Dawkins, despite it being described as "a defence of the theory of evolution by natural selection", and am now considering him a heretic, which is one of the reasons why. (Rewind, reparse and reinterpet, it does make sense in a recursively self-referential way.)
The relatively minor grizzle is that he's presenting the U certificate version of evolution, with all the emphasis on survival selection, leaving out the main driving force in the creation of interesting species like ours. I can see why the many hundreds of pages Darwin wrote about sexual selection by female mate choice didn't go well in Victorian England, but we're grown-ups now. We can stand knowing the world's ellipse has a focus around sex and female decision making, as well as the more manly one around violent competition.
But that's just technical: what I really have trouble with is his re-casting of science in the style of religion. Actually I don't even approve of him engaging in a science vs. religion argument in the first place, as it's silly, but now he looks like Saruman: so deep in his study of the Enemy that he's adopted their ways.
From calling evolution "Darwinism", through presenting it via the life story of that prophet (blessings be upon his name) and showing off his family bible first edition Origin of Species, it all looks designed to appeal to people with no interest in reasonable common sense logical factual evidence-based reality.
I can see why he's done it that way, taking on the feeble minded in their own territory, but trying to outwit them in that way is treating them as Evil, rather than disabled by their bad upbringings. Not believing in reality is the result of intellectual foot-binding, the solution isn't to trick the victim into putting on a shiny new bandage.
Assuming we're not allowed to just kill the 40% (eek!) of British people who are now crippled in this way, a professor of public understanding of science ought to try (in some way I'll leave as an exercise for the reader) to spread some public understanding of science. Putting a wizard's hat on the scientist is not really in the spirit of the thing.
This compounds the error of engaging in the argument against creationism at all - it implies there's scope for an argument, rather than treating it more accurately as an object of contempt. It may be better to go for a radical separatist solution - let natural selection take its course by not imposing the results of evolution (such as food, medicine, Oxygen, limbs etc.) on people who don't like it.
Hmm, what's the HTML tag for end of rant?
The relatively minor grizzle is that he's presenting the U certificate version of evolution, with all the emphasis on survival selection, leaving out the main driving force in the creation of interesting species like ours. I can see why the many hundreds of pages Darwin wrote about sexual selection by female mate choice didn't go well in Victorian England, but we're grown-ups now. We can stand knowing the world's ellipse has a focus around sex and female decision making, as well as the more manly one around violent competition.
But that's just technical: what I really have trouble with is his re-casting of science in the style of religion. Actually I don't even approve of him engaging in a science vs. religion argument in the first place, as it's silly, but now he looks like Saruman: so deep in his study of the Enemy that he's adopted their ways.
From calling evolution "Darwinism", through presenting it via the life story of that prophet (blessings be upon his name) and showing off his family bible first edition Origin of Species, it all looks designed to appeal to people with no interest in reasonable common sense logical factual evidence-based reality.
I can see why he's done it that way, taking on the feeble minded in their own territory, but trying to outwit them in that way is treating them as Evil, rather than disabled by their bad upbringings. Not believing in reality is the result of intellectual foot-binding, the solution isn't to trick the victim into putting on a shiny new bandage.
Assuming we're not allowed to just kill the 40% (eek!) of British people who are now crippled in this way, a professor of public understanding of science ought to try (in some way I'll leave as an exercise for the reader) to spread some public understanding of science. Putting a wizard's hat on the scientist is not really in the spirit of the thing.
This compounds the error of engaging in the argument against creationism at all - it implies there's scope for an argument, rather than treating it more accurately as an object of contempt. It may be better to go for a radical separatist solution - let natural selection take its course by not imposing the results of evolution (such as food, medicine, Oxygen, limbs etc.) on people who don't like it.
Hmm, what's the HTML tag for end of rant?