Happy 199th Birthday to Charles Darwin!
There is no such thing as "Darwinism".
It's important to be clear about that. "Darwinism" is an idea made up by lying ignorant hate-mongering slimeballs who only see the world purely in terms of faith, bias and dogma - and who believe that everyone else does, as well.
There is no such thing as a "Darwinist". Charles Darwin was not a Holy Lawgiver, his groundbreaking work On The Origin Of Species is not a sacred text. He was merely an intelligent, thoughtful and honest man who reached the logical conclusion of many years of careful, painstaking work; his book was merely the beginning of modern scientific understanding that has progressed far beyond the limits of available knowledge at its initial publication 149 years ago.
Charles Darwin was a scientist. He sought knowledge and understanding. He didn't just wake up one morning and declare "Today, I will discover that natural selection is the mechanism that explains the fact of common descent that we observe in Nature"; he gathered information and made observations and, when he had enough data that the data told him something, he wrote up his conclusions. After publication, his conclusions were there to stand or fall on their own merits. 149 years later they not only stand, but have been bolstered by a vast array of findings from many fields of scientific endeavour, from work done by the future generations who came after to expand the trail he blazed into a complex superhighway that leads to greater knowledge and understanding at every turn.
There is no reverence for Charles Darwin, and he would be appalled if there were. There is only the respect due a man industrious enough to do his work, intelligent enough to see where it led, and honest enough to speak the truth about it. These qualities are nowhere to be found in the self-appointed and self-described "culture warriors" who shriek that Darwin is responsible for racism and slavery and Nazism and whatever alleged "moral decay" is tacked onto this week's list of talking points, who set forth a pogrom of lies and hatred and censorship and misdirection and contempt for law and lack of integrity or common decency and threats of violence... all the while falsely accusing honest men and women of these same faults in a transparent and pathetic act of projection.
There is no "Darwinism" and there are no "Darwinists", there is merely a recognition of the self-evident fact of evolution, and people who understand that. That such people do not base this understanding upon an ideology, and indeed derive no ideology from it, is terrifyingly incomprehensible to those for whom everything is ideologically driven - and we would pity them were they not so pernicious and dangerous.
The brittle strawman of "Darwinism" is everything that the modern theory of evolution by natural selection is not, and reveals only the intellectual and moral vacuity of those who hurl the word like a club at anyone who refuses to be as petty and hateful and small-minded as themselves. To them I give nothing but my scorn. To Charles Darwin I give a respectful salute and my thanks for his work, and then I give my full attention to those who patiently and enthusiastically push back the frontiers of human knowledge for the betterment of us all.
Happy Darwin Day, everyone.
It's important to be clear about that. "Darwinism" is an idea made up by lying ignorant hate-mongering slimeballs who only see the world purely in terms of faith, bias and dogma - and who believe that everyone else does, as well.
There is no such thing as a "Darwinist". Charles Darwin was not a Holy Lawgiver, his groundbreaking work On The Origin Of Species is not a sacred text. He was merely an intelligent, thoughtful and honest man who reached the logical conclusion of many years of careful, painstaking work; his book was merely the beginning of modern scientific understanding that has progressed far beyond the limits of available knowledge at its initial publication 149 years ago.
Charles Darwin was a scientist. He sought knowledge and understanding. He didn't just wake up one morning and declare "Today, I will discover that natural selection is the mechanism that explains the fact of common descent that we observe in Nature"; he gathered information and made observations and, when he had enough data that the data told him something, he wrote up his conclusions. After publication, his conclusions were there to stand or fall on their own merits. 149 years later they not only stand, but have been bolstered by a vast array of findings from many fields of scientific endeavour, from work done by the future generations who came after to expand the trail he blazed into a complex superhighway that leads to greater knowledge and understanding at every turn.
There is no reverence for Charles Darwin, and he would be appalled if there were. There is only the respect due a man industrious enough to do his work, intelligent enough to see where it led, and honest enough to speak the truth about it. These qualities are nowhere to be found in the self-appointed and self-described "culture warriors" who shriek that Darwin is responsible for racism and slavery and Nazism and whatever alleged "moral decay" is tacked onto this week's list of talking points, who set forth a pogrom of lies and hatred and censorship and misdirection and contempt for law and lack of integrity or common decency and threats of violence... all the while falsely accusing honest men and women of these same faults in a transparent and pathetic act of projection.
There is no "Darwinism" and there are no "Darwinists", there is merely a recognition of the self-evident fact of evolution, and people who understand that. That such people do not base this understanding upon an ideology, and indeed derive no ideology from it, is terrifyingly incomprehensible to those for whom everything is ideologically driven - and we would pity them were they not so pernicious and dangerous.
The brittle strawman of "Darwinism" is everything that the modern theory of evolution by natural selection is not, and reveals only the intellectual and moral vacuity of those who hurl the word like a club at anyone who refuses to be as petty and hateful and small-minded as themselves. To them I give nothing but my scorn. To Charles Darwin I give a respectful salute and my thanks for his work, and then I give my full attention to those who patiently and enthusiastically push back the frontiers of human knowledge for the betterment of us all.
Happy Darwin Day, everyone.