"endless forms so beautiful have been and are being evolved"- i pity those who cannot appreciate the complexity and pure grandeur of life.
I will say this: darwin was a great man, a great man for finding fault in his theories until he could improve them; for always asking "why?" even of his own ideas.
I raise my glass for a man who thought more severely of his own propositions than did those who would doubt him over a hundred years-
and I will always find fault for anyone who questions him without merit, because he earned every slim ounce of approbation he ever received in his lifetime.
I cannot properly express my disdain for anyone who would counter a dozen dozen dozen men's lifes' work with an infantile analogy from a book written thousands of years ago and conveniently edited several hundreds of years after that. To you ignorant people I proclaim: you have held back our species more than you know or are even willing to know. The petty beliefs you have spread so virulently to comfort your own minds make me weep- not because of the beliefs themselves but because you have the potential to find something so much more meaningful if you would just have the courage to accept answers that did not conform to your dangerous, simplistic views of the world.
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On a related note, I'll be going to see Daniel Dennett speak tonight. As much as I admire Darwin, Dennett strikes me as an often careless and unproductively militant atheistic thinker whose appropriation of Darwin has tarnished the master's legacy.
I agree with much of the content of your last paragraph, and much of what Dennett argues for, but surely we can affect a more persuasive tone without slipping into the condemnatory rhetoric that has characterized the tradition of those we seek to persuade.
Not that a rant isn't called for every once in a while.
I have to report that I'm a hypocrite. After Dennett's talk, (which was exclusively on Darwin and updating evolutionary accounts of culture and language -- and gripping) I encountered about the punch bowl a dated prophet citing those "infantile analogies." In turn, I basically recited to this person your post with vocal vitriol. How else does one deal with those who can not be dealt with rationally?
I usually try to be rational, insistent, calm, and repetitive- you know, kind of catapult the propaganda. This was a rant, and I probably should have been a little less rhetorically unbridled. I was angry, though: angry because the whole thing is so much richer and beautiful than simple bible creation stories, and they're missing it.
It's also annoying because I'm worried that as Americans we spend so much time fighting over something that's clearly scientifically established that we will in the end pollute our ability to think rationally about engineering and mathematics. In the world sphere if we want to stay a financial and technological superpower this is not the way to go about it.
I hear ya'. And to be honest, my first comment has a different tone than I had in mind. What's a blog good for if you can't declare your views rationally and emotionally? It's your house, and, as a guest, I was out of line as "devil's" advocate, and clearly a mosquito buzzing in a giant's ear re. Dennett.
Your comment about these knuckle-draggers polluting mathematics and engineering is a new idea for me. I have little competence in either sphere. Maybe you'll flesh-out your ideas in a future post (?). Completely agree re. superpower concerns. Hopefully, the loudness of the religious is little more than the desperate moaning of a dying animal. Dennett has convinced me of this.
Nah, don't worry about it, I appreciate the discussion! Besides, I know pretty much where you stand and therefore I trust your criticisms. I think the attack against science as it pertains to evolution and the origin of the universe is part of a general demonizing of education and intelligence as "elitist". An example you may be sick of at this point is Obama: I don't care what you think of him, but the fact that labeling him an "elitist" because he earned his way to the top of harvard law school and became a constitutional law professor, because that label sticks, is atrocious. There are faults to find with him but the fact that he earned that credential in my mind makes him the most educated man to run for president in quite a long time. And that angers people. *sigh* I just don't get it...
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