I don't see any significant difference in substance between what Darwin did and what Donald Trump does in peddling racist hatred. Donald Trump might, actually, be the less dangerous because he doesn't pretend his racist prattling carries the reliability of science, pretending that has a more proven potency in modern history than mere racism minus such assertions of reliable knowledge.
For most people even a superstitious disbelief in evolution is probably less demonstrably dangerous than a faith in the ultimate explanatory power of natural selection. The history of Darwinism as applied in the real world makes it one of the most dangerous of all 19th century hypotheses, perhaps only rivaled by Marxism and capitalism. You can hear echos of that faith in all forms of biological determinism, even in what some of the most evolution denying fundamentalist-racists and sexists assert. Though it is not the only form of biological determinism, it has been the most pervasive and powerful one.
The importance of evolution as the focus of a Kulturkampf is primarily due to its Darwinian interpretation, natural selection, being believed to be of utility to promote atheist materialism. It was largely in reaction to that use of Darwinism from the weeks after the publication of On the Origin of Species by atheist-materialists that the Fundamentalists rose up in opposition to it. And if you doubt that use of Darwinism from its inception, I invite you to read what such early readers of Origin of Species said on that count, people such as Darwin's cousin, the renowned British scientist, Francis Galton said as well as early reviewers such as Thomas Huxley (AKA Darwin's Bulldog) and, yes, Ernst Haeckel said on that count.
I can say that there is a major irony in Fundamentalism as it developed because as a boon to white supremacy, it shared in some of the worst aspects of Darwinism. The various streams of development of both had considerable sharing of sewage.
For most people a knowledge of evolution is about as useful as a knowledge of the ancient Etruscan language, of which there is also only very partial and incomplete knowledge of, though, considering the vast time range and size of the problem of evolution, that percentage of fragmentary knowledge of Etruscan is enormous by comparison.
The time spent on lying Darwin into a plaster saint for atheism would be far better spent on, first and foremost, countering the oil and coal industry lies about the hardest of facts, THAT WE ARE DESTROYING OUR BIOSPHERE WITH MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING. I will point out that it is the media freed by the same dolts who deify Darwin who have sold that lie even as they carry water for the hardcore fundmentalists who do, actually, have the goods on St. Chuck, they've done their homework even as so many of his cult refuse to.
The sins and massive stupidity of such people is as great as that of the Republican-fascists who have so benefited from all of the various threads of atheist-materialist promotion in all of their dishonesty and stupidity. I say a curse on all their houses. I'm against both groups, the atheist-materialists of pseudo-liberalism and the vulgar materialists of the Republican-fascists, the British Tories, etc.
I think the ability of the cabloids and others in the corporate media to lie us into the state we are in are as much a product of the ideology of atheist-materialism as the greed of capitalism. Neither of those groups really believe it is a sin to tell a lie so they unleashed the liars to lie us into our doom.
And if an absolutely accurate knowledge of that vast, always to be undiscovered country, evolution is of such vital importance as you claim, then no one in human history can honestly claim to have it.
If people think the present day conceptions of evolution are the last word in it, they are incredibly credulous dupes. Evolution is such an enormous phenomenon, most of which will never be known, that the best that can be achieved is extremely fragmentary knowledge of it. Scientists who claim to have pinned it down to anything like general laws are more useful to the deniers than they are to science. If you doubt that go look at the hay the anti-evolutionists make of virtually every lapse in previously held ideas in the area.
Evolution is a fact, how it happened, if it is the product of one force or thousands or trillions of disparate events is not a matter of factual knowledge, it is ideological speculation and wishful thinking.
Funny I just ran across a comment at Salon arguing that evolution was responsible for the decline and inevitable demise of religion.
ReplyDeleteI don't take such fools seriously anymore, although they do make me think of the upside of the "Darwin Awards." If only the latter worked that effectively.....
In the minds of such dolts "evolution" is religion. I would say it's one of the central dogmas of English language atheist faith.
DeleteIn reality evolution is a very fragmentary science whose practitioners are way, way, way too prone to fill in the massive gaps in observation, measurement etc. with the magical thinking they call "natural selection". Though there are some honest evolutionary biologists they are seldom the ones who become household names. I think Richard Dawkins might be the quintessential example of the magical thinkers, though I think even he realizes the sell-by of his snake oil is about up. I think that's why he retired into a career in hatin' on religion.