The technocrats, he charged, wanted to grab control from “ordinary citizens ...so that they alone could make decisions over “controversial issues such as sex education, partial-birth abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and global warming.” ... For some conservatives, accepting Darwin undercuts religious faith and produces an amoral, materialistic worldview that easily embraces abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other practices they abhor. As an alternative to Darwin, many advocate intelligent design...
***Hi AG and BB. I don’t like to admit it, but the NY times expresses how I view this issue quite well. Would you two care to chime in?
Oh, and don’t let me pass up this opportunity to plug your book.
Announcing a New Book by Alamo-Girl and betty boop [Update at #329]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1738139/posts
Which is why this reductionism isn't science, it is a bid to become a moral philosophy in the hands of a thoroughly secularized political elite. And when the darwinian reductionists get hold of moral philosophy and have the power to exploit it, you get the Francis Galtons and Margaret Sangers, not to mention the Hitlers and the Stalins, et al., of this world.
To me it is senseless to say that because conservatives assume that evolved social traditions have more wisdom than rationally planned reforms that this is somehow evidence that Darwinism is "true." Social traditions are not subject to natural selection at all. And Darwinism has nothing to say about "wisdom," or thought or even consciousness in general. Nor does it explain the origin of life. It says a whole lot LESS than meets the eye....
Plus the father of genetics, Benedictine monk Gregor Mendel firmly believed that his own experiments on selective breeding constituted irrefutable proof that Darwin's theory of natural selection was untenable.
I agree with George Gider's observation that "Both Nazism and communism were inspired by Darwinism. Why conservatives should toady to these storm troopers is beyond me."
In my personal view, Darwinian evolution theory has been turned into a modern myth; in this popular guise, it has long ceased to be bona fide science. It is an alternative cosmology that as West put it, "fundamentally challenges the traditional understanding of human nature and the universe."
Among other things, it wipes out any notion of a human nature that is relatively constant persisting over time, in favor of an evolutionary process that transforms human nature over time, into -- ????? Superman? Some other species?
Moreover, it is not science's job to explore the moral implications of sex education, partial-birth abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and global warming in the first place. Even as science, what Darwinism might have to do with global warming is perfectly unclear to me.
I think it is a bad mistake for conservatives to use NeoDarwinism as a basis for policy or for rationalizing policy: It just gives distinction to where distinction isn't due. Darwinism simply has no competence in public policy areas, as we have already seen repeatedly, at enormous cost in terms of blood and treasure....
Well Kevmo, my two cents' worth, FWIW. Thanks once again for plugging our book! :^)