At bottom, RobRoy, what I suspect is happening is a kind of broad cultural backlash. The progressive Left (i.e., "post-modernism" -- which includes folks in science and the arts and letters who, while maybe not professing to be members of that category, still have imbibed a large number of ideas from post-modernist thinkers [more or less unconsciously] about the nature of God, man, and society) -- is slipping into the irrelevance it so richly deserves. The Internet has facilitated this process; for it makes it far more difficult to control information. And of course, the control of information is an indispensable bulwark of the power of the "status quo."
Repression of thought, curbs on speech, the kind of "diversity" that makes one walk in lock-step to the approved nostrums of elites, authoritarianism/totalitarianism of all stripes, all seem to be on the losing side of history right now. President Bush's "liberty initiatives" aren't so much as cutting against the grain, but riding the tide of changing global circumstances, which are driven by intellectual, cultural, political, and ideological change.
It's as if folks had finally started taking C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man quite seriously, and are fighting back. In the process, culturally it seems we are going back to, and reappraising our "roots" -- which derive from the traditions of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome.
This is what makes for the conflict and general loss of civility of debate these days. Careers are on the line, reputations are at stake -- and also the ability to wield power.
Well, them be just some miscellaneous thoughts of my own, FWTW. Thanks for your post!
Beautiful prose and thanks for the ping. May I delicately add, 'a potential loss of the moral high ground'.
For though the fame motive plays a big role, at root, the morals debate is driving much of this too. The high elite know the party is coming to a close, and they don't like it one bit. They have been the mill owners of moral fibre for awhile now, but the mills are subject competition. Viva la internet!
You left out all the lies and the false-science promoted by the anti-evolutionists.
Your 946 was disgustingly well worded. I feel that way partly because I already believed and agree with much of what you said, and partly because you brought up reasonable perspective and conclusions I had not yet thought about. 8^>
I'm also embarrassed that I have not yet read "The Abolition of Man" yet.