Just by coincidence, during the time I've been working my way through The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, our friend, The Existentialist Cowboy wrote a great essay on "The Coming Dark Ages" and, of course what the two writings have in common is a marvelous discussion of Evolution vs Creationism vs Intelligent Design. (In Dawkins book, one of his contributors describes Intelligent Design as "Creationism in a cheap Tuxedo" but I've given them the courtesy of listing them separately) The result of course was a de facto "total immersion" course in evolution and the current arguments on both sides.
In all honesty I was a little disappointed with Dawkin's chapter on Why there is almost certainly No God. I felt as if he leapt to the ultimate regression argument far too quickly and left the argument hanging in the breeze. That is, if ultimately a very complex god created the universe, who created the god? Creationists always counter this with some version of the argument, "God always was and always is." Cop out.
But back to the Cowboy (Len) for a moment....He takes great care to document the massive movements to bring creationsim and ID (intelligent design) into the schools and throw "Darwinism" out. And he notes:
It is interesting that Intelligent Design is often espoused by the same political mindset that embraces "Social Darwinism". Both are equally bogus. Both are embraced by the right wing though they are incompatible theories. It is odd to find even fallacious perversions of Darwin espouse by a group that is identifiable by its hatred of all things Darwinian. It is equally odd to find Intelligent Design, however fallacious, espoused by a Social Darawinists. The obvious conclusion is that these people just haven't given even their own ideologies, let alone Darwin, enough thought.
Social Darwinism does not follow from "Darwinism". Worse, it attributes to Darwin positions he never took. The term "survival of the fittest" was never used by Darwin but has been variously attributed. Hofstadter seems to attribute that phrase to rail road men:
Once again, we come face-to-face with the Great Conservative Dilema. How does a conservative embrace that which the conservative professes to abhore? Even further, why, do they persist in offering Creationism and versions of it in schools when they instinctively know it is wrong?
Let's talk about this.......
About Me
- hizzoner
- I have been involved in politics since I was 18 years old....let's just say that was a considerably long time ago. I've been in legislative service, I've been in local government as both staff and an elected official (three times actually). I have an almost child-like belief in the good that government can do and have always felt that it was my duty to make government work for the people it represented no matter what venue I was in. If I have any admirable trait at all, I think it must be insight. Maybe there's something to the zodiac sign business afterall because my sign says that I am supposed to have special insights into people and I have found that it's true....at least thus far.