"A celebrated new movie about one the world's greatest scientists cannot find a distributor in the US."Although Darwinism thoroughly proves the idea that complexity and organization do arise and evolve over time as a result of mindless algorithms, most Americans, with the help and censorship of the Christian establishment, not only are totally ignorant of the evidence, ignorant of the principle, but are unaware of just how much Darwin's dangerous idea has revolutionized such diverse things as the development of the digital computer and epidemiology.
The Christian establishment has of course tried to satanize everything from the telescope to the ratio Pi to the barometer over the centuries and of course has punished science and scientists heavily, but such things now go on mostly in the United States. Contrary to George W. Bush's assertions, the jury is not out on Evolution any more than it's out on the Pythagorean Theorem, the Speed of Light or the age of the universe. But far worse than the pathological denials of fact are the immoral, dishonest and dangerous attacks on Darwinian science as a source of extremism. A "Christian" website thatpre -judges movies for the believers has launched into an attack on Creation so viciously dishonest that it has succeeded in censoring it so that cannot be shown in the US.
It's easy for someone with little education and a superstitious mind to buy the slander that the philosophy of science founded by Charles Darwin leads to eugenics and that Darwin himself was
"a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering."
But of course we're not told how little the real Darwinism has to do with the "survival of the fittest" interpretation cooked up by others. One might as well blame Louis Pasteur for biological warfare. One might as well blame Nietzsche's hatred of anti-Semitism for Hitler. One might as well blame Jesus for the Crusades, the Inquisition and the dangerous lies of the American religious right. That less than 40% of Americans "believe" in evolution shows the cultivated and stultifying ignorance that lubricates our downward slide, that produces the enthusiastic gullibility that produces sign waving mobs and demented political displays.
Of course the Christian jihad against science and scientific method and scientific epistemology is part of a larger Church led war against Democracy. The concept of heresy, the freedom of opinion, is a grave offense but the backbone of autocracy and the greatest impediment to Democracy in history has been religious orthodoxy. So far they've kept that movie out of our country and our survival depends on their failure to maintain our ignorance.
"Darwinism thoroughly proves the idea that complexity and organization do arise and evolve over time ... "
ReplyDelete(O)CT(O)PS takes exception with this interpretation. There is nothing simple or disorganized about a cephalopod. This is a human-centric view that is biased against other life forms. Just because a species develops later does not make it more complex, more organized, more intelligent, or superior to another species.
In fact, quite the contrary. I know of many human beings who, by all accounts, are simpletons in extremis. Like tea baggers, birthers, deathers, and republicans. To call these higher life forms than a cephalopod is offensive in extremis.
Given what I know about human beings, evolution is a retrograde process. It results in less intelligence, less respect for fellow creatures, and a diminished moral capacity.
Right, Squid?
Bloggingdino, do you concur?
Actually that's what Darwinism asserts -- that there is no objective to evolution, no trunk to the tree and no pinnacle for man to inhabit.
ReplyDeleteWithout mankind on the pedestal, most religions can no longer function.
The Christian establishment has of course tried to satanize everything from the telescope to the ratio Pi to the barometer over the centuries...
ReplyDeleteAlexander Wood (may his tribe increase) was the Scottish physician who, in 1847, used anesthesia to ease the pain of childbirth.
Protestant ministers and the Catholic Church sermonized against this affront to God, since, they bellowed, God's punishment for Eve for having listened to the talking snake and then eaten the fruit of knowledge, was to give birth in excruciating pain forever.
It took 50 more years before the practice of allowing women to experience childbirth without agony was finally accepted.
I think of that story each time I hear some religious charlatan croaking about the evils of knowledge and scientific advancement.
Things were better during the Jurassic, I can tell you that.
ReplyDeleteThe Jurassic was indeed classic, but I found the cretaceous to be more spacious.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously folks, pain, suffering, disease, fear, guilt and disease have all been cultivated as a way to get and keep converts. There would be hardly any religion without it.
Cultivating these things is indeed diabolical, but with the possible exception of "guilt" they are all anterior to religion. To some extent, then, might not religion be a response to such ills?
ReplyDeleteQ. What scientific theory is disproved by humans?
ReplyDeleteA. Evolution: Darwin was wrong.
Yes, humans are proof of devolution, it appears. One runs into teleological language even in science-based accounts of, oh, I don't know -- the dinosaurs. You'll be reading some dino-book and there it is: a claim that Triassic creatures were "primitive," while Jurassic ones were less primitive, and Cretaceous critters were thoroughly modern. This would come as news to the highly successful forms of life that flourished for millions of years during all epochs once life got going.
ReplyDeleteSome of the most highly evolved forms of life are parasites - seemingly simple, but they've evolved because of more "highly evolved" species - like the parasite that caused ants to climb to the ends of grass blades and stay there so that they'll be eaten by cows where the parasite flourishes and is excreted in huge numbers.
ReplyDeleteWhat offends the fundamentalists more than taking God out of the process is showing that we are not the pinnacle, that there is no pinnacle, no purpose, no direction that can be determined - nothing but endless adaptation to fit an endlessly changing field of circumstances.
Something like 90% of all species are now extinct and if we were to include those things which disappeared without a trace, the figure would likely be higher.
Reminds me of Tennyson's lines from In Memoriam A.H.H. LVI, where Nature takes down the notion that any species is permanent, much less the individual:
ReplyDelete‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go....’
A deconstructionist announcement: Either the movie found a distributor, or a distributor found the movie. To be released in December, in any case.
ReplyDeleteHere is the link:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/09/creation_the_movie_now_has_us.php?utm_source=combinedfeed&utm_medium=rss