Dawkins is promoting "fascism" says O'Reilly

[Chris Fleming]

"That was the point I did address."

Yeah but that's when you made the ridiculous statement that I am saying that SCIENCE is being forced on students and then started talking about the Amish. That's silly dude. I'm talking, OBVIOUSLY, about evolution. Duh. You can study reproduction all day long. That's one example of what I was talking about when I said there's so much else to study, there's no need to turn the class room into an indoctrination center for either side. The assumption here is that evolution is good science. It's not. Attempts to explain it are attempts to make it accepted.

"essential ideas and theories about biology"

Evolution is not essential at all, especially on the high school level and if brought up should be honestly set forth as a theory without the teacher overstepping it. All I'm asking.

[Steve James]

It is taught as a theory. I know that for a fact where I teach. Can't speak for Kansas. And, if you meant "forced to learn evolution", then I simply disagree. No biggie, but I'd addressed the difference between evolution and science several times before. Yeah, I think --like I said before-- that confusing evolution with science is silly. And, like I said before, even if the argument is that evolution is a flawed theory or even a false view, that is no reason to teach anything religious. I clearly don't think it's an argument for not teaching evolution: which is a scientific theory, not a religious one.

[GaryR]

Chris, I think we have had almost these exact discussions before, but usually we do so over a bunch of cold ones, so I don't recall what is a re-hash and what isn't! Its funny, just for some background to anyone reading this, Chris actually recommended the first Dawkins book I ever bought (the selfish gene), back when he practiced real science, lol .

Yeah, gotta give the +1 dittos to Darth's post. Gary, you present some very valid points, but most of what you presented is a conditional argument, the conditions of which we are not currently facing and, in fact, are moving inexorably away from. The nightmares of a theocracy have always been well-understood from the founding of this country, and its dangers remain a valid concern. However, what we have now and have had since the 1960's is the culture-wide ascendency of atheistic secular progressivism, set against the backdrop of the decline of federalism and the growth of larger, more intrusive federal government that had been taking place since the era of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Interesting, my points/rant were not meant to be conditional. In a nutshell all I was saying was religion should not attempt to invade science, and we are lucky to have people like Dawkins guarding the laboratory door so to speak.

Understandably the West isn't in immediate danger of becoming a theocracy, or breaking out into another protestant/catholic war. But the invasions of dogma into politics, policy, law, and how new scientific knowledge is taught, studied,applied etc is effected by religion. Stem Cell research for example had federal funding issues due to religious based morality, not on scientific objectivity. "Intelligent design" luckily continues to fail at getting access to our classrooms. "Faith based initiatives" demonstrate how the Spending powers of our government have reached a new high. As to a decline in Federalism, I think the only technical decline we have seen since the 1930's are two cases....yes TWO entire Supreme Court Cases, U.S. v. Lopez, and U.S. v. Morrison, ( I am taking a Constitutional law class now, and we actually just covered federalism, and the case history, interesting stuff, I'm sure I'll have more perspective after the year is up!) As to the larger fed. gov, I agree 100%.

Like many things, there have been both positive and negative fallout elements as a result. The negatives include loss of personal freedom and the creation of the welfare state, for example, while the positives include the championing of real science in school curricula. However unfortunately, another negative element is the fairly recent trend (last 25 to 30 years or so) within the scientific community of adopting political activism. While it may not seem immediately apparent to the layperson why this is both hypocritical and potentially dangerous, it is absolutely vital that our scientists retain their objectivity and, further, that they keep their work meticulously and uncompromisingly free of even the appearance of the taint of bias or agenda.

I agree in part, and I think we will just have agree to disagree on the rest, but I'll make my points anyhow . I think that trend to adopt activism has come as a sort of necessity, they fear the intrusion of non-science on their science, and simply getting the public as whole to accept things like evolution is an uphill battle, and the enemy trying to pick them apart is startlingly ignorant as to the actual science. Pull up a kirk Cameron interview, torture yourself a bit, then ponder how the layperson eats up a pathetic argument like that. I understand I didn't completely address your above point, I agree its dangerous for our scientific community to loose its objectivity, but I simply disagree that Dawkins has specifically done that. (more on this later)

Science traffics in the observable and the objectively measurable. As it is, science itself provides the evidence as to why the concept of pure science is itself a Platonic ideal via Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle. It is, therefore, even the more essential that scientists work feverishly to avoid even the appearance of bias. Being accused of agendized research is perhaps one of the worst insults in the scientific community, the suspicion of which can often be the death knell for a scientific career.

I think in most cases that is true. Perhaps only "semi-retired" scientists should crusade. If you were to ask Dawkins why he feels a scientist should agree with my nutshell argument above I think he would respond with something like he wrote in his book--"As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect." "Fundamentalist religion is hell-bent on ruining the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well-meaning, eager young minds. Non-fundamentalist, 'sensible' religion may not be doing that. But it is making the world safe for fundamentalism by teaching children, from their earliest years, that unquestioning faith is a virtue."

Science itself also makes no claim whatsoever to hold any dominion over the subjective. In fact, intellectual honesty requires that science remain disinterestedly silent on all subjective matters. Theology and philosophy are inherently and inseparably subjective pursuits. Science, therefore, has absolutely no jurisdiction over them in any way. While that fact may be used as the basis for an argument regarding the separation of church and state, it just as strongly, if not moreso, provides the basis for the concept of the separation of church and science.

Does science have jurisdiction over a child whose parents refuse him lifesaving medication due to their religious beliefs? The probability that "X" medical treatment will save the life of a child v the probability that he will be healed by prayer is definitely subject to objective analysis. The knowable difference between the theory of evolution (with its millions of pieces of corroborating evidence), and Creation is not a subjective either. One is science, the other religion, your right, those two do not belong in the same school room. Church and science should be separate. But once religion attempts to invade the world of science it opens itself up to scientific scrutiny on those points.

At what point do you allow the scientists to send a memo to the other room telling them the earth is not flat, it revolves around the sun, or the age of the earth and human species? Historically religion has fought those facts violently. Telling the scientists to hide in the corner while the evangelicals shout known conjecture at the layperson is one sided. There has to be a middle-ground of discourse. Intellectual honesty also requires at some point the person who starts telling people the earth is 6000 years old should be laughed at, and not allowed to corrupt our education systems.

Politically/legally, do we allow one group to withhold civil rights from other on the basis that their conduct is wrong according to biblical morality? In this way the jurisdictional dispute hazes, and religion shouldn't be given any special respect/handled with kid gloves. As H.L Mencken said "we must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

Where Dawkins has erred is in his choice not merely to act as a positional advocate for the separation of church and state, but instead to become just as much a subjective zealot for atheism as the fundamentalist religious zealots he decries. Put simply, Dawkins is no longer practicing science, but is practicing political and personal zealotry for atheism even while proclaiming to be an apologist for science. As a result, he no longer holds quite the same positive regard among his scientific peers as he once enjoyed, even if the science-friendly laiety find his fervent opposition to religious fundamentalism somewhat refreshing.

If this statement were accurate I would agree. First as Dawkins expressed in his book, he would be happy to receive evidence to the contrary of any scientific pursuit no matter how many decades he had believed or furthered it, the scientific community as a whole must be open to continuously and rigorously challenge their own data, while a religious zealot by contrast starts from his own dogmas/axioms and works backwards, rejecting what evidence doesn't support his conclusion.

I think equating Dawkins to a religious zealot, having read his works on the topic to be off base. But perhaps you didn't read the God Delusion, or if you did, glossed it over and missed its central thesis. IMO, It is far from subjective zealotry; Dawkins described The God Hypothesis as "there exists a super human, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us." He goes onto say "This book will advocate an alternative view; any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it. God, in the sense defined, is a delusion, and as later chapters will show, a pernicious delusion." In other section ...."That you cannot prove God's non-existence is accepted and trivial, if only in the sense that we can never absolutely prove the non-existence of anything. What matters is not whether god is disprovable (he isn't) but whether his existence is probable . That is another matter. Some undisprovable things are sensibly judged far less probable than other undisprovable things. There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because god can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 percent. On the contrary, as we shall see."

Dawkins goes on to your issue directly; "Huxley declared that the god question could not be settled on the basis of the scientific method. Mcgrath goes on to quote Stephen Jay Gould in a similar vien; "to say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time; science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply cant comment on it as scientists." Why shouldn't we comment on god, as scientists? And why isn't Russell's teapot, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, equally immune from scientific skepticism? As I shall argue in a moment, a universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?" ....

Anyhow, we likely will have to agree to disagree, If you haven't read the God Delusion yet, I would suggest it to anyone regardless of your stance on religion. If you really want to understand where Dawkins is coming from, its a much better source than watching a Bill O interview!

G

[Iskendar]

I don't think evolution theory has ever stated "man is just another dumb animal"

I'd have to look it up but there have been some evolutionists quoted as saying things to that effect.

Oh who gives a flying fuck about what you can quote some evolutionists as saying! If you can't grasp the difference between what a theory states, and an offhand comment by some individual, please check yourself into the retard farm and take up basket weaving, but stay out of any serious discussion. This is so beside the point, it's not funny anymore.

The TOE does not state that "man is just another dumb animal". It states that a reproducing population subject to mutation and cross-breeding will evolve over time to deal with the pressures laid upon it by the outside world, and that this is the mechanism by which current species have been formed. Period. If some biologist, in his own time, concludes from this that "man is just another dumb animal", that's his prerogative, but that is NOT what the theory states, so stop pretending it does.

[Chris Fleming]

Well I look beyond the dry black and white data, numbers, stats and figures that some seem to stop at and look at the implications of these things. There is such thing as philosophy of science, you know. Plus it helps if the people who champion this sort of thing add in their own interpretations like this issue at hand. If the champions of evolution themselves see man as a purposeless refined and slightly more cultured ape with a bit more brain power, then people can see the implications of that. To simply stop at bland data is to isolate oneself away from the real world, which seems to be what happens to people of science at times.


In other matters, looks like it's time to change the text books.

http://news.aol.com/health/article/rese ... s%2F637211

[Steve James]

If the champions of evolution themselves see man as a purposeless refined and slightly more cultured ape with a bit more brain power, then people can see the implications of that.

Well, no evolutionary scientist would say that science, something "man" does, as purposeless. In fact, the purpose of science is to increase man's knowledge. That's "knowledge", true, not ethics, morality, social values or any of the other things that man does. However, to me, that means how Man treats Man during life. What's that saying... "That which you do for the least of mine, you have done for me." I think that evolutionary science, like all science, is only worthwhile to the extent that it helps people.

Anyway, I don't look down on apes or think that man is "better," only different in very important ways. Of course, I'm a man; so it's kind of natural to think that way. I don't feel indignant when compared to an ape. Shucks, I can't do what an ant can. But, I'm waiting to meet aliens to hear what they think

[Chris Fleming]

So who said that science is purposeless?

Reading comprehension Steve.

[Steve James]

Really, you need to clarify what you mean when you say that the "champions of evolution") (i.e., evolutionary scientists, no?) "see man as a purposeless refined and slightly more cultured ape." Purposeless, in what sense? Of course, scientists believe that they have a purpose, if only as organisms. But, maybe you have a different idea. What do you think is man's purpose?

[GrahamB]