07.16.09
Updated, play it again: Why is Huffpost/Alternet peddling evolutionary psychology?
The article on Huffpost is reposted today, with the Alternet link where Wright’s essay was reprinted: http://www.alternet.org/belief/141336/why_the_%22new_atheists%22_are_right-wing_on_foreign_policy/
Why the “New Atheists” are Right-Wing on Foreign Policy
Here we go again: another evolutionary psychologist hooked up by the Huffpost. We commented on this yesterday in fact, Why is Huffpost peddling evolutionary psychology?, and here we have another variant brand from Robert Wright.
The right-wing character of some of the New Atheists is clear enough and has been pointed to here on this blog umpteen times over a year or so ago, when we discussed the New Atheism in its cresting period.
My problem here with Wright, and finally with the porno-jerkoffs at Arianna’s new ‘liberal’ magazine, is the attempt to attack conservatism from a Darwinian standpoint, attempting to manipulate liberal opinion toward Darwinism/evolutionary psychology.
Liberals need to evade these clever tactics (which aren’t anything new, P.Z.Myers et al have been doing this for years) to realize that Darwinism is not a liberal belief system, but a flawed evolutionary theory created (by Wallace) in the context of Darwin’s nineteenth century Whiggish views of things, perched with his investments in his upper class redoubt in Down House.
Darwinism and evolutionary psychology are essentially conservative liberalism in bastard descendancy, and in any case are mythologies of the metaphysics of natural selection. As such they are false, and it would help if Arianna Huffington (or the staff at Huffpost) would stop being darwin dummies attempting to promote evolutionary fundamentalism.
Meanwhile, I am happy to see a critique of religion and Israeli politics, but the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology is NOT helpful on the subject of religion, and polarizing it across liberal/conservative lines simply confuses the subject even more.
Wright’s book on religion is so incoherent that to use it to cavil the New Atheists is pointless.