07.27.09
With Darwinists, the only safe stance is paranoia
Comment on Guess what, noone is qualified; Harris the hypocrite
James said,
July 27, 2009 at 2:29 pm
One of the troubling consequences here is that the Dawkins cult has successfully penetrated into pop culture to the extent that an “intelligent” person (as defined by the media) is now someone who has to engage in a knee-jerk dismissal of any idea that can be vaguely associated with religion (or it has to be neutralized by watering it down). To be sure, the f*ckup religionists deserve a large part of the blame here, but manipulating the public to conform to one worldview will probably be disastrous (especially the Darwinian). In the final analysis, it will hardly be a triumph of rationality if certain ideas have to be factored out of someone’s intellectual space because “secularists” are terrified of religion (and I’m not saying that Collins,etc. would be within the parameters of intelligent dialectical possibilities).
It seems that the fate of Darwinists (and I hope not secularists) is to fall into a crystallized belief system. That’s what happened to Christians, so it is not surprising it should happen to Darwinists.
As to Harris, I am surprised that he would make a federal case out of Collins’ ethical beliefs, however confused.
Let’s face it, with Darwinists, paranoia is the only safe tactic. You don’t know who is a closet nihilist, a eugenicist in private, an unspoken follower of Nietzsche, etc…
Technically, Darwinism affirms mass murder as a eugenic project (as one of our commenters here stubbornly pointed out).
In fact, anyone who believes that group selection/kin selection theories could explain ethics is a Very Smart Idiot, and a basket case with a PhD.
So Collins is at least aware of the total confusion concealed behind Darwin’s theory.
You would think Harris (who must be a closet Non-dual Vedanticist) would get the point, but apparently not.
James said,
July 27, 2009 at 4:55 pm
“It seems that the fate of Darwinists (and I hope not secularists) is to fall into a crystallized belief system.”
I think the Darwinian worldview has too much momentum among the intelligentsia to lose at this point. The war with the ID movement has actually given it a steroids injection and established it as the rallying cry among college educated urbanites for the ideals of modernity (no surprise that Robert Wright and David Sloan Wilson are posting at Huffpost).
Darwiniana » Intelligentsia transmogrified into terminal Darwinians? said,
July 27, 2009 at 6:37 pm
[...] Comment on With Darwinists, the only safe stance is paranoia James said, July 27, 2009 at 4:55 pm “It seems that the fate of Darwinists (and I hope not secularists) is to fall into a crystallized belief system.” I think the Darwinian worldview has too much momentum among the intelligentsia to lose at this point. The war with the ID movement has actually given it a steroids injection and established it as the rallying cry among college educated urbanites for the ideals of modernity (no surprise that Robert Wright and David Sloan Wilson are posting at Huffpost). [...]