10.21.09
The crime of Darwinism far worse than Yahya’s legal limbo
From Slate: Meet Harun Yahya, the leading creationist in the Muslim world.
The character of Yahya may reflect on the poor quality of his Darwin critique, but there is no connection between the legal limbo of this creationist and the status of Darwinian theory.
Darwinian theory is a massive dishonesty perpetrated on a social scale through propaganda, peer review, and the momentum of delusion. The result in aggegate is far worse than anything perpetrated by this Islamic Darwin doubter.
Stephen P. Smith said,
October 21, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Dishonesty at this level is worth watching, oddly.
We may consider two levels of thinking:
(1) The activity of persuasion, and the projecting of a desired image. Life is a perpetual campaign, and politics is found impacting even the claims of science. The ends justifies the means, even if the means is veiled in deceit and deception. The act of persuasion becomes emotional. Beliefs are promoted only because of the emotional investments. The self that carries such emotion is only the caricature of self, well painted by evolutionary psychology. The dishonesty is maintained because of the aversion that is found whenever the topic of self gets serious, and philosophy is made dumb to protect the canard. Science is said to stand apart from philosophy.
(2) The activity of disclosure. Arguments are only about searching for the disclosures that will permit resolution, and there is very little invested in persuasion. The emotionality that is attached to beliefs is admitted, but emotionality is found vitally important; otherwise, there would be no beliefs, but we need beliefs despite their occasional shortcomings. The heated emotionality is accepted as it is with no necessary prejudice. Emotionality is the messenger, however, and hints of something to be disclosed. The attempt is made to discover self, or the source of emotionality. A premium is places on honesty, because what is revealed by disclosure carries no additional attempts at persuasion when the debate ends. What is revealed is simply self-evident, and requires no politics to fabricate a desired spin.
My view is that (2) is a transcendental science that accepts self-criticism, as brought to us by Edmond Husserl. And (1) is only a pseudo-science, and cannot bring itself to admit any errors.
Darwiniana » Darwinian dishonesty said,
October 22, 2009 at 2:36 pm
[...] Comment on Harun Yahya post Stephen P. Smith said, October 21, 2009 at 11:07 pm ยท Dishonesty at this level is worth watching, oddly. We may consider two levels of thinking: [...]