Talk show host and Hollywood-is-destroying-our-values columnist Michael Medved has taken on a new role - that of Senior Fellow for the Discovery Institute. The Institute is, of course, a bastion of “intelligent design” theory and a defender of America against Materialist Ideology:
*"The position cements a longstanding friendship and recognizes a commonality of values and projects across a spectrum of issues.
“Michael Medved is an intellectual entrepreneur, a political and cultural polymath with great insights, judgment and wit. We are delighted to have this new relationship with him,” said Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman."*
I was going to pit Medved awhile back forthis dishonest column (in which he purports to recognize various shades of gray in the abortion debate, but then announces that most Americans absolutely detest abortion). But his signing on with the creationism crowd provides an even better opportunity.
“Intellectual entrepreneur”? Way to flush your credibility (what’s left of it) down the toilet, Mikey.
Actually, most Americans do detest abortion. But I digress.
I don’t believe in intelligent design as such, and certainly don’t believe in creationism. However, I don’t believe Darwinian theory answers all questions either - it certainly doesn’t seem to have much application past the biological. Matters of philosophy and metaphysics seem to be beyond its scope.
In any case, why can’t you just let him yammer on on this topic as he sees fit and when he talks about cultural matters, discuss them on their terms. Seems like the right way to go about these kinds of debates. Like Cecil said, “When we are talking about the price of mangoes in Sumatra, I am not interested in having you drag in your opinions on the temperature of spit in Wichita.”
This is precisely the point on which “intelligent design” crowd is intellectually dishonest – the whole business right down to the name is an attempt to disguise the application of a religious viewpoint into matters of science that are beyond its scope.
Has anyone claimed that evolution answers “all questions,” particularly philosophical or metaphysical questions? Has anyone ever claimed that it has non-biological applications? I’m pretty sure the theory of evolution does not purport to do anything other than explain the natural mechanism through which speciation occurs, and nothing else. You might as well complain that the theory of gravitation doesn’t tell you how to make a really good potato salad.
Exactly. Saying you don’t believe in evolution is like saying you don’t believe in electricity and have an alternative belief system that accounts for the fact that your toaster works.
Talk about a strawman argument. Darwinian evolutionary theory doesn’t even address the origin of life-- just the evolution of life once it got started. Now, I don’t for second think the origin of life was anything but a natural process, but we don’t know how it got started, and Darwin never attempted to address that. He certainly didn’t try to tackle “the meaning of life”.
I’m not talking about what Darwin said or didn’t say. I’m talking about the use various people have put to his theories (and others) over the years to try to deny God, or prove a certain race backward enough to warrant extermination, or show that mankind itself can evolve in various directions if certain people could push the process along.
Folks complain that religion ought not intrude into scientific discussions - well, it seems far worse when science and pseudoscience intrude on discussions where it has but limited application, if any at all.
Now we of course can step back now and call these things perversions of Darwinian thought - and they were. And keep in mind I’m right on board with Darwin myself. But let’s also not kid ourselves - the folks who believed in eugenics weren’t exactly shunned in their time. Indeed, most of them were seen as liberal and progressive thinkers trying to help people out.
I don’t want pseudoscience purporting to prove a God, but neither do I want such (aka Dawkins) purporting to disprove him. Neither does any of us a service.
I don’t get why Jews (Medved, Ben Stein) are joining in evangelical Christian pusuits like creationinsm. If the Evangelicals had their way, Stein and Medved are going to be “left behind”.
Maybe it’s just a ploy so they can get closer to Christian babies and drink their blood.
I wasn’t the one who devised the term “social Darwinism”, and “philosophical Darwinism” turns up an awful lot of hits on google. Seems it is a variant of naturalism, which seems to make sense in the taxonomy of philosophical theories.
I’ll leave you to Medved bashing, which could take all day. But perhaps you should save some bashing for people who extend their theories too far on all sides.
I dunno, maybe Medved and Stein actually, y’know, agree with evangelicals on these issues? You do realize that you can agree on political issues without having to agree on theological issues, right?
And your insinuation that evangelicals are somehow anti-semitic is ridiculous. I grew up in evangelical and fundamentalist churches (though I’m neither now) and there was absolutely no trace of anti-semitism. These folks don’t hate Jews. They may not think they are going to Heaven, but that certainly doesn’t mean they are anti-semites. And they are very strong supporters of Israel.
If you are going to slam evangelicals at least make sure your targets are valid. There is plenty to criticize in the movement without dragging up inaccurate stereotypes.
One could refer to nuclear arms as a perversion of atomic theory. But that wouldn’t justify creating a Bible-based pseudoscience to explain how atomic particles work, and demanding that it be taught in schools.
By the way, it’s extremely common for creationists to preferentially refer to Darwin and “Darwinian” principles, rather than to evolution (apparently they think that emphasizing evolutionary theory’s 19th century origins is a put-down). People who are “right on board with Darwin” generally have no trouble with using the word evolution.
May we regard free market capitalism as a form of Darwinian evolution, in which the market decides who succeeds and who fails, what species dies out and what species prospers? In this model the buggy whip manufacturers are the Neanderthals and Microsoft is the Cro-Magnons.