Arsonists reportedly destroyed a well known Science Center in Naples Italy that promotes Evolutionism. From the pages of the Journal Nature:
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/496169c
On the night of 4 March, unknown arsonists destroyed the famous City of Science centre in Naples. This shocking event has been publicly welcomed by some hard-line creationists in Italy, who disapprove of the teaching of evolution at the centre.
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The conservative commentators who instead seemed to rejoice at the centre’s destruction include the national news paper Il Foglio, which applauded the flames as purification against the sourge of evolutionism — “a nineteenth-century superstition” destined to bring young people to “despair and simian behaviors”. This inflammatory anti-Darwinism has been rapidly amplified on the Internet.
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Italy’s current climate of political uncertainty seems to have fostered an unexpected resurgence in creationism…
The article only claims the creationists welcomed the burning of the center, it does not actually, imho, demonstrate that creationists ever said they approve of arson! But, in the spirit of openess, if any of our Italian readers can provide original source material and translate it for us, I would be grateful.
By the way, it is nice to see the pages of nature use the term “evolutionism” since the commitment to the theory of evolution is one of dogma rather than evidence.
No-one should be rejoicing at such an event. It should be condemned in the strongest possible terms and those responsible for the arson must be held accountable. There is no productive reason to engage in or encourage this kind of lawless behavior.
At issue is whether the claims by the reporter are actually accurate!
I’m not so sure that the creationists in Italy actually condoned the arson. They can be negative about Darwin (we are here at UD every day!), but that doesn’t mean they approve of burning buildings. That is an insinuation by the report in Nature, and I’m not so sure that insinuation is accurate.
If it is not accurate, it is merely a smear, and not the truth.
Arson is a crime, one next to murder (and often ends up being murder as buildings tend to have people in them, and firemen get harmed). There is never an excuse for arson, and arsonists need to do heavy time and serious counselling, as they may be outright insane. If any group condoned the arson, it is wrong, period. That has nothing to do with whether or no, the naturalistic, molecules to man theory of evolution is well warranted, and it is separate from whether or no the evolution promoting centre was acting in the right way in its promotional activities. And, judging by the state of evidence on origins of the world of life, both OOL and OO body plan level biodiversity, the resurgence in design thought and in Creationist thought — separate things — is quite understandable. The attempt to put down and belittle by suggesting that it is hard times that lead to such, is out of order, especially given the wider climate of historical and current associations in a country such as Italy. Of course, I await findings on what was actually said, by whom why, and what actually happened in March. KF
Given their axiomatic total lack of intellectual integrity, as laid out so plainly in the article: Why Quantum Theory Does Not Support Materialism, linked from a post, I believe, of Chance Ratcliffe, here yesterday, it is no more than ‘par for the course’.
This one:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtrut.....8589952939
I would venture that abuse of power is very prevalent, almost an unwritten law, rather than aberrant, in our unregenerate, Western society, but these characters ‘go the extra mile’ with their risible pretention to be paragons of Reason.
One would think, since they make their living off QM, and in view of the inerrant, probative role of its mathematics, materialists, while given any wriggle-room, however specious, have always exploited it, hitherto, finding none in QM, would ‘put have their hands up and said’, ‘OK. It’s a fair cop, guvnor.’
Except, I dare say, any burglar caught ‘red handed’ would have some concept of fairness, right and wrong, etc. Doubtless, for some reason, feeling that to share a common, external code of morality is the only sensible way, even if wont to transgress it, personally.
The mayor of Naples thinks it is related to criminals. This article mentions the mafia.
http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie.....48135.html
Another report points out that we don’t even know if arson was involved:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sci.....burns.html
The more I think about it, the more I think that opinions and insinuations were being passed off as fact in the Nature article. It was sloppy reporting, but I suppose since it smears creationists, the editors of Nature will let it get published.
Sorry. ‘and’ missing between, ‘hitherto’ and ‘finding’. A clumsy sentence, but by no means wide of the mark.
Arson, like poisoning, is a particularly vile crime, and surely, invariably with murder in mind, when buildings are occupied, and a fraudulent insurance claim isn’t the motive.
Here is an article after the fire that was published by Il Foglio. Nature claims Il Foglio seemed to rejoice in the burning of the Science Center.
I found an anti-Darwin article after the fire, but it mentions no rejoice of the burning of the center.
I used babel fish to translate. Of note is the article is by Giuseppe Sermonti, the editor of one of the worlds oldest peer-reviewed biology journals and where John Davison got published.
There is no mention of approving of the burning of the Naples Science Center. It does have a nice quote from Einstein that I was not aware of.
If the April 15 article in Nature was referring to the April 7 article and several like it in Il Foglio, then this is really sloppy reporting…its not even reporting, its fabrication!
Il Foglio published over 20 anti-Darwin articles since 2010. The first one was, “Beautiful Cannon Fire Against Darwin”. It had nothing to do with the Naples fire, but was a review of Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini’s book, “What Darwin Got Wrong”. Here is a list of the articles: