The folk at Nature’s blog appear so anxious to get people to believe Darwinism dunit that some have resorted to making statements about the history of Christianity and science that are actually true. Get a load of this, from James Hannam, “Science owes much to both Christianity and the Middle Ages” (May 18, 2011):
Until the French Revolution, the Catholic Church was the leading sponsor of scientific research. Starting in the Middle Ages, it paid for priests, monks and friars to study at the universities. The church even insisted that science and mathematics should be a compulsory part of the syllabus. And after some debate, it accepted that Greek and Arabic natural philosophy were essential tools for defending the faith. By the seventeenth century, the Jesuit order had become the leading scientific organisation in Europe, publishing thousands of papers and spreading new discoveries around the world. The cathedrals themselves were designed to double up as astronomical observatories to allow ever more accurate determination of the calendar. And of course, modern genetics was founded by a future abbot growing peas in the monastic garden.
Stunner. But it turns out that all these honest admissions are in the service of explaining that “creationism” is the problem between “science” and “religion.” And “the award of the Templeton Prize to Lord Rees is a small step in the right direction.”
A small step in the right direction? Awarding the Templeton to a multiverse advocate who thinks we might be living in a giant sim?
These folks just don’t get it, do they?
When people think Darwin doubters are stupid, they can’t help treating us that way, even when they are trying not to. To the extent that we are in fact the heirs of real science, we will not fall for evolutionary psychology, multiverses, and giant sims. And that is how people will know who we are.