Further to April 2014 (and to Barry’s suggestion that readers kindly remember Uncommon Descent in their year end giving – via the Donate button (our Christmas stocking – tax receipt) on the main page):
My sense is that we are making some headway against what Leon Wieseltier has referred to as Darwinist dittoheads, and I’d like to point to some more stories, this time from May 2014, that explain why:
As it happens, so much has begun to happen, that we can only point to various peaks now. In May, we began to talk about Nicholas Wade’s Troublesome Inheritance book, about how Darwinism emphasizes racial differences:
Wade, a prominent science writer, insists Darwinian evolution is ongoing, and wants to revive the “conversation” about race.
Geneticists use code words for race, he says. (Here’s an excerpt from the book.)
Well, it gets better. Did you know that creationists are liberals? Or something?
Real Clear Science surprised us by weighing in with the idea that race is real but racism is wrong. Some of us wondered: Does it mean that as long as you front Darwin, you can be a racist while saying racism is wrong?
Anyway, Britain’s Spectator called the whole thing “Darwin’s unexploded bomb.”.
Rod Dreher weighed in, expressing unease about even reading the book, as if some big truth we couldn’t accept were to be found therein. Never heard what it was.
BUT then things took a really odd turn: It turned out that everyone who doubts Wade’s race theories is a creationist. Or a mind-body dualist. And a cultural Marxist, even. Look, we honestly didn’t know … We ended up wondering if racism is the new cool?
The News desk still gets unsolicited e-mails from the proponents of human biodiversity, which sounds like racism with a trust fund, and that pretty much sums up their relationship with us.
Scientific American, it turned out, didn’t like the Kleagle much. (We would have bet against their hitting it off, if asked, and cleaned up – but more on that later.)
Maybe we should have anticipated this uproar because Columbia mathematician Peter Woit had to take to the ‘Net months earlier to advertise the fact that he is NOT a creationist just because he doubts crackpot cosmology. But we admittedly didn’t guess it would go any further than him.
Yet Wade ended up getting compared to a creationist himself.
Hey, is “creationist” the new “think for yourself and let others do the same”? In that case, definitely, have some creationists in your portfolio, including Stephen Jay Gould.
Here’s Tom Bethell’s view, and here is Slate’s (neither agreed with the book’s view). Also, more from Slate. Here’s a roundup of reviews, another here And then there was the Descent of Mann. Here’s PZ Myers on the subject (customary profanity warning). Here’s New Statesman. And Fred Reed.
Wow. Darwinism is really showing its wrinkles, isn’t it? Everyone is a creationist or might as well be one now.
Meanwhile, a kids’ book was hailed as an antidote to creationism., presumably therefore to liberalism (?). If not …
See also:
January 2014: Events that made a difference to ID (My sense is that we are making some headway against what Leon Wieseltier has referred to as Darwinist dittoheads.)
February 2014: Events that made a difference to ID We are definitely past having to care what Christians for Darwin think.
March 2014: Events that made a difference to ID Old, taken-for-granted “truths” are collapsing; an information theory approach may help us forward.
April 2014: Events that made a difference to ID Despite these developments, naturalists would prefer chaos and nonsense to signals that point away from naturalism.
June 2014: Events that made a difference to ID In June we began to think seriously about William Dembski’s then upcoming Being as Communion, a more philosophical look at design in nature
July 2014: Events that made a difference to ID Among many other events, a UD Post where a famous chemist says no scientist understands “macroevolution” passed 200,000 views.
August 2014: Events that made a difference to ID Famous Darwin follower, Jerry “Why evolution is true” Coyne, was really mad that information theorist William Dembski is allowed to speak at his fort, Fort Chicago University
September 2014: Events that made a difference to ID It was becoming obvious that no one who knows the facts need be defensive about doubting the naturalist spin.
October 2014: Events that made a difference to ID Even establishment science media are now moving to recognize the problems with Darwinian evolution theory.
November 2014: Events that made a difference to ID Not only has the kill-ID bomb not exploded, but lots of people besides us are beginning to notice that fact.
December 2014: Events that made a difference to ID Fake Facebook pages started in an attempt to discredit ID theorists. (People fake Rolexes, not Timexes.)
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Leon Wiesletier, former editor of The New Republic; circulation, formerly 50,0000.
“We reject Wade’s implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork.” A quote from the people (population geneticists)whose work Wade seriously bastardizes.
Rod Dreher annoyed Denyse by morphing into Eastern Orthodoxy away from her Catholicism and saying that, “sexual abuse of minors is facilitated by a secret, powerful network of gay priests.”
This grab bag of unsubstantiated factoids, and half espoused thought is the end of year contribution, to what exactly?
Never in the course of human endevour has so little been achieved, by so few, for so little attention. Roll on 2015.
Underachievement, thy name is ID. I feel another banning coming on.
rvb8, you are probably right about the banning, but principally for the sin of mind-reading.
I either didn’t know or had forgotten that Dreher had been Catholic.
If he really said something as silly as that about gay priests, I have less reason to hold him in respect, but had never heard it before. (I always deduct 10 respect points if people believe in conspiracies, because it can almost always be explained by mere confluence of interests and events).
Yes, there ARE conspiracies out there (cf 9-11) but they are not common, rarely large, and do not remain secret for very long.
As the Chinese define it: Secret = known by only one person
Tell you what, rvb8, I will give you one more chance to grow up. Use it wisely.
While racism certainly predated Darwinism, Darwinism made it possible to be an ‘intellectually fulfilled racist’. Darwin infamously stated,
In fact the ‘pseudo-scientific racism’ Darwinism engendered was so insidious, and obvious, that Darwinism can be traced back as a primary root cause for the NAZI holocaust:
Yet contrary to what Darwin presupposed, it is found that the differences between individuals in a population are far greater than differences between populations:
As well, as would be expected if humans were created, genetic diversity of Africans is greater than any other population:
At the 48:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Robert Carter comments on the surprising findings he found in his detailed analysis of the genetic diversity of humans:
In fact, contrary to what Hitler (and Darwin) would have presupposed, (and as Dr. Carter pointed out in his preceding video), the mutations that differentiate Europeans from Africans are found to be detrimental mutations and are not found to be beneficial mutations:
In fact, much contrary to what Darwin (and Hitler) would have thought, humanity on a whole is Devolving instead of Evolving
of related note:
Of note, Aboriginals, who have a distinctive brow ridge which Darwinists perceive as ‘archaic’, have been severely abused in the past because of Darwinism:
Also of note: The I.Q. tests, that have shown supposed large differences in the intelligence between races of humans, are all shown to be biased by overlooked environmental factors:
Dr. Ben Carson is a prime example of overcoming strong peer pressure (environment) trying to tell him to neglect his education:
It is also interesting to point out that the materialistic philosophy has an extremely difficult time assigning any proper value to humans in the first place, i.e. Just how do you derive value for a person from a philosophy that maintains transcendent values are illusory?:
I would like to think that people intuitively know that they are worth far more value than a dollar?!? Yet, as pointed out, on materialism you have the ‘resale value’ of less than one dollar!
Of course, in the marketplace some arrangements of matter carry more value than others because of the craftsmanship inherent within how the matter is arranged. But materialists deny that there is any true craftsmanship within humans. We are merely the happenstance product of a lucky series of accidents! Thus, why should any person’s particular arrangement of material carry any more value than any other particular arrangement of matter since any person’s arrangement of matter is just a happenstance accident and was not the work of a craftsman (i.e. fearfully and wonderfully made)?
Verse and Music:
Thank you Denyse. I will not use bad language. I will not miss quote. I will not egregiously attack stupid ideas, unless they are facile.
I still understand that I will be gone from here soon, if only for the fact that I continually point out that ID has done nothing, ever.
But please keep posting about the devastating near collapse of science. (You will note I don’t say neo-Darwinism). BA will assist, and Barry will talk about a grandson who can read the Bible, and understands its message.(If I could borrow the grandson Barry that would be good, because I’ve read that book cover to cover, and still have absolutely no idea if it’s good or bad).
Happy New Year all:)
rvb8, not knowing your standards, who can say whether you should think the Bible a good book or bad one?
But I can spare you one error in future: Catholics regard Orthodox communions as actual churches, because their bishops were ordained, bishop to bishop, from the time of the apostles.
Protestant churches are called “ecclesial communities,” meaning people who meet in fellowship to worship God as Christians. But no claim is or can be made regarding their provenance.
Of course a local ecclesial community might feature such Christians as would put the Catholic church to shame. But that isn’t the same thing as provenance.
So apart from being a failed effort at mind reading, your assumption that I would be deeply offended with a Catholic who went Orthodox shows a lack of information.
(Actually, I would not personally make it my business if Dreher became a Hindu, but would not expect you to have noticed that.)