Sunday 8 February 2009

Observing the Darwin Zealots - Booker in the Telegraph.

Christopher Booker offers his observations on the enthusiasm shown by adherents to Darwin’s theory in the run up to the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. Booker too has noticed the analogy between devotion to Darwin and organised religion. Charles Darwin zealots have made science a substitute religion

Booker firstly points out some unresolved problems with Darwin’s theory that are generally ignored or supressed today. He then compares global warming adherents with the Darwinists and comments that “It becomes increasingly obvious that…the Darwinians…are so convinced by the simplicity of their theory that they are unable to recognise how much they do not know - and …their response has been to become ever more fanatically intolerant of anyone who dares question their dogma.”

Furthermore he comments that seeing Richard Owen (the intelligent design proponent who established the Natural History Museum in celebration of God’s handiwork) replaced by Darwin in centre stage in the British Natural History Museum ‘is a warning of what happens when science ceases to be scientific and becomes a substitute religion. The symbolism of the change is more perfect than its perpetrators know.’
Andrew Sibley

3 comments:

eduardo blasina said...

We are aware of how much we dont know, but we know that is studying, not praying that we will find the answers.
Science replaces religion when the issue is understanding who we are and where we live. Owen was replaced not only in museums, but in History.
Best regards

Anonymous said...

Devotion to the Darwin religion won't help much.

Eric said...

eduardo's comment typifies a view that turns the history and philosophy of modern science on its head. Modern science stands on the shoulders of what today we would call ID-ers (in fact, it stands on the shoulders of what we would call 6-day creationists today, but that's another story); it is the belief in basic axioms that flow from a realist view of the material world and its being from the word of a rational God that makes enquiry as to the operation of the material world possible. If first beliefs are out of kilter with the real world, enquiry will not work; which is why science was 'still born' in the ancient world.
ID-ers today do not expect to solve physical problems by prayer. You've erected a straw man, eduardo; but we study in the traditions of modern science that springs from a Christan world-view, and has sprung from no other world view. The concern is that consistent darwinism will lead back to its pagan evolutionary roots, and kill science once more as it rejects the soil in which it germinated.

‘Induction over the history of science suggests that the best theories we have today will prove more or less untrue at the latest by tomorrow afternoon.’ Fodor, J. ‘Why Pigs don’t have wings,’ London Review of Books, 18th Oct 2007