The Evolution Front
The New American Civil War has other fronts besides the still burning but seldom discussed issue of Civil Rights. Another is the steadily enlarging issue of so-called "Illegal Immigration," which could just as well be called "Civil Rights for Latinos" (instead of for Rainbows). Another is Climate Change. Another is Gun Control. Another is the Drug War. Another is Terrorism, and on and on. But the most entertaining and informative one features the battle between Evolutionists and Creationists.
As far as I know, the only blood that has been shed in this fight so far is the intellectual kind, but that may only be a matter of time, because the opponents are going at it with every bit of the same fury that can be found across all the other fronts. In some ways here the hostilities could be even worse, because they involve that all-important ingredient of the human ego, reputation. Yet it's important to pay attention because in this struggle one can see many of the tactics and strategy that the Regressives employ on all the other fronts, and it's all the clearer because Intelligent Design's approach is so narrow and focused. It's proponents make no attempt to show the Designer or Designers hard at work in their workshops or showing how they set their creations out into the world or even to put faces on these Divine Artists. Instead the advocates are bent almost solely on saying "Ah-hah!" at every gap or incorrect conclusion that they think they've found in the evolutionary record.
This struggle is not new or homebrewed. Instead it has been going on since long before Darwin published his "Origin of Species," and it was permanently sharpened in the middle 1800's as a result of what has all the appearance of two punk kids going out on a lark, in a genuine sailing ship to the South Seas, and with government money to pay their way.
We have the vision of oldtime ship's captains as being crusty old rascals, on the order of Captain Bligh and Melville's Ahab. Yet I've seen more than one film lately where ship's officers of that era are depicted as being little more than recent high schoolers. Was sailing over the oceans so dangerous in those days that even ships captains had about the same life expectancy as second lieutenants in Vietnam? Did only one or two voyages suffice to convince them that if they wanted to be grandfathers or even fathers, landlubbery was the way to go?. Still you have to wonder how, in 1829, the English Navy could have given a mere 23-year older named Robert FitzRoy a real ship with a real crew and permission to sail thousands of miles to distant and exotic places.
Besides dutifully charting coastal waters, FitzRoy also hoped to find proof that the Holy Bible had the right scoop on how the universe and everything in it was created. And so, to keep his mind sharp on the long journey, he took along a fellow indulger in oddities who was even younger, a 20-year-older named Charles Darwin.
Though the two stuck it out together for five years, they engaged in so many arguments at the Captain's table that they became enemies, and that makes me wonder, because Darwin's thinking was still a distance away from the theory that has bent so many people's noses out of shape ever since, in their dead certainty that apes, much less dark Africans, were not in their line of ancestors. Instead, as a naturalist, he meant only to collect some of the many wonders of Nature. So did Darwin come up with his big concept less because during the trip he noticed how adaptations to environments and the life experience seemed to bring about changes in living things from one generation to the next, and more because he had grown too fond of countering FitzRoy at every turn?
In any case, this struggle was already in the air, and even after Darwin came up with the content of "Origin of Species," it was years before he published it, out of fear of the religionists, and when, 25 years after the voyage of the Beagle, a meeting of English science biggies was called to discuss Darwin's theory, FitzRoy attended, still floating his quite different beliefs, and now today, in the battle between the Evolutionists and Creationists, the whole thing still is Current Events, and, despite all the discoveries in the last 200 years, little about this disagreement is really new.
As far as I know, the only blood that has been shed in this fight so far is the intellectual kind, but that may only be a matter of time, because the opponents are going at it with every bit of the same fury that can be found across all the other fronts. In some ways here the hostilities could be even worse, because they involve that all-important ingredient of the human ego, reputation. Yet it's important to pay attention because in this struggle one can see many of the tactics and strategy that the Regressives employ on all the other fronts, and it's all the clearer because Intelligent Design's approach is so narrow and focused. It's proponents make no attempt to show the Designer or Designers hard at work in their workshops or showing how they set their creations out into the world or even to put faces on these Divine Artists. Instead the advocates are bent almost solely on saying "Ah-hah!" at every gap or incorrect conclusion that they think they've found in the evolutionary record.
This struggle is not new or homebrewed. Instead it has been going on since long before Darwin published his "Origin of Species," and it was permanently sharpened in the middle 1800's as a result of what has all the appearance of two punk kids going out on a lark, in a genuine sailing ship to the South Seas, and with government money to pay their way.
We have the vision of oldtime ship's captains as being crusty old rascals, on the order of Captain Bligh and Melville's Ahab. Yet I've seen more than one film lately where ship's officers of that era are depicted as being little more than recent high schoolers. Was sailing over the oceans so dangerous in those days that even ships captains had about the same life expectancy as second lieutenants in Vietnam? Did only one or two voyages suffice to convince them that if they wanted to be grandfathers or even fathers, landlubbery was the way to go?. Still you have to wonder how, in 1829, the English Navy could have given a mere 23-year older named Robert FitzRoy a real ship with a real crew and permission to sail thousands of miles to distant and exotic places.
Besides dutifully charting coastal waters, FitzRoy also hoped to find proof that the Holy Bible had the right scoop on how the universe and everything in it was created. And so, to keep his mind sharp on the long journey, he took along a fellow indulger in oddities who was even younger, a 20-year-older named Charles Darwin.
Though the two stuck it out together for five years, they engaged in so many arguments at the Captain's table that they became enemies, and that makes me wonder, because Darwin's thinking was still a distance away from the theory that has bent so many people's noses out of shape ever since, in their dead certainty that apes, much less dark Africans, were not in their line of ancestors. Instead, as a naturalist, he meant only to collect some of the many wonders of Nature. So did Darwin come up with his big concept less because during the trip he noticed how adaptations to environments and the life experience seemed to bring about changes in living things from one generation to the next, and more because he had grown too fond of countering FitzRoy at every turn?
In any case, this struggle was already in the air, and even after Darwin came up with the content of "Origin of Species," it was years before he published it, out of fear of the religionists, and when, 25 years after the voyage of the Beagle, a meeting of English science biggies was called to discuss Darwin's theory, FitzRoy attended, still floating his quite different beliefs, and now today, in the battle between the Evolutionists and Creationists, the whole thing still is Current Events, and, despite all the discoveries in the last 200 years, little about this disagreement is really new.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 11:13 AM
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