On 18 Oct 95 14:54:55 EDT you wrote:
JB>Loren's excellent post...triggered some thoughts, so here goes.
>The elements Loren mentions are:
>A) RISING SECULARISM.
>B) PHILOSOPHICAL NATURALISM.
>C) OPERATIONALISM.
>D) RISING INDIVIDUALISM.
>E) UNIVERSALISM.
>All of these played a role. B,C and E were primarily of the
>intellectual elite. But how did the "man on the street" come to
>accept Darwinian precepts over time?
JB>I would add:
>F) MEDIA
>The rise of popular media was taking off at exactly this same time (as was
>modernism itself. See Johnson's "The Birth of the Modern"). Modernism was
>"progress", "hope for millions"...and the media were champions of that idea.
>Enemies of progress (e.g., the Luddites) were portrayed in the media as
>enemies and extremists. We also had the birth of "the spin doctor" long
>before that term was coined.
This is an interesting point. Now that I am sensitised to the
Creation v Evolution debate, I am amazed at how many times the word
"evolved" is slipped into media pronouncements. Every science
discovery is portrayed as supporting "evolution", even though some of
them have little or nothing to do with the issue. The word
"evolution" is used in the sense of "progress", no matter that
Darwinists now acknowledge that technically it isn't. Just
yesterday I heard of the evolution of the child as it grows up!
JB>Staunch Darwinians recognized that the popular media would be
>crucial in this war of ideas. The first great "spin doctor" was T.
>H. Huxley. Not only did he get to review "Origin" for The Times of
>London, he wrote a full 5,000 word, three and a half column ode to
>it. And then he arranged the now legendary debate with Samuel
>Wiberforce--one that for the first time painted Darwinists as
>progressive and open, and anti-Darwinists as puerile and closed.
Yes. And circulated (or at least did not correct) a false report of
the encounter, which Wilberforce probably actually won! See Gould's
"Knight Takes Bishop?", in "Bully for Brontosaurus", 1991, pp385ff)
JB>Then next great spin doctor was H. L. Mencken. It was largely he,
>through his skewed reportage of the Scopes Trial, who set the tone
>for the debate which STILL HOLDS FORTH TODAY. Bible believers were
>"anthropoid rabble," mobbing against the truth. You can still catch
>a whiff of this stuff on talk.origins, or anywhere else the debate is
>hot and heavy. [This is why Phil Johnson is such a force to be
>reckoned with. His charm, good humor and well reasoned approach are
>not easily spun away.]
Indeed, the myth lives on, even after the facts it is based on are
shown to be false. The Scopes trial has been portrayed as a
persecution of an innocent evolutionist by a bullying creationist
State, but in reality it was a deliberately staged "martyrdom" by
evolutionists as part of a larger PR battle.
JB>The media will continue to play a role in all this. With the
>decline of critical thinking skills, the images people see dancing
>before them will carry more and more weight. Unfortunate, but true.
>Jerry Seinfeld making fun of Creationists for five minutes holds more
>power than 100,000 copies of Reason in the Balance!
Yes. But the worm may be turning. It is an old saying that the
election is lost when a politician complains about the media.
Creationists are learning to use the media and evolutionists like
Dawkins are complaining:
"...there are people, including many working in what they call (often
as a singular noun) 'the media', who just like seeing applecarts
upset, perhaps because it makes good journalistic copy; and Darwinism
has become sufficiently established and respectable to be a tempting
applecart. Whatever the motive, the consequence is that if a
reputable scholar breathes so much as a hint of criticism of some
detail of current Darwinian theory, the fact is eagerly seized on and
blown up out of all proportion..." (Dawkins R., "The Blind
Watchmaker", Penguin: London, 1991, pp251-252).
Perhaps once the media get a whiff that there may be something
seriously wrong with Darwinism, and that Darwinists may have been
using taxpayers funds to prop up their own philosophy, they might
realise there is a bit of a story in i! :-)
God bless.
Stephen
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