In a message dated 3/19/00 3:22:02 AM Dateline Standard Time,
tich@primex.co.uk writes:
<< Dembski writes:
>Daniel Dennett even recommends
>"quarantining" parents who teach their children to doubt Darwinism
>(see the end of his *Darwin's Dangerous Idea*).
Dembski has here conflated ideas from two paragraphs, and created a meaning
which is expressed by neither of them. So you can judge for yourselves, here
are the two consecutive paragraphs in full:
"We should not expect this variety of respect [for religions] to be
satisfactory to those who wholeheartedly embody the memes we honor with our
attentive--but not worshipful--scholarship. On the contrary, many of them
will view anything other than enthusiastic conversion to their own views as
a threat, even an intolerable threat. We must not underestimate the
suffering such confrontations cause. To watch, to have to participate in,
the contraction or evaporation of beloved features of one's heritage is a
pain only our species can experience, and surely few pains could be more
terrible. But we have no reasonable alternative, and those whose visions
dictate that they cannot peacefully coexist with the rest of us we will have
to quarantine as best we can, minimizing the pain and damage, trying always
to open a path or two that may come to seem acceptable.
"If you want to teach your children that they are the tools of God, you had
better not teach them that they are God's rifles, or we will have to stand
firmly opposed to you: your doctrine has no special glory, no intrinisic and
inalienable merit. If you insist on teaching your children falsehoods--that
the Earth is flat, that "Man" is not a product of evolution by natural
selection--then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who
have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the
spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your
children at the earliest opportunity. Our future well-being--the well-being
of all of us on the planet--depends on the education of out descendants.">>
I must confess that I fail to see how this was a mis-quote. Dennetts words
drip
with know-it-all arrogance, to the point where he does assert that we should
quarantine, the best we can, those who "cannot peacefully coexist" with his
personal metaphysics. Imagine if a Christian wrote those very paragraphs and
was
talking about members of another religion. He then plans to use "free
speech" to
demonstrate (through education) to the children of religious people their
"falsehoods" (which from his perspctive, includes the belief "God exists").
This can easily be interpreted as part of the quarantine plan.
I suppose you could interpret these paragraphs such that Dembski misquotes
Dennett, but then it's all a matter of interpretation.
The really interesting thing is that Dennett is so convinced by his own biases
and philosophy that he actually thinks the evolution of Man *by natural
selection*
is a fact. Too bad Dennett wasn't posting here, as I'd like him to provide
the
evidence that it was indeed natural selection that evolved the rather long
series of biological features that led to human beings. If he couldn't do
this (and he
wouldn't be able to), I'd like him to explain why his education is not in
fact indoctrination.
Mike
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