From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Tue Mar 11 2003 - 07:18:52 EST
In a message dated 3/11/03 12:39:46 AM Eastern Standard Time,
hvantill@chartermi.net writes:
> I see Ruse's comments as an expression of: a) a desire to protect science
> from being kidnapped and held hostage by any religious worldview, whether
> theistic, agnostic or atheistic, 2) a judgment that that a lot of
> worldview-driven nonsense has come to be falsely associated with science,
> especially with the concept of evolution, 3) a desire to see more
> substantive discussion about what well-informed science and honest religion
> might contribute to one another, and 4) the confidence that his personal
> worldview need not be protected by a program of misrepresenting or
> exploiting science to say what it does not or cannot say.
>
> Looks like an excellent model.
>
> Howard Van Till
>
>
>
>
Except that it is a marked contrast to the reality of the sciences as
presented in David sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral who claims functionlaism
in the social sciences and evolutionary biology were hijacked in the '60s by
social scientists to deny group selection in order to disenfranchise any
claim that religious belief and practice were efficacious for those
practicing them. Below is Dawkins' (an evolutionary biologist) latest
offering. Note Dawkins VERSUS priests. Ruse has the reality backward. It is
NOT science that is being kidnapped by religion but religion being
deliberately and *incorrectly* undermined by science. Wilson calls religion
adaptive. See below:
Dawkins versus the priests and New Age shamans? No contest
Richard Dawkins is suitably knockabout in A Devil's Chaplain - but he should
stop pulling his punches, writes Robin McKie
Sunday March 9, 2003
The Observer
A Devil's Chaplain
by Richard Dawkins
Weidenfeld & Nicolson £16.99, pp264
Consider this experiment in temporal ingenuity. You are holding your mother's
left hand. At the same time, she clutches her own mother, your grandmother,
with her right. Your grandmother then holds her mother's hand, and so on into
the past.
With each individual allocated a yard of private space, your ancestral queue
snakes off into the Industrial Revolution, through the Middle Ages and on into
prehistory, until, 300 miles down the line, it eventually reaches the missing
link, the common ancestor that humans shared with chimpanzees six million
years
ago.
Now imagine a similar, parallel queue emerging from that common ancestor, this
time following the chimpanzee side of her family - until it reaches the
present
day. 'You are now face to face with your chimpanzee cousin, and you are joined
to her by an unbroken chain of mothers holding hands,' Dawkins observes.
Full text
A Devil's Chaplain
Reviews
Book Description
The selected writings of the famous evolutionary biologist who has changed the
Synopsis
A reviewer wrote of "The Selfish Gene" that it was 'rich with metaphor,
About the Author
Dawkins is a proponent of strict Darwinism which as wilson says is now proven
rich
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4
: Tue Mar 11 2003 - 07:19:31 EST
<A HREF="http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/scienceandnature/0,6121,910163,00.html">http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/scienceandnature/0,6121,910163,00.html>
Richard Dawkins
Hardcover - 320 pages (6 February, 2003)
Weidenfeld & Nicholson; ISBN: 0297829734
AMAZON - UK
<A HREF="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0297829734/humannaturecom">http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0297829734/humannaturecom>
way people think.
passionate arguments, wry humour, colourful examples and unexpected
connections'. This selection of Richard Dawkins large output of articles,
lectures, individual chapters and reviews demonstrates the breadth of his
interests, the sheer quality of his writing and the challenging nature of his
trenchantly held views. Whether writing on the many aspects of evolution or on
science in general, the importance of science, the poetry of science, the fact
that science is inspiring (or ought to be), he is often provocative, sometimes
outrageous, never less than highly influential.
Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist renowned throughout the world. He
was educated at Oxford and taught zoology before becoming the first holder of
the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford
University, in 1995. His previous books rank among the most influential
intellectual works of our time., They include The Selfish Gene (1976), River
Out of Eden (1995), and Unweaving the Rainbow (1999).
to be incorrect and was ideologically suppressed beginning in the '60s and
now replaced by multilevel selection theory which supports Spencer's idea (as
early as 1876) and durkheim's functionalsim that ecclesiastical systems
maintain social bonds and operate as organisms as Calvin said in his
catechism.