Re: [asa] Dawkins, religion, and children

On 4/29/07, PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> While they are wrong about teaching atheism, Dawkins supports
> pantheism if anything, the question raised by Dawkins is a valid one:
> rights of parents versus the rights of children.

This is not a detached academic debate about the conflict of rights as you
characterize it but a good ol' fashioned axe grinding by Dawkins and
Dennett. Ronald Numbers just updated his history of Darwinism, Creationism,
and Intelligent Design in Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and
Creationism, March 27, 2007, ed. Petto and Godfrey. Number's chapter was
adapted and reprinted from Darwinism Comes to America, 1998, pp. 1-23. What
makes this especially pointed is the work is extremely anti-ID and
anti-Creationist -- which should be obvious from the title. Yet, note this
quote by Numbers on p. 45. Note to Ted: it might be good to dig up Number's
1997 Dennett reference and see the entire context of the quotes.

If Dawkins played the role of point man for late-twentieth-century
> naturalistic evolutionists, Tufts University philosopher Daniel C. Dennett
> gladly served as their hatchet man. In a book called Darwin's Dangerous
> Idea (1995), which Dawkins warmly endorsed, Dennett portrayed Darwinism as
> "a universal solvent, capable of cutting right to the heart of everything in
> sight" -- and particularly effective in dissolving religious beliefs
> (Dennett 1995, 515). The most ardent creationist could not have said it with
> more conviction, but Dennett's agreement with them ended there. He despised
> creationists, arguing the "there are no forces on this planet more dangerous
> to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism" (Dennett 1995, 516).
> Displaying a degree of intolerance more characteristic of a fundamentalist
> fanatic than an academic philosopher, he called for "caging" those who would
> deliberately misinform children about the natural world, just as one would
> cage a threatening animal. "The message is clear," he wrote: "those who will
> not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest
> and wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly,
> to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes [traditions]
> they fight for" Dennett 1995, 519-20). With the bravado of a man unmindful
> that only 11 percent of the public shared his enthusiasm for naturalistic
> evolution, he warned parents that if they insisted on teaching their
> 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 our earliest opportunity" (Dennett
> 1997). Those who resisted conversion to Dennett's scientific fundamentalism
> would be subject to "quarantine."
>

References used by Numbers:

Dennett, D.C. 1995, Darwin's dangerous idea: Evolution and the meaning of
life. New York: Simon and Schuster.

_________, 1997. Appraising grace: What evolutionary good is God? The
Sciences 37 (January/February): 39-44.

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Received on Mon Apr 30 11:04:10 2007