Re: [asa] Dawkins, religion, and children

At 11:03 AM 4/30/2007, Rich Blinne wrote:

>On 4/29/07, PvM <<mailto:pvm.pandas@gmail.com>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.

@ ".. in order to construct a world, we all engage in an imaginative
leap, the secular fundamentalist no less than the religious
fundamentalist." ~ Thursday, April 27, 2006 Thinking On Your
Knees http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/search?q=gaia

~ Janice .. "... this is a key insight, for it highlights the truism
that "progressivism" is a deeply nostalgic exercise, politically,
developmentally, and even ontologically. Politically it is a form of
romanticism, a backward-looking philosophy that naively idealizes
human nature and the instincts in general. Developmentally it is
nostalgic, for it attempts to resuscitate the conditions of infancy,
when "wishing" could be instantaneously converted into "having"
merely by crying and registering distress. .." ~ Saturday, March 24, 2007
That Old Devil Moonbat http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/search?q=communes

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Received on Mon Apr 30 12:05:41 2007