When you're in a liberal school you should be proud of your liberal heritage. And part of this should be fighting evil unscientific things such as Creationism or Intelligent Design. Long live Charles Darwin! Or to be more creative, Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!
We had a series of events this week celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. I'm not going to discuss about scientificity of Creationism or Intelligent Design or Evolutionism. All these debates come out of literal interpretation of the Bible. Even Darwin himself didn't propose his theory to deny Creation. But one thing struck me going to a couple of these events.
Ardent supporters of Evolutionism, discredit Creationism as a doctrine that comes out of religion, not science (as if the two are mutually exclusive). They find Intelligent Design equally abhorrible (if not more), because it is basically the same old non-scientific Creationism disguised as a scientific theory. But I found something in common over these events which were supposedly about the promotion of science, scientific thinking and rationality over irrationality and dogma.
What I saw, basically amounted to efforts to expose the conspiracy and stupidity of those Creationists who sell their Intelligent Design as a scientific theory. Exposing the conspiracy of some people or making fun of them, instead of refuting their arguments (or doing so just as a minor side theme) doesn't sound much like a scientific method. And building your arguments in a way to draw emotional laughs and jeers at those fanatic idiot naive religious conspirators doesn't give you much a feeling like being in a scientific or rational environment.
While sitting in these events, I had a feeling of being among fanatics, just of a different variety; instead of believing in Creationism, they had a different religious doctrine: Evolutionism. And they expressed their emotions and religious fervor exactly the same way as the people whom they tried to discredit as irrational and unscientific.
Well, let's go to the fun stuff. The last and the most interesting of these events was the birthday celebration of Charles Darwin. It began with yet another exposé movie about those cloaked Creationists. And it was followed by a break to have refreshments. Yay, cookies and cakes. And even a real birthday cake. And they had announced about a surprise guest (that could be easily guessed). We found Charles Darwin out there who had attended his birthday ceremony, holding his Origin of Species book dearly to his chest with a very venerable look. And there were a lot of enthusiastic fans who wanted to take pictures with their guru. Scientific environment, eh?
At one point, Darwin gave me an interested look. With my long hair and beard, I was the closest in appearance to him (well, not white-haired, but Darwin has been young at some point in his life). And I was looking at him with interest. Maybe he was thinking I was a shy fan, feeling timid about asking for a photo-op.
Although I respect Darwin as a great scientist and I find his theories very interesting, I'm not a fan, not interested in taking photos in such a manner. At least, not with a reenactor of Darwin. If it had been the real Charles Darwin, maybe. But while I may not be an evolutionist (in its religious fanatic sense), I am definitely a very hard-core cookieist. Happy Birthday Charles!
We had a series of events this week celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. I'm not going to discuss about scientificity of Creationism or Intelligent Design or Evolutionism. All these debates come out of literal interpretation of the Bible. Even Darwin himself didn't propose his theory to deny Creation. But one thing struck me going to a couple of these events.
Ardent supporters of Evolutionism, discredit Creationism as a doctrine that comes out of religion, not science (as if the two are mutually exclusive). They find Intelligent Design equally abhorrible (if not more), because it is basically the same old non-scientific Creationism disguised as a scientific theory. But I found something in common over these events which were supposedly about the promotion of science, scientific thinking and rationality over irrationality and dogma.
What I saw, basically amounted to efforts to expose the conspiracy and stupidity of those Creationists who sell their Intelligent Design as a scientific theory. Exposing the conspiracy of some people or making fun of them, instead of refuting their arguments (or doing so just as a minor side theme) doesn't sound much like a scientific method. And building your arguments in a way to draw emotional laughs and jeers at those fanatic idiot naive religious conspirators doesn't give you much a feeling like being in a scientific or rational environment.
While sitting in these events, I had a feeling of being among fanatics, just of a different variety; instead of believing in Creationism, they had a different religious doctrine: Evolutionism. And they expressed their emotions and religious fervor exactly the same way as the people whom they tried to discredit as irrational and unscientific.
Well, let's go to the fun stuff. The last and the most interesting of these events was the birthday celebration of Charles Darwin. It began with yet another exposé movie about those cloaked Creationists. And it was followed by a break to have refreshments. Yay, cookies and cakes. And even a real birthday cake. And they had announced about a surprise guest (that could be easily guessed). We found Charles Darwin out there who had attended his birthday ceremony, holding his Origin of Species book dearly to his chest with a very venerable look. And there were a lot of enthusiastic fans who wanted to take pictures with their guru. Scientific environment, eh?
At one point, Darwin gave me an interested look. With my long hair and beard, I was the closest in appearance to him (well, not white-haired, but Darwin has been young at some point in his life). And I was looking at him with interest. Maybe he was thinking I was a shy fan, feeling timid about asking for a photo-op.
Although I respect Darwin as a great scientist and I find his theories very interesting, I'm not a fan, not interested in taking photos in such a manner. At least, not with a reenactor of Darwin. If it had been the real Charles Darwin, maybe. But while I may not be an evolutionist (in its religious fanatic sense), I am definitely a very hard-core cookieist. Happy Birthday Charles!
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