Thursday, August 18, 2005

Creationism: God's Gift to the Ignorant

Excellent rant by Richard Dawkins.

The conclusion is great:

The creationists’ fondness for “gaps” in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas.


Don't yeshivas have the same love of ignorance? Don't they forbid (or discourage) books and magazines which contain viewpoints counter to their own?

3 comments:

JCMasterpiece said...

Um, that has got to be one of the most absurd thing i have ever heard. Talk about simplifying a view and complete unfounded bashing for the sake of bashing alone.

I was especially amused when this writer writes about Christian scientists "Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the scientist’s rejoicing in uncertainty."

This is exacly what scientists, researchers, and statisticians do all the time. I have done numerous research papers on different topics and this tactic appears to be a standard way of proof. Theory A states this, Theory B (usually what the person is hoping to prove) states this since theory A is proven false theory B must be correct.

The fact that this writer criticizes Christians for using this kind of logic proves that he is either ignorant of research techniques or has an obvious agenda that he will say whatever he can to "prove" his point.

Jewish Atheist said...

Unless you are talking about reductio ad absurdum, I strongly disagree that scientists, researchers, or statisticians do this "all the time." Please provide one example from a mainstream scientific journal where a scientist does this.

JCMasterpiece said...

I will have to pull out my notes and all of my old research among my files from school, but i should be able to find this... when i have some extra time