Dawkins blames "retarded" American religion for anti-evolutionism.

:evilgrin:


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/print.html


Still, so many people resist believing in evolution. Where does the resistance come from?

It comes, I'm sorry to say, from religion. And from bad religion. You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Britain, but in the United States.

My American friends tell me that you are slipping towards a theocratic Dark Age. Which is very disagreeable for the very large number of educated, intelligent and right-thinking people in America. Unfortunately, at present, it's slightly outnumbered by the ignorant, uneducated people who voted Bush in.

But the broad direction of history is toward enlightenment, and so I think that what America is going through at the moment will prove to be a temporary reverse. I think there is great hope for the future. My advice would be, Don't despair, these things pass.

but despite this, i'm sure there will be a dozen posts after mine screaming about his insults to the mentally retarded.

and he's right.

mental retardation. I.e., "to slow up especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment".

But I hear ya... :eyes:

He is not calling people retarded, he is calling their religious views retarded.

This guy is a little over the top...but I generally agree with him...though I am not an atheist!

Americans for what is clearly the fault of morally and spiritually disabled Americans.

incidentally, Dawkins is featured in Jonathan Miller's completely fantastic documentary series, ATHEISM: A brief history of disbelief.

the unedited interviews are in THE ATHEISM TAPES.

if you don't get the beeb and know of those whimsical bittorrent protocols, get thee to uknova.com, sign up, search on Miller, and download away. great viewing.

warning: if you're an anglophile or a fanatical britcom addict, uknova will destroy your free time.

;)

"It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, ..."

NOT "retarded Americans!"

WHY twist his words to insult the mentally impaired's dignity?

:eyes:

:hide:

Seriously, I wanted to capture the outrage in Dawkins' tone. I sympathize with it.

wait...

never mind.

:o

:hi:

Sorry,but that's the way he comes acrose----and I believe in evolutionism,not creationism.

I cannot abide intellectual snobs!

I thought he was spot-on. Guess that makes me an intellectual snob, too.

Arrogant in what way? I know it is arrogant to state something that is obviously wrong, or very questionable, but insist upon "being right." I do not see this here.

mushroom eatin', snob what can't armwrassel worth a damn or smash a beercan on his forehead. Bet he don't like NASCAR neither.

That's what we all do you know.

They do tend to be a bit that way.

But I can see how he'd rub others the wrong way.

He is, however, a highly intelligent, analytical scientist, with a more than adequate command of the English language, unlike a great number of people in this country. His criticisms of religion and its non critical, anti-intellectual approach to science may sound arrogant to those who do not read what he is actually saying.

And definitely not an elitist.

Tells it like it is and suffers no fools. We need more of this. Why should we make nice with the fools he is talking about??

And I might add that the fools he's talking about usually wouldn't be reading Salon.

I just finished reading his latest, The Ancestor's Tale. Loved it. He made some rather pointed (negative) remarks regarding Bush & Co. I am not sure it was relevant to the topic but it was fun to read.

And, as far as the paragraphs posted here go, it sounds like he's right on the money.

:popcorn:

.... Are Mountains Of Evidence To Support Evolution. Ignorance And Religion Are To Blame For Discounting Evolution. The Idea Of Creationism
As Being Reality Is "Retarded".

Don't want people to think he's blaming developmentally disabled Americans.

:hi:

:rofl:

I am absolutely tired of playing to the back of the class. If these ignorant fucks want civilization to stagnate because of their need to push their ridiculous beliefs, I say leave them behind. Let them form their own state where they scorn science and pray for the rapture.

I think we have long overlooked an effective weapon against them, outright ridicule. Unapologetically call their ideas stupid to their face and don't let up. Our problem from the start is that we were too nice and actually let their bullshit gain a spark of credibility, and that spark caused a brushfire of regression.

We need to break their momentum, and the best way to do it is to call bullshit and not let up.

Dr Dawkins is always well-spoken in interviews; this was no exception. Thanks!

:hi:

I'm kidding. I know as opposed to what, and I know what he meant.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, not believing in evolution was pretty much a fringe attitude. When we studied evolution in tenth grade biology, only one student objected to it, a Jehovah's Witness, and he protested by being one of the few tenth graders not to take the class. All the others, including the few kids who attended the fundamentalists churches (we were mostly a Lutheran, Catholic, and Methodist town, so maybe about ten percent of the students were fundamentalists), took it calmly.

I went to a Lutheran college from 1968 to 1972, and one of my religion courses was Studies in Genesis. We looked at the parallels of the creation story to other Middle Eastern cultures, and no one said a word.

When Reagan came into the White House, the fundamentalists were emboldened. Suddenly, anti-evolutionists were all over the media. Suddenly, school prayer was an American tradition that dastardly liberals had outlawed. Suddenly, Halloween was demonic.

One thing that happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s was that public schools went through a misguided attempt to become "relevant," which in practice often meant dumbing down, sad to say. When I looked at the successor editions to textbooks that I myself had used in high school or to supplementary materials like Scholastic Magazine, they were visibly dumbed down.

In areas where fundamentalists were strong, they began demanding biology textbooks without evolution. (One of the hazards of much-vaunted "local control" of schools.) In areas where this was not possible, fundamentalists boycotted biology classes and used evolution as an excuse for starting their own schools or homeschooling.

This drive to eliminate the teaching of evolution comes from their basic authoritarianism. The fundamentalists want absolute obedience from their flocks, and one of their tenets is Biblical literalism. If the first chapter of Genesis can be proven to be a myth, their reasoning goes, their flocks might start questioning everything!

The fact that millions of mainstream Christians live with belief in evolution doesn't phase them. Of course, most mainstream Christians dont' practice absolute obedience to their clergy anyway.

Given that American culture llikes schooling as job training and a venue for athletics but not for genuine learning, too few people noticed as the numbers with faulty scientific training grew to reach a critical mass.

It really has been since the Reagan "revolution." Of course its roots run deeper, back to the Goldwater run, Vietnam, Watergate. And especially, to the reactions against the real revolutions of the civil rights, anti-war, feminist, etc. movements.

Oy, what a mess!

and that most Americans don't question the fact of Evolution.

I am not "Religious" nor do I believe in God as a person up in the sky playing puppetmaster.

However, I am intellectually honest enough to see that Darwinism does not and cannot explain how Consciousness can arise from Physical Matter.

And also, that the billions of developments that happen through eons leading to ever more complex, organized and Consciously Aware lifeforms can't be explained by random chance + natural selection.

Occam's Razor.

To explain how Lifeforms constantly change into ever more complex forms by positing random chance is mathmatically untenable.

It makes more sense to look for Nature having an inherent capacity for some kind of Primal Intelligence.

:hi:

like Gravity.

Most people don't understand that there is a difference between Evolution and the Theory of Evolution. Just as Gravity and the Theory of Gravity are two seperate things.

Dawkins addresses your concern about "random chance" and natural selection. NS, he says, is not at all random.

NS is driven--self-driven. Its drivenness can mislead those of us who are conscious to believe that it is driven by a Consciousness.

He explains modern Darwinism- you should check it out.

Selection makes for a non random process.

:hurts:

:spray: :rofl:

Meant to post the line of the article you were referring to, but I AM blond and some days MORE than others!

but I still grimace when the word retarded is used because I know people will take it out of context.

I'm glad he edited it. ;)

My favorite was a debate between him and the Archbishop of Canterbury. By the time Dawkins finished and sat down, the Archbishop leaned over to a friend and muttered "Lions 10, Christians 0."

Also, read "The Blind Watchmaker" if you haven't done so already. Brilliant, brilliant book.

For the AoC to actually admit that he has been shot down is excellent.

He is one of the defining thinkers of my life.

Damn! I liked those guys.

Check out his fan club!

http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/index.shtml

this "theocratic Dark Age" is multiplying..It's wrong and it's evil..it makes no sense other than it's fascist and that's whose in power now.

They're using the guise of Jesus Christ, who was a Liberal, to smear Liberals.