Hi Rich,
>1. Neither my post nor the one I was replying to was referring to the
>paragraph where Dennett uses the expressions "falsehood" and "that "Man" is
>not a product of evolution by natural selection." We were referring to the
>following paragraph, which occurs 3 pages earlier:
>"Save the Baptists! Yes, of course, but not _by_all_means_. Not if it means
>tolerating the deliberate misinforming of children about the natural world.
>According to a recent poll, 48 per cent of the people in the United States
>today believe that the book of Genesis is literally true. And 70 per cent
>believe that "creation science" should be taught in schools alongside
>evolution Some recent writers recommend a policy in which parents would be
>able to "opt out" of materials they didn't want their children taught.
>Should evolution be taught in the schools? Should arithmetic be taught?
>Should history? Misinforming a child is a terrible offense."
>See? -- "evolution", not "evolution by natural selection".
I see, so we can lift paragraphs from their overall context and treat books
like thousands of separate mini-bulletins? I think it is rather clear that
Dennett does not distinguish between evolution and evolution by natural
selection.
After all, what is the title of his book? Is it "The Idea of Evolution?"
Nope,
it's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea." Okay, so Dennett doesn't want parents to
be able to have their kids opt out of education about evolution. Do you think
we would allow them to opt out of "learning" that natural selection was the
mechanism that did indeed evolve human beings? If it's a falsehood to believe
that Man is not the product of evolution by natural selection, clearly this
falsehood
should be corrected in education, right?
>2. I'm sure you can find cases where I've misrepresented people in trivial
>ways. Everybody makes trivial misrepresentations all the time, and we don't
>normally draw attention to them.
I don't think it was a trivial misrepresentation as this is a very common and
significant misrepresentation that characterizes this whole dispute. Many
have no problem with human evolution (including me). We see evidence of it.
But the darwinian fundamentalists want to tack on natural selection as if it
was indeed the mechanism. Evidence of evolution is not evidence of its
mechanism. Yet where is the evidence that these evolutionary innovations were
indeed evolved by natural selection?
It's the classic example of bait-and-switch. Dennett only wants us to learn
about
evolution. Well, okay says the buyer. And what they get is evolution by
natural selection - you know - Darwin's Dangerous Idea, that ol' universal
acid.
Mike
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