There also will be an exhibit suggesting that belief in evolution is the root of most of modern society's evils. It shows models of children leaving a church where the minister believes in evolution. Soon the girl is on the phone to Planned Parenthood, while the boy cruises the Internet for pornography sites.
Ahahahaha.
5 comments:
The thing that absolutely ticks me off is the fact that these people keep equating Evolution with 'Social Darwinism'. 'Social Darwinism' actually came from the writings of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) who was pre-Darwinian. In fact, Darwin got the idea for Natural Selection from Malthus' writings. Read the first essay in Stephen Jay Gould's Ever Since Darwin for more info. Darwin turned out to be the more popular historical figure, so they anachronistically changed Malthusian theory to 'Social Darwinism'.
Now they can blame all of society's ills on evolution... From Hitler to Zedong. Yay!
Yes, it's plainly obvious that fundies just dump the ills of society on evolution without researching where those ills originated.
Eugenics? Nevermind that the practice originated 2000 years before Darwin with animal husbandry, it's clearly evolution's fault!
Thanks for the link and recommendation of Gould's book. I actually haven't read anything by him, and as soon as I polish off the 3 books I currently have lined up, I'll be ordering some of his work off amazon.
Oh man, there just ain't no substitute for classic Gould when it comes to evolutionary theory. Each of his main 'books' is an anthology of essays spanning a huge range of evolutionary topics.
He covers really complex stuff, but each of the essays is written for the layperson, so it's perfect for someone just getting into the field (as I was when I began the ol' Ph.D. - I was in Biochemistry for my undergrad and M.Sc.).
I regularly discuss books on my blog, so if you want ideas, look up my 'Book Club' posts.
The first three SJ Gould books are here (my buddy TheBrummell's blog), here and here, if you'd like some ideas for good books on evolution. Oh, and Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale is an excellent, large-scale intro to evolutionary theory.
Thanks for more recommendations (they pushed my amazon wishlist up to 42 evolution-related books!)
I own The Ancestor's Tale (about 2/3 the way through), and I've read 5 other books by Dawkins.
The Selfish Gene was introduction to ev. theory, so I guess since my first impression was decidedly "gene-centered" and "gradualistic", I have an excuse having not read any Gould. OK, that's not an excuse at all, but as you obviously know, Dawkins and Gould didn't see eye to eye when it came to the structure of evolutionary theory.
I'm attempting to balance my sources, so I'll be sure to pick up those three books by Gould.
I just created a library (put the link on my front page) of what I own, although I've yet to put everything up.
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