"Rev Dr" Lenny Flank
Posts: 2560
Joined: Feb. 2005
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| Quote (Fross @ Mar. 02 2007,12:23) | Maybe it's my lack of imagination but I can't possibly imagine what could come after "teach the controversy", maybe it's an evolutionary dead-end.
whadda ya think? |
Reposting from the last time this question came up:
I'm sticking to my prediction that the fundies will now drop anti-evolutionism altogether -- they've lost that fight so many times that it would be simple-minded masochism to keep fighting it. Instead, they will turn to anti-cosmology-ism, by giving us some privately-defined version of "The Anthropic Principle" which, they will say, proves that the universe was specially created . . . uh . . . I mean designed . . . er . . . I mean . . um . . . "adjusted", yeah, *that's* the word, "specially adjusted" . . . just to produce us.
There are several advantages to the fundies for that strategy. First, it completely sidesteps all of their crushingly long list of anti-evolution defeats. Just because anti-evolutionism has already been repeatedly ruled to be non-science religious dogma doesn't mean that anti-cosmology-ism is, right, Your Honor?
Second, if you think people misunderstand evolution, just WAIT till the fundies start spouting out all sorts of sciencey-sounding bullshit about cosmology and quantum physics.
Third, the very name "The Anthropic Principle" sounds vaguely sorta kinda like "Created For Man", so all the members of the Big Tent (remember, The Anthropic Principle says nothing at all about . . . oh . . . how old the earth is, whether or not life evolves, or even whether or not the Big Bang happened) can read into it whatever they like, in whatever form they like it.
And fourth -- and most beautiful of all -- the term "The Anthropic Principle" was itself produced by real live cosmologists, not by foaming fundie nutters, and has actually been used in real science publications. That'll keep the fundie quote-miners employed for years. It'll also allow them to argue in court, "But Your Honor, this is just THEIR OWN SCIENCE that we want to have taught !!!!"
Gee, if I were a dishonest person, I'd write the book myself laying out all those arguments, and thus take credit (all the way to the bank) for starting ID's successor. ;)
Alas, though, the anti-cosmology-ist strategy will ultimately fail too, just like the anti-evolutionist campaign did, and for much the same reasons. There will, for instance, be a documented history tying anti-cosmology directly to fundie anti-evolutionists, going back several decades (there were a couple ICR nutters who wrote articles declaring that Einstein's relativity is wrong and therefore the Big Bang is wrong, and then there's Gonzalez's "universe-was-designed" tome and Heddle's blitherings about "cosmological ID").
And any version of The Anthropic Principle put out by fundies will, of course, be inherently religious, since none but a deity is capable of producing or adjusting a universe (no "maybe the space aliens diddit" this time). And you can be sure that in every "scientific" discussion where the fundie version of "The Anthropic Principle" appears, *some* fundie nutter will stand up in the middle of it and shout "JESUS SAVES !!!!!!" at the top of his lungs, and thus give the whole game away. Just like Intelligent Design, The Anthropic Principle gambit depends for its success completely and totally on the ability of its supporters to shut up about their religious motives. Alas, they simply can't do it. They don't WANT to do it. Their incessant compulsion to preach, will kill them every time. Just like it killed ID.
Of course, without the political support of the Republicrat Party, the fundies are nothing but a sewing circle anyway, and it appears as though the Republicrats will not have real political power again for a long long long time . . .
Indeed, the Republicrat Party itself will likely be in for some awfully rough times ahead. Basically, the Repugs are the "Party of the Angry White Man". Unfortunately for them, by the middle of this century if not sooner, white people will themselves be firmly a minority in the US -- and then the angry white men can stamp their feet all they want, they simply won't have the numbers at the ballot box to win. Women and ethnics will then decide elections, and they're, uh, not very friendly to the Republicrats (and vice versa).
I look for the Republicrats to decline drastically over the next few decades, and either remake themselves completely, or be replaced by an actual conservative political party ("conservative" in the Eisenhower sense, not in the radical Dubya/fundie sense). The alternative would be for the angry white fundie nutters to seize power undemocratically, without elections. I do not dismiss that possibility. Indeed, I think open fascism in the US (as compared to the fig-leaf fascism that we've recently had under Republicrat single-party rule) is a very real option.
Which is why I keep my hunting rifle well-oiled.
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Editor, Red and Black Publishers
www.RedandBlackPublishers.com
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