Tim Lee

No Intelligence Allowed

Since ads for Ben Stein’s “Intelligent Design” movie is on heavy rotation over on the right-hand side of the page, now seems like a good time to reiterate that most of the ads on this site are automatically placed by Google, and shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement by TLF or any of its contributors. Ron Bailey’s take on Expelled seems pretty spot-on to me.

April 21, 2008 | Comments |

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    If people want to read more, www.expelledexposed.com refutes many of Stein's fallacious claims.
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    What many defenders of TENS cannot accept is that ideas have consequences. You cannot teach survival of the fittest as the primary means by which our own damn species came into existence, and then look askance at someone who looks down on those they consider unfit for survival, without looking like you have not fully embraced the worldview you teach is the basic truth of life. Dawkins himself pointed out that he would hate to live in a society that embraced TENS as a fundamental truth about how life and nature are ordered.

    I'm inclined to agree with the atheists, even though I am a Christian myself, who despise "Christian atheists" like Dawkins, PZ Myers, Dennet and Hitchens. You cannot on the one hand teach that the fundamental truth about how species advance is that the sick and unfit die off, and then fall back on Christian morals on providing for the sick and weak. It's a real cognitive dissonance that comes from the fact that most supporters of TENS base their arguments on how society should function if TENS be true, almost entirely on emotion rather than reason. It's emotion that causes the reaction in Dawkins that says that he would not like to live in a society that runs itself according to how TENS alleges the entire natural world operates.

    I could understand the argument that we need to rise above nature, but both religion and science tend to agree that man is a slave to his nature. It's philosophers who, without any serious evidence, tell us that we can aspire to be fundamentally more than what we are by nature.

    From where I stand, most TENS supporters in America try to live a version of Christianity. They try to live our truth by denying everything that TENS would tell them about nature and themselves, while preaching TENS. I think it is because they are scared shitless of what it would feel like to actually embrace the worldview that is natural if you truly believe that TENS explains the mysteries of life.

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