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COMMENTARY
December 31, 2005
Fightin’ exit
My favourite letter-to-the-editor all year was from a certain Rod Bhar of Carleton Place, who noted the large amount of space the Ottawa Citizen had devoted to the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s three most famous papers.“What shocks me,” said the droll Mr Bhar, “is the shameful lack of recognition for the Citizen’s David Warren. “Mr. Warren is having his own version of Einstein’s big year. So far in 2005, he has debunked both the theories of evolution and global warming. What’s more, unlike Einstein, he has done this without any scientific training. This surely ranks as an achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize.” In my private electronic universe, 2005 must go down as the year in which, by volume, hatemail from “Darwinoids” and “environmentalcases” overtook hatemail from Islamists and gay activists. Never thought that could happen. But one takes one’s blessings as they fall, and I should like to close my account on 2005, as previous years, on a fightin’ note. Let no one think my recent silence on Darwinism indicates any kind of backing off. True to my noble Scottish ancestry, intellectual claymore in hand, I remain ready-aye-ready to charge down the hill, waving it and crying: “Another for Hector!” I continue appalled that a crude Darwinian materialism continues to be pumped by our schools into the heads of people too young to defend themselves. That it is presented as something morally and spiritually neutral, as “pure science”, when it is pure bluster. Here is where a little autodidactic training in philosophy has served me better than any kind of scientific tutoring could have done. For I am able to spot the premise upon which the logical argument sits: and therefore grasp the argument’s circularity. Working from the premise that only strictly material causes are admissible in the study of biological effects, the Darwinians then demonstrate that all biological effects can be explained from strictly material causes. But the human mind, which can tell the difference between something that is alive and something that is dead, finally rebels against this circularity. Darwinism provides no account whatever of the singular miracle of life. The very will to survive is inadmissable on materialist premises. Random collocations of atoms do not behave to a purpose. And as the physicists have realized -- such as Einstein, the man who said, “God does not play dice with the universe” -- the existence of material is itself a problem. The ultimate particle is not even a particle. "I would give Darwin the gold medal for the best idea anybody ever had," said true-believer Daniel Dennett in Der Spiegel this week. It may well be, but the best idea any human ever had continues to run interference with the truth. My chief objection to Darwinism is that it's a religion, posing as a science. This makes it the natural enemy of 1. religion, 2. science, 3. human freedom. Verily, I think twisted science is a more dangerous enemy than twisted Islam over the longer run. Especially as the most twisted form of Islam (“Salafism”, let's call it) is currently in the act of destroying itself. (Albeit, with a lot of collateral damage.) I use “Darwinoid” as a routine term of abuse for the crusading sort of Darwinists, at large in our schools. Science is no part of their agenda. Rather, they seek to instil dogmatic materialism in young minds. The same dogma underlies radical environmentalism. And communism, and fascism, now that we are making a list. Which is not to say that only dogmatic materialists have embraced these ideologies. In addition to the real atheists, even fruitcake Jesuits (“liberation theologians”) signed up with communism in Latin America. But the fuel that makes Darwinism go is dogmatic materialism. This is what gives it the religious fervour. I continue to draw inspiration from so many simple people, lacking the intellectual means to confute the Darwinian priesthood in the academy, who are nevertheless able to smell a rat, and will not be tricked or intimidated into accepting their materialist presumptions. The popularity of "Intelligent Design" is growing because it offers a way for science to get out of the face of religion. This is also why the Darwinoids hate and fear it: because the whole point of their Darwinism is to get in the face, of Christianity in particular. “ID" uses exactly the same fact-sets as all the biological disciplines; it merely leaves God to open minds, rather than consciously trying to “eliminate that hypothesis”. In time it will prevail, for the truth always does. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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