"A.Carlson" <amcarls@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:pj9kk1p1sv1otj8p6b914n7u0n6btpgvst@4ax.com...
How can anyone with even a reasonable IQ really believe that no
evidence has emerge over the last 150 years that supports evolution?
It isn't as though DNA evidence, genetics, behavioral studies,
advanced dating methods, and ever emerging fossil evidence, just to
name a few, are novelties that are rarely, if ever, reflected in the
press.
Indeed; but, with respect, you are misunderstanding their mind-set a
little - not with regard to their ignorance of the evidence, but with regard
to the 'way round' they view the legitimate acquisition of knowledge: the
reason that they are obsessed with 150-year-old admissions about a theory's
'weakness' and 'gaps' is that, in their atavistic view, 'real knowledge' has
to be *revelational* in origin. They just *don't get* the notion of truth
being something that's approached incrementally over time through a
laborious process of 'trial and the gradual elimination of error' (Popper):
they think it bursts out full and complete and finished, in an act of
inerrant 'revelation'-- or else it doesn't arise at all. To them (and quite
apart from the resistances they have to the implications of evolutionary
ideas), Darwin was 'obviously' in possession of 'a worthless theory' --
because he didn't get to say the last word on it as well as the first.
Darwinist theory is 'bad' -- because the first Darwinist didn't complete it.
Darwin himself said he 'didn't have all the answers' -- therefore Darwinism
isn't an answer *at all*. There's no 'complete and inerrant' Darwin 'bible',
so there's no Darwin 'revelation' -- so there's no Darwinist truth.
And, therefore, where you and I see a magnificent idea being elaborated,
tested, supported, extended and strengthened over 150 years, *they* simply
see some Victorian guy's bad guess being desperately patched up into yet
another 'competitor faith' that threatens to overthrow their own religion --
and which therefore has to be 'crusaded against' using any and all available
means...
As I said, it's a different mind-set. And you won't change them, because
they aren't strong enough to leave such infantilism behind. They need to
think of truth as appearing *fully finished* -- because they are too weak to
accept provisional knowledge. And they can't accept any theory's
*incompleteness* -- because they are too weak to cope with gaps in
knowledge. They're stuck that way. They'll never change. They'll never
know what science is for, or how it works. They'll never stop hating
science.
All one can possibly hope to do is to keep them locked outside until they
die
off.
Katt.
.
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