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Obscu-ranting

This is very plain in the creationism-evolution debates, whose anti-outgroup subtexts are, on the one side:  You are inhuman brutes determined to rob us of our spiritual consolations and sweep away the moral foundations of our civilization, and on the other:  You are obscurantist ignoramuses who’d like to shut down progress and drag us all […]

This is very plain in the creationism-evolution debates, whose anti-outgroup subtexts are, on the one side:  You are inhuman brutes determined to rob us of our spiritual consolations and sweep away the moral foundations of our civilization, and on the other:  You are obscurantist ignoramuses who’d like to shut down progress and drag us all back to the 16th century, with kings and priests telling us what to think.   Neither subtext has much relation to reality, in my experience—I mean, I know a couple dozen people on each side of this, and none fits either description.  The scientists are not looking to convert Notre Dame into a Temple of Reason; the creationists aren’t plotting to burn heretics at the stake. ~John Derbyshire

Quite right.  I think you’ll find that it should be the 11th century (living pre-Investiture Contest is a must!), and you can’t convert heretics if you’ve already burned them.  Now Manichees are a different story… 

In fact, most creationists and even those odd ducks, such as myself, who somehow manage to think that evolution describes something about the created order that has no great bearing whatever on the existence of God are not concerned to drag anyone anywhere (and we don’t even have a time machine).  We would all prefer, I think, to have certain outspoken scientists refrain from making bold metaphysical claims (e.g., God does not exist) as if they were obvious proven facts, when they are contestable philosophical claims like everybody else’s and we would just as soon be spared tiresome lectures about how the Church impeded and handicapped science for ages, when it was principally the Church that sponsored and encouraged all branches of learning for the better part of our civilisation’s history.  That might improve relations between the groups a bit.

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