Geoffrey Moore: “Taking the shuttle from the train station I met a European executive and his wife who commented to me about how odd America’s denial of evolution and preference for intelligent design seems to a European sensibility. […] Today, as I participated in a series of economic workshops, I was struck by an ironic reversal: In the world of economics, it is the U.S. that believes in natural selection, and it is Europe, specifically the EU and its leading countries, which clings to an outmoded ideology of intelligent design.”
I hope you haven’t confused Social Darwinism with the biological kind, and that you aren’t naive about the vast amount of centralized engineering in the US system, with its squadrons of lobbyists and massive subsidies to the well-connected.
He’s not talking about social darwinism, but about capitalism.. -ian
I find the intelorance of any new ideas in science far more disturbing, especially those that would challenge something as radical as Darwinism. Whatever happened to keeping in open mind? Accepting Darwinism as a truth that can’t be challenged sounds lazy to me.
Sorry, I neglected the cheap shot on US captilism and veared off topic.
Intelligent design is not science. (Evolution “radical”?!) -ian
we in europe don’t think that that keeping the market forces a bit in check (your “intelligent design” analogy) will have better results than us style capitalism (if you mean results as in gdp, growth etc). quite the contrary.
we (well, lots of us) think that we should trade in some of the possible growth for better security (not just social security) of the people.
so the analogy to the id movement in the us is a bit flawed…
“Intelligent design is not science. (Evolution “radical”?!) -ian”
Fair enough we both have our own hostile views, but let’s not discourage competition that could advance our scientific knowledge by violently opposing dissenting views. So you say Intelligent design is not science. Can you name any scientific examples that directly challenge Evolution?
Well, the big difference is that the EU does exist and keeps on changing stuff, while there is no real proof that god exists and is actively improving his design…
SCNR.
On the other hand, you can raise doubts against the intelligence of bureocrats, whereas a god, if he actually exists and created mankind as-is, likely is rather intelligent.
Yes, there are things science can’t explain, and religion fills that gap pretty nicely, but that doesn’t make religion science. My father (an actual scientist!) sums it up very well here:
-ian
Innovation is what raises our standard of living, and innovation means taking risks and trying new things. Sometimes, when you take risks and try new things, you fail; other times, you succeed, and the new innovations obsolete old ones. In order to make room for the next big innovation, you have to cast away the previous ones that failed or that became obsolete. Yes, that means people have to adapt with the changing times, and the times they are a-changin’. The days of choosing a career at 22 and never having to adapt are gone. We actually have to earn our big fat salaries now, ’cause if we don’t, there’s someone (probably hundreds actually) in China or India who would be happy with one-tenth of what we have. The big change: The tools to innovate are available to them now too. It is folly to sit on our laurels and hope the government will take care of us. -ian
“we toss overboard ideas we find to be in error, or even merely inadequate …”
Since you brought up religion, would this include denying and therefore disrespecting the beliefs found in many religions? Who cares though it’s only the intolerant attitude towards religion that scientists must take in order to be accepted by their colleagues.
Then you have the wife of a European executive who’s somehow baffled by America’s preservation of Christian views clashing against those of the progressively secular European culture. Bah!
if denying the existence of something that religious scholars have tried to prove for thousands of years and failed every single time is “disrespecting” someone, then:
yes. i have the right to disrespect those people. just as i have the right to disrespect people wearing tinfoil hats. (you wouldn’t laught about the beliefs of those, would you, mr. wood)
The passage you quote (“we toss overboard ideas we find to be in error, or even merely inadequate …”) was referring to science, not religion. Since religion is not science (but rather a complement to science), no, it would not include denying and therefore disrespecting the beliefs found in many religions. -ian
@cs: It’s always easier to disprove the existance of anything you can’t see, touch, hear, or feel than it is to prove. That’s a challenge for scientists not religious scholars.
@ian: Thanks for the clarification. I’ll digress now for the sake of argument and deviating off topic.
lets see how these old fashioned nanny states with their fat inneficiant medical systems stack up against the lean mean USA style dog-eat-dog medical system:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html
What the Dover school board was proposing amounted to a paragraph stating that some people disagreed with aspects of evolution and giving the name of a book that explained Intelligent Design. This would have taken up perhaps 15 minutes of the school year. If, as so many commentators have stated, Intelligent Design is such a joke, where is the threat in that? Why treat the brief mention of a different way of viewing the world as the equivalent of a deadly virus? If this is such a critical issue, why not explain to them how it is not science?
It does not go away if you ignore it. At present, the majority of the US population believes some creator created this world. To those who disagree this represents, at the least, a failure to convince.