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Islam's Darwin problem
In the Muslim world, creationism is on the rise.
| Why do people keep insisting that understanding Darwinian evolution is necessary to becoming Modern? Understanding the difference between science and magic, and that magic doesn't actually work, is necessary. Accepting that we humans have discovered a great deal more about the world around us than God (whatever one's group might call him/her/it) revealed in the Holy Book, that is necessary. Accepting also that not every word in that Holy Book means what one was told as a child, and in fact that some of those words have been mis-copied... or even were mis-transcribed or are the result of incomplete understanding by the original recorder, these things are necessary. But one can make use of electric lights without understanding electro-physics, the engineering of power plants and the wiring of communities for power, although it is useful, Darwinially speaking, to realize that it's a good idea to call in a professional electrician to fix a non-functioning light switch if one doesn't have a grasp of the key concepts. The Muslim world would do better to understand how application of Darwin's concepts of "survival of the fittest" and "competition for a particular niche in the environment" result in the dynamic economies and non-tyrannical politics that the Muslim world so often lacks. In other words, Darwin should be studied to understand why the Ummah has been falling ever further behind the West since 1492. They can figure out how Ardi fits into things later. |
Posted by: tipper 2009-10-28 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=281993 |
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