The Horrors of Evolution (Evolution)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Saturday, August 30, 2008, 11:42 (5927 days ago) @ edinburgh4

Well, I've just listened all the way through your video presentation, which was rather long. A lot of it goes back over the ideas about "the chain of being" that were expressed by everybody from ancient Sanskrit to Monboddo and Erasmus Darwin, with the supposed purpose of showing that Charles Darwin didn't say anything new. All this may be new to you but is already well known to most of us who have studied the subject. - The quotation you initially give from the introduction by Richard Dawkins to his programmes on "The Genius of Charles Darwin" refers not just to "evolution" but to "evolution by natural selection", which was Charles Darwin's largely original contribution. Others had expressed similar ideas but only he carried it through to its full consequences, and assembled a convincing array of evidence for it. - The other confusion you make is between two different concepts of "enlightenment". The 17th/18th century "Enlightenment" was all about the exercise of reason, whereas religious "enlightenment" refers to opening the mind to religious faith, which is quite the opposite. By the way the French "Encyclopedie" was inspired by the earlier Encyclopedia by Ephraim Chambers, not the other way round. - Finally I share your dismay at the rise of New Age teachings and Paganism, though not for the same reasons. Surely you have seen the other programmes by Richard Dawkins in which he attacked such irrational nonsense?