(Shorter, less detailed 26+ minute version, here.)
Notice: save in a few states with protective laws, to try to mention limitations, weaknesses or criticisms of the dominant Darwinist view, is to be viewed as trying to teach "Creationism by the back door." Where, as on prior rulings, Creationism [and things tagged as Creationism] are deemed religion, and are strictly verboten.
Censorship, in one word.
Not exactly the vaunted "free thought" that was boasted of by "rationalists," "skeptics" and other so-called free thinkers. Including, Darwin in an October 13, 1880 letter:
. . . though I am a strong advocate for free thought [--> NB: free-thought is an old synonym for skepticism, agnosticism or atheism] on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds, which follows from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biassed by the pain which it would give some members of my family [--> NB: especially his wife, Emma], if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion.This letter makes it utterly clear that a key background motive for Darwin's theorising on origins science was to put God out of a job, thus indirectly undermining the plausibility of believing in God.
In thinking and acting like this, he probably believed that he was championing enlightenment and science-led progress in their path to victory over backward, irrational but emotionally clung-to beliefs. And so his strategy was to lead in a science that was in his mind showing just how outdated and ill-founded the Judaeo-Christian theism that had dominated the West since Constantine in the 300's was.
Now, we are seeing what that is leading to on the ground, never mind what a less a priori materialism driven review of the issue of origins science may show or at least point to.
So, we have serious and ever-deepening problems, given the sort of attitude espoused by Richard Lewontin and ever so many others in the academy and other halls of influence and power:
. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads we must first get an incorrect view out . . . the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth [[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]. . . .
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [[--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [[--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [From: “Billions and Billions of Demons,” NYRB, January 9, 1997. Bold emphasis and notes added. If you have been misled to imagine that this is out of context "quote mining" kindly see the longer, fuller citation and notes at the linked. ID thinker Philip Johnson's response in November that year in First Things, was richly deserved.]
Things are so bad now, that Bergman counsels people (knowing that destruction of an academic career can have horrific consequences, with divorce and loss of family being common along with massive loss of reasonably anticipated income) to "stay in the closet."
Yes, go into the closet and stay there.
Looks like, as fair comment: the real problem with many secularist radicals was not that people were in the closet, but WHO was in the closet.
For shame!
While things are not as overt in the Caribbean, I strongly suspect such trends are present here, just, not so far advanced and more subtle in the ways they act. And certainly, the trends are highly relevant for bright young people hoping to go to the USA for advanced studies.
We need to think, very carefully indeed, about where our civilisation is headed. END
