Category: Culture & Ethics
Reading Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro’s book, Never Let Me Go, is now a film. The book is an excellent narrative that forces the reader to ask “What does it mean to be human?”
Codevilla: “Darwinism corrupted Northern and Southern thinkers equally”
Angelo Codevilla’s new book The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It has been stirring enviable attention since it first appeared as an essay in The American Spectator. “Magnificent,” writes David Goldman at First Things. “I felt like I had just plunged head-first into 50-degree water.” New York Times blogger Tom Kuntz says: Few articles have resonated with conservatives this year as much as Angelo M. Codevilla’s essay…It says America is divided between an elite, government-dependent “ruling class” — Republicans and Democrats alike — and a majority “country class”: families, businesses and institutions not dependent on subsidies and privileges. Excerpt from the book: Human equality made sense to our Founding Fathers, because they believed Read More ›
Discovery Institute, the All-Purpose Boogey Man
It always amazes me how if you want to bash intelligent design, Discovery Institute, or Darwin doubters generally, you can pretty much say anything you want, however ridiculous, and everyone in the Darwin choir will sing hallelujah and never bother to fact check what you say. At the Huffington Post, science writer John Farrell debuts with an awkwardly written blog trying to pick a fight with John West on Darwinism’s sinister race-war theme (“Bad Faith (in Science): Darwin as All-Purpose Boogey Man?“). The post struck a nerve, garnering 1,266 comments as of this writing. Says Farrell, West wants his readers to realize that Darwin’s racism had murderous overtones and that therefore the science of evolution must be suspect. Farrell means Read More ›
Berlinski Takes on St. Christopher, Now Viewable Online at C-SPAN
Good news! The Berlinski/Hitchens debate of a couple weeks ago, “Does Atheism Poison Everything?,” is now viewable online in full at C-SPAN. Berlinski is inimitably rapier-like yet courteous as always, though I don’t envy him having to fend off the sympathy vote for the ailing and recently sainted Christopher Hitchens (who looks eerily like Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi). At Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne notes the C-SPAN production, first smugly saying — apparently before he watched it — how enjoyable it is to see Hitchens “take apart” the “haughty” Berlinski. Then he offers an update to the same post, apparently now having watched the event, where he pronounces it a “reasonably good debate” Read More ›
Nature: I used to love her, now I’ll have to kill her
[NOTE: Today we welcome a new contributing writer to Evolution News & Views, Heather Zeiger. Ms. Zeiger graduated magna cum laude from the University of Texas at Dallas with a B.S. in chemistry and a minor in government and politics. She received her M.S. in chemistry, also from UTD; her research was in organic synthesis and materials.] The most general definition of bioethics is the relationship between man and technology. This relationship takes on many forms, some in the context of fear, as exemplified by Bill Joy’s now well-known Wired article, “The Future Doesn’t Need Us.” Others are in the context of hope or even a type of salvation, as exemplified in Ray Kurtzweil’s work, including The Singularity Is Near: Read More ›