Category: Culture
More on the Darwin (and Obama) Angles in the Discovery Channel Hostage Episode
A line that’s being widely offered on James Lee, who took hostages at the Discovery Channel on Wednesday before being shot and killed, fastens on his debt to Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. The connection to Darwin, pushed heavily in Lee’s list of demands, goes on being ignored. (No surprise.) But there’s even more to the Darwin angle than I previously realized. Lee’s manifesto has otherwise been dismissed as mostly “a big bag of crazy.” Not so fast. Lee was obviously disturbed, but the document he left behind makes sense in its weird way — providing that you’ve dipped a bit into the ideas of his guru. No, not Al Gore. Daniel Quinn, whose book My Ishmael Lee insisted must become Read More ›
Mohler, Giberson, and the Genesis of Charles Darwin: Will the Truth Set Karl Giberson Free?
On August 21 Karl Giberson, physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College and one of several engaged in the ever-interesting juggling act of defending “faith and science” by means of a Darwinian apologetic, now has added to his litany of misconceptions a boorish attack on Al Mohler in The Huffington Post, “How Darwin Sustains My Baptist Search for Truth.” Since David Klinghoffer has provided an excellent summary of the issues involved in an earlier post to this site, Karl Giberson v Al Mohler on Darwin: The Grudge Match, they need not be restated here. The point here is to address Giberson’s principal objection, namely, Mohler’s assertion that “Darwin did not embark upon the Beagle having no preconceptions of what exactly he Read More ›
Major Media Spike Discovery Channel Gunman’s Darwinian Motivations
If someone opposed to abortion were to take hostages at an abortion clinic, you can be sure the newsmedia would tenaciously track down and publicize every anti-abortion association and comment of the criminal in question. But when a gunman inspired by Darwinism takes hostages at the offices of the Discovery Channel, reporters seem curiously uninterested in fully disclosing the criminal’s own self-described motivations. Most of yesterday’s media reports about hostage-taker James Lee dutifully reported Lee’s eco-extremism and his pathological hatred for humanity. But they also suppressed any mention of Lee’s explicit appeals to Darwin and Malthus as the intellectual foundations for his views. At least, I could find no references to Lee’s Darwinian motivations in the accounts I read by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC. Read More ›
James J. Lee, Hostage-taker and Darwinist
We are thankful that James J. Lee, the hostage-taker who invaded the Discovery Channel building today in Maryland, did no physical harm to his hostages, who have now been safely freed. Lee, a radical environmentalist, was shot and killed. While expressing relief that police action averted a greater possible tragedy, it’s worth noting the contents of the late Mr. Lee’s reported manifesto, a list of demands he published online, directed at the cable channel. Demand number 7 reads: Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!! For the sake Read More ›
How Not to Defend Darwin on “Survival of the Fittest”
Evolutionary biologists make poor historians, especially when it comes to Charles Darwin. So intent on preserving the reputation of St. Charles, evolutionists typically do their best to paper-over Darwin’s less-than-savory views on issues like race or the application of natural selection to society. British biochemist and theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander runs true to form in a newly posted interview at BioLogos. In the interview, Alexander does his best to disassociate Darwin from the idea of “survival of the fittest,” noting that the phrase was coined by Herbert Spencer rather than Charles Darwin, and that it was then picked up by nasty politicians like Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler, who used it to promote their noxious views. Alexander is correct that Read More ›