DARWIN'S DILEMMA

[Guest guest]

Dear AAPN members,

The following article appeared in the

Telegraph newspaper today. I am grateful to all those who were

gracious to share their insight on religion and its connection to

animal rights and the responses really moved me in their depth of

feeling. The article could have been more comprehensive but there were

space constraints. Richard Dawkins supports the Great Ape project and

has visited Kolkata. All credit goes to the newspaper for printing an

article on such a controversial issue. Dr Wedderburn was a great

source of inspiration for this bit of effort.

Best wishes and kind regards,

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060213/asp/knowhow/story_5829380.asp

Delusion by design

 

FIORENZO FACCHINI, PROFESSOR of evolutionary biology at the University

Of Bologna, has kicked up a storm in the Vatican by playing second

fiddle to Charles Darwin. Facchini says that intelligent design in the

evolutionary context is not science and only creates confusion when

taught in classrooms, especially in the US. Facchini is not the first

Vatican individual to question the official position of the Church.

The Vatican's chief astronomer, Rev. George Coyne, too, argues that

intelligent design is not science and has no place in education.

 

Whereas Facchini and Coyne are diplomatic in their criticisms, Richard

Dawkins, a charismatic crusader for scientific outlook at Oxford

University, has savagely taken the religious establishment to task. In

his forthcoming book, The God Delusion, Dawkins criticises the concept

of religion in the US and states cogently that creationists are

pushing the country back " to the dark ages " .

 

Dawkins, who was selected for the post of Charles Simonyi Professor Of

the Public Understanding Of Science, extols the virtues of Darwinism

by describing religion as a virus and God as delusion. He adds that

believing religion is like " believing in a teapot orbiting Mars " and

quotes the philosopher David Hume to back up his arguments. He says,

" The relevance of evolutionary biology to atheism is that evolutionary

biology gives us the only known mechanism whereby the illusion of

design, or apparent design, could ever come into the universe

anywhere. "

 

Decrying human chauvinism, Dawkins argues, " The most important reason

is that if you tell the evolution story forward and end up with

humans, as is normally the case because people are interested in

themselves, it makes it look as though the whole of evolution was

somehow aimed at humanity, which of course it wasn't. One could aim

anywhere, like kangaroos, butterflies or frogs. We're all contemporary

culmination points, for the moment, in evolution. "

 

Dawkins, however, is ready to make a concession. He points out that

genetically manufactured or engineered animals could be the products

of intelligently designed evolution caused by humans.

 

The ongoing debate still holds fascination even 120 years after

Darwin's death. Keeping in mind the rigid criticism of evolutionists

by the late Pope John Paul and now Pope Benedict, it remains to be

seen if the debate gets as acrimonious as when it first took place

when Thomas Henry Huxley, widely known as " Darwin's bulldog " and

Bishop Wilberforce Of Oxford thundered at each other in a lecture at

the British Association meeting at the Oxford University Museum

one-and-a-half century ago.

 

SHUBHOBROTO GHOSH