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To: PatrickHenry; VadeRetro
It is only in school that American youngsters in general are ever likely to hear any reasoned exposition of the evolutionary viewpiont. They might find such a viewpoint in books, magazines, newspapers, or even, on occasion, on television. But church and family can easily censor printed matter or television. Only the school is beyond their control.

So, Asimov is/was a bit of an evo-fascist, eh? How disappointing.

If the government can mobilize its policemen and its prisons to make certain that teachers give creationism equal time, they can next use force to make sure that teachers declare creationism the victor so that evolution will be evicted from the classroom altogether. We will have established ground work, in other words, for legally enforced ignorance and for totalitarian thought control.

Nice unintentional irony. What this is really about is control: Asimov wants it.

There are numerous cases of societies in which the armies of the night have ridden triumphantly over minorities in order to establish a powerful orthodoxy which dictates official thought. Invariably, the triumphant ride is toward long-range disaster. Spain dominated Europe and the world in the 16th century, but in Spain orthodoxy came first, and all divergence of opinion was ruthlessly suppressed.

Yet, secularism is the roughshod orthodoxy of the day. I wonder where Isaac is going with this...?

In more recent times, Germany hounded out the Jewish scientists of Europe. They arrived in the United States and contributed immeasurably to scientific advancement here, while Germany lost so heavily that there is no telling how long it will take it to regain its former scientific eminence. The Soviet Union, in its fascination with Lysenko, destroyed its geneticists, and set back its biological sciences for decades. China, during the Cultural Revolution, turned against Western science and is still laboring to overcome the devastation that resulted.

So, Creationism is like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, all rolled into one?

OK...

As we now, with all these examples before us, to ride backward into the past under the same tattered banner of orthodoxy? With creationism in the saddle, American science will wither. We will raise a generation of ignoramuses ill-equipped to run the industry of tomorrow, much less to generate the new advances of the days after tomorrow.

We will inevitably recede into the backwater of civilization, and those nations that retain opened scientific thought will take over the leadership of the world and the cutting edge of human advancement. I don't suppose that the creationists really plan the decline of the United States, but their loudly expressed patriotism is as simpleminded as their "science." If they succeed, they will, in their folly, achieve the opposite of what they say they wish.

Oh, the sky is bloody falling. This is Asimov's Global Warming theory.

What a shrill little rant this is. Asimov is demonizing his enemies as much as much as any cultist, and more than the vast majority of preachers in this country. In so doing, he completely undercuts his credibility as one who might explain the merits of evolutionary theory. It's not enough to be right, one also has to have a clue.

I'm not the first to say it, but getting rid of government schools will solve this conflict... but I'll bet the intellectual heirs of Asimov will shriek the loudest against it.




135 posted on 02/15/2003 9:44:42 PM PST by Sabertooth
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To: Sabertooth
So, Asimov is/was a bit of an evo-fascist, eh? How disappointing.

Sad to say, ol' Isaac was a bit of a leftie. It didn't show up in his science writings, or even in his science fiction -- not overtly. He mostly ignored economic issues. (However, as his Foundation stories reveal, he had this thing for long range planning.) But in his little essays, or in his speeches, the left-leaning side of Isaac was there for all to see. So his support of gov't schools -- as long as they're teaching evolution -- is charmingly silly. Still, Asimov was so good in so many different fields that it's almost always worth reading what he has to say. (As here, where he bashes creationism for the foolish bunch of junk that it truly is.) But just remember that he was no free-market advocate.

184 posted on 02/16/2003 4:01:21 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas)
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To: Sabertooth
From the main article:

What a shrill little rant this is. Asimov is demonizing his enemies as much as much as any cultist, and more than the vast majority of preachers in this country. In so doing, he completely undercuts his credibility as one who might explain the merits of evolutionary theory. It's not enough to be right, one also has to have a clue.
Your take:

Oh, the sky is bloody falling. This is Asimov's Global Warming theory.

I don't think Asimov actually believed there was much of a chance the creationists were really likely to establish an Iranian-mullah theocracy in this country, although he mentions cases in which an organized few have come to power. (He might also have mentioned Lenin's boast along the lines that, when he came to Russia, political power was laying about in the streets waiting for someone to pick it up. There can be times like that.)

He's mostly telling us what kind of knuckle-dragging, drooling worldview animates the people who would tell us what the "real science" is and what they would bring us to if they could. No, it isn't likely that they can, but who wants to risk it?

189 posted on 02/16/2003 7:26:48 AM PST by VadeRetro
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