Pensive the Ludicrous wrote:
Quote:
Sure. But when someone points out that Jefferson owned slaves or that Columbus was pretty much just in it for the fame and money, no one calls them ignorant backwards thinkers and makes broad assumptions about their motivations.
Well, sure, but the larger point is that we ought not to care lots about what people thought then as part of their larger cultural paradigm, but should care more about how we can use the best bits of their omnibus, today, in
our paradigm. I don't particularly herald Darwin because I'm not a Darwin scholar, but I've got no problem with conveniently forgetting whatever his faith might be to make evolution itself, which is much larger than Darwin now, more consistent with empiricism.
Sure. I agree completely.
I assume that you therefore disagree completely with a film in which the focus is entirely on his faith and how incompatible it is with his science, and how fortunately for us all our hero Darwin abandons faith for science?
Cause that's what this film appears to be about. Obviously, I haven't seen it. Maybe his struggle with his faith is accurately portrayed. No clue. But given the language in the article, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it's not. And that's a safe bet given that by all historical accounts, he never actually "struggled" with his faith at all. At least not in the context of his scientific work. He became agnostic later in life, not because of the death of his daughter, and not because of some conflict between his work and his faith, but out of a pretty rational and normal agnostic realization that all the various faiths on the planet can't all be right, so maybe it's not so important to obsess on the details of any specific dogmatic paradigm.
Edited, Sep 16th 2009 8:40pm by gbaji