Sunday, July 27, 2008

Cleaning out my DVR

I still had the old Nova show on the Dover trial and the smackdown that it was. I fired it up and watched. After they got past the part where they let all the IDiots ramble, they got to the juicy evidence, both for the duplicity of IDiots and some nice bits for evolution.

What I found aggravating was the IDiots trying to claim the moral high ground, including one of their ranty documents which mentioned "moral relativism." Pot meets kettle, as usual. Also had a part about "Darwin rejecting humans as spiritual and moral beings" and the stuff about us being "just" animals. Here's news for any fundies reading: Moral and "spiritual" behavior is one type of animal behavior. We're animals, we do it, therefore all those traits define moral, civilized beings are types of animal behavior. I don't get what's so hard about that. Animals are a VERY diverse group. It's like fundies are unaware of the fact that some animals form social groups and have instincts and emotions to optimize the group's survival. We're like that. We just happen to be complex enough to think things through a little more.

One thing I've grown to dislike is some of the handling of science's rejection of the supernatural. To me, it's a meaningless word, and should be called out as such. Science works in the testable. "Supernatural" is just a word believers slap on when it gets inconvenient to science to test something. They arbitrarily label something as untestable despite making predictions and call it supernatural. Scientists complain about the alleged untestability and that property gets associated with the supernatural. Then the woos just go ahead and call whatever they like "supernatural" and then whine about the alleged blindspot science has. Lot of unnecessary distraction in there by using the pointless word.

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