“It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”
– Richard Dawkins
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Knowledge Guild
The Knowledgeable Post
Just another expression of dogma. Replace the word “evolution” with the word “god” and you have exactly what a christian fundamentalist would say.
I’m afraid the term ‘dogma’ is not quite correct here, nor is your comparison to theist fundamentalism. A dogma is a belief or statement of opinion, considered to be absolutely true regardless of evidence. The concept of evolution is one of the most empirically supported and understood phenomena in modern science. When the authority of an argument is concerned, theism – because its difficult relationship with verifiability – is incomparable to all disciplines of empirical science.
I tend to think that the evidence which supports evolution theory is reasoned and plausible, especially in light of emerging Evo-Dev positions, but if you believe that evolution theory is based on empirical evidence that it is observable, measurable, testable, unfalsifiable and documentable then I accept your choice to interpret evidence however you prefer.
I only commented because it amuses me that fundamentalists, regardless of belief or not in a deity, often fail to see their own shadow on the opposing side of the debate.
Of course one has to agree with you that there are (always) people in a debate who completely disregard the other side of an argument. Although, I do have to take you up on your use of the term ‘fundamentalists’. I’m afraid the term can only be used to refer to a theist community in which the believers regard a certain text as “holy” (or at the very least “divinely inspired”) and pursue a strict, normative and conservative lifestyle accordingly.
In short, there is only the “religious” fundamentalist – it is what the term embodies. Atheists, anti-theists, or so-called adeists who oppose religion with the same fervour as some of their fanatical theistic opponents could be called radical or extreme secularists.