March 13, 2007

• odes to Darwin

  Here's some hilarious stuff from http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/uds-first-suck-up-to-darwin-contest/#comments , in honor of the 2009 bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth and the sesquicentennial of his publication of "The Origin of Species".   Here are three of the 'odes'... the link has several more.   They're especially funny because they weave in a lot of real evolutionists' rhetoric, and expose some of the irony involved.  The second and third one especially bring out the problems atheism/naturalism/evolutionism has with reductionism and determinism... i.e. whether consciousness, morality, and free will are merely illusions or not.

   

   

  Darwin lived in age of superstition and squalor yet rose above it to lead humanity into sunlight, into the promised land.

  Darwin was abandoned by his mother at the age of three months after the insane King George III ordered the death of all infants named “Charles”, “Chas” or “Chuck”. The King’s daughter saw him floating in a basket amongst the bullrushes, however. His superior persona was obvious even at that age and she adopted him as her own.

  Darwin grew into a comely man of great height and uncommon strength. He was known to be able to carry a full-grown cow upon his shoulders. Many respected accounts have him running a four-minute mile over a century before Roger Bannister. And in boots.

  Still it is the prowness of his mind, not his body for which he is known.

  Science was in a primative and unenlighted state before his birth. There was no telephone, eletric light, or aeroplane.

  There was no motor car. Not a single luxury.

  Darwin’s then theorized that whales might have descended from bears - swimming bears, that is — and all these things became possible.

  The glories of the 20th Century would not have occurred without Charles, Chas, Chuck, Darwin.

  Much has been written about Darwin, and much more will be.

  It can never be enough.

  He was a real man of genius. Charles Darwin, we salute you!

  
  As we approach 200 years since Darwin’s birth, how can we go about gauging his importance to the world? When looking at the role of individuals in history, it can be easy to forget that history moves dialectically. Ideas are not the result of individuals, but material, historical processes. If Darwin had chosen a different profession in his youth, the idea of Evolution would have still emerged as a great force in the world.

  Does this mean that we shouldn’t honor and revere Darwin? Absolutely not. Material reality chose Darwin to reveal the truth of evolution. By honoring Darwin, we honor the ultimate material reality. Conveniently, Evolution also molded man so that he needed heroes to look up to. Evolution, amazingly, built in a mechanism by which the idea of Evolution can spread. We can honor Darwin by celebrating him and reading his work. In doing so, we fulfill two important Evolutionary needs: the need for a hero and the need for truth about reality. Truth about reality, of course, helps humans advance as a species. Darwin’s work, by undoing the misguided superstitions that evolved for thousands of years, has done more to help us advance as a species than any other man in modern times

  Listen my child and I shall tell you
  Of the Prophet and His mighty works

  The story begins eons ago,
  Indeed in the very beginning

  For in the beginning were the particles
  And, lo, the particles were in motion

  Eons passed
  Galaxies formed
  stars were born; burned for billions of years and died

  And in all this time, the particles knew naught
  Of themselves or anything else
  There was no knowing, my child, for what can particles in motion know?

  But slowly, ever so slowly, some of the burned out star stuff
  Began to coalesce around a core and form a small planet

  Further eons passed and still there was nothing but particles in motion
  That knew nothing, for what can particles in motion know?

  But then one day, in a warm pond on this little planet
  Some of the particles received a surge of energy and
  Formed self-replicating groups of bio particles

  But still, the particles knew nothing; for what can particles in motion know?

  Further eons passed.

  And then, oh day of days, came a descendant
  Of that first group of self replicating bio particles from that warm pond
  And he looked to the heavens and declared “I know.”

  This great and glorious amalgamation of bio particles we call the Prophet
  Others call him Darwin.

  But alas, Darwin did not really know, as he himself recognized
  For what can particles in motion know?

  I would call you “best beloved” but we know
  That love is not real; it is just a chemical reaction in our brain.

  So, I shall say, “one who is the object of
  The illusory but nevertheless pleasurable chemical reaction in my brain
  That I choose (alas, another illusion) to call love”
  That is how we came to know that we do not know
  For what can particles in motion know?
  

  • 12:19 pm
  • 4 Comments