Darwin made a wonderful move in this game: he offered a mechanistic explanation for the apparent finalism of the life forms. The differential reproduction of slight variations in traits, spontaneously produced one generation after the other, followed by the filter of natural selection, did the trick. It was all the teleology we needed, but based on a perfectly mechanistic process. This idea looked unbeatable. Immediately, applications of it were discovered in the diffusion of goods, in the financial markets, in the spread of fashions, songs, tunes, even scientific hypothesis. It was a smashing success.
Moreover, it’s a clever idea, not something obvious, not the kind of idea that everyone discovers spontaneously. Teach it to a class of kids, and they will realise that it never occurred to them beforehand, but that it’s so damn clever. They feel so damn clever just for grasping it. This is, I think, crucial. Adults also feel clever for just grasping it, and for developing on the spot an intuition of zillions of examples and applications.
I would submit that a lot of people feel "so damned clever" for grasping it, because they are told that it really is some sort of advanced form of thought, when in actuality it doesn't go in any essentials much beyond what the philosopher/poet Lucretius wrote more than two thousand years ago. As David Berlinski points out, it is the mere work of an afternoon to understand the idea, and one needn't be particularly clever at all to grasp it.
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Just imagine how clever they'd feel if they were actually able to get a good grasp on Christian theology. It makes modern philosophies (including Darwinism) look childishly crude in comparison. I'm increasingly convinced that one reason Christianity is in retreat in the West is that we're no longer smart enough to understand it, even though we know so much more "stuff" than the ancient or medieval worlds did....
Yeah, it is a funny thing. I was once an atheist, but when I got an inkling that something more was going on, my attitude was "Whoah, groovy!" But the New Atheists kick and scream and throw tantrums anytime there is the slightest sign that there may, in fact, be something Deeply Groovy behind things. It's just plain weird, and not a little insane.
Matteo: "I would submit that a lot of people feel "so damned clever" for grasping it, because they are told that it really is some sort of advanced form of thought, when in actuality it doesn't go in any essentials much beyond what the philosopher/poet Lucretius wrote more than two thousand years ago. As David Berlinski points out, it is the mere work of an afternoon to understand the idea, and one needn't be particularly clever at all to grasp it."
According to the Holy TalkOrigins site's Introduction to Evolutionary Biology page:
"Evolution [sic] is the cornerstone of modern biology. It unites all the fields of biology under one theoretical umbrella. It is not a difficult concept, but very few people -- the majority of biologists included -- have a satisfactory grasp of it."
Matteo: "But the New Atheists kick and scream and throw tantrums anytime there is the slightest sign that there may, in fact, be something Deeply Groovy behind things. It's just plain weird, and not a little insane."
And it's willfully chosen insanity -- as Mrs Olsen might say, "That's the deepest kind!"
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