"F*ck climate science!" |
A post on the North American Intelligent Design website Evolution News is apparently in favour of the idea is that the Smithsonian Institute is being called to heel by the Trump Administration. Here are some quotes (with my emphases) from the article & accompanied by my comments.
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Evolution News: New Criterion editor Roger Kimball rightly takes issue with the assumption that correcting the problems with the Smithsonian Institution is a mere “footnote” to a larger agenda. On the contrary, he sees it as being of “central” importance.
My Comment: What is that larger agenda and why is kicking the Smithsonian into line of central importance? The Evolution News article then quotes Roger Kimball....
Roger Kimball: The Trump administration just announced that it would be conducting a detailed "internal review" of the Smithsonian's exhibitions and curatorial practices in order to root out wokeness and return the sprawling agglomeration of museums to their founding purpose (on who's say so, I wonder?). It is part of the fulfillment of [Trump's] Executive Order to abolish the racist and divisive practice of DEI. [See picture] below.....
Click to enlarge. |
My Comment: My take on the subject of "Wokeness" can be seen here. (The term is used as an alarmist political rallying cry by the far right - what one might refer to as the "unwoke".). See also here.
Whatever one's opinion of Western society's current malaise and its philosophical disquiet, it is in fact an ethos which has slowly evolved since the enlightenment (and ironically it may even have its roots in the Reformation with the latter's emphasis on individualism, self-determination and freedom of conscience). But, one thing is clear: This ethos hasn't been imposed by centralised diktat, but as the above quote actually acknowledges it's evolution was a gradual process. In contrast I read the above as very much in favour of our aspiring would-be-dictator Trump commandeering the institutions of education in favour of what is likely to be an imposed "unwoke" agenda. To the credit of the conservatives mentioned, they have shied away from the methods of diktat because it is likely they have understood it to be an attack on the hard won democracy of the Western world. It's no surprise that the Putin admiring Donald Trump "understands" the world of commandeering.
The article continues as follows....
Evolution News: Denying human exceptionalism is intended to make human visitors to the museum feel animal-like and without special dignity. Though phrased in scientific terms, that’s as corrosive a message as the rest of the radical messaging.
My Comment: Pointing out that human life is very much of a piece with the animal kingdom doesn't necessarily conflict with human exceptionalism. As I don't trust the alarmist assessments of the "unwoke" I would want to see chapter and verse where the Smithsonian explicitly rules out that humans are "animals++" or "animals 2.0". They may actually leave answering that big religious and very controversial question to visitor opinion; that would be the democratic way.
Yes, that's right, I don't trust the stuff that Evolution News comes up with either. Some of its pundits are not what I would consider to be sufficiently competent (See here). I suspect that the above quote is working from a naïve "God did it xor evolution did it" dichotomy.
Evolution News: Arguably, it’s more corrosive, in that it attacks something — being human — that’s far more fundamental than being American. Social restoration, so urgently needed, can’t be accomplished if the public is consistently being told we are little better than animals in the forest. In telling us that, over and over, our institutions of science education train us to act like animals. And in that, they are succeeding.
My Comment: Oh yes, the ethos that we are no more that animals in a meaningless and purposeless universe is corrosive of society. But to my mind the "unwoke" MAGA agenda is even more corrosive as it tries to usher in a government which attempts to fix "problems" by diktat. Aping the criminal and lying Putin regime is the direction I fear MAGA is going: Putin is to Russian Orthodoxy as Trump is to North American evangelicalism.
In comparison I have a lot more sympathy for genuine atheists such as this who have become captive to an all but empty philosophy and yet who have no intention of "correcting the problem" of theism by commandeering churches. In contrast does Evolution News, by identifying itself with the Trumpism, aim to impose upon us its philosophy of classic dualism?
INTERESTING LINKS
1. "Trumptruth" trumps truth
When you don't like the news shoot the messenger boy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2dj217z2w6o