Perhaps, but they are also among the most influential, at least in this country, so they are certainly relevant.
Yes, but they are influential, to the degree that they really are, primarily because the media has amplified their influence, just as it has artificially amplified the influence of their leftist critics. But that's about politics. As far as Christian theology goes, I think it could be argued that their influence is fairly marginal within Christianity as a whole (and Protestantism proper is still only a subset of the entire Christian world).
B
ut then, your argument doesn't follow. If Dawkins is indeed directing his critique at this group, and not using them as a proxy for all believers as claimed (and this is, I supposed, debatable), then his argument is limited to them only. In like manner, were I to argue that "MAD Moplogists tend toward closed-minded dogmatism," but MAD Mopologists constitute only a small % of Mopologists as a group, I don't see how it follows, therefore, that I am arguing that all Mopologists tend toward closed-minded dogmatism.
Well, I'm really not arguing that. I'm arguing that Dawkins is using "fundamentalist" as a proxy for all religions and religious beliefs, whether Christian or not. Its a well poisoning technique, not a serous critique of religion.
Dawkins may or may not be "extreme" in some senses (I haven't read enough of him to form an opinion yet), but I dispute the premise that "science" or "Darwinism" are "fundamentalist." They may have dogmatic believers, but the theories method and theories that result therefrom are hardly "fundamentalist:" rather they are the exact opposite. Evolution is a much tested theory with scads of empirical evidence supporting it, which is more than can be said for, say, creationism.
I do not make any claims that "science" or "Darwinism" are, of themselves, forms of fundamentalism. What I said was that Dawkins holds a scientistic world view (which is fundamentalist in nature) and is a Darwinian fundamentalist. All who hold to Darwinism are do not hold Dawkin's views.
As to evolutionary theory per se, you are correct if you claim that the microevolutionary aspects have been tested and come with "scads of empirical evidence supporting it". When you make those claims regarding the larger, marcorevolutionary changes claimed, without direct empirical support, to have occurred (and which can neither be tested or refuted at all, given their very nature), you are on far thinner ice. When you make those claims about the origins of biological life, the boat capsizes completely.
The macroevolutionary changes
may have occurred, but present evolutionary theory has no basis, except highly speculatory extrapolations and assumptions, upon which to make such a claim. Those who claim such has been proven, or is a
fact, are exercising something more akin to faith in their own religion of science, rather than doing science respectively.
Perhaps, but this goes beyond the narrow comment I was making. Using extreme examples as strawmen to depict the norm is a tactic employed by just about everyone, regardless of persuasion.
I'm curious; what is the specific empirical evidence for creationism and in what scientific journals has it been published?
There is no scientific basis for Prostestant Creationsim per se. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, is making fair headway, as you can see here (question 6).
http://www.discovery.org/csc/topQuestions.phpI think the Dude answered this well enough.
Dude has done nothing more than run around the sugar bowl making clear again and again what I and Light have already made clear: in a materialist universe, we make up meaning as we go along. But this sense of the term "meaning", being as arbitrary and randomly generated as the universe itself, begs the question: is there any ultimate, innate value to the universe and our existence within it?
Suffice to say that I disagree with the implied premise that for something to mean something, it must have some cosmic purpose.
That's not the argument. If you have a tuna fish sandwich or a toasted cheese sandwich for lunch today, this need not have any "meaning" at all beyond physical nourishment for some hours of that day. Similarly, who won what Super Bowl in what year has no ultimate meaning or relevance. However, the moral choices we make (to have an affair, just for one example, or to cheat on a college exam), when bounded and conditioned only by our personal death and the heat death of the universe, raise serious questions, at least to serous minds.
Bottom line: if there is no God and no ultimate meaning, then Stalin was right: one death is a tragedy, but a million are just a statistic. The point is that there is no intrinsic, inherent moral frame of reference for this in Dawkin's world. We may not like death and killing and abuse because, as organic creatures, we
don't like to be exposed to such things, but this is pragmatic self preservation, not morality. Without an ultimate standard, our own standards of self preservation, standards that we may term "moral" are no less arbitrary, and no more defensible, than the starving of 20,000,000 Kulaks.