I am a fan of memetics as framed by Richard Dawkins. Even so, I think Dawkins is presenting himself as a martyr for science. Beliefs are personal matters, especially when it comes to the impenetrable concepts of both Faith and Science. Both have their sophists who believe “there ain’t room in this here Western Culture for the two of us”.
This is a religious war, this is a war for power, this is a grab for souls. This war is as feral, tribal, and primitive as anything we Americans snicker at as “backwards-ass” over there in the Middle East. This is a war over the same altar and very similar vestments.
This is indeed a cultural war in which a science of the empirical, the provable, and the concrete — the academy and its enlightenment — is being abandoned for the church of faith, hope, Godhead, Spirit, and an afterlife. As I read the article in today’s New York Times Magazine, Darwin’s God, it will fuel both the atheists and the faithful equally.
If you are a scientist, Dawkins makes a lot of sense; if you are a believer, Dawkins in protesting too much. If he is indeed secure in his beliefs and doesn’t have an agenda, then why is he so caustic, vitriolic, and insulting.
Even folkpsychology would suggest that he and his fellow academics, fellows, post docs, scientists, zoologists, anthropologists, and other priests of the enlightenment have a lot of lose if their hard-earned reputation and rationalism go to the curb.
