Fresh from the triumph of The BDJ Challenge, I hereby lay down The Oliver Kamm Challenge.
Since he does not understand the terms of the debate, and since it would be beneath him to read any book not written by himself (and then gloriously torn to shreds in a review by Neil Clark), Kamm, who refers to this blog from time to time on his own and so clearly reads it, has repeatedly accused me of "Biblical creationism". Well, he obviously doesn't know what that can mean, either. But I do know what he means.
Therefore, I challenge him, if he has such an aversion to "Biblical creationism" within his understanding of the term, to explain why he has been such a devoted supporter of the "Biblical creationist" George Bush, and why he remains a positively fanatical supporter of the "Biblical creationist" Tony Blair.
Over to you, Oliver...
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Do you support anyone who has different views from you on "Biblical creationism"?
ReplyDelete"Support" in what way? I don't agree with them, obviously. Creationism is scientism.
ReplyDeleteScientism is the belief that the only objectively true knowledge is that derived from the application of the natural-scientific method.
It is ruinous of science, since that method can only function on certain presuppositions which it cannot prove, but rather must (and, historically, happily did) accept on higher authority.
Creationism is a form of scientism, which has accepted the scientistic argument and then applied it to Genesis.
Creationists may seem to be the polar opposites of Stephen Hawking, Peter Atkins and Richard Dawkins. But, in fact, they are all of a piece.
Kamm, beacuse he doesn't know what he's talking about, has repeatedly accused the BPA of creationism, and held that up as a reason not to vote for us.
Well, he more than voted for a more-or-less open creationist and very noisily wishes that he still could. And he loudly implored the people of another sovereign state to vote for a very, very open creationist indeed.
What says he to that?
Keep on at him about this one.
ReplyDeleteHe has brought up your "creationism" several times merely because you referred to a philosophical commonplace that he was too unlettered ever to have come across.
But he himself is utterly devoted to the man who handed over some of our schools to the creationists, and wanted to hand over hundreds more. His remaining cultists, including Kamm, still do.
"Keep on at him about this one"
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, I will.
"a philosophical commonplace that he was too unlettered ever to have come across"
A worthy disciple of Tony Blair.
"the man who handed over some of our schools to the creationists, and wanted to hand over hundreds more"
Blair and Sir Peter Vardy were in the same class at prep school. Isn't that nice?
"His remaining cultists, including Kamm, still do"
Are they on some sort of payroll? I think we should be told.
David, that comment by "Bill" was so obviously written by you that it's embarrassing. If you're going to demean yourself by writing pseudonymous comments on your own blog, at least adopt a different prose style.
ReplyDelete"a philosophical commonplace that he was too unlettered ever to have come across"
ReplyDeleteFor those of us who missed it, can you tell us what it was?
No, Anonymous 22:28, that is just how properly educated people speak and write. As a Kamm fan, you are unsurprisingly unfamiliar with it.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 11:38, it is that, as any text book on the philosophy of science will tell you, "the survival of the fittest" (which is a philosophical reading of scientific data, and not scientific in itself) is tautologous, since the only way to spot the "the fittest" is that they are the ones that survive.
I first came across this in a book edited by that well-known Biblicist, A C Grayling. No one who really knows anything about the subject disputes it.
But the likes of Kamm and his minions, however, are beyond horror at the suggestion that their wealth and privilege does not mark them out as ineluctably and indefeasibly at the top of the natural order. Since they normally only ever encounter people whom they can sack or evict, they have never heard such insolence in their lives.
Oh, that "survival of the fittest" thing again. You're the one who comes out looking silly, in that case, not Kamm.
ReplyDeleteI feel that my point is being proved. He is completely incapable of understanding it. And, clearly, so are you.
ReplyDeleteHe is just hereditary elite since - well, since when? We really are talking about Charlemaigne and beyond where his Middle European line is concerned, aren't we? But that doesn't in itself make him bright, or "the fittest". He merely thinks that it does. As, obviously, do you.
But anyway, if he is so hostile to creationist politicians (even imaginary, never mind real, ones), then why is he such an enthusiast for the creationist George Bush, and why is he such a fanatic for Tony Blair, not only probably a creationist himself, but certainly responsible for passing vast sums of public money and considerable numbers of state school pupils into the hands of open, organised creationism?
Natural selection is in one sense a tautology. Who are the fittest? Those who survive and leave the most offspring. Who survive and leave the most offspring? The fittest. But a lot of this is semantic wordplay, and depends on how the matter is defined, and for what purpose the definition is raised. There are many areas of life in which circularity and truth go hand in hand. For example, what is electric charge? That quality of matter on which an electric field acts. What is an electric field? A region in space that exerts a force on electric charge. But no one would claim that the theory of electricity is thereby invalid and can’t explain how motors work; it is only that circularity cannot be used as independent proof of something. To harp on the issue of tautology can become misleading, if the impression is given that something tautological therefore doesn’t happen. Of course the environment can “select,” just as human breeders select.
ReplyDeleteI challenge you, if you have such an aversion to George W. Bush, to explain why you are so keen to use the "natural selection is a tautology" argument - which is a key argument used by Ann Coulter in her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Coulter is a notorious George Bush fan. What are you doing on her side?
ReplyDeleteI'm not. She's on ours, if anything.
ReplyDeleteKamm lauds to the skies the man who made possible, and very strongly encouraged, things like the Emmanuel Academies. Why?
AG, no one disputes that electricity is electricity. That is science. Whether "the survivors" are "the fittest", however, is not, and is highly disputable.
I am certainly not David Lindsay. Can he guess who I am? I have known him for a long time, and we do not always agree.
ReplyDeleteAG, fitness is a moral judgement and an aesthetic judgement, making it a philosophical judgement, making this transparent tautology, "the survival of the fittest", a nonsense. The data are scientific, and they must be. But the analysis is not, and it cannot be.
But back to David's original point. Kamm's fellow ueber-Blairite, Alan Johnson, launched a full-frontal attack on Catholic schools while he was Education Secretary, although he was beaten off.
Why are Catholic state schools bad, but creationist privatised (but publicly funded) schools good, or at least acceptable? Why does Kamm support such people?