Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Limits: Why the Darwinians Are Wrong

Dreher, as some know, is a guy who writes--but since he's a newspaperman at heart, he's also a questioning sorta guy.

He's enamored of Wendell Berry who is a "life small, back-to-the-farm" guy. In the last 90 days or so, that particular mindset has seeped into all the Very Correct Places--the NYTimes, Time Magazine, Harper's (etc.)--because it has a good deal to do with The Agenda (climate-change/warming/save the Earth).

Berry may be right or wrong, but as the MSM adopts his outlook, they will eventually run into a cognitive dissonance problem.

Here's Berry (quoted by Dreher):

The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness. We have obscured the issue by refusing to see that limitlessness is a godly trait. ...Any definition is a limit, which is why the God of Exodus refuses to define Himself: "I am that I am."

Berry reminds us that resources may have limits (e.g., petroleum, minerals, etc.)

But if that is true, it is also true that Science has limits. So the March of Progress, idolized by the Times/Time editors and scriveners--a natural outgrowth of the Darwinian philosophy--will eventually have to collide with the reality. Conveniently, Benedict XVI has mentioned the limits of Science a number of times. Not so conveniently for the Times (etc.,) they have ignored him, or have subtly reminded us that he is just an old European guy in a big hat without particular competence in such things.

Well, folks, either there is, or there is NOT, "unlimited progress" (and its Republican companion, unlimited wealth.)

Common-sense folks live as though there are limits, because there are--to resources as well as to Progress.

1 comment:

Display Name said...

"I am that I am." I thought Popeye said that.