Spittledip said arrogance equates with insecurity. Well, I'm an arrogant asshole about evolution (and about science in general), yet I'm not the least bit insecure about the "differing viewpoint" of ID, "7 days' work and the garden of Eden", or any other creation myth. That was my point.
Which isn't to say that creation myths don't scare the sh!t out of me. They do, because they represent humanity's infinite capacity to embrace - and act on - fathomless ignorance.
Ignorance comes in many flavors. I see the need to force an ideology on another as one. That can be religion or atheism.
The Republicans used the religious right for votes in turn for support for the latters agenda. Well they really had no intention of honoring that agreement, and if you look at the state of Roe v. Wade before and after the Bush administration, you'll note it's still there, and the Reps really never tried to change anything. Lots of talk, yes, but no action.
I believe that in part the supposed support of the religious right by the Reps created a backlash. The RR (religious right) acted at a more local level and tried to have other things taught in schools other than evolution in science classes at the state level. That was wrong. Science needs to be taught in science classes.
So the next painfully obvious reaction was to champion someone (anyone apparently) who was (rightly) against such interference in the classroom. Unfortunately the human reaction in most cases is to go to the other extreme, and Dawkins is the example here.
Instead of reasonable people coming to the reasonable conclusion that people may have religious beliefs or not, but as people they aren't inferior or evil in either case, the metric becomes "he must believe as I do" It's what they do that counts. I've brought up Collins many times, because the man is a frigging genius and while serious scientists may disagree with his religious POVs, they acknowledge his accomplishments and abilities. Dawkins dismissed his out of hand.
Sadly that's a trend I see here. If one entertains the possiblity of a master intelligence, then they are daft. They then treat science as a replacement for religion, which clearly shows they don't know what science is. Science is a hammer, a screwdriver, a tool to take that which we observe apart and see how things work. That's it. It won't answer all our questions, because our ability to ask them is greater than our ability to gather data, or comprehend it.
The technique may be perfect or not, but we are finite beings with finite minds. There is a limit to what we can understand. Like those opposing evolution, those who have infinite faith in our ability to quantify reality will have to deal.
Did you know that the leader of the Anglican Church at the time was very excited by what Darwin published? He didn't have any more of a problem accepting it than he would have with the fact that the Earth revolved around the Sun. He wasn't imprisoned by Genesis.
In fact, if you have read about science at the time, you would have noticed that much work was done by the "Right Reverend" someone or other.
The only reason it changed wasn't because people denounced religion, but because it became too large a body of knowledge and so people specialized in one or the other, as we have further divided the sciences today.
And so it went, with little serious contention until the rise of Stalinism. At that point freedom, religion, everything the US held as rights was seen at risk. Worse, the state policy of atheism caused the deaths of millions of those who practiced religion. Yes, here is a case where there was mass murder of people not due to religious differences, but by the state to enforce atheism.
Those commie bastards wanted your freedom, you ability to practice religion, your family, everything.
That led to what I call "Godandamerica", a concept that America was here to defend the world from such people and yes, that included the right to practice religion. So religion and state became mixed, not that one should control the other, but because we embraced our form of government and our rights as a single entity.
To cut a long post a bit short, that's where we find the root of todays conflict. The Reps have the Godandamerica mindset (well some do) and Dawkins hasn't a clue, otherwise he's address the history of the situation and try to understand that much of what we see is cultural, not automatically religious in nature.
As I said, he's not very bright in my estimation
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