Quote:
Originally Posted by Jinn
Indeed he did. The speaker in the film is Jeremy Rifkin; his book Algeny was called, by Stephen Jay Gould (who I am a big fan of), "a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship". Evidently this video is a prelude to another book he will be releasing with the same title as this thread.
He does seem to have taken particular generalizations of science a bit too far, but I don't think it undermines the point about increasing the diameter of our 'tribe' over time. I have heard that rhetoric a few times, most recently another notable atheist/skeptic - Shermer - ended his section of a debate I attended on "Does God Exist?" with a call to expanding our 'tribe' to include more 'others,' regardless of God's (non)existence.
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I don't think it undermines his point either, it does undermine my willingness to seriously consider what he has to say. It's damaging to your credibility when you try to enhance your position by dressing it up in scientific language and pretend it's intricately related to other theories which it is not. It's even more damaging when you have to misrepresent those theories to make it work.
I seem also to recall that religious idoltry appeared before modern agriculture so his time-line doesn't jive with me. I could be wrong but I'm not confident enough in my knowledge to back Wikipedia's agreement.
Also, WTF is 'increasing self-hood'?
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of increasing our 'circle of empathy' but as far as I can tell he's just talking nonsense through a lot of the video.