{"id":3665,"date":"2006-03-28T09:50:48","date_gmt":"2006-03-28T09:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/who-you-calling-a-fundamentalist.html"},"modified":"2006-03-28T09:50:48","modified_gmt":"2006-03-28T09:50:48","slug":"who-you-calling-a-fundamentalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/who-you-calling-a-fundamentalist.html","title":{"rendered":"Who you calling a Fundamentalist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This, via Dr. Albert Mohler, <\/a>and account of a recent celebration in London, of the 30th anniversary of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene.<\/em> In attendance was Daniel Dennett, the author of the recent book, <\/a>Breaking the Spell,<\/em> shredded in the NYTimes by Leon Wieseltier.<\/a> Dr. Mohler notes Dennett’s words:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

And I also thought, on rereading the book, that the late Steve Gould was really right when he called Richard and me Darwinian fundamentalists. And
I want to say what a Darwinian fundamentalist is. A Darwinian fundamentalist is one who recognizes that either you shun Darwinian evolution altogether, or you turn the traditional universe upside down and you accept that mind, meaning, and purpose are not the cause but the fairly recent effects of the mechanistic mill of Darwinian algorithms. It is the unexceptioned view that mind, meaning, and purpose are not the original driving engines, but recent effects that marks, I think, the true Darwinian fundamentalist. <\/p>\n

And Dawkins insists, and I agree wholeheartedly, that there aren’t any good compromise positions. Many have tried to find a compromise position, which salvages something of the traditional right-side-up view, where meaning and purpose rain down from on high. It cannot be done. And the recognition that it cannot be done is I would say, the mark of sane Darwinian fundamentalism. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This, via Dr. Albert Mohler, and account of a recent celebration in London, of the 30th anniversary of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. In attendance was Daniel Dennett, the author of the recent book, Breaking the Spell, shredded in the NYTimes by Leon Wieseltier. Dr. Mohler notes Dennett’s words: And I also thought, on rereading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWho you calling a Fundamentalist? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/who-you-calling-a-fundamentalist.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who you calling a Fundamentalist? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This, via Dr. Albert Mohler, and account of a recent celebration in London, of the 30th anniversary of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}