Andrew Marr is an idiot
| March 5th, 2009Gollum lookalike Andrew Marr was a terrible choice to replace Melvyn Bragg on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week. Bragg had begun to develop the show into something close to his later, acclaimed In Our Time – intelligent discussion from a few knowledgeable and interesting experts on all manner of subject and Marr simply wasn’t up to the job of replacing him.
Now Marr is presenting a BBC TV series on Darwin, called Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (a title lifted from Dan Dennett) and he writes on the BBC website:
I believe Darwin was right…Darwinism, as I take it, is a creed of observation…
Whether or not Andrew Marr, an English graduate, ‘believes’ Darwin to have been right shouldn’t detain anyone for long but that sly inclusion of ‘Darwinism’ is troubling. As The New Scientist recently said,
When you come across the terms “Darwinism” or “Darwinists”, take heed. True scientists rarely use these terms, and instead opt for “evolution” and “biologists”, respectively.
How to spot a hidden religious agenda
I don’t suppose Marr is a Creationist but his language is very peculiar and probably betrays too much time in the company of religious literalists of one stripe or another. And ‘Darwinism’ – or the fact that species have evolved through the processes of natural selection – is not a creed – which Marr should know is ‘a formal statement of religious belief; a confession of faith‘. It isn’t a creed literally and the metaphorical use is false in its implication.
But Marr goes on to say
However we celebrate the old man, we mustn’t let his work crust into creed or harden to dogma.
Well I wasn’t going to do that and I don’t know anyone else who was either but of course Marr, just a few paragraphs before, has already claimed he sees Darwin’s work as a creed, the very thing he now pretends to be warning us about. Marr is inventing a problem that doesn’t exist presumably in a misguided but typically BBC-ish effort to appear even-handed when there simply are not two sides and there is no debate. The only people clinging to dogma and creeds are religious people and Marr knows that’s true.
I admire your idealism but your assertion doesn’t reflect reality accurately.
…. “The only people clinging to dogma and creeds are religious people ”
If science is to provide us with the best possible material explanation of the world, then Darwin became a dogma a long time ago.
But as a True Believer, I’m sure you will disagree.
Paul, I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
Science doesn’t cling to ‘Darwinism’; scientists accept that a major cause of evolution is through mutation and natural selection because the argument is very convincing and the evidence strongly supports such a view. That’s not dogma, it’s more to do with well-attested fact.
If you think you can propose a more plausible hypothesis and find evidence to support you, go ahead and good luck.
Marr says (Prog 2)…’This data…was…’. Surely it should be ‘These data…are…’
I totally agree with your post about Andrew Marr’s use of language. However, I’m not sure why you made the comment about his appearance as “Gollum lookalike”. Marr is responsible for his comments (leaving aside the question of free will!), but not for his looks, and making this kind of comment seems unnecessary.
Mark. For humour.
The anthropologists among the criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo. But the criminal is a decadent. Was Socrates a typical criminal? At least that would not be contradicted by the famous judgment of the physiognomist which sounded so offensive to the friends of Socrates. A foreigner who knew about faces once passed through Athens and told Socrates to his face that he was a monstrum — that he harbored in himself all the bad vices and appetites. And Socrates merely answered: “You know me, sir!”
Andrew Marr hasn’t done his homework. Darwin’s theory has been superceded by over one hundred years of scientific research and nowadays only creationist cretins call evolution Darwinism. No scientists are stridently trying to argue that gemmules are part of biology, so Marr’s stupid comment shows his ignorance.
All the dogma and creed is coming from the religious cretins that want to teach religious fairytales as science .