Fundies should be thankful, for we are Merciful.

[elfs]

I have this dream, you know. I understand that one of the premises of Ayn Rand's famous book, Atlas Shrugged, is that the "productive" people of the world all take themselves away to some desert colony and let the rest of the world, bereft of leadership and vision, waste away.

I dream of a Darwin Shrugged. That someday, all of the gifts of evolutionary biology be withheld from those who claim not to believe in its efficacy. That we deny them all access to antiobiotics, vaccines, cancer angiogenetic antagonist drugs, anti-obesity medicines, modafinil. That we withdraw from their markets (and their markets only) inexpensive fibers and bright colorful dyes.

That we make food as dear to them as it ever was in the depth of a Lamarkian winter.

I think I subject myself too much to the utter stupidity of the anti- evolutionists. The "We're fighting Darwinism" has now fallen over into smug "We've beaten Darwinism" in the fundie churches, who congregants still vaccinate their kids and use antibiotics, all produced by scientists who scratch their heads and say, "Uh, what... ?"

Sigh I guess I'm just too bloody minded today. Damn allergies kept me up all night, I got maybe four hours of sleep. My car's gonna cost me a kilobuck, probably, to keep running for another two or three years, and all that stressy crud.

Comments

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

I just finished reading Richard K. Morgan's excellent _Altered Carbon_, a futuristic noir novel. In it, people are stored in "stacks" installed in their spinal columns and can be "re-sleeved" - inserted into a new body - if their body is killed, or even restored from backup if their stack is destroyed. Most penalties for crimes are essentially temporal displacement - you get stored for a while, then re-sleeved.

In this world, the Catholics, refusing to believe that the stack could be the repository of the soul, refuse to be resleeved. This also prevents them from being needlecast (think ansible) out to the colonies, leaving them stuck on Earth, and generally leaving them behind as the rest of society lives longer and they don't.

[rapier.livejournal.com]

I really liked this book. I require more Richard K Morgan.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

He has published several other books, two in the same world. I intend to pick them up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Morgan_%28author%29

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Actually, that would be a piece of cake to accomplish. Just lead them on a crusade against the Evils of the modern world, whereby they *want* to sequester themselves away in some camp/commune/Alabama and live out their perfect society. Which will at the very least be left behind, and at best will whither and die. It wouldn't hurt to put Depo-Provera and Tomoxifen (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=279238) in the water supply to kill their sex drives. Everyone can thus remain virgins forever and in so doing preserve their purity for a fast-track into heaven.

[eddvick.livejournal.com]

That's make a kickass novel if there were some justifiable handwaving in the setup.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Actually... It would make fabulous background to a novel about a divided United States. In those states where high schools taught Intelligent Design, corporations pulled up stakes and moved out. Later, when those states' economies start to tank, the corporations move back, setting up enclaves to defend against the masses who know nothing and produce little.

[eddvick.livejournal.com]

Why am I reminded of the comic book "Captain Confederacy"?

Sadly, too many corporations are led by 'true believers' or make large profits off of them. Dominos and KMart come to mind.

And it's dissatisfying (to me) to break them down on a state-by-state level, judging an entire state's population by whether 51% of its voters are asshats & morons. Web 2.0 is great at building community; what you do is get computers to those who don't have them, get them connected and have them join/build communities, encourage them to make it nonvirtual by congregating in enclaves of likeminded individuals. Some of them would take themselves off immunizations voluntarily; there's a start.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Already happening, but at a national level.

I just got back from a seminar presented by Professional Engineers Ontario (in Canada) on medical applications of engineering. One presentation was on making artificial hip or knee joints with porous ceramic soaked in stem cells, instead of the current titanium and polyethylene. Within a year or two of implantation, it's been replaced by natural bone and is self-repairing like a natural joint. Currently artificial joints wear out and have to be replaced every 10-15 years.

One comment that the presenter made was that research in Canada has greatly benefited from all the scientists migrating north so they could include stem cells in their research without losing funding.

[stephdray.livejournal.com]

I have often said this same thing. That if these people want to live like the Amish, then I'll respect their ability to live their beliefs, but otherwise, I have nothing but contempt.

[marketeer]

I think it was you that I first saw post about the Dobrich family in Sussex County, DE who were fighting a particularly ugly prayer-in-the-public schools case. The New York Times reported this morning that a settlement has been reached.

[cthulu-for-pm.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a damn good idea to me.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think I would be quite so harsh on those who simply don't *believe* in it. Those who actively argue against it however deserve everything they get.

There is a world of difference between those who were brought up believing and those who try to balls up everybody else's lives.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

I dream of a Darwin Shrugged. That someday, all of the gifts of evolutionary biology be withheld from those who claim not to believe in its efficacy.

Heck, forget that. I wanna withold all science from those who can't be bothered to learn to understand it and use it properly.

You wanna put belief before observed phenonmena? Fine. No Science for You.

You treat science as a religion? Fine. No Science for You, either.


We, the practitioners of science and technology, have been too optimistic and too charitable for too long. Everyone else has been ungrateful of the gifts of our intellect and viciously hateful towards us. So maybe it's time we just stop bothering, sit back, and laugh cruelly at the rest of humanity as they reap the consequences of what they've sown.