The Left Against Science

[Doug1943]

If you don't know who Richard Dawkins is, look here: [ Richard Dawkins - Wikipedia ]

In short, he's probably the most well-known exponent of evolution in the world -- of a particular view of it -- and a very militant atheist.

He's a man 'secular humanist' -- not really a Leftist, but he wouldn't be welcome at most gatherings of American conservatives.

Whatever his politics, he's an honest man, and a great believer in science and the scientific method. This belief also used to mark the Left, but no longer. Now, increasingly, the Left wants to teach anti-scientific flapdoodle to children.

It's particularly bad in New Zealand. Here's Dawkins on his recent trip there:

I’m in New Zealand, climax to my antipodean speaking tour, where I walked headlong into a raging controversy. Jacinda Ardern’s government implemented a ludicrous policy, spawned by Chris Hipkins’s Ministry of Education before he became prime minister.

Science classes are to be taught that Maori ‘Ways of Knowing’ (Matauranga Maori) have equal standing with ‘western’ science. Not surprisingly, this adolescent virtue-signalling horrified New Zealand’s grown-up scientists and scholars. Seven of them wrote to the Listener magazine.

Three who were fellows of the NZ Royal Society were threatened with an inquisitorial investigation. Two of these, including the distinguished medical scientist Garth Cooper, himself of Maori descent, resigned (the third unfortunately died).

I was delighted to meet Professor Cooper for lunch, with others of the seven. His resignation letter cited the society’s failure to support science against its denigration as ‘a western European invention’. He was affronted, too, by a complaint (not endorsed by the NZRS) that ‘to insist Maori children learn to read is an act of colonisation’.

The rest here: [ Why I’m sticking up for science ]