Mr.Dawkins, who brainwashed who?

Richard Dawkins made the following statement "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane(or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." in 1989 according to Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 21, Number 3.( actual link is http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_21_3.html)


To be honest, I was amazed every single time I had read the original quote. But after I read the whole article that was the follow up to that statement, I was even more amazed. Here is more from the same article: "I don't withdraw a word of my initial statement. But I do now think it may have been incomplete. There is perhaps a fifth category, which may belong under "insane" but which can be more sympathetically characterized by a word like tormented, bullied, or brainwashed. Sincere people who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the massive evidence of science on the one hand, and their understanding of what their holy book tells them on the other."(Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 21, Number 3. ) (http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_21_3.html)

As always, Mr. Dawkins strives to come across as the proverbial "unbiased, unimpeded by preconceptions" scientist.

But I have to be very honest...I find that very hard to swallow. Or maybe I should say I am extremely tired of that misconception....

Until the time of Louis Pasteur(1822-1895), a lot of very "great scientific minds" believed in the idea of "spontaneous generation". Most you know this is the mistaken idea that rats would spontaneously appear from rags left on the floor, or maggots spontaneously appeared on meat.

Even the great philosopher Aristotle believed aphids formed from the dew on plants, fleas from putrid matter, mice from dirty hay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation

Most of you may also know that Pasteur preformed the experiment that proved, scientifically, once and for all that "spontaneous generation" was not correct. This is something that I learned in grade school, and I am almost certain that all of you reading learned also. Life only comes from life.

Life only comes from life...proved by Louis Pasteur in 1862...taught in grade school science as a basic rule of biology.

But then a few years later we learn the above is true, and Aristotle and all those people were wrong, EXCEPT in the case of ALL LIFE on our planet...the emergence of all life was, by accident, spontaneously generated "just this once", because there can't be any other explaination.

Doesn't any one besides me wonder, to use Mr. Dawkins own words, how "tormented, bullied, or brainwashed" you have to be to go against one of the basic laws of biology to explain the origin of all life on the planet!?!?!?!

Tormented, bullied, brainwashed...very strong emotionally charged words. I would have made sure they couldn't be used against me before I used them myself, Mr. Dawkins. (to be continued)