Real Clear Politics has a column titled The Secular Right which reflects upon the Mac Donald vs. God affair. Interestingly, the author linked to my post where I followed the debate in The Corner. A few months ago my summary of John Derbyshire's summary of Judith Rich Harris' work was linked from her site. Ultimately, I think this should be a clue to NRO that they need to invest in a more robust and user friendly content management system: their archiving blows.
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Over at The Corner at National Review Online John Derbyshire has been getting into a debate with his colleagues over Judith Rich Harris' work, and her two books The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike. I find it amusing when scientific controversy comes crashing into the punditocracy, though I…
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I put all my money on Mac Donald. That God fellow has a nasty habit of not showing up.
From the RCP article:
That's rather out of date. The definition of "skepticism" has shifted. What he describes would now be called "universal skepticism" or "Pyrrhonism". In modern, or scientific, skepticism, doubt is not universal. Belief is apportioned according to the evidence.
After that, he proceeds to some rather laughable strawmen. It's interesting to see him attack PoMo and Relativism as Leftist values, considering these have in recent years been embraced by some members of the Right ( Astroturf campaigns, David Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights, the "Republican war on science")
Except that Natural Law has never overcome the very simple criticism directed at it: Is vs. Ought? Mac Donald is correct, reason-based morality has no need to rely on Natural Law.
Oh joy. I've reached the bottom of the column and discovered he's a Rand-ian.
Oh joy. I've reached the bottom of the column and discovered he's a Rand-ian.
bingo :=)