Apparently today will be poetry day. I found this poem in a book I was reading. It is by a man named Mortimer Collins (1860):
Life and the Universe show spontaneity:
Down with ridiculous notions of Deity!
Churches and creeds are all lost in the mists;
Truth must be sought with the Positivists.
Wise are their teachers beyond all comparison,
Comte, Huxley, Tyndall, Morley and Harrison.
Who will venture to enter the lists
With such a squandron of Positivists?There was an ape in the days that were earlier;
Centuries passed and his hair became curlier;
Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist -
Then he as Man and a Positivist.
Some things never change. The core argument of this is the idea that science represents a system of belief, not fact. Also, it casts the postivists in terms suggesting their arrogance. Actually there were multiple versions of this poem. Here is another:
Life and the Universe show Spontaneity;
Down with ridiculous notions of Deity!
Churches and creeds are all lost in the mists;
Truth must be sought with the Positivists.Wise are their teachers beyond all comparison,
Comte, Huxley, Tyndall, Mill, Morley, and Harrison;
Who will adventure to enter the lists,
With such a squadron of Positivists?Social arrangements are awful miscarriages;
Cause of all crime is our system of marriages;
Poets with sonnets, and lovers with trysts,
Kindle the ire of the Positivists.Husbands and wives should be all one community,
Exquisite freedom with absolute unity;
Wedding rings worse are then manacled wrists,
Then he was a MAN - and a Positivist.If you are pious, (mild form of insanity,)
Bow down and worship the mass of humanity,
Other religions are buried in mists;
We're our own gods, say the Positivists.
The framing of science as an alternative religion appears again, and this time is added the idea that believers in evolution want to destroy existing institutions.
I thought I would republish these because it gives you some perspective. This culture war has been going on for a long time, largely with the same arguments. That could stir you to anger, but it might be better if we started thinking of better arguments. Maybe then it might actually end.
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Nice poems, amusing. :) Here's one by A.E.Houseman along the same lines.
The Laws of God and Man
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
A song that comes to mind about this topic is Mike and the Mechanics' I Believe.
This poem is in Culture Star Reader (http://www.culturestarreader.com:
Ode to Dolly by Valerie Coskrey
Dolly had a little lamb.
It came the natural way.
Now everything that Mary's can,
A clone can do today.
A longer version more in-line with this conversation was just submitted for publication. Interested?
Certainly I am interested. This post appears to be turning into a poetry of evolution compilation, but that is fine with me.
Hi,
I just came across the posting of your answer to my "Interested?" The longer version of the Dolly poem is on my blog, link below.
soapboxbyval.blogspot.com/2006/08/ode-to-dolly-concerning-dollys-role-in.html
My, how time flies!
Valerie