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Another request, this time with food for thought
(continuing discussion moved to [[Talk:Piltdown Man]])
(continuing discussion moved to [[Talk:Piltdown Man]])
I would be grateful if you would take the trouble to write a thoughtful response.
Maybe the following will help. An important part of conservatism is respect for tradition, even when the reasons for a tradition are not known to you, because traditions are the residue of many failures and disasters of the past; traditions steer you away from disasters of a kind that you can't appreciate until it's too late. Why do people who see the truth of that principle so clearly, oppose it so vociferously in biology? It seems to me just as plausible that liberals would be the ones opposing evolution, insisting that only a central, governing authority could possibly have made something as complex as living things, and demanding a complete, step-by-step "proof" of evolution, fully understandable by any non-expert—and that conservatives would be calling evolution a principle pervading all of nature, to be ignored at your peril, and pointing out that the billions of years of evolution make it irrational to demand detailed proof and perfectly preserved evidence of every mutation-step from microbes to man, let alone the selective pressures that favored them.
The same could be said for the usual conservative and liberal positions regarding free markets and respect for the harshness and unperfectibility of worldly life. Is it just chance that conservatives happen to oppose evolution and liberals favor it? Or is there some deeper reason why the mindset that finds capital punishment, low taxes, and states' rights attractive, finds it implausible that present-day species developed from earlier species by a long process of trial and error?
—[[User:BenKovitz|Ben Kovitz]] 21:41, 21 August 2011 (EDT)