boingboing posted a review of The Invisible Kingdom. Ah, fame at last…
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Hi Idan !! It was really nice to find you all successful and famous already – – and we were all sure it happens to people in our line work around late forties 🙂
I am definitely going to get Invisible Kingdom, I will let you know how it went – but send me an e-mail!
Best, Ido Bachelet – Boston.
Who are the creationists you deal with? Are they really the arrogant, narrow minded dogmatic and phobic individuals you include in several footnotes? My definition of creationism must be different . . . using words like “suddenly” and “suddenly endowed” and “special ability” is where creationism and evolution meet, make friends and journey into the sunset to enjoy a long (probably eternal) and fruitful relationship, my friend!! (I am quoting from the last bonus track in The Invisible Kingdom.) I really, really enjoyed the book but was sad to know that because I believe in a Higher Being bringing forth life I “should” have been avoiding your book like the plague . . . truly a sad conclusion! I find it interesting that you can jump from A to, let’s say, M and feel comfortable, that you can “rewind” the tape genetically and figure out the what and when, but for me to inject a simple why into the equation – I seem to be immediately labeled a kinked protein. Hmmmmm . . . . is it just in their natures for scientists to be arrogant, narrow minded and dogmatic and phobic? My sensitivities aside, great read!! Great book! Totally engaging! Made me (and as a consequence of my constantly shouting out to my kids and husband, “Listen to this! You are not going to believe this it is so cool!”) and my whole family re-think what it means to be “at the top of the food chain!”
Actually, there is no logical contradiction involved in believing in a higher force and accepting evolution as well. One version of it goes by the name of “Deism”. It may not be the most popular worldview, but it’s a legitimate one and I have no particular quarrel with it. I personally know some quite good scientists – some of them biologists – who are men and women of faith.
I DO have a problem with “dogmaticism, narrow-mindedness, arrogance and phobia”, whatever side of the creation-evolution debate they may be exhibited on. There are obviously scientists who are like that, some of them quite vocal. There are undoubtedly creationists who are like that – and currently it is mostly their voice that is heard in the debate. This extreme, reality-ignoring version of creationism is the one I refer to as “creationism’ in the book – and I accept that it is an overgeneralisation. If the book were an in-depth study of evolutionary debates I would have bothered to explicate all this, but since it’s a book about bugs, it didn’t seem right to go into that much detail. Perhaps I was wrong, but you can’t please everyone…