"Darwination ensues."
I've read this drivel a million times, and I've never seen it refer to anything that remotely fits the expression.
Posting a picture of Darwin in the comments thread of any news aggregator when somebody does something daring, or even something stupid, and then buys the farm, has become a sort of religion of its own. But it's a religion without any basis in fact. And what it really is is a kind of cowardice that wears the disguise of moral and intellectual superiority. If you never ride a bicycle without a helmet, you love to point at anyone that does and say: See, he had that coming --if they fall and hit their head. To be daring is to be stupid, and to be stupid is to be inferior. Ergo, I'm the top of the food chain by virtue of being an amoral coward.
No you're not.
This worldview is held by many who have been taught nothing for 16 years of school - and counting - but that Einstein meant everything is subjective; Schroedinger's Cat means you're not really lying when you are; glossing Hobbes means not only that all the brown people deserve to starve, but it would be useful if they did; the Cretan Paradox means anybody you don't like can be defamed; and reading Rousseau means you can have a high opinion of yourself for refusing to participate in any form of gentility related to civilization. You're not a boorish slob; you're
authentic.You're not atheists, you know. Christopher Hitchens isn't really an atheist, so I doubt you are. What you are is an ingrate. You are squatting in the house that religions built, pulling things off the wall to make fires to warm your bones, all the while chanting in your brand new version of the that old-time-worship-everything- pagan sect. You're not willing to submit yourself to the rigors of participating in a sophisticated relationship with the metaphysical, so you say that persons that contemplate the sublime are just worshipping an invisible sky pixie. It gets you right off the hook for any intellectual and moral heavy lifting.
You can claim people whose clothes match when they go to church, know which fork to use, or join the military out of pure dumb patriotism are hollow inside, while you serenely download porn in your mother's basement and eat Cheetos like the wild, noble savage you are. And of course, the "Jesus in the Bathtub Shrine" for people who claim they're rationalist atheists is the blank, bearded expression of Charles Darwin, cut and pasted into every comment thread you can find.
I've met true atheists. They are very few and far between. Almost everybody on death row qualifies. There's another word for them. It fits much better. They're sociopaths, with the occasional psychopath mixed in. A belief in God takes many forms, all relating simply to the details. It all boils down to nothing more than this: Life Has Meaning. And by "life," I don't mean joining PETA and complaining about eating chicken wings because you'd like to indulge yourself in the delusion that chickens would be immortal or would be in Poultry Montessori Schools or something equally daft if we didn't eat them. I mean life, the universe, and everything. If you're a real atheist, then that "life" has no meaning. You wouldn't participate in civilization in any way if you really believed that. You'd be feral. And trust me, those who use cross-training shoes solely to code html in an office park wouldn't last long in a real Darwinian world.
And so you cower in your cubicle, and puff up your sunken little chest, and paste in the face of the man with the theory you don't even understand properly, and think: Brave people deserve everything they get if things work out badly. If they were like me -- an ingrate coward-- they'd be pasting a picture of Darwin in this thread right now instead of risking pushing up the daisies.
I've got news for you. Those people you look down your nose at for their simple piety and individualism and grit? Unlike you, they aren't mating with a gym sock while looking at pictures of scrawny girls with bolt on boobs on the internet. They're doing all the things in this world worth doing, including having children.
Do not ask for whom Darwination ensues. It ensues for you.
(Our occasional contributor and commenter Roger de Hauteville used to be King of Sicily)
