Yesterday I happened to check Arts & Letters Daily, which I haven’t really followed since the 2010 death of its founder (and an occasional email correspondent of mine), Denis Dutton. There I found a review of the latest book by another big name from that era: Richard Dawkins. As cringe as that whole Nu-Atheist thing was, I still respect Dawkins as a biologist, and I clicked. The reviewer, a Tim Flannery, writes:
Dawkins believes that the placement of every nerve and artery (and other elements of bodily structure) is precisely sculpted by evolution. Yet he does not discuss the condition known as situs inversus, which can cause the heart to be on the right rather than the left, without causing medical symptoms or complications.
Today, in my regular scripture study, I read the second half of the Book of Ecclesiastes (which, incidentally, Dawkins has cited as his favorite book of the Bible, presumably because it’s the most nihilistic). There I found this:
A wise man’s heart is at his right hand; but a fool’s heart at his left (Ecclesiastes 10:2).
So Michael Jackson had it all wrong, asking the man in the mirror to change his ways. Why should a wise man take advice from a fool?
No comments:
Post a Comment