More evo-doublethink

Rather trivial, you may say, but life is made up of lots of little details.

walking back from the train station yesterday, I saw a council notice up about a public consultation concerning a new local settlement. Shall we call it Blackheath although that isn't it's name.

the headline read 'Blackheath is evolving!'

what was the consultation meeting about? Planning. So, in fact, Blackheath is being intelligently designed. The use of the word 'evolving' is completely incorrect. The opposite of the truth. Of course, I am not suggesting any dishonesty on the part of the local authority, just another example of how our language has been manipulated and its meaning mangled.

The word 'doublethink' comes from George Orwell's future dystopic novel 1984 and refers to one of the tricks whereby the language was manipulated by the ruling power, who of course controlled education and the media, to steer people into thinking and saying only what was approved.

Darwinian evolution cannot plan, it has no goals, and is as likely to walk over a cliff as it is to walk along a path. In fact, much more likely to walk over a cliff or just lay down and die given what we know about DNA mutations. People know from their everyday experience of life that unguided proceses do not build useful or beautiful things. Intelligence is required to produce meaning, always. The planners of Blackheath know this, that's why they are asking for ideas and thinking about design and purpose. This is not evolution.

The way that the word evolution has been laden with false meaning is a classic example of doublethink. The idea that planned, purposeful improvements are the same thing as Darwinian evolutionistic processs is completely inaccurate, so to promote this is a deliberate lie. A lot of people are taken in by it. Who was it that said if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth?

Of course, the English language changes. However, if the meaning of a word changes beyond all recognition, we need a new word to describe the thing the word used to mean. If designed improvement can now be described as evolution, we need a new word to describe the supposed process whereby life, having originated without a designer, adds complexity by random mutations and natural selection, despite the abundant evidence that this does not happen.

How about Dawkinism? But then I already use that term for an approach to debate that involves grandstanding, special pleading, distraction tactics, misprepresentation, bombast, character asassination and denial of contrary evidence and arguments.

On the other hand, if deceit is the aim, we can leave things as they are and let people be bamboozled into thinking that evolution and design are the same. But they are not, and it matters.