Celebrating anti-intellectualism and ignorance with Javed Chaudhry
By: Salman Hameed
Last Sunday I had posted about the astonishing display of intellectual ignorance by Georgia Congressman Jack Kingston. For a change of language, below is a clip of a popular Pakistani TV anchor, Javed Choudhry, displaying an equal level of ignorance about evolution, and about the pursuit of knowledge, in general. Even if you don’t speak Urdu, just play the clip for a few minutes, and you will detect a deep level of condescension in his tone and in his voice.
His main point here is that you don’t have to read Aristotle, Socrates, Plato et al. for thinking about life (the topic of his talk this discussion is “Relationships”). After all, they have been dead for a long time (I don’t think he knows exactly how long, since at one point he says 5000 years ago and at another he says 3000 – and both are wrong). So he urges us to use our own brains – since we know a lot more today than they ever did, and that we should be able to challenge any authority with own ideas. Now on the surface this sounds great – since this what we say about science also. However, he does not mention that your views have to shaped and informed by learning from the past. A key omission.
And then just on cue, he demonstrates his own ignorance by arguing against evolution by bringing up the same old and stupid misconception: “if humans came from monkeys, how come monkeys are still around?”. But just to demonstrate his level of thinking, he goes on to say that monkeys have been around in zoos for a while. How come not even one has started wearing pants or smoking cigarettes (I guess, he missed a whole slew of Hollywood films). Sigh! I mean how much effort does it take to at least look at what are some of the basic principles of evolutionary biology. But he does deserve credit for taking the level of discourse to even a stupider level. I mean sure. You can criticize it. But at least know a tiny bit about what you are criticizing. Oh wait. But that would mean actually reading something. And I guess reading can be hard. But if you graduate from the Javed Choudhry university – you only need to think – and not read. I guess he is a born genius. First it was Einstein – and now we have Javed Choudhry.
Read about common misconceptions about evolution here and here.
Sorry to inflict this on you (blame Shahid Saeed for the tip :)). The fun about evolution begins around the 5-minute mark, but his anti-Aristotle/Socrates/Plato rant is before that:
Source:http://sciencereligionnews.blogspot.com/2011/02/celebrating-anti-intellectualism-and.html