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Entry: What's So Scary About Evolution?--For Both Left and Right, a Lot Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/whats_so_scarry_about_evolution#26994 Post contents: Western civilization began to thrive only when it shrugged off the silly Middle Eastern superstition that had so burdened it so long and rediscovered its Greco-Roman roots. In the millinenum from Constantine to Michelangelo, the West bumbled along at near-subsistence level from one crisis to another. Greece and Rome had given the world representative politics, philosophy and literature, architecture and artistic aesthetics. And Ancient Greece gave humanity science; all cultures have intiated scientific breakthroughs, but only one created the discipline for investigating the cosmos and ourselves in it. Nothing symbolizes the West's rediscovery of its heritage better that the replacement of countless representations of the Virgin by the voluptuous Venus of Botticelli rising from the tide. After it regained it soul with the Renaissance, the West never looked back. And never again would it be backed to the wall by the acquisitive followers of yet another Levantine/Arabian fever dream. (What makes the place such a brewer's vat for religious fervor, anyway?) Fairy tales about chariots of fire and resurrections may inspire industry and creativity. But they are not its mortar. After all, the beauty and grace of Chartres owe more to the load-bearing arch of the "pagan" Romans than to the frenzied Saul of Tarsus. Sent at: 2008 12 01