Racism is implicit in the theory of evolution. Darwin didn't invent it, he merely found a theory to account for it. The theory is full of holes but since there's no way to prove it or disprove it that's not recognized.
It was commonly held by Europeans and Brits that the cultural differences they'd seen among the various tribal peoples around the world were really biological differences, differences of substance rather than differences of accident of time and place, differences that defined peoples as inherently inferior or superior. I'm not up enough on that literature to know if perhaps some were regarded as not human at all, but I wouldn't be surprised. At least they must have put them on that Linnaean tree in various biological "stages" of evolution, degrees of humanness. There was that ridiculous "science" of phrenology that compared different human skulls to show their evolution from something less than human to the human. This idea still persists in the notion of "hominids" that they've pieced together from bits of bone, but they refuse to recognize this as racist in essence. It's just Science don't you know.
This view of the human spectrum simply fitted in with the ideas of evolution that were already accepted among those who had rejected God for the supposed infallible standard of human reason. Hard not to laugh at that, but they believed it -- and sadly, most still do. The devil had done his work well. We love to be gods and find our greatness in ourselves rather than in a God we are required to worship and bow down to. Oh how lovely He is when you know Him though.
So anyway, all those ideas were already there. Racism was already accepted in the culture, and already intrinsic to the ideas of evolution that were floating around. Well, clearly, they'd reason, if there are human beings at such different levels of civilization and accomplishment as they could see from their explorations of the world, then there must be some sort of biological principle that explains such differences. Their bias was MATERIALISTIC, hence biological. It must not have occurred to them that it was culture that made the difference among the various tribes of humanity, and specifically that it was the CHRISTIAN culture that had raised Europe to its level of civilization. I'm sure there were Christians who saw this but even the Christians in the scientific arena were getting things all wrong based on a biblical standard so it probably wasn't many.
And Science was all the rage, you know, Science is what overturned the idea of God in the first place: We can explain everything from a materialist perspective, there is no evidence for anything supernatural, blah blah blah. So of course the people with a scientific bent, the naturalists like Darwin and Wallace, were looking for the principle that would scientifically establish WHAT THEY ALREADY BELIEVED about the different varieties of not only animal life but human life.
The biological assumption was already solidly in place, the hierarchy of human groups was already solidly in place, they'd been around the world and taken careful copious notes about animal species and human "species" as they thought of them. All that remained was finding that biological principle that would justify it all.
Well, both of them found it, as it were, that is, they both came up with the Likely Story of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races.* As Darwin came to it, he inferred it from Domestic Selection, that is, from what breeders from farmers to pet owners had known for millennia, that you can direct the expression of traits in animals by "favoring" them or keeping them from breeding with animals with traits you do not desire, and can create amazingly wonderful new breeds by this simple method. Darwin argued this from his experience with breeding pigeons. He simply extrapolated from that known effect to the possibility that nature itself must have ways of "selecting" different biological expressions by the mere fact of "favoring" those better able to survive and reproduce.
Now, from a strictly biological point of view, all that means is that races or breeds of any living thing become established through their natural biological advantage, through their natural biological ability to survive and reproduce given their genetics and their environment.
And of course once you've decided that human beings are just animals in various stages of development you apply the same formula there. It's a racist formula in that context, of course, and that needs to be recognized. Evolution is INHERENTLY racist. The THEORY itself is inherently racist. You can't help but think of all living things as on some hierarchy of development -- even if you don't accept the idea of upward progress. You still have to think of us as all BIOLOGICALLY different in some fundamentally crucial sense.
This of course flies in the face of a BIBLICAL view of humanity which defines us as all descended from Adam and Eve, all brothers and sisters racially. There never was any evolution, that was the brainchild of the anti-God rationalists. Darwin didn't invent it, he merely gave it scientific validation.
God created all life to VARY, He didn't put any of it on a hierarchy. The "races" are varieties, breeds, etc. This includes humanity in our strictly biological life as well. No two human beings are exactly alike and we do create "races" when groups of us go off and occupy isolated parts of the world and marry only within our group, which creates a unique racial type.
We see a wonderful diversity of biological forms, not a ladder from inferior to superior. In this fallen world some fail to thrive and die out. That is ONLY because this world is fallen, because death entered with the entrance of sin and God made animals subject to the curse same as human beings. For our sake. So all life is subject to diseases and deformities and many are subject to predators, and different environments can be hostile. Had the Fall never occurred we'd have myriads of beautiful variations of all living things, all happily thriving. Period.
I don't feel I've yet said this as well as it needs to be said.
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* Just have to mention here that my own favorite argument against evolution, which I've argued in many posts here, is that what happens genetically when you have any kind of selection is that the possibility of further evolution is reduced. Whether the selection is domestic or natural, when any breed is isolated and inbreeds within its own gene pool, this very process, including natural selection itself, but ANY form of selection, REDUCES genetic possibilities, in fact the very creation of new breeds REQUIRES a reduction in genetic possibilities. So that if this trend continues, as it does in domestic breeding programs, further reducing and refining the gene pool of the breed, which can also happen in the wild when successive populations become more and more isolated from their former population, what happens is that evolution becomes LESS AND LESS possible. The very processes that bring about variations eventually lead to the genetic inability to create more variations. "Evolution defeats evolution."
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Saturday, October 27, 2012
The bad "creationism" of the 19th century unfortunately gave an excuse for the idea of evolution
Here is a letter by Wallace to the British Quarterly about controversy being raised over Darwin's theory. What interested me in particular was his remark in the first paragraph that shows that the standard "creationist" understanding of the day was very far from a Biblical understanding. They asserted that God created AGAIN AND AGAIN, though the Bible is clear that God RESTED after creating all things.
The 'British Quarterly' and Darwin (S107: 1865)
If the creationists had been true to the Bible it might have been possible to prevent the theory of evolution from ever happening!
It is certainly true that the forces of evil are going to treat Christianity as inferior anyway, but in this case it's pretty clear that such unbiblical approaches to science did give them an excuse. I don't know if the liberalizing influences had simply undermined Biblical doctrine to such an extent or what.
It's sad to read the rest of that letter Wallace wrote because he just goes on and on about the stupidity of another witness they were able to muster for the "creationist" side:
I think so, and I also think this same abandonment of Biblical creationism and general ignorance of the scientific context are all too apparent these days as well. In fact you may get called all sorts of names by Christians for simply trying to keep up with these things at all.
The weakness and irrelevance of creationism today is demonstrated all too clearly at the debate forum, EvC, or Evolution versus Creationism, where the "creationists" are a sad and sorry lot of misinformed people, and many of them argue from wildly unbiblical positions. Very few hold to the Biblical Young Earth position (earth around 6000 years old), hardly two of them agree with each other about anything at all, and the few who do seem to be truly biblical creationists who also know their science get into such technical areas of discussion the average Christian couldn't possibly follow their arguments anyway. I know I can't.
The 'British Quarterly' and Darwin (S107: 1865)
[[p. 77]] Allow me to call the attention of your readers to a very gross attempt, in the last number of the British Quarterly Review, to mislead the unscientific public. At p. 143, in an article on the 'Supernatural,' after disposing of Hume, Strauss, Baden Powell, and such small fry, in a few lines each, the reviewer claims physical science as his ally, and calls into the witness-box 'the geologist' (one of a type now happily almost extinct), who, he says, will tell us that again and again the special interference of a Creator has been required, and who finally 'will tell you that this same "development" or "origin of species by natural selection" is an unblushing intruder into the domain of science, unlicensed and unrecognized.'Darwin commented on this wrong creationist thinking in his Origin of Species, which I mention in a post about Darwin a while back. This is unbiblical and it needed to be criticized and overthrown, for which we could even thank Darwin since it forced Christians back to the Bible. Darwin of course didn't criticize it as unbiblical, nor does Wallace here, but that is what was wrong with it.
If the creationists had been true to the Bible it might have been possible to prevent the theory of evolution from ever happening!
It is certainly true that the forces of evil are going to treat Christianity as inferior anyway, but in this case it's pretty clear that such unbiblical approaches to science did give them an excuse. I don't know if the liberalizing influences had simply undermined Biblical doctrine to such an extent or what.
It's sad to read the rest of that letter Wallace wrote because he just goes on and on about the stupidity of another witness they were able to muster for the "creationist" side:
This, however, is not strong enough. The model 'geologist' is sent down, and a new witness is specially called in a note, which is so 'unblushing' that I give it entire.
'Let us hear a word on the subject of development from one who has won scientific laurels by a life of study and thought:--"All the great living and recently deceased masters of physical science reject it. Does it appeal to anatomy and physiology? Cuvier, Owen, and Carpenter cry out against it. Does it evoke the aid of chemistry? Berzelius, Turner, and Liebig see its shallowness. Does it call on zoology for aid? Agassiz and Ehrenberg can refute its claims. Does it search the archives of geology for support? Sedgwick, Miller, Lyell and D'Orbigny can show how certainly it will fail. Or, finally, does it appeal to botany? Hooker and Lindley, Torrey and Gray, know that it will certainly glean nothing to sustain it in that flowery field. The fact is that it is only here and there a second-rate naturalist will sympathize at all with such dreamy views." (Dr. E. Hitchcock, in "Bibliotheca Sacra," vol. xi. p. 789.) We do not think anything in this extract unwarranted, even though Mr. Darwin has added his name to the roll of non-theistic theorists; for though he is distinguished as a naturalist in the department of [[p. 78]] observation, his book exhibits philosophic abilities of the lowest order. Nothing can be more significant than his entire abandonment of geology; nothing more foolish than the supposition that some strata are so lost that no trace of them can be found; and nothing more unscientific than to help his theory to take its absurd shape out of the barely possible but utterly unknown.'Either the writer of this article knew that at least four of the persons here mentioned--Carpenter, Lyell, J. Hooker, and A. Gray--so far from rejecting or crying out against 'development' and 'the origin of species by natural selection' are its strongest supporters, or he did not know it. He is, therefore, either imposing a deliberate and wilful misstatement on the public, or he is incredibly ignorant of the subject he is writing upon. Again, when he talks of Darwin's 'entire abandonment of geology,' does he know that almost all the great modern geologists are converts to his views? and when he stigmatizes Darwin's work as 'foolish' and 'absurd,' does he know that John Stuart Mill has adduced it as one of the most wonderful examples of logical reasoning extant?
It is hardly worth while to break such a fly upon the wheel, but it is well to make known as widely as possible to what weak subterfuges those who attempt to stem the flood of modern thought with the worn-out theological mop are at last driven.At the very least can it be said that the abandonment of an aggressive BIBLICAL creationist argument, along with abandonment of scholarship in general by Christians, gave license to this sort of attack?
I think so, and I also think this same abandonment of Biblical creationism and general ignorance of the scientific context are all too apparent these days as well. In fact you may get called all sorts of names by Christians for simply trying to keep up with these things at all.
The weakness and irrelevance of creationism today is demonstrated all too clearly at the debate forum, EvC, or Evolution versus Creationism, where the "creationists" are a sad and sorry lot of misinformed people, and many of them argue from wildly unbiblical positions. Very few hold to the Biblical Young Earth position (earth around 6000 years old), hardly two of them agree with each other about anything at all, and the few who do seem to be truly biblical creationists who also know their science get into such technical areas of discussion the average Christian couldn't possibly follow their arguments anyway. I know I can't.
Some information about Alfred Russel Wallace
This is a page of links to writings by and about Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's counterpart and competitor in the search for a theory to justify the idea of evolution. The following are from a page called "Texts of Some of Wallace's writings" from the right-hand list at the above link. There are no separate URLs to the separate pages [well, there are if you know how to find them and I did finally, but don't know if I'll get them posted here.]
There are some fascinating titles that ought to be very revealing of the mentality of the 19th century. Wallace is a spiritualist for one thing, as many were in that century, since God had been abandoned, so you'll find the occasional article referring to seances and that sort of thing. And the incredible number of writings on various species he studied around the world shows him to be a consummate naturalist.
I may not yet have found the main writing that shows his thinking along the same lines as Darwin but the first one I quote from below is obviously in that direction:
Comments on the Effect of Contact Between the Higher and Lower Races of Man (S87: 1864)
There are some fascinating titles that ought to be very revealing of the mentality of the 19th century. Wallace is a spiritualist for one thing, as many were in that century, since God had been abandoned, so you'll find the occasional article referring to seances and that sort of thing. And the incredible number of writings on various species he studied around the world shows him to be a consummate naturalist.
I may not yet have found the main writing that shows his thinking along the same lines as Darwin but the first one I quote from below is obviously in that direction:
On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species (S20: 1855
This law agrees with, explains and illustrates all the facts connected with the following branches of the subject:--1st. The system of natural affinities. 2nd. The distribution of animals and plants in space. 3rd. The same in time, including all the phænomena of representative groups, and those which Professor Forbes supposed to manifest polarity. 4th. The phænomena of rudimentary organs. We will briefly endeavour to show its bearing upon each of these.
If the law above enunciated be true, it follows that the natural series of affinities will also represent the order in which the several species came into existence, each one having had for its immediate antitype a closely allied species existing at the time of its origin. It is evidently possible that two or three distinct species may have had a common antitype, and that each of these may again have become the antitypes from which other closely allied species were created. The effect of this would be, that so long as each species has had but one new species formed on its model, the line of affinities will be simple, and may be represented by placing the several species in direct succession in a straight line. But if two or more species have been independently formed on the plan of a common antitype, then the series of affinities will be compound, and can only be represented by a forked or many-branched line.Another interesting title:
Now, all attempts at a Natural classification and arrangement of organic beings show, that both [[p. 187]] these plans have obtained in creation. Sometimes the series of affinities can be well represented for a space by a direct progression from species to species or from group to group, but it is generally found impossible so to continue. There constantly occur two or more modifications of an organ or modifications of two distinct organs, leading us on to two distinct series of species, which at length differ so much from each other as to form distinct genera or families.
These are the parallel series or representative groups of naturalists, and they often occur in different countries, or are found fossil in different formations. They are said to have an analogy to each other when they are so far removed from their common antitype as to differ in many important points of structure, while they still preserve a family resemblance.
We thus see how difficult it is to determine in every case whether a given relation is an analogy or an affinity, for it is evident that as we go back along the parallel or divergent series, towards the common antitype, the analogy which existed between the two groups becomes an affinity. We are also made aware of the difficulty of arriving at a true classification, even in a small and perfect group;--in the actual state of nature it is almost impossible, the species being so numerous and the modifications of form and structure so varied, arising probably from the immense number of species which have served as antitypes for the existing species, and thus produced a complicated branching of the lines of affinity, as intricate as the twigs of a gnarled oak or the vascular system of the human body.
Again, if we consider that we have only fragments of this vast system, the stem and main branches being represented by extinct species of which we have no knowledge, while a vast mass of limbs and boughs and minute twigs and scattered leaves is what we have to place in order, and determine the true position each originally occupied with regard to the others, the whole difficulty of the true Natural System of classification becomes apparent to us.
We shall thus find ourselves obliged to reject all those systems of classification which arrange species or groups in circles, as well as those which fix a definite number for the divisions of each group. The latter class have been very generally rejected by naturalists, as contrary to nature, notwithstanding the ability with which they have been advocated; but the circular system of affinities seems to have obtained a deeper hold, many eminent naturalists having to some extent adopted it. We have, however, never been able to find a case in which the circle has been closed by a direct and close affinity. In most cases a palpable analogy has been substituted, in others the affinity is very obscure or altogether doubtful. The complicated branching of the lines of affinities in extensive groups must also afford great [[p. 188]] facilities for giving a show of probability to any such purely artificial arrangements. Their death-blow was given by the admirable paper of the lamented Mr. Strickland, published in the 'Annals of Natural History,' in which he so clearly showed the true synthetical method of discovering the Natural System.
If we now consider the geographical distribution of animals and plants upon the earth, we shall find all the facts beautifully in accordance with, and readily explained by, the present hypothesis. A country having species, genera, and whole families peculiar to it, will be the necessary result of its having been isolated for a long period, sufficient for many series of species to have been created on the type of pre-existing ones, which, as well as many of the earlier-formed species, have become extinct, and thus made the groups appear isolated. If in any case the antitype had an extensive range, two or more groups of species might have been formed, each varying from it in a different manner, and thus producing several representative or analogous groups. The Sylviadæ of Europe and the Sylvicolidæ of North America, the Heliconidæ of South America and the Euplœas of the East, the group of Trogons inhabiting Asia, and that peculiar to South America, are examples that may be accounted for in this manner.
Such phænomena as are exhibited by the Galapagos Islands, which contain little groups of plants and animals peculiar to themselves, but most nearly allied to those of South America, have not hitherto received any, even a conjectural explanation. The Galapagos are a volcanic group of high antiquity, and have probably never been more closely connected with the continent than they are at present. They must have been first peopled, like other newly-formed islands, by the action of winds and currents, and at a period sufficiently remote to have had the original species die out, and the modified prototypes only remain. In the same way we can account for the separate islands having each their peculiar species, either on the supposition that the same original emigration peopled the whole of the islands with the same species from which differently modified prototypes were created, or that the islands were successively peopled from each other, but that new species have been created in each on the plan of the pre-existing ones. St. Helena is a similar case of a very ancient island having obtained an entirely peculiar, though limited, flora. On the other hand, no example is known of an island which can be proved geologically to be of very recent origin (late in the Tertiary, for instance), and yet possesses generic or family groups, or even many species peculiar to itself.
When a range of mountains has attained a great elevation, and has so remained during a long geological period, the species [[p. 189]] of the two sides at and near their bases will be often very different, representative species of some genera occurring, and even whole genera being peculiar to one side only, as is remarkably seen in the case of the Andes and Rocky Mountains. A similar phænomenon occurs when an island has been separated from a continent at a very early period. The shallow sea between the Peninsula of Malacca, Java, Sumatra and Borneo was probably a continent or large island at an early epoch, and may have become submerged as the volcanic ranges of Java and Sumatra were elevated. The organic results we see in the very considerable number of species of animals common to some or all of these countries, while at the same time a number of closely allied representative species exist peculiar to each, showing that a considerable period has elapsed since their separation. The facts of geographical distribution and of geology may thus mutually explain each other in doubtful cases, should the principles here advocated be clearly established.
Comments on the Effect of Contact Between the Higher and Lower Races of Man (S87: 1864)
Again, DarwinISM is a great evil way beyond anything we can attribute to Darwin himself personally
Finally I've calmed down about being accused of supporting Darwinism because I tried to correct a misimpression about what he wrote. Nothing has otherwise changed, I've merely calmed down, put it in the Lord's hands -- read some in George D. Watson's Tribulation Worketh, good for dealing with this sort of thing, also sang some lines from Be Still My Soul, also good for it. I still believe as I did and I'm apparently still regarded as an evil supporter of Darwinism same as I was. If I think about it too much it could get to me again, so I won't say more. I'll just read some more Watson if it gets too hard to deal with.
There's still more to say on this subject. In a nutshell, DarwinISM has had a horrifically evil influence in this world, and I've remarked on this many times, but that doesn't mean that Darwin himself intended any of those effects, and he most certainly didn't.
It is well documented, though probably not as well known as it should be, that the murderous racist philosophies of Hitler and others such as Margaret Sanger, took their inspiration from Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Believers in evolution try to deny that, but Christians at least ought to be well informed of it.
I still believe that none of that derived from Darwin's own personal attitudes, only from his theory, whose deadly inhumane implications he hadn't foreseen. He was a man who had rejected belief in God and set himself to pursue a scientific ambition that he knew was contrary to Christian teaching, which is actually a very common story in the times in which he lived, which was a time in which "science" was supplanting the Christian religion in England and in fact the west in general. That alone is enough to account for his coming up with a theory that could be put to all kinds of destructive uses, and particularly because it contradicted the biblical view of God's creation of humanity, but this doesn't mean that he himself was personally inclined toward such uses.
He was certainly aware that treating human beings as descended from animals was going to put him at odds with the Christian culture, but like most godless scientists he didn't envision anything destructive from that idea, he only anticipated that he would be ostracized for going against religion in the pursuit of what to his mind was scientific truth. He expected resistance out of religious bigotry, which is the usual stance of science against religion.
But that his ideas could justify racist murder? I really don't think so. He had the prevailing attitude: Science is good, you see, it's truth, it's enlightenment, and the more of that the better for all of us. Opponents are simply narrow-minded and tradition-bound opposers of the noble enterprise of discovering Truth. Murder? No.
Anyway, The Origin of Species promoted no ideas that could be called racist, although the theory of natural selection does carry implications that a racist mentality could twist to their purposes by applying it to human beings, and the idea of evolution does apply it to human beings, just not in The Origin of Species. In the context of that book, which doesn't even mention human beings but deals only with animals -- finches, turtles, bats, horses, pigeons -- the subtitle "preservation of favored races" --another way of saying "natural selection" --refers to breeds of animals, and to get all indignant over the word "races" in that phrase is simply to demonstrate ignorance of how a naturalist would use terms in those days. He COULD have used the word "breeds" because that is exactly what he meant by the word "races" -- would that get anyone worked up about racism in the theory?
Here is Webster's 1828 Dictionary (that's Noah Webster, a strong Christian) on
RACE
And there are some more directly racist ideas in Darwin's next book The Descent of Man. Since I haven't read that book I would only have supposed that there could be such implications because of the context of applying natural selection to human beings, but in fact he does express a racist view of the sort that must have been prevalent in his time:
Here is an online copy of Darwin's Descent of Man of 1871. And the following is from Chapter Six of that book, On the Affinities and Geneaology of Man.
But note how he is discussing this: He is not presenting some new idea here but clearly referring to a concept that he assumes his readers would readily recognize and agree to. The idea of "savage races," the idea of a big gap or difference between "civilised" man and other races he clearly regards as inferior, are being used as if they were well known, as no doubt they were. There is clearly an idea of higher and lower, better and worse, implied here, but not as something Darwin himself invented. He refers to the racial group "Caucasian" as superior to others, particularly the "negro," implying that all the usual categories of human races were clearly already established in the public mind of the time.
Again, Darwin did not invent these. He is referring to them as if they were accepted facts in his day.
The idea of evolution was itself also not new in Darwin's time, so the idea of human relatedness to the apes was not invented by him either.
What Darwin did was try to put these already-accepted ideas on a scientific footing, to explain how one "species" could have "evolved" into another -- "scientifically." That's what his whole theory is about. He came up with the idea of natural selection as the necessary mechanism to explain this. And he wasn't the only one: Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the same idea at the same time. And I thought this statement from a page on that site where the author tries to answer wrong ideas about Wallace was interesting:
Back to the racist comment in Darwin's Descent of Man, one thing that is clear about the theory of evolution is that the idea of progress, of more "highly evolved" and less highly evolved races, of superior and inferior, better and worse, was clearly implicit in it, and this notion was reinforced by the idea of natural selection which implies that all "races" are in differing stages of evolution. Though it is often denied now, it does encourage classifying different races as superior and inferior. This was in Darwin's mind, as well as his readers' minds, and all those who already held to a belief in evolution and were ready wholeheartedly to embrace the theory that supposedly explained what they already thought anyway.
Today defenders of evolution often go out of their way to insist that as a scientific theory it does not imply progress, that the changes that take place biologically that supposedly lead to the formation of new species, occur only in relation to the neutral standard of what promotes survival and reproduction. This idea is in Darwin's writing too, and yet we find him discussing human race in the above quote in clear terms of superior and inferior.
Evolutionists today try to erase the whole idea of race from their thinking on the basis of the theory's referring only to neutral changes, but you CAN'T erase this concept from the theory because the whole thing depends on an idea of biological changes forming new groups or races as the stepping stones of evolution itself. I guess you can try to deny the idea of progress in a blind biological system, but you can't deny that the idea of progress was inherent in the original thinking about evolution.
However that is all to be finally sorted out, it ought to be clear from that quote that Darwin himself did give at least some cause for the racist doctrines that based themselves on his theory, did give cause to Hitler, did give cause to Sanger, although he himself might have deplored what they made of his remarks had he known about them.
True, he doesn't deplore the possibility of the extermination of the "lesser" races, he treats it as a "scientific" inevitability that the higher will ultimately replace the lower. Perhaps the real evil of such a theory is that it allows for such cold "neutral" or "objective" assessments of human beings. This cold way of reckoning justifies abortion too: It's not really a human being, or if it is, human beings are just animals anyway, or an unborn infant is less than human just because it's not yet fully formed, so it's not really murder, and so on and so forth. Hitler therefore wasn't committing murder, he was merely ridding the world of "vermin," a good and noble deed from that twisted perspective.
It's interesting, as an aside, that in Darwin's frame of reference it was the "negro" who was lower -- a term which no doubt included all the "savage races" and primitive tribes that had been encountered by Europeans over the previous centuries as they extended their explorations to all parts of the world -- but Hitler didn't go after the black races (though Margaret Sanger did), Hitler set himself to rid the world of Jews, an obviously successful and civilized "race," which on Darwin's scheme should put them in the more highly evolved category, and Slavs, who are Caucasians and therefore also in the highly evolved category, according to Darwinian racialism which again was really the standard racism of his day. Hitler obviously had his own "Darwinian" theory to serve his own purposes. How much responsibility for THAT should be put at Darwin's doorstep?
I think Darwin was a pawn of the philosophical leaders of his day, men including Thomas Huxley for instance, who aggressively promoted his theory. As far as his own beliefs go he was a typical representative of the "enlightened" thinkers of his time. If it hadn't been his version of natural selection that became the justification for the evolutionism that was already accepted by the "enlightened" ones, it would have been Alfred Russel Wallace's, just another misguided godless scientist. The 19th Century brought all the evils of the Enlightenment to a critical mass, the elimination of God for starters, followed by the works of Rationalism which in that intensified form could only express the fallenness of human nature to the horrific level of Nazism -- and it still isn't over, there's more and even worse evil to come unless we turn back to God.
So now I suppose I've only compounded my sins in the eyes of my Christian critics. Back to reading George Watson, good for the soul.
There's still more to say on this subject. In a nutshell, DarwinISM has had a horrifically evil influence in this world, and I've remarked on this many times, but that doesn't mean that Darwin himself intended any of those effects, and he most certainly didn't.
It is well documented, though probably not as well known as it should be, that the murderous racist philosophies of Hitler and others such as Margaret Sanger, took their inspiration from Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Believers in evolution try to deny that, but Christians at least ought to be well informed of it.
I still believe that none of that derived from Darwin's own personal attitudes, only from his theory, whose deadly inhumane implications he hadn't foreseen. He was a man who had rejected belief in God and set himself to pursue a scientific ambition that he knew was contrary to Christian teaching, which is actually a very common story in the times in which he lived, which was a time in which "science" was supplanting the Christian religion in England and in fact the west in general. That alone is enough to account for his coming up with a theory that could be put to all kinds of destructive uses, and particularly because it contradicted the biblical view of God's creation of humanity, but this doesn't mean that he himself was personally inclined toward such uses.
He was certainly aware that treating human beings as descended from animals was going to put him at odds with the Christian culture, but like most godless scientists he didn't envision anything destructive from that idea, he only anticipated that he would be ostracized for going against religion in the pursuit of what to his mind was scientific truth. He expected resistance out of religious bigotry, which is the usual stance of science against religion.
But that his ideas could justify racist murder? I really don't think so. He had the prevailing attitude: Science is good, you see, it's truth, it's enlightenment, and the more of that the better for all of us. Opponents are simply narrow-minded and tradition-bound opposers of the noble enterprise of discovering Truth. Murder? No.
Anyway, The Origin of Species promoted no ideas that could be called racist, although the theory of natural selection does carry implications that a racist mentality could twist to their purposes by applying it to human beings, and the idea of evolution does apply it to human beings, just not in The Origin of Species. In the context of that book, which doesn't even mention human beings but deals only with animals -- finches, turtles, bats, horses, pigeons -- the subtitle "preservation of favored races" --another way of saying "natural selection" --refers to breeds of animals, and to get all indignant over the word "races" in that phrase is simply to demonstrate ignorance of how a naturalist would use terms in those days. He COULD have used the word "breeds" because that is exactly what he meant by the word "races" -- would that get anyone worked up about racism in the theory?
Here is Webster's 1828 Dictionary (that's Noah Webster, a strong Christian) on
RACE
[L. radix and radius having the same original. This word coincides in origin with rod, ray, radiate]
1. The lineage of a family, or continued series of descendants from a parent who is called the stock. A race is the series of descendants indefinitely. Thus all mankind are called the race of Adam; the Israelites are of the race of Abraham and Jacob. Thus we speak of a race of kings, the race of Clovis or Charlemagne; a race of nobles, Hence the long race of Alban fathers come.
2. A generation; a family of descendants. A race of youthful and unhandled colts.
3. A particular breed; as a race of mules; a race of horses; a race of sheep.Yes, again, if the idea of race in the sense of breed is applied to human beings as if we are merely animals, which is of course what Darwin does when he gets to that subject in his next book, then it can become a basis for all kinds of racist thinking.
And there are some more directly racist ideas in Darwin's next book The Descent of Man. Since I haven't read that book I would only have supposed that there could be such implications because of the context of applying natural selection to human beings, but in fact he does express a racist view of the sort that must have been prevalent in his time:
Here is an online copy of Darwin's Descent of Man of 1871. And the following is from Chapter Six of that book, On the Affinities and Geneaology of Man.
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated.So here we do have racist ideas in connection with Darwin's theory. The "Australian" is the aborigine of that continent, which he identifies as a "negro."
The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." [Descent of Man, Chapter 6 ]
But note how he is discussing this: He is not presenting some new idea here but clearly referring to a concept that he assumes his readers would readily recognize and agree to. The idea of "savage races," the idea of a big gap or difference between "civilised" man and other races he clearly regards as inferior, are being used as if they were well known, as no doubt they were. There is clearly an idea of higher and lower, better and worse, implied here, but not as something Darwin himself invented. He refers to the racial group "Caucasian" as superior to others, particularly the "negro," implying that all the usual categories of human races were clearly already established in the public mind of the time.
Again, Darwin did not invent these. He is referring to them as if they were accepted facts in his day.
The idea of evolution was itself also not new in Darwin's time, so the idea of human relatedness to the apes was not invented by him either.
What Darwin did was try to put these already-accepted ideas on a scientific footing, to explain how one "species" could have "evolved" into another -- "scientifically." That's what his whole theory is about. He came up with the idea of natural selection as the necessary mechanism to explain this. And he wasn't the only one: Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the same idea at the same time. And I thought this statement from a page on that site where the author tries to answer wrong ideas about Wallace was interesting:
Wallace did not coin the phrase "survival of the fittest"--Herbert Spencer did. It was Wallace, however, who suggested that Darwin use the phrase as a means of conveying the basic idea of natural selection to nonspecialist readers.So "survival of the fittest" was not invented by either Darwin or Wallace but made use of because they thought it might get more difficult concepts across to nonscientists. Unfortunately the term only succeeded in confusing the subject even more.
Back to the racist comment in Darwin's Descent of Man, one thing that is clear about the theory of evolution is that the idea of progress, of more "highly evolved" and less highly evolved races, of superior and inferior, better and worse, was clearly implicit in it, and this notion was reinforced by the idea of natural selection which implies that all "races" are in differing stages of evolution. Though it is often denied now, it does encourage classifying different races as superior and inferior. This was in Darwin's mind, as well as his readers' minds, and all those who already held to a belief in evolution and were ready wholeheartedly to embrace the theory that supposedly explained what they already thought anyway.
Today defenders of evolution often go out of their way to insist that as a scientific theory it does not imply progress, that the changes that take place biologically that supposedly lead to the formation of new species, occur only in relation to the neutral standard of what promotes survival and reproduction. This idea is in Darwin's writing too, and yet we find him discussing human race in the above quote in clear terms of superior and inferior.
Evolutionists today try to erase the whole idea of race from their thinking on the basis of the theory's referring only to neutral changes, but you CAN'T erase this concept from the theory because the whole thing depends on an idea of biological changes forming new groups or races as the stepping stones of evolution itself. I guess you can try to deny the idea of progress in a blind biological system, but you can't deny that the idea of progress was inherent in the original thinking about evolution.
However that is all to be finally sorted out, it ought to be clear from that quote that Darwin himself did give at least some cause for the racist doctrines that based themselves on his theory, did give cause to Hitler, did give cause to Sanger, although he himself might have deplored what they made of his remarks had he known about them.
True, he doesn't deplore the possibility of the extermination of the "lesser" races, he treats it as a "scientific" inevitability that the higher will ultimately replace the lower. Perhaps the real evil of such a theory is that it allows for such cold "neutral" or "objective" assessments of human beings. This cold way of reckoning justifies abortion too: It's not really a human being, or if it is, human beings are just animals anyway, or an unborn infant is less than human just because it's not yet fully formed, so it's not really murder, and so on and so forth. Hitler therefore wasn't committing murder, he was merely ridding the world of "vermin," a good and noble deed from that twisted perspective.
It's interesting, as an aside, that in Darwin's frame of reference it was the "negro" who was lower -- a term which no doubt included all the "savage races" and primitive tribes that had been encountered by Europeans over the previous centuries as they extended their explorations to all parts of the world -- but Hitler didn't go after the black races (though Margaret Sanger did), Hitler set himself to rid the world of Jews, an obviously successful and civilized "race," which on Darwin's scheme should put them in the more highly evolved category, and Slavs, who are Caucasians and therefore also in the highly evolved category, according to Darwinian racialism which again was really the standard racism of his day. Hitler obviously had his own "Darwinian" theory to serve his own purposes. How much responsibility for THAT should be put at Darwin's doorstep?
I think Darwin was a pawn of the philosophical leaders of his day, men including Thomas Huxley for instance, who aggressively promoted his theory. As far as his own beliefs go he was a typical representative of the "enlightened" thinkers of his time. If it hadn't been his version of natural selection that became the justification for the evolutionism that was already accepted by the "enlightened" ones, it would have been Alfred Russel Wallace's, just another misguided godless scientist. The 19th Century brought all the evils of the Enlightenment to a critical mass, the elimination of God for starters, followed by the works of Rationalism which in that intensified form could only express the fallenness of human nature to the horrific level of Nazism -- and it still isn't over, there's more and even worse evil to come unless we turn back to God.
So now I suppose I've only compounded my sins in the eyes of my Christian critics. Back to reading George Watson, good for the soul.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Morality without God
Somebody has started a new thread at EvC on the subject of Morality without God, and of course because morality IS compromised without God he doesn't even capitalize the word "God."
In a way this is funny. The originator of the thread writes some of the most obnoxious obscene stuff at EvC, and in general such "freedom of expression" is allowed there. HIS morality sure is intact. Laws against public indecency,obscenity and profanity in the west did derive from our former Christian mindset and are still just barely applied and not to the kind of language you encounter at a place like EvC. But THAT's not immoral is it?
No, because mainly the way morality continues without God is by redefining what's right and wrong. What used to be good is now evil, what used to be evil is now good. Oh not totally. Yet.
Yes, there is conscience and yes there are social restraints, all quite true, or the human race couldn't have survived as long as it has.
But our once-Christian societies have drastically deteriorated morally over the last few decades and this IS because God has been banished.
To the mentality at EvC all kinds of former moral standards simply are no longer standards: It isn't a problem to them I'm sure that so many don't bother to marry these days but live together with the expectation that it can be a temporary arrangement; even have children under those circumstances as if it were all quite acceptable; that fornication is not regarded as a sin but is freely exercised probably by a majority these days; that adultery is only slightly restrained by the fact that it hurts somebody, usually meaning it's done in secret; that divorce is easy upon demand (God hates divorce); that homosexual sex is no longer a sin but in fact regarded as normal and even as deserving to be treated like a heterosexual union, even paraded in the public square. But no, there hasn't been any deterioration of morality since God was thrown out of our public life.
People are less concerned about financial fraud when they have rejected the idea of God, less concerned about any form of cheating, from school exams to taxes, about lying, about getting away with anything.
It's considered some sort of crime these days to punish any class of criminals with the death penalty and God is subjected to accusations of immorality Himself for exacting capital punishment as reported in the Bible.
Abortion is regarded as a right rather than as murder, socially sanctioned murder, legally sanctioned murder. It's OK to murder one person to save another, such as stem cell research on dead infants, in fact it's demanded in tones of moral indignation. But we don't need God to be moral.
All this has resulted from the "death of God" in western society. Really, we've sunk even lower than the pagan societies.
Should also point out that Darwinism WAS made the philosophy that justified mass murder under Nazism, and by the founder of Planned Parenthood whose motive for promoting abortion was to rid society of people she considered to be "unfit" according to her way of construing Darwin, which meant the black race. Darwin's theory in itself promoted no such views,* but since the theory of evolution was an aggressive attack on Biblical standards, making human beings into mere animals, it did give license to such racist murdering ideas.
The idea that we're just as moral without God is a black joke, but I'm sure even after reading this they'd still admire today's godless morality. They just consider God's morality to be wrong and their own to be right. Funny how that works.
Much more could be said.
===================================
*At least not in Origin of Species, although I'm now aware that in the Descent of Man there are racist implications, which I'll post on soon.
Often one hears from the religious side that one cannot have morals without god or holy scriptures, and they seem to be baffled how you just dont run around killing people torturing them and whatnot.Two things are true about this subject: Without God -- by which I mean the true God not the gods of paganism such as in ancient Rome -- 1) we still have a conscience because morality is built into us, and 2) at the same time we are far less moral than if we acknowledge God. (His remark about ancient Israel is some kind of monstrous lie, where did he get it?)
Morality is a part of us a part is imbeaded in our genes, a pack of wolves does not eat and kill each other because its counter-productive to their society.
And a part of it is learned from our social interactions when we are children and it evolves as we grow up. If we where to grow up in ancient Rome we would find it perfectly socaly acceptable that people are killing each other in an arena for our enjoyment, or if we grew up in an ancient Israel tribe we would find it perfectly acceptable to beat a slave to an inch of his life, our behaviour in that instance would also be religiously and morally idealised, as we where adhering to the rules of our religion.
In a way this is funny. The originator of the thread writes some of the most obnoxious obscene stuff at EvC, and in general such "freedom of expression" is allowed there. HIS morality sure is intact. Laws against public indecency,obscenity and profanity in the west did derive from our former Christian mindset and are still just barely applied and not to the kind of language you encounter at a place like EvC. But THAT's not immoral is it?
No, because mainly the way morality continues without God is by redefining what's right and wrong. What used to be good is now evil, what used to be evil is now good. Oh not totally. Yet.
Yes, there is conscience and yes there are social restraints, all quite true, or the human race couldn't have survived as long as it has.
But our once-Christian societies have drastically deteriorated morally over the last few decades and this IS because God has been banished.
To the mentality at EvC all kinds of former moral standards simply are no longer standards: It isn't a problem to them I'm sure that so many don't bother to marry these days but live together with the expectation that it can be a temporary arrangement; even have children under those circumstances as if it were all quite acceptable; that fornication is not regarded as a sin but is freely exercised probably by a majority these days; that adultery is only slightly restrained by the fact that it hurts somebody, usually meaning it's done in secret; that divorce is easy upon demand (God hates divorce); that homosexual sex is no longer a sin but in fact regarded as normal and even as deserving to be treated like a heterosexual union, even paraded in the public square. But no, there hasn't been any deterioration of morality since God was thrown out of our public life.
People are less concerned about financial fraud when they have rejected the idea of God, less concerned about any form of cheating, from school exams to taxes, about lying, about getting away with anything.
It's considered some sort of crime these days to punish any class of criminals with the death penalty and God is subjected to accusations of immorality Himself for exacting capital punishment as reported in the Bible.
Abortion is regarded as a right rather than as murder, socially sanctioned murder, legally sanctioned murder. It's OK to murder one person to save another, such as stem cell research on dead infants, in fact it's demanded in tones of moral indignation. But we don't need God to be moral.
All this has resulted from the "death of God" in western society. Really, we've sunk even lower than the pagan societies.
Should also point out that Darwinism WAS made the philosophy that justified mass murder under Nazism, and by the founder of Planned Parenthood whose motive for promoting abortion was to rid society of people she considered to be "unfit" according to her way of construing Darwin, which meant the black race. Darwin's theory in itself promoted no such views,* but since the theory of evolution was an aggressive attack on Biblical standards, making human beings into mere animals, it did give license to such racist murdering ideas.
The idea that we're just as moral without God is a black joke, but I'm sure even after reading this they'd still admire today's godless morality. They just consider God's morality to be wrong and their own to be right. Funny how that works.
Much more could be said.
===================================
*At least not in Origin of Species, although I'm now aware that in the Descent of Man there are racist implications, which I'll post on soon.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
The Hitler-Darwin connection continues to be confused
I don't know how Chris Pinto has managed to so completely misread my remarks to him but judging from today's radio show it's so extreme I may have no hope of ever straightening it out.
I'll try it yet one more time and then just do my best to forget about it.
I did NOT say anything to imply that I don't agree that Hitler built his racist doctrines on Darwinism, I have repeatedly said that I know he did. And all the references Chris makes on this program sound very valuable, but none of them deals with the specific remark I made.
If Hitler built his doctrines on Darwin's idea of "race" it was on a MISREADING of that idea, apparently in the same way Chris Pinto is misreading it.
Again, as I said in the previous post, the reduction of humanity to animals is sufficient excuse for it, but ALL I've focussed on is Chris Pinto's specifically misunderstanding the title to Darwin's book, nothing else. The "preservation of favored races" did NOT mean the same thing to Darwin that it means to Chris Pinto, or to Hitler either.
This does NOT mean that Nazism did not make use of Darwinism, and I never said otherwise. I certainly did NOT say THAT is an embarrassment to the Church that such views are held.
ALL I SAID WAS THAT Darwin himself did not use "race" the way Pinto and Hitler and Sanger read it, Darwin himself did not understand "favored race" the way Hitler and the others did, and did not understand "fittest" the way the others are reading him. Darwin's frame of reference was NATURALISM, or biology, he was using those terms strictly in the scientific sense of his day.
I explained all this on the previous post more thoroughly, I'm merely outlining it here.
AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN: to say this does not mean that Darwinism did NOT form the foundation of Nazism. OF COURSE IT DID. But it wasn't DARWIN's idea of "race" that did so.
Now if I'm still being misunderstood so be it, I'll just bow out of all discussion on the subject and leave the whole thing to the Lord.
Here's what I wrote on his comments page, edited to clean up my mistyping:
Too bad, I was trying to be helpful, and I've SO appreciated Chris Pinto's stuff. Now it's going to have a poisoned atmosphere about it, can't be helped although I'll try not to let it get to me. I've heard he's also now siding with the critics of The Harbinger too.
Oh well, I guess the Lord doesn't want me to be understood for some reason.
I'll try it yet one more time and then just do my best to forget about it.
I did NOT say anything to imply that I don't agree that Hitler built his racist doctrines on Darwinism, I have repeatedly said that I know he did. And all the references Chris makes on this program sound very valuable, but none of them deals with the specific remark I made.
If Hitler built his doctrines on Darwin's idea of "race" it was on a MISREADING of that idea, apparently in the same way Chris Pinto is misreading it.
Again, as I said in the previous post, the reduction of humanity to animals is sufficient excuse for it, but ALL I've focussed on is Chris Pinto's specifically misunderstanding the title to Darwin's book, nothing else. The "preservation of favored races" did NOT mean the same thing to Darwin that it means to Chris Pinto, or to Hitler either.
This does NOT mean that Nazism did not make use of Darwinism, and I never said otherwise. I certainly did NOT say THAT is an embarrassment to the Church that such views are held.
ALL I SAID WAS THAT Darwin himself did not use "race" the way Pinto and Hitler and Sanger read it, Darwin himself did not understand "favored race" the way Hitler and the others did, and did not understand "fittest" the way the others are reading him. Darwin's frame of reference was NATURALISM, or biology, he was using those terms strictly in the scientific sense of his day.
I explained all this on the previous post more thoroughly, I'm merely outlining it here.
AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN: to say this does not mean that Darwinism did NOT form the foundation of Nazism. OF COURSE IT DID. But it wasn't DARWIN's idea of "race" that did so.
Now if I'm still being misunderstood so be it, I'll just bow out of all discussion on the subject and leave the whole thing to the Lord.
Here's what I wrote on his comments page, edited to clean up my mistyping:
I have NOT denied the connection between Darwinism and Hitler, EVER. You are NOT disagreeing with what I said because you have not yet grasped what I said.
I said ONE thing and ONE THING ONLY: I said that you MISREAD that one line about the preservation of favored races as Darwin was using those words.
That's ALL I said. And that sort of misreading DOES make you look foolish.That remark about the Catholic who I studiously avoided responding to is really low of you, Chris. But you're wrong about that too.
If you still misunderstand that's too bad, I'll have a bout of high blood pressure and get over it.
Also, the Catholic has not agreed with me, he simply appreciated my fairmindedness in pointing out a misreading of Darwin's title.
This is really upsetting but I'll try not to be upset.
No you aren't being unkind you're just wrong, about me and about the Catholic and about the whole mess.
Too bad, I was trying to be helpful, and I've SO appreciated Chris Pinto's stuff. Now it's going to have a poisoned atmosphere about it, can't be helped although I'll try not to let it get to me. I've heard he's also now siding with the critics of The Harbinger too.
Oh well, I guess the Lord doesn't want me to be understood for some reason.
Darwin and Hitler: Blame where blame is due but don't overdo it
No good deed goes unpunished, said some wag. Oh well.
Chris Pinto's radio shows have been a very inspiring resource for me for months now, mostly on the historical role of Rome and the Jesuits in plots to undermine the Protestant Reformation.
A couple days ago on his show he addressed the racism promoted by the theory of evolution, something I've written on myself at times, but in this case he quoted the subtitle of Darwin's Origin of Species as if it actively promotes racism, which it doesn't. The original complete title of his book was
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
Because "race" in common language today, and even in Darwin's day, usually refers only to human beings, and often implies racist attitudes, Chris read this title to be racist as if Darwin himself had promoted the racist doctrines that used the theory of evolution to justify them.
Make no mistake, evolutionism WAS used for that purpose, but this was based on a misrepresentation of the theory, a straw man version of the theory which had nothing to do with Darwin's strictly naturalistic or biological thinking in the Origin.
Perhaps Sanger misread that same subtitle, and Hitler too and others, and took off on their own projects to rid the world of the "unfit" on the basis of their absurd misreading of Darwin's work. Darwin's notion of "fitness" was not their idea of "fitness" and his use of "race" had nothing to do with their racist notions.
As he used those terms, "race" was simply another word for "breed" or "species" or "variety," as in a "race of penguins" or a "race of sweet peas," and the idea that a "race" could be "favored" referred only to the circumstances of inherent qualities and environmental conditions that made it possible for a living creature to thrive and reproduce. This was the basis for his observation of natural selection, the fact that life conditions may favor one kind of creature over another. Those "races" that thrive and reproduce in healthy numbers are the "favored races" and are the "fittest" in the "struggle for life."
This has NOTHING to do with racism. Obviously. Mice and cockroaches thrive and reproduce quite well in their environmental niches, better than the nobler tiger no doubt. Another confusion that has lions as more "fit" than zebras because lions prey on zebras also misses the same point: Zebras survive and reproduce quite well in spite of the lions. Which creature does better at these standards of "fitness" I have no idea but it COULD be the zebras.
Again, the Darwinian use of these terms has NOTHING to do with racism.
Certainly the theory of evolution itself does unfortunately lend itself to the brutal racist thinking of Hitler and Sanger, by two of its tenets: 1) by reducing human beings to mere animals, and 2) by the implication that if all life is evolving from lower to higher (which is also a misreading of Darwin although it's not necessarily an irrational conclusion) then all living things including human beings are in different stages of evolving, and Hitler and friends felt quite free to decide who is more evolved than whom and seek to eliminate the less "fit" --SO much less "fit" by their absurd definition that they could call them "vermin" and dispose of them as vermin are disposed of. All for the sake of improving the human race and life on this planet. Yes, this kind of thinking DID have quite a bit of influence at one time, and it WAS attributed to Darwinism. Apparently even Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, or "My Struggle" took off from Darwin's title about the "struggle for life."
Pinto is quite right about all those historical derivations from the idea of evolution, but he misread Darwin's title apparently in the same way Hitler and Sanger did, and what bothered me most about that was that it makes Christians look foolish.
So I wrote a comment at Chris Pinto's site hoping to correct his misunderstanding. What happened is that I got preached at by others there for supposedly defending the infidel Darwin against the truths of Christ, and didn't succeed in persuading Pinto either, who actually referred to my comment on his next radio show, Darwin and Hitler, as most likely the result of my having been influenced by godless evolutionists to defend Darwin from the charge of racism.
I wasn't going to bring it up here until it seemed to me that his description of the show needed to be answered:
And by the way, the idea that we're all evolving from lower to higher is still alive and well in the New Age movement, where even there they are willing to propose the elimination of those they consider to be less "evolved" than themselves. Often Christians are regarded as the inferiors in their system. We hold to this ancient tradition you see, while they have transcended all such inferior views and have been enlightened by the channeled teachings of "higher" beings in this universe. Which Christians know as demons and their doctrines, but try telling them that.
Anyway, all this racist stupidity is WRONGLY attributed to Darwin himself. It probably never even occurred to him that his ponderings about natural selection could be misused in such ways. I suspect he was -- rightly -- more worried about how people were going to pounce on him for reducing human beings to animals. I see torment in his face in the most familiar portrait of him. It's sad when a brilliant man lives and dies without Christ. There's no need to make him guiltier than he was.
Chris Pinto's radio shows have been a very inspiring resource for me for months now, mostly on the historical role of Rome and the Jesuits in plots to undermine the Protestant Reformation.
A couple days ago on his show he addressed the racism promoted by the theory of evolution, something I've written on myself at times, but in this case he quoted the subtitle of Darwin's Origin of Species as if it actively promotes racism, which it doesn't. The original complete title of his book was
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
Because "race" in common language today, and even in Darwin's day, usually refers only to human beings, and often implies racist attitudes, Chris read this title to be racist as if Darwin himself had promoted the racist doctrines that used the theory of evolution to justify them.
Make no mistake, evolutionism WAS used for that purpose, but this was based on a misrepresentation of the theory, a straw man version of the theory which had nothing to do with Darwin's strictly naturalistic or biological thinking in the Origin.
Perhaps Sanger misread that same subtitle, and Hitler too and others, and took off on their own projects to rid the world of the "unfit" on the basis of their absurd misreading of Darwin's work. Darwin's notion of "fitness" was not their idea of "fitness" and his use of "race" had nothing to do with their racist notions.
As he used those terms, "race" was simply another word for "breed" or "species" or "variety," as in a "race of penguins" or a "race of sweet peas," and the idea that a "race" could be "favored" referred only to the circumstances of inherent qualities and environmental conditions that made it possible for a living creature to thrive and reproduce. This was the basis for his observation of natural selection, the fact that life conditions may favor one kind of creature over another. Those "races" that thrive and reproduce in healthy numbers are the "favored races" and are the "fittest" in the "struggle for life."
This has NOTHING to do with racism. Obviously. Mice and cockroaches thrive and reproduce quite well in their environmental niches, better than the nobler tiger no doubt. Another confusion that has lions as more "fit" than zebras because lions prey on zebras also misses the same point: Zebras survive and reproduce quite well in spite of the lions. Which creature does better at these standards of "fitness" I have no idea but it COULD be the zebras.
Again, the Darwinian use of these terms has NOTHING to do with racism.
Certainly the theory of evolution itself does unfortunately lend itself to the brutal racist thinking of Hitler and Sanger, by two of its tenets: 1) by reducing human beings to mere animals, and 2) by the implication that if all life is evolving from lower to higher (which is also a misreading of Darwin although it's not necessarily an irrational conclusion) then all living things including human beings are in different stages of evolving, and Hitler and friends felt quite free to decide who is more evolved than whom and seek to eliminate the less "fit" --SO much less "fit" by their absurd definition that they could call them "vermin" and dispose of them as vermin are disposed of. All for the sake of improving the human race and life on this planet. Yes, this kind of thinking DID have quite a bit of influence at one time, and it WAS attributed to Darwinism. Apparently even Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, or "My Struggle" took off from Darwin's title about the "struggle for life."
Pinto is quite right about all those historical derivations from the idea of evolution, but he misread Darwin's title apparently in the same way Hitler and Sanger did, and what bothered me most about that was that it makes Christians look foolish.
So I wrote a comment at Chris Pinto's site hoping to correct his misunderstanding. What happened is that I got preached at by others there for supposedly defending the infidel Darwin against the truths of Christ, and didn't succeed in persuading Pinto either, who actually referred to my comment on his next radio show, Darwin and Hitler, as most likely the result of my having been influenced by godless evolutionists to defend Darwin from the charge of racism.
I wasn't going to bring it up here until it seemed to me that his description of the show needed to be answered:
Chris discusses the controversy over the influence of evolutionary teaching in the Nazi movement of the 1930's and 40's. Today, many evolutionists have tried to deny the connection, and insist that Darwin's theory is not "the science of racism" as many have said. But what does the record of history tell us?Well, the record of history tells us that evolutionism was certainly made the excuse for horrific mass murder in the early part of the 20th century, and as I say above, not without justification as it reduced human beings to mere animals rather than creatures made in the image of God, and contributed to the rejection of biblical standards so that they could do this without feeling the bite of God's Law on their conscience.
And by the way, the idea that we're all evolving from lower to higher is still alive and well in the New Age movement, where even there they are willing to propose the elimination of those they consider to be less "evolved" than themselves. Often Christians are regarded as the inferiors in their system. We hold to this ancient tradition you see, while they have transcended all such inferior views and have been enlightened by the channeled teachings of "higher" beings in this universe. Which Christians know as demons and their doctrines, but try telling them that.
Anyway, all this racist stupidity is WRONGLY attributed to Darwin himself. It probably never even occurred to him that his ponderings about natural selection could be misused in such ways. I suspect he was -- rightly -- more worried about how people were going to pounce on him for reducing human beings to animals. I see torment in his face in the most familiar portrait of him. It's sad when a brilliant man lives and dies without Christ. There's no need to make him guiltier than he was.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Faith and Proof
Prejudiced definition of "faith" given by a poster at EvC where of course it suits their other prejudices:
The EvC-favored definition makes it appear that there are no grounds whatever for putting faith in anything, it's a totally irrational process.
But it's not necessarily irrational to be persuaded to belief in something by someone who impresses you as credible and trustworthy and that's how most of us come to faith in Christ and in Biblical revelation. As Webster says in his last sentence, this is like believing in the reality of any historical person: you trust the written witnesses to their existence.
We don't believe because of the credibility of the story, which has just about zero credibility in and of itself. God in human flesh? Virgin birth? Miraculous healings? The parting of the Red Sea? Appearances of angels? The resurrection from the dead? Hardly. You have to have been a witness yourself to such things to believe them or you have to find those who did witness such things believable.
Some have excluded themselves from belief in the Bible because of a prejudice against the supernatural on the one hand, and an irrational belief in evolution on the other, deluded that they have "proof" though it's no less mere persuasion by what they regard as credible witnesses than belief in the Bible is.
Faith = firm belief in something for which there is no proofThat's a definition he says he got from Webster's. Well, certainly not from THE Webster's, the one written by Webster himself, here from the 1828 edition:
FAITH, n. ...1. Belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting on his authority and veracity, without other evidence; the judgment that what another states or testifies is the truth. I have strong faith or no faith in the testimony of a witness, or in what a historian narrates.
2. The assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition advanced by another; belief, or probable evidence of any kind.
3. In theology, the assent of the mind or understanding to the truth of what God has revealed. Simple belief of the scriptures, of the being and perfections of God, and of the existence, character and doctrines of Christ, founded on the testimony of the sacred writers, is called historical or speculative faith; a faith little distinguished from the belief of the existence and achievements of Alexander or of Cesar.
The EvC-favored definition makes it appear that there are no grounds whatever for putting faith in anything, it's a totally irrational process.
But it's not necessarily irrational to be persuaded to belief in something by someone who impresses you as credible and trustworthy and that's how most of us come to faith in Christ and in Biblical revelation. As Webster says in his last sentence, this is like believing in the reality of any historical person: you trust the written witnesses to their existence.
We don't believe because of the credibility of the story, which has just about zero credibility in and of itself. God in human flesh? Virgin birth? Miraculous healings? The parting of the Red Sea? Appearances of angels? The resurrection from the dead? Hardly. You have to have been a witness yourself to such things to believe them or you have to find those who did witness such things believable.
Some have excluded themselves from belief in the Bible because of a prejudice against the supernatural on the one hand, and an irrational belief in evolution on the other, deluded that they have "proof" though it's no less mere persuasion by what they regard as credible witnesses than belief in the Bible is.
Monday, October 8, 2012
The usual mindless assumption about unconformities
Dr. A. has the usual idiotic geological diagram of what supposedly creates unconformities in one of his recent posts.
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=675135.
It's of course all hypothetical because nobody has seen this happen, and it CAN'T happen. That is, the third picture down can't happen. You aren't going to get the curved rock to erode flat like that, not even as merely relatively flat as the picture shows. You'll get water runoff that erodes from high to low, exaggerating the vertical rather than smoothing it out, not sheets that erode flat. Which doesn't even happen when you start with a flat terrain. Not to mention that the difference in hardness between the layers will contribute further to a nonhorizontal result. The supposed flatness in ALL the geological diagrams of the creation of nonconformities SIMPLY CANNOT BE CAUSED BY EROSION.
As one of Lyell's illustrations demonstrated, which I posted on some time ago, what really happens is, yes, first Picture One, the laying down of the horizontal strata, though including the upper layers as illustrated in Picture Four as well -- all at once of course in the Flood, not according to Lyell but according to me -- but then Picture FOUR is what happens next, as the tectonic force pushes the lower layers laterally UNDERNEATH the upper layers that remain horizontal, eroding the contact between the two.
It's obvious to anyone who can really think scientifically.
[Oct 15] He follows this with a mind-numbingly obvious post about determining relative age from certain features, in a post titled Cross-Cutting Relationships. I suppose it has to be stated but does it need a separate post?
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=675135.
It's of course all hypothetical because nobody has seen this happen, and it CAN'T happen. That is, the third picture down can't happen. You aren't going to get the curved rock to erode flat like that, not even as merely relatively flat as the picture shows. You'll get water runoff that erodes from high to low, exaggerating the vertical rather than smoothing it out, not sheets that erode flat. Which doesn't even happen when you start with a flat terrain. Not to mention that the difference in hardness between the layers will contribute further to a nonhorizontal result. The supposed flatness in ALL the geological diagrams of the creation of nonconformities SIMPLY CANNOT BE CAUSED BY EROSION.
It's obvious to anyone who can really think scientifically.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Dr. A's Geology Course: Now approaching the Geological Column and its absurdities
Dr. A's Course in Geology has suddenly acquired four new posts, and they just happen to be on THE most controversial subjects for a creationist, of course, which I won't be able to get to for some time. All I can do for now is note their addresses, hoping to get back to them reasonably soon.
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=674613
The Principle of Faunal Succession
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=674764
Index Fossils
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=674991
The Geological Column
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=675135 Unconformities
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=674613
The Principle of Faunal Succession
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=674764
Index Fossils
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=674991
The Geological Column
http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=675135 Unconformities
Monday, October 1, 2012
A thread on coal deposits at EvC
I can't really follow this thread on coal deposits at EvC partly because the creationist speaks Russian and mangles English, but a couple posts caught my attention.
Post 65:
Then in Post 66, Dr. A raises the sort of issue I always want geologists to explain, that so far he hasn't in his Geology Course:
What needs to be answered is, "How do you know" that subsidence or uplift occurred in any given time period? That is: Please describe the actual phenomena that lead to that conclusion.
Post 65:
Dr. A says: But thin layers of coal are not. This is why the Ocean Drilling Project never finds any coal.Language problem and all, the guy is making the perfectly reasonable point, in defense of the Flood as the explanation for the coal layers, that we don't see peat beds (coal in formation) in the world right now that cover such a huge flat territory as would have to have been the case if coal formation WERE the result of the normal processes the evos assume.
Russian guy: Because these layers are tightened by tectonic conveyor into the mantle. Coal shall remain only on the continents.Dr. A, being disingenuous and refusing to understand what the guy is saying: Why? Is there some sort of probability theory relating to the size of peat swamps of which I was previously unaware?
So the guy explains: Reality is a such theory. Where in the modern world there are such large homogeneous marshes with perfectly flat terrain how on Donbass?
Then in Post 66, Dr. A raises the sort of issue I always want geologists to explain, that so far he hasn't in his Geology Course:
But that doesn't say what you think it does. It says that tectonic events caused subsidence in the Carboniferous, not uplift. And then "Subsequent subsidences ended with uplift during the Sakmarian" --- which is in the Permian (which is just where the diagram I showed you puts it). So if they are right, then the Carboniferous deposits are due to repeated episodes of subsidence caused by rifting, not by alternating episodes of uplift and subsidence.This is a typical INTERPRETATIVE statement that assumes Old Earth theory, that sees the strata in terms of millions of years of time and describes them as "landscapes."
What needs to be answered is, "How do you know" that subsidence or uplift occurred in any given time period? That is: Please describe the actual phenomena that lead to that conclusion.
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