Evolutionite censhorship at Baylor

Reality says that all of the supposed Christian atrocities against others are hugely overrated, and that history books offer nothing remotely comparable to the wars and ideology-based killing of the last hundred years unless you go back to Chengis Khan and even that is a stretch.

In particular in 1913, there had not been a major European war in 100 years and they didn't even have to think; all they needed to do was keep on with whatever they'd been doing for the past hundred years and they'd still be on top of the world now as they were then.

But we all know what actually happened, don't we?

Why are you covering for your commie loving Republican buddies gunga. WTO entrance for Communist China: under Bush administration
Preferred Nation Status for Communist China: under Bush Administration
$230+ Billion trade deficit with Communist China: under Bush Adminstration
Massive move of high technology and tons of jobs to Communist China: under Bush Administration

Gunga bravely hides under nearest rock and refuses response for two weeks.
What a man!

Gee, hm, maybe that has something to do with the fact that... Hm... Technology got better? There is a trend that you have failed to take into account. That the number of deaths involved in each conflict increases over the years. Now why is that? Hm, no, it can't possibly be because weapons got better!



Yes, right-wing nationalism, racism, politics, religion... Practically everything, except evolution. The First World War had nothing to do with evolution. The Second World War also had nothing to do with evolution.

You keep stating that Hitler was acting on evolutionary principles, but that's complete and utter bollocks.

Have you actually read Darwin's Origin of Species? The Theory never calls for the extermination of entire races. In fact, I'm on the Chapter on Hybridism right now. From what I'm reading, I'm getting the general jist that interspecies mingling can be vital for the propagation of new better species, better adapted to their environment. If anything, Evolution seems to advocate interracial relationships, not racism.

You don't seem to understand Evolution or history at all.

Eugenics is what Hitler practised, and is independent of Evolution. Eugenics is detrimental to the human race, according to Evolution, because eugenics decreases the gene pool, which decreases the ability of the human race to evolve and therefore survive. Eugenecists would have you believe that what they do is improving our species' fitness, but their criteria for bad gene is arbitrary and only based on present circumstances. What may be a bad gene today might be a good gene tomorrow or might even be a good gene today.

And as for Stalin?

He rejected the ideas of August Weismann, a 19th-century German biologist, in favor of Trofim Lysenko, a pseudoscientist who based his ideas on Lamarckism. Weismann, who accepted Darwin's theory of evolution, disproved Lamarckism and proposed that germ cells pass on hereditary information; his work was an early variant of the modern evolutionary synthesis which unites evolutionary theory with genetics. Stalin appointed Lysenko head of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union, where he had great political power.

Stalin and Lysenko rejected evolution and genetics for ideological, not biological, reasons. (Stalin was quite ignorant of science in general.) The class struggle of Marxism contradicts the individual competition implied by natural selection. More importantly, genetics, implying that traits were fixed at birth, contradicted the ideal of moulding and improving traits. Stalin proclaimed genetics a capitalist pseudo-science.

Racism has no place in Evolution. That you fail to see this is either a testament to your stupidity or your unwillingness to see the trees from the forest.

Hitler didn't have any Christian beliefs. Lip service yes, but not beliefs.

From Sir Arthur Keith's Evolution and Ethics:






Chapter 3

The Behavior of Germany Considered from an Evolutionary Point of View in 1942

VISITORS TO GERMANY IN 1934 FOUND AN emotional storm sweeping through masses of the people, particularly the more educated. The movement had much in common with a religious revival. The preacher in this case was Adolf Hitler; his doctrine was, and is, tribalism; he had stirred in the emotional depths of the German people those long-dormant tribal feelings which find release and relief in mutual service; men and women who had been leading selfish lives or were drifting aimlessly were given a new purpose in life: service to their country the Third Reich. It is worth noting that Hitler uses a double designation for his tribal doctrine National Socialism: Socialism standing for the good side of the tribal spirit (that which works within the Reich); aud Nationalism for the ethically vicious part, which dominates policy at and outside the German frontiers.

The leader of Germany is an evolutionist not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. [/size]For him the national "front" of Europe is also the evolutionary "front"; he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people. He has brought into

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modern life the tribal and evolutionary mentality of prehistoric times. Hitler has confronted the statesmen of the world with an evolutionary problem of an unprecedented magnitude. What is the world to do with a united aggressive tribe numbering eighty millions!

We must not lose sight of the purpose of our visit to Germany; it was to see how far modern evolutionary practice can provide us with a scientific basis for ethical or moral behavior. As a source of information concerning Hitler's evolutionary and ethical doctrines I have before me Mein Kampf, extracts from The Times covering German affairs during the last twenty years, and the monthly journal R.F.C. (Racio Political Foreign Correspondenee), published by the German Bureau for Human Betterment and Eugenics and circulated by that bureau for the enlightenment of anthropologists living abroad. In the number of that journal for July 1937, there appears in English the text of a speech given by the German Fuhrer on January 30, 1937, in reply to a statement made by Mr. Anthony Eden that "the German race theory" stood in the way of a common discussion of European problems. Hitler maintained his theory would have an opposite effect; "it will bring about a real understanding for the first time." "It is not for men," said the Fuhrer, "to discuss the question of why Providence created different races, but rather to recognize that it punishes those who disregard its work of creation." I may remark incidentally that in this passage, as in many others, the German Fuhrer, like Bishop Barnes and many of our more intellectual clergy, regards evolution as God's mode of creation. God having created races, it is therefore "the noblest and most sacred duty for each racial species of mankind to preserve the purity of the blood which God has given it." Here we have expounded the perfectly sound doctrine of evolutionary isolation; even as an ethical doctrine it should not be condemned. No German must be guilty of the "greatest racial sin" that of bringing the fruits of hybridity into the world. The reproductive "genes" which circulate within the frontiers of Germany must be kept uncontaminated, so that they may work out the racial destiny of the German people without impediment. Hitler is also a eugenist. Germans who suffer from

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hereditable imperfections of mind or of body must be rendered infertile, so that "the strong may not be plagued by the weak." Sir Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics, taught a somewhat similar evolutionary doctrine namely, that if our nation was to prosper we must give encouragement to the strong rather than to the weak; a saving which may be justified by evolution, but not by ethics as recognized and practiced by civilized peoples. The liberties of German women are to be sacrificed; they must devote their activities to their households, especially to the sacred duty of raising succeeding generations. The birth rate was stimulated by bounties and subsidies so that the German tribe might grow in numbers and in strength. In all these matters the Nazi doctrine is evolutionist.

Hitler has sought on every occasion and in every way to heighten the national consciousness of the German people or, what is the same thing, to make them racially conscious; to give them unity of spirit and unity of purpose. Neighborly approaches of adjacent nations are and were repelled; the German people were deliberately isolated. Cosmopolitanism, liberality of opinion, affectation of foreign manners and dress were unsparingly condemned. The old tribal bonds (love of the Fatherland, feeling of mutual kinship), the bonds of "soil and blood," became "the main plank in the National Social program." "Germany was for the Germans" was another plank. Foreign policy was "good or bad according to its beneficial or harmful effects on the German folk now or hereafter." "Charity and humility are only for home consumption" a statement in which Hitler gives an exact expression of the law which limits sympathy to its tribe. "Humanitarianism is an evil . . . a creeping poison." "The most cruel methods are humane if they give a speedy victory" is Hitler's echo of a maxim attributed to Moltke. Such are the ways of evolution when applied to human affairs.

I have said nothing about the methods employed by the Nazi leaders to secure tribal unity in Germany methods of brutal compulsion, bloody force, and the concentration camp. Such methods cannot be brought within even a Machiavellian system of ethics, and yet may be justified by their evolutionary result.

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Even in that result we may harbor a doubt: can unity obtained by such methods be relied on to endure?

There are other aspects of Nazi policy which raise points which may be legitimate subjects of ethical debate. In recent years British men of science have debated this ethical problem: an important discovery having been made a new poison gas, for example is it not the duty of the discoverer to suppress it if there is a possibility of its being used for an evil purpose? My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics. A man of science is responsible for the accuracy of his observations and of his inferences, not for the results which may follow therefrom. Under no circumstances should the truth be suppressed; yet suppression and distortion of the truth is a deliberate part of Nazi policy. Every anthropologist in Germany, be he German or Jew, was and is silenced in Nazi Germany unless the Hitlerian racial doctrine is accepted without any reservation whatsoever. Authors, artists, preachers, and editors are undone if they stray beyond the limits of the National Socialist tether. Individual liberty of thought and of its expression is completely suppressed. An effective tribal unity is thus attained at the expense of truth. And yet has not the Church in past times persecuted science just in this Hitlerian way? There was a time, and not so long ago, when it was dangerous for a biologist to harbor a thought that clashed in any way with the Mosaic theory of creation.

No aspect of Hitler's policy proclaims the antagonism between evolution and ethics so forcibly as his treatment of the Jewish people in Germany. So strong are the feelings roused that it is difficult for even science to approach the issues so raised with an unclouded judgment. Ethically the Hitlerian treatment of the Jews stands condemned out of hand. Hitler is cruel, but I do not think that his policy can be explained by attributing it to a mere satisfaction of a lust, or to a search for a scapegoat on which Germany can wreak her wrath for the ills which followed her defeat of 1918. The Church in Spain subjected the Jews to the cruelty of the Inquisition, but no one ever sought to explain the Church's behavior by suggesting that she had a

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lust for cruelty which had to be satisfied. The Church adopted the Inquisition as a policy; it was a means of securing unity of mind in her flock. Hitler is an uncompromising evolutionist, and we must seek for an evolutionary explanation if we are to understand his actions. When the Huguenots fled to Germany they mingled their "genes" with those of their host and disappeared as an entity. The Jews are made of other stuff: for two thousand years, living amid European communities, they have maintained their identity; it is an article of their creed, as it is of Hitler's, to breed true. They, too, practice an evolutionary doctrine. Is it possible for two peoples living within the same frontiers, dwelling side by side, to work out harmoniously their separate evolutionary destinies? Apparently Hitler believes this to be impossible; we in Britain and in America believe it to be not only possible, but also profitable.

It must not be thought that in seeking to explain Hitler's actions I am seeking to justify them. The opposite is the case. I have made this brief survey of public policy in modern Germany with a definite object: to show that Dr. Waddington is in error when he seeks to place ethics on a scientific basis by a knowledge of evolutionary tendencies and practice.

Chapter 4

Human Life: Its Purpose or Ultimate End

IN THE COURSE OF GATHERING INFORMATION concerning man's morality and the part it has played and is playing in his evolution, I found it necessary to provide space for slips which were labeled "Life: Its Ultimate and Proximate Purposes." Only those who have devoted some special attention to this matter are aware of the multitude of reasons given for the appearance of man on earth. Here I shall touch on only a few of them; to deal with all would require a big book. The reader may exclaim: Why deal with any of them! What has ultimate purpose got to do with ethics and evolution! Let a man with a clearer head and a nimbler pen than mine reply. He is Edward Carpenter, who wrote Civilization: Its Cause and Cure (1889).

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It is from the sixteenth edition (1923) I am to quote, p. 249:

If we have decided what the final purpose or Life of Man is, then we may say that what is good for that purpose is finally "good" and what is bad for that purpose is finally "evil."

If the final purpose of our existence is that which has been and is being worked out under the discipline of evolutionary law, then, although we are quite unconscious of the end result, we ought, as Dr. Waddington has urged, to help on "that which tends to promote the ultimate course of evolution." If we do so, then we have to abandon the hope of ever attaining a universal system of ethics; for, as we have just seen, the ways of national evolution, both in the past and in the present, are cruel, brutal, ruthless, and without mercy. Dr. Waddington has not grasped the implications of Nature's method of evolution, for in his summing up (Nature, 1941, 150, p. 535) he writes "that the ethical principles formulated by Christ . . . are those which have tended towards the further evolution of mankind, and that they will continue to do so." Here a question of the highest interest is raised: the relationship which exists between evolution and Christianity; so important, it seems to me, that I shall devote to it a separate chapter. Meantime let me say that the conclusion I have come to is this: the law of Christ is incompatible with the law of evolution as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed. Clearly the form of evolution which Dr. Waddington has in mind is not that which has hitherto prevailed; what he has in mind is a man made system of evolution. In brief, instead of seeking ethical guidance from evolution, he now proposes to impose a system of ethics on evolution and so bring humanity ultimately to a safe and final anchorage in a Christian haven

For cripes sake, Baylor is the buckle of the bible belt and Baptist to boot, what do you expect.
"Your eyes may glitter, you teeth may shine, but those Baptists will keep you in line"

I'm a recovered Baptist, but you can punch holes in a lot of Darwin's theories too.

I heard an Evangelican minister take on "Carl Sagon's " theories in his sermon at Park Street Church in Boston and they damn near had to take me out in a litter I was laughing so hard.

Appreciate the humor of it all.

What is really hard to fathom about gunga is that he has a visceral hatred for science and abortion on demand (among other things) yet when I ask him why he is covering for his commie loving Republican buddies. Who have, among other things, done the following:

WTO entrance for Communist China: under Bush administration

Preferred Nation Status for Communist China: under Bush Administration

$230+ Billion trade deficit with Communist China and heading for a new record this year: under Bush Adminstration

Massive move of high technology and tons of God-fearing American jobs to Communist China: under Bush Administration

His best and ONLY response is:



So Godless communists who FORCE people with more than one child to have abortions, by law; outlaw and ruthlessly suppress religion, and send people to prison because they want to surf the web should be subsidized by Americans to the tune of $230 billion a year. With Bush/Cheney and the Republicans blessing, no less, he thinks this not worthy of response.

Whatever world he lives in certainly must be an interesting place!

Typical Creationist obfuscating. I never mentioned Hitler's religious beliefs, only that his beliefs were incompatible with Evolution Theory. Yet what did you do? Attempt to prove that he wasn't Christian, which neither proves his actions were based on Evolution or disproves it.

TCR-

I too have a visceral hatred of abortion. I got it off Ovid. I think. It manifests itself as a flaccidation experience when informed that a lady has had such an unnatural experience. That is probably why very few ladies publicise the fact they have had one. They must be aware of the effect it has on some men. It's the same with birth control. I can take care of those matters myself without requiring a lady to undergo any of the indignities all these processes involve some of which entail her poisoning herself. If one follows the argument through one soon gets to Germaine Greer's famous statement that "all men are rapists" which I object to.

Doesn't a $230+ billion trade deficit mean that the Chinese worker is working for the comfort of Americans. Doesn't an aristocracy have a trade deficit with the underclass. It seems to me to be quite in tune with a Republican agenda. Doesn't the American consumer buy Chinese goods because they are cheaper than American made ones.

Have you had a good dose of the Protestant work ethic rate busting its way to exhaustion. Isn't the basic principle to charge what the traffic will bear. Are you in favour of the American worker having a monopoly on the manufacture of goods sold in America. I think they might well be three times the price they are now in that case and the American worker would be a grimy and calloused organism to boot. A win/win eh?

These things move slowly. There are no quick fixes but I think it fair to assume that human rights in China have vastly improved since the policy to China took the route it has in recent years.

Like the socialists here your Dems have an interest in keeping workers skint and exploited. That way they have an anger to pretend they are going to alleviate.

First, we buy goods from China because we can't find goods from America. I think even you would admit a 40 year old man with 4 kids and a mortgage cannot hope to compete with a 10 year old Chinese child forced to do slave labor. Even some Amish factories have closed because they can't compete...you know the lazy Amish don't ya!

In the 1970's a man could support his family with one job, now two working people can't even afford health care for thier children; while the rich in the U.S. have NEVER been richer. Is that comming down enough for your ass!

I did factory work while obtaining my degrees. I'll put my work ethic up against your's anytime! If you ever make it to the U.S. I'll take you to a tire factory I know of and you can show me your stuff.

One thing for sure don't call them MY democrats!!! I hate them as much as the Republicans, two side of the same coin!

The fact cat CEO's who never did a F***ing day's work in their life run this country.

Its funny how you always let gunga off the hook.

Your farrrr from as fair or enlightened as your meds lead you to believe you are!!!

I don't have a work ethic TCR.

There's not an animal in the evolutionary pantheon that works without being trained and whipped.

One of my pals in the pub hates fat cats too. Your 40 yr old should keep his pants pulled up it seems to me. An American baby living 80 years will consume 2,000 barrels of oil. So his 4 kids are going to consume 8,000 barrels. Assuming zero growth which is unthinkable. It'sless than half that here. And less than the reciprocal of 8,000 in many places.

Have you read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen? Or The Americans by Geoffrey Gorer.

And Dylan said - "Don't hate nothing at all 'cept hatred".

It's the way of the world old son. The Chinese are moving towards the two-car family.

There's nobody here can't get health care. Not even hobos never mind kids. Perhaps that's why we have to do without all the luxuries you have.

Hey- I threw gunga off the ID thread. And he's kept off. He's not always wrong. Abortion is a crunch issue for me. I'll tolerate all sorts of stuff from people who are against abortion in principle. Those who resort to violence simply discredit the argument.

When you direct your energies at the fat-cats you are missing the real target. Which is yourself.

So America is going to sink and you think your socialist supported fat-ass is going to float?

So the meds still aren't doing you any good at all are they. Poor little girly-man.

You're welcome to try to punch holes in the modern theory if you like, but not a single person on this forum has yet succeeded, even remotely, in many years.

Frankly, we would welcome a reasonable and educated challenge at this point. We've had a boatload of this creationist cut/paste crap already. Do you have anything new to offer?

Thought you might like this ...

You 're right! That is a classic!!! One of the few times I can truly say 'wish I'd have said that'

TCR-

When you resort to things like-



you go off my radar. At least I never say things like that.

I heard a great suggestion the other day. Someone said that congressmen should dress like NASCAR drivers, and be required to wear their corporate sponsors on their suits. With all sponsors displayed proportionally to the $$$ they funnel to the congressman (in whatever forms).

I can just see Dick Cheney walking onto the Senate floor in a white jumpsuit just covered with Chevron, Mobil and Exxon patches.

Those NASCAR drivers would pale in comparison with their corporate sponsoors.

The patches on the NASCAR drivers are designed to sell gas. The sponsors of the congressmen are designed to influence decisions.

Different job-- different style. Anybody interested can find out who the congressman's sponsors are (I hope) and why would anybody care who wasn't interested?

Spendi wrote:

Rosbourne,

I doubt I have anything new to offer. Just opinions.

I think "Intelligent Design" is crap. Dinasaurs are a product of Intelligent Design? Wooly Mammouths? For what purpose.

Was the human body Intelligently Designed to be prone to disease and dementia? I think not.

One has to remember that Darwin was a "Christian" and walked a tight rope between scientific inquiry and religious fanatisim in order to survive in the academic society of his time. I truly do not take Darwin to task for his brilliant opus, but only suggest there were some hanging threads. But no one is perfect. Intelligent Design?

I am a Baptist by birth, a Buddhist by choice and I chant to silence the "little voices" that want to tell me how, when and where to think.

If this does not make sense to anyone but myself, that's okay.

Seaglass the Iconaclast

Hi Sglass, you keep suggesting that there are holes to be punched (in Darwin's theory) and threads which are hanging. But you still haven't given an example of any.

What hanging threads are you talking about?