@electronicmail,
Quote:....the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural selection....
...Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
That seems a trifle incoherent to me. Habit, reason, instruction, &c. are aspects of religion. And "much more" doesn't do justice to what he said. Some might say "entirely". It's hardly an argument for an anti-IDer. On the strength of it one might say that our moral qualities owe nothing to natural selection. And everything to religion. I never thought fm agreed with that.
The three lines "....Man----future" are wiped out by the following "But". In fact the "But etc" makes the previous sentence look ridiculous. It is just base flattery of his peers who liked to think of themselves as being at "the very summit of the organic scale".
To write those three lines and then follow them with "But we are not here concerned" with the matter is fatuity.
Darwin, it seems to me puts religion centre stage in the advancement of moral qualities, an exclusively human characteristic. Such things are totally absent in the non-human organic world. The worker ants and bees are incapable of being anything else.
And man having "penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system" is a very recent achievement. On the Darwinian time-scale it is in the last tick of the clock to midnight compared with the history of mankind and it was conducted in only one place on earth and that is where the Christian religion was ascendent.
I don't think it is much use to the anti-ID cause to bring Darwin in so completely on the side of ID as that quote does.
Perhaps those who gave you a diploma for comprehension of your own language did so for no other reason than to praise their own methods of instruction.
