Is Evolution a Dangerous Idea? If so, why?

It is such a relief to know you are not serious about all this text you have been manufacturing. You aren't serious, are you?

First, you say Catholicism is in no danger from anything and then in practically the next sentence you try to fall back onto that same (by this time) tired social consequences theme. I do like how you try to label all of your opposition rather than let them speak for themselves. Hmmmmm. All Materialists.
No Rationalists?
No Empiricists?
No Realists?
No Atheists?
Interesting.... and part of the fun.

I also love the part where you complain that, what was it?, Right. So stop changing the meaning of evolution and things will go better.

Also stop trying to change the subject of the thread which is your primary method of being off topic. No. It isn't.

I know you won't stop, it's your game, but now that I know this is a joke you are playing, it doesn't matter so much.

So where are we? This is a bit like having a conversation while trying to hold onto a talking fish. Catholicism doesn't have a talking fish, it does have a talking snake, but I thought saying that this was like having a conversation with a talking snake would sound too deprecating.

So, again, first, Catholicism, okie-dokie, next it's got to watch over it's influence, but lastly, Whoa, big fella, I'm getting whiplash.

Which retreat are you referring to, the one where the Protestants of your country sack all monasteries (luckily the Church is not materialist so it didn't matter:lol: )
or when the 30 Years War or the 100 Years War were going badly (Luckily, both sides in both wars had the Holy Scripture to guide them forward. A boon to humankind)
or are you referring to the period of the Dark Ages when the only folks who could read were the sixth century Irish monks?

Grim days. But the Church bounced back, didn't it? And it did it by indulging in what I spoke about before, like any good amoeba, it absorbs it's opposition. (Sometimes that absorption entails annihilation but that is permitted by the Holy Word.)

I wish you would drop this whole pretense about worrying yourself to lathers over Evolution's effects on the Church. That's not what worries a good Creationist like you. (Ah. Sorry. I've outed you.) What you don't want to happen is that the idea of unguided nature comes face to face with what is believed faithfully by the evangelistic crowds - that a god is in charge of everything that is happening. Nothing is left to be altered by environment or the changes in other species, it's all designed.

Which, of course, is piffle. (OOOOOO THEY SING LOUDER!!)

(I am always saddened that there is not a Creationist group who believes in a Committee of Gods. That makes much more sense than having ONE Almighty GOD (um with his Son and also, once a year, The Holy GhOst. right.) Very rational.

One god for the animals, one for the plants, one for the sea and it's creatures, one for the sky and the underworld. Each making it's creations and occasionally having to battle each other. Why did we give up that idea?)

(pssst: reality)

So why is Evolution a dangerous idea? It's not to anyone who doesn't mind getting out of bed each morning on his own.

I made the best Balsamic-Red Wine Reduction while typing this.
Joe(Come to New York. I'll share.)Nation

finally got the point Joe?

Yes, I got the point ages ago, but I wear hats so often that few notice.

Joe(I might consider other kinds of charity.)Nation

I am in deadly earnest Joe and you would be making a big mistake thinking otherwise.



Catholicism is a philosophy. It is in no danger. It is its influence which is threatened.

I understand why you assert that the argument from consequences is "tired". It is actually the only argument serious people consider. That is why presidential candidates are grilled on what the policies they stand for will look like if put into practice.



They all mean the same thing in common usage don't they? Rationalists, Empiricists and Realists are terms used as a intellectual make up. To render Atheist and Materialist, which are synonyms, better looking to untutored sensibilities. In actual fact religion is rationalistic, empiricist and realistic. It takes humans in societies as its subject matter. It sees, for example, abortion as a treatment for a condition that needn't have arisen and which operates dynamically to encourage the condition by providing a safety net where one should not be. Like an acrobat with a safety net can be thought skilful but not daring so sex can be thought skilful but not really sex at all when surrounded by safety nets. By the bye--such "sex" is unheard of in the whole evolutionary record. Without the safety nets the process becomes entirely different and calls for more responsibilty and care.



It is not me doing that Joe. It was you. You go from the Catholic meaning of the word to the materialist meaning of the word seemingly without being conscious you are doing it.



Declaring that materialism is not a dangerous idea is what the dispute is about. I think it is a dangerous idea. And I have provided many reasons which it is pointless to repeat.



From where I sit it is like holding a conversation with a serried rank of 'speak your weight' machines. You could make a fortune with a talking fish and never have to work again.



There have been a large number. Along the lines of that depicted by Umberto Eco in Name of the Rose. That was a posh one unlike the one depicted by Gustave Flaubert in The Temptation of Saint Anthony. The keepers of the flame/s. They wax and wane.



I am not worrying about evolution's effects on the Church. I am worrying about the materialists using evolution in the way they must do. That point has been dealt with.



There again is another word casually tossed out with no meaning.



I can't speak for those crowds but I'm definitely not a fan of unguided nature and I doubt anybody else is. I think I would support believing in anything rather than that.



We evolved away from Pantheism in order to get this Faustian scientific project up and running. I thought you were an evolutionist. It doesn't take long for Pantheists to expand from gods of the animals, plants, the sea and it's creatures, the sky and the underworld. They start on the jugs and windows and bedposts and pisspots before very long and confusion takes over. As it does with materialists as well only their confusion is caused by how each individual ego interprets its own version of materialism and is its one and only god. Hence the ubiquity of the assertion and the dogmatic belief in the certainty of its truth. The projection of the ego is the proper meaning of the word sadism. Algolagnia is the word when inflicting pain is involved. Without the sublimation of the ego in a greater principle there is only sadism left and thus materialism lets loose a society of aggressive, competing egos and then might is right. And the law only runs when it is present and not even always in that event. And the law is rightly suspected of being made on behalf of those who make it. Who are the most powerful egos.

Oh--it does matter dys. The stoic is irrelevant. He just wimps it.

Page 23 of the autobiography of Charles Darwin.

Yes, a philosophy which its adherents always pray is not too well-examined. Catholicism's one bright spot is the anti-evolutionary stance it takes with regard to it's leadership: it gives me great relief each time I remember that all of the hierarchy have pledged never to reproduce.

Joe(a big fan of unguided nature because there isn't any other kind.)Nation

I used to be a catholic and I think you are in error with that particular statement. Catholic philosophy is very layered and survives examination rather well.

It survives so well that, after years of examination, I quitted disgusted..

This not taking in consideration that I can be a mediocre examiner..

I didnt quit disgusted, more a wonder of what else there may be...

I can't for the life of me now figure why any woman would allow herself or her children to be Catholic, I laugh every time I hear someone decrying the second class participation allowed to women in Islam before referring them to Catholicism and its very peculiar ways of treating women. So un-Christlike, if you think about it. Until Paul came along and spoiled things, Christianity was, as Christ intended, an egalitarian effort at finding God.
===
This from a recent Maureen Dowd column:


I'm pretty sure that Islam got the ideas on subjugating women, not from Mohamed, but from the 6th Century Church which had already removed any women from it's leadership four hundred years before.

What a strange species we are to invest any belief in a system wherein half of the species is so disregarded by the organization's leaders! They all, as evolution directs, had mothers.

Joe(yet such disconnection)Nation

http://able2know.org/topic/143543-8#post-3961543

18 th post down the page. 2nd last.

Newsweek is owned by the Washington Post Company which has a revenue of $4.2 billion and employs 19,000 people most of whom will likely reject the Church's teachings on a comprehensive range of what are "deeply personal issues" and will have incomes considerably in excess of the average working population.

Ms Germaine Greer's slagging off of Mother Theresa provided a good example of what words can achieve in the hands of a reasonably competent wordsmith.

Media generally is out to get the Church because the Church is inhibiting to Media's interests.

Darwin tells the tale of the unChristian Tierra del Fuegians sometimes eating their womenfolk but leaving out such extremes it would be hard to imagine what would be as derogatory to women as wanking, birth control, divorce, adultery, abortion and homosexuality or imagining that they are in any way equal to men which must be profoundly insulting to them except possibly in the refined editorial suites of our honest and trustworthy media where any amount of humiliation is put up with in order to get a by-line or be allowed to read a teleprompter looking sexy.

Our top News channel, Sky News, ran the story at the top of their broadcast the other night that an American lady who alleges that she was interfered with by a priest has called for the Pope to do something or other.

Top story. There's an election on, Greece needs a bail-out, the Polish president has been killed in an aircrash, our man was leading the Master's field, a rail crash in Italy and Wayne Rooney's ankle should be mended in time for the World Cup.

And on an allegation untested in court. What sort of evidence do you require?

Top headline. News reader salivating. Animated gestures. Really up for it. Cleavage on view.

Paul was most likely homosexual and the churches he started had female deacons, priests and bishops. It was the romans who changed it to male superiority and the church conformed.

No, Islam got its ideas about women from arab culture. Mohamed tried to liberalise the law, and simply recommended women to dress modestly. This may involve shorts over a one piece at the beach in today's society, certainly not a full burkha.

Religion has never been anti-women, it is society and culture that has changed religious principles to conform.

It should be noted that at no time did Mother Theresa slag off at Greer. But wouldnt it be a better world if the Pope was more like Mother Theresa...I dont mean dead, I mean in spirit.

I very much doubt it. But "more like" can mean very little. I'm nearer to Australia when I fall out of bed.

I hope that doesnt happen often. They have me here, they dont need you...so sod orf !

Here is an interesting point of view:

Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.Founder, The Clergy Letter Project
Posted: April 15, 2010 12:07 PM
The Danger of Ignoring Creationism
Last week I wrote about the problems the Discovery Institute had with my article arguing that the evolution/creation controversy was a battle between different religious worldviews rather than a struggle between religion and science.

Now I find myself writing about yet another major creationist organization's criticisms of my work for The Huffington Post. This time the attack is coming from Answers in Genesis, the people behind the $27 million creation museum-cum-theme-park just outside Cincinnati. You know who I mean -- they're the folks who show dinosaurs and humans comfortably cavorting and who declare that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

There are two issues I need to address.

The first, why the criticism leveled by Answers in Genesis is meaningless nonsense, is rather trivial. The second, however, why any of us should care in the least about what creationist organizations have to say, is far from trivial. Indeed, I'd argue that it may well be one of the more important issues of our time.

Let me dispense with the trivial point first. Last month I discussed why social Darwinism was both a misnomer and a terrible idea, both scientifically and socially. Not surprisingly, Answers in Genesis disagreed. They simply repeated their argument that social Darwinism is a "logical ... conclusion of Darwinian scientific theory" and then, grotesquely, pointed to the existence of serial killers to support their absurd contention.

Such behavior is nothing new for Answers in Genesis and their founder, Ken Ham. Two outrageous but all-too-typical examples will make my point. Back in 1987 Ham published an article entitled "Creationism: Cure for AIDS?" in which he concluded that "the spread of AIDS can be stopped -- by simply rejecting false evolution." In an even more extreme move, Ham and Answers in Genesis opted to commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11 by running ads in the Cincinnati Inquirer and in Christianity Today laying the attack at the feet of evolution.

Ham and his lot are clearly extremists, so why should we care what they do or say? Wouldn't we be better off simply ignoring them?

I wish it were so, but, as amazing as it might seem, Answers in Genesis and the Discovery Institute have the ability to shape public policy in frightening ways. Unless many of us keep pointing out what they're all about, they may well succeed in reshaping America and redefining science in a manner that will do irreparable damage.

And make no mistake about it, Answers in Genesis and the Discovery Institute are close cousins, even though they present different personas. Yes, the Discovery Institute is slicker -- with many more lawyers, better suits, and a bevy of political operatives -- than the young-earth- and fire-and-brimstone-preaching contingent that makes up the core of Answers in Genesis.

But, most importantly, both groups want the country recast as a Christian fundamentalist nation. And they both abhor the concept of evolution and want science redefined.

Am I being too extreme? You be the judge.

As I pointed out last week, Howard Ahmanson, Jr., one of the Discovery Institute's biggest donors, has expressed radical views about the role religion should play in America. And that's putting it mildly, since he's said, "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives."

Take a look at the The Wedge, the Discovery Institute's original planning document, and cringe when you read that their goal is "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies."

Or listen to Ken Ham's 2010 "State of the Nation" speech (yes, he thinks he's important enough to deliver a speech with that name!) and hear him call for a country based on "God's word" rather than "man's word."

Both organizations, apparently suffering from a bad case of science envy, are desperately calling for science to be redefined to include the supernatural. Yes, you read that correctly. Both think that science is too limited in its present form and that it needs to be expanded beyond its present search for natural explanations. Observation, experimentation, data collection, analysis, indeed, the entire scientific method, be damned; bring in supernatural explanations.

This would all be funny if groups of this sort weren't able to influence politicians, primarily at the local school board level and in state legislatures around the country. However, anti-evolution bills or pro-creationism actions persistently crop up, under various names, in state after state and town after town.

What may be saddest of all about this is that natural allies, people who care about high quality science instruction and respect for others, are being manipulated into attacking one another. Religion and fundamentalism are not synonymous and I've come to realize that deeply religious people are usually respectful of others with different beliefs. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, are typically intolerant of the slightest deviation from their own views. Which brings me back to my original point: the controversy is not between religion and science.

Whatever you may think of religion, the fact is that the majority of religions, including a majority of Christian denominations, view evolution as being fully compatible with their faith. When religion as a social construct is attacked because of the extreme pronouncements of people like Ken Ham, intolerance abounds and ignorance wins.