Is Evolution a Dangerous Idea? If so, why?

@Ionus,

At any stage we could have waiting in the wings a virus or a germ, possibly one yet to mutate to being a danger, and we have screwed around with the instructions so much we no longer have immunity which a percentage of us would have now for almost everything. Even the black plague couldnt wipe us out. Those who can not contract aids have two parents with the anti-viral mechanisms to survive the black plague. What if we decide to get rid of this type of mechanism becuase it is a troublesome side effect to what we really want to do....cure mental illness for example....if someone says trust me I am a doctor, will you ?

1 Reply

@Setanta,

If you take this standpoint, then logically the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are also Christian sects.

1 Reply

@Ionus,

I agree with you.
I saw on TV a healthy little girl, whose parents were recommended to abort as she was according to the doctor severely handicapped.
It was the forth child in the hospital who should have been aborted but the parents wanted to keep the child and it turned out the children were all perfectly healthy.

0 Replies

Quote:

I am opening this thread for the ant-evolutionists to give us some good reasons for their stand

Apart from the usual reasons which Ionus has covered, I think people who embrace evolutionist ideas are impossible to socialise with. They feel so right because they have science on their side.

As they get more and more isolated from normal human discourse they seek like minded people and then they start getting extreme and don't just become impossible to socialise with but people to be avoided at all costs as their increasing extremism causes a shriller and shriller noise to emanate from their vocal chords and if it wasn't for the tolerance of their opponents they would be rounded up and stuck in compounds where they can annoy each other to their heart's content while the rest of us get on with the usual modes of existence.

It might be as bad a spiral downwards as crack cocaine.

2 Replies

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Quote:
I am opening this thread for the ant-evolutionists to give us some good reasons for their stand

Apart from the usual reasons which Ionus has covered, I think people who embrace evolutionist ideas are impossible to socialise with. They feel so right because they have science on their side.

As they get more and more isolated from normal human discourse they seek like minded people and then they start getting extreme and don't just become impossible to socialise with but people to be avoided at all costs as their increasing extremism causes a shriller and shriller noise to emanate from their vocal chords and if it wasn't for the tolerance of their opponents they would be rounded up and stuck in compounds where they can annoy each other to their heart's content while the rest of us get on with the usual modes of existence.

It might be as bad a spiral downwards as crack cocaine.

Ah. Levity. Just in time to lighten the mood.

0 Replies

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Quote:
I am opening this thread for the ant-evolutionists to give us some good reasons for their stand

Apart from the usual reasons which Ionus has covered, I think people who embrace evolutionist ideas are impossible to socialise with. They feel so right because they have science on their side.

As they get more and more isolated from normal human discourse they seek like minded people and then they start getting extreme and don't just become impossible to socialise with but people to be avoided at all costs as their increasing extremism causes a shriller and shriller noise to emanate from their vocal chords and if it wasn't for the tolerance of their opponents they would be rounded up and stuck in compounds where they can annoy each other to their heart's content while the rest of us get on with the usual modes of existence.

It might be as bad a spiral downwards as crack cocaine.

To socialise with someone, they have to lie to you?
Isolated from normal discourse?
Remarkable. Where do you snatch these notions from?

1 Reply

@saab,

Yeah . . . so?

0 Replies

@edgarblythe,

Quote:

Remarkable. Where do you snatch these notions from?

Interaction with evolutionists. Face to face and on here.

1 Reply

Lutheran churches have also identified themselves as catholic on the basis of continuity in doctrine with the Early Church based upon Apostolic Succession with the church before separation into Greek or Eastern and Latin or Western

0 Replies

Who gives a **** how a pack of self-serving bullshit artists wish to portray themselves on the stage of their fantasy world?

0 Replies

@spendius,

Actually Ed--there is a bit more to it.

Quote:

Trace Science then, with modesty thy guide;
First strip off all her equipage of pride;
Deduct what is but vanity or dress,
Or learning's luxury, or idleness, *
Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,
Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;
Expunge the whole, or lop th'excrescent parts;
Of all our vices we have created arts;
Then see how little the remaining sum,
Which serv'd the past, and must the times to come!

II.
Two principles in Human Nature reign,
Self-love to urge and Reason to restrain;
Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call;
Each works its end, to move or govern all:
And to their proper operation still
Ascribe all good, to their improper, ill.

Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul; **
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man but for that no action could attend,
And but for this were active to no end:
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.

Most strength the moving principle requires;
Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires:
Sedate and quiet the comparing lies,
Formed but to check, delib'rate, and advise.
Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh;
Reason's at distance and in prospect lie:
That sees immediate good by present sense;
Reason, the future and the consequence. (NB)
Thicker than arguments, temptations throng;
At best more watchful this, but that more strong.
The action of the stronger to suspend,
Reason still use, to Reason still attend.
Attention habit and experience gains;
Each strengthens Reason, and Self-love restrains.
Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight, ***
More studious to divide than to unite;
And Grace and Virtue, Sense and Reason split,
With all the rash dexterity of Wit.
Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,
Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.
Self-love and Reason to one end aspire,
Pain their aversion, Pleasure their desire;
But greedy that, its object would devour;
This taste the honey, and not wound the flower:
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil or our greatest good.

Alexander Pope An Essay on Man.

* --"learning's luxury"--using Science for self display either to the self or to others.

**--"Self love"-- of the sensual appetites as well as self regard. "Acts"--activates.

***--subtle schoolmen"--philosophers, rigid theologians and moralists.

NB--Fancy rabbiting about Reason and refusing to discuss consequences as can be found all along the evolution threads.

But--"This taste the honey, and not wound the flower: "--the entire debate summed in one astounding poetic image.

2 Replies

@spendius,

Here's an example Ed of an evolutionist on the homeopathy thread.

Quote:

We're over-thinking this. It isn't necessary.

Homeopathy is snakeoil, pure and simple.

End of social interaction. There are a few other posts from A2K's evolutionists on that thread. Check them out.

They haven't heard of the placebo effect or the healing effects of faith and they don't do fun.

Hopeless as boozing companions. Totally hopeless. Okay stood on soapboxes. No give and take. Megaphonitis.

1 Reply

@spendius,

I am in favor of homeopathy for many people. Therefore, some 'evolutionists' may make such pronouncements, others not. You need a better example than that.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

I have not read some of your posts preceding this, as yet, because I am very tired just now. Been working on top of a building, repairing boards a raccoon tore up and more besides. But I intend to do better later on.

0 Replies

@spendius,

Science in Pope's time was not at the same level of discovery as it is today. It was much easier in his day to be a smeller of flowers, disparage the sciences and mouth lofty platitudes.

Now, there are aspects of science I abhor, but it is the fault of the system in which they labor. Drug companies in the United States, for instance, practice their science in a way that makes of us laboratory mice, with deep pockets to be picked. Making us saps, so they can ply us with pills for every real and imagined condition, instead of seeking cures. They have been collecting probably by now trillions of dollars in donations for cancer research and are not curing any more patients today than they did seventy years ago. Where is all that money going? Certainly not into real cures.

Evolution science is a different thing entirely. It is not judgemental or dogma oriented. That persons by projection use it to reject religion is not really the fault of the science.It simply is what it is. We have evolved in such a way that allows us to be the sort of animals as Pol Pot, on the one hand, but also Leonardo da Vinci and Saint Francis, on the other. That evolution shows that the Bible is not factual is simply a fact of reality. No amount of rejection of evolution changes that. If we all became adherents of Christianity and believed as you believe, evolution would still be correct and the Bible still filled with errors. We just would be too ignorant to know or care.

2 Replies

@edgarblythe,

That's another example Ed of why evolutionists are impossible to socialise with.

We are actually not too ignorant to know or care after 2,000 years of Christianity despite the latest fads for denying that fact which are all in the service of justifying sexual behaviour frowned upon by Christians for reasons of practicality.

And I sincerely hope that your offhand remarks about the smelling of flowers, disparagments of the sciences, which is quite the opposite of what the quote I gave you suggests, and mouthing lofty platitudes which is hardly the proper attitude to sublime poetic expression, does not steal the poetry of Alexander Pope from American youth by causing librarians and teachers to dismiss it on your say-so.

My conclusion is that the extract from An Essay On Man is beyond your comprehension and who in their right mind would seek the company of anybody in such a degraded state of literacy?

0 Replies

@edgarblythe,

EDGAR 1, ----SPENDI 0.

0 Replies

That's another example Ed of why evolutionists are impossible to socialise with.

I would say it is spendi proving impossible to socialise with. You can't post a simple response without resorting to name calling.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

You denigrated Alexander Pope with name calling Ed. Which is to say you discouraged young Americans who might be innocent enough to value your opinions from reading his works. Which is very serious.

It's dumbing down. As a fact.

And I'm not anti-evolution. I'm for not wounding the flower when taking the honey.

Thomas Jefferson, who you all like to selectively quote, wrote--

Quote:

The writings of Sterne, particularly, form the best course of morality that ever was written."

That's Laurence Sterne. 1713--1768. I'll bet Tristram Shandy is in not one school library in America and in very few public libraries.

1 Reply

@spendius,

You would be wrong about Tristram Shandy and you would be wrong about my stand on Pope. He is great in his own context, but not in a discussion of today's science.

2 Replies

Is Evolution a Dangerous Idea? If so, why?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know