Posted on 11/15/2013 9:05:36 AM PST by Olympiad Fisherman
Indeed.
You are discussing the issue from a contemporary context.
The point you are making was much more ambiguous vis a vis what was considered evolutionary theory 100 years ago.
Of course I am writing from a contemporary context. I was replying to a poster who thinks that Newtonian physics lacks such philosophical issues, which obviously is true only from a contemporary context. Newtonian physics REVOLUTIONIZED things philosophically. No longer were the laws of nature different on earth and in the heavens. Newton showed that the laws of nature are universal, and in a very real sense allowed science to really proceed. So, yes, I was responding from a modern perspective to someone who was arguing from a similar perspective that evolution TODAY carries such philosophical baggage, when that is not the case.
"Darwinism"?
Is that like Newtonism or Einsteinism?
Evolution is an old philosophical doctrine going back to the Greco-Roman world with Lucretius and company, long before it became scientific. Darwin just took it and slapped biological labels on it. You also seem unaware that Newton was a Christian, and that early science was rooted in the Christian Middle Ages based on natural theology. Early Christian scientists believed that nature would work according to rational governing laws precisely because a rational Governor had made it. Such a worldview held sway until the doctrine of naturalism slowly replaced the natural theology that science was originally built upon. Naturalism is chock full of philosophical ideas like Romanticism and Existentialism that confuses such conceptions with a greater empiricism - or what they used to call, “nature looking into nature,” which submerges man into nature completely and prevents him from being on outside observer in the scientific process (hence holism which eventually led to fascism). I would also argue that Darwin also slapped biological labels upon Hegel’s philosophy of history.
However, although it is true Darwin himself has the reputation of being called the dismal scientist, i.e., the man who looks only at scientific materialistic explanations, he never divorced himself from the Romanticism that heavily influenced his own thinking. Nature alone was at the heart of Darwin’s thought just as much as any other Romantic philosopher of the 1800’s. Reducing man to an animal that has slowly evolved through the chance processes of natural selection is not exactly the best way to trumpet the humanistic accolades of modern science. Neither is the Darwinian descent of man fully submerged into a purposeless natural world of unintelligent outcomes a very good epistemological basis upon which to build objective scientific knowledge.
However, the whole point being here, is that science was always infused with a philosophical and theological worldview. The idea of a neutral science is a fantasy of the modern imagination ...
stremba has answered this far more eloquently than I could hope to do so in reply #17.
Yes, my use of “Darwinian” is very telling indeed. He is fallible human being like us all. I am also very glad that you have come to the realization that evolution cannot explain origins. There is hope!! Yes, evolutionary theory is extremely limited when it comes to explaining origins, but few people today understand that important distinction, and it is seldom discussed publicly. And yes, I do agree that evolution is descriptive rather than prescriptive, but the fact of the matter is, most scientists did not figure that one out until the smoke cleared from the battlefields and gas chambers of World War II when there was finally a repentance over eugenics. In the early heady days of Darwinism, evolutionary theory, eugenics, and racism could not be separated from one another.
What does it mean for an idea to be unscientific? Generally, one primary standard for the consideration of an idea to be scientific is testability. If an idea can be tested by observation, it is scientific. To be testable, an idea must be falsifiable by the right observations. If no possible observation would cause a rational person to give up an idea, then that idea is not scientific.
Now, let’s put evolution to the test. (BTW the term “darwinism” is a poor term; evolution includes much that Darwin would never have known). Can we think of an observation that would render evolution false? I can think of several, just off the top of my head without even thinking hard about it. Here’s a brief list:
1. Finding a fossil of an anatomically modern rabbit that is reliably dated at over 500 million years old.
2. Finding an organism whose genetic information is stored in some manner other than nucleic acids.
3. Finding an organism whose basic metabolic processes are catalyzed by something other than polypeptides.
4. Finding a particular endoviral insertion that is shared by the genomes of gorillas and humans, but is not present in chimpanzees.
5. Observing a chimpanzee giving birth to a human. (Or any case where an organism gives birth to an offspring that is wildly different from its parents) Yes, despite creationist mischaracterizations, this is something that is strictly forbidden by evolution and would conclusively falsify it. Evolution works only by the accumulation of SMALL changes to produce large ones, not by large, sudden changes. The theory never stated that a human was born from an ape of any kind, but rather that humans and apes share a common ancestor. The chimpanzees are the organisms that shared the most recent common ancestor with humans. This ancestor was neither a chimpanzee nor a human, but some other species. The population of this organism would have become separated into two groups. These groups would have, little by little, diverged from each other genetically. Over the course of time, the divergence became greater and greater, leading to modern chimps on one hand and modern humans on the other. At no time would there have ever been a case where any organism gave birth to an offspring that was wildly different from its parents. If we ever did observe this, it would falsify evolution.
These are just a few examples off the top of my head showing that evolution is testable. So far, it has passed all observational tests, including laboratory experiments designed to produce new species of organisms via the process of evolution. Of course, these aren’t likely to meet the creationists satisfaction since “they’re still fruit flies!” But expecting to see otherwise in a short time is not realistic. There are many things that actually occur that we cannot expect to observe over the course of centuries. For instance, observation of the location of Niagara Falls, the average elevation of the Rocky mountains or the distance between San Francisco, CA and Juneau, AK over periods of centuries would produce no discernable change, at least without sensitive measuring instruments. Observation over millions of years would show significant changes, however.
First of all, please define “Darwinism”. I know what evolution is, but I’m not quite sure what you mean by “Darwinism”. If you mean that the two are the same, then why would you state that Darwinism, eugenics and evolutionary theory were intertwined? Surely, you must intend a difference in meaning between evolution and Darwinism or why not just say that evolution and eugenics were intertwined?
Next, even given the truth of your assertion that evolution and eugenics were intertwined, so what? The Christian church and medieval society were intertwined. Medieval societies regularly condoned the torture of people for a variety of reasons. Does that imply that Chritianity condones torturing people? Obviously not. If Christian beliefs were used as a justification for torture, that would be a perversion of Christian belief. Similarly, using evolution to justify eugenics is a perversion of what evolution actually states, which is that genetic diversity is beneficial to a population of organisms.
As you point out, Darwin, and every other scientist studying evolution, are fallible humans. The fact that scientists misrepresented the conclusions of evolution reflects badly upon those individuals, not on the theory itself. The theory stands or falls on observational evidence, not on the use to which it’s been put by humans. And I would agree with you that better education on the subject is necessary. Very few people actually understand evolution, which may be why many still think it has something to do with the origin of the universe, the earth or life.
Your presupposition is that Hitler misinterpreted Darwinian theory. He understood it all too well. He understood genetic changes, over time, with survival of the fittest yielded an evolved species. He sought to bring about the Ubermenschen (Aryian supermen) and do away with those stipulated by Hitlers scientists as Untermenschen (subhumans, so stipulated by Hitlers scientists). Hitlers problem was that he needed to increase the rate of genetic changes. He did this by instituting laws not allowing certain portions of the population to engage in business. The Darwinist movement, as developed by Ernst Haeckel and twentieth century German intellectual history served as a prelude to Nazism. As the theory of Evolution caught hold it took a firm grip more than any other place in the world at that time.
Hitler first set up an infrastructure to stop the subhuman (his term) from breeding. FIrst he killed the defective infant (according to Darwin it would eventually happen anyway), then removed the cripples and syphillitics of older age, spin bifid a patients, Downs Syndrom, Turner's Syndrome Patients, he propagated abortion, and implemented the program of Lebensborn (selective breeding of 'better' Nazis). Then of course he implemented the 'work camps', the death camps', Medical experimental camps, as well as propaganda machines, all of which were geared to implement the destruction of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Negroes, Slaves ( all stipulated by the German intelligence as inferior). This allowed Hitler to 'speed up' death of the 'inferior' and speed up the natural selection of supermen by selective breeding.
Now as far as you ascribing the term "evil" to anything, I must wonder, how you, as a proponent of Darwinism can see evil as a metaphysical possibility. If it evolved, in accordance with Darwinism or neoDarwinism, evil cannot exist. It just ….is. Why would a mindless, purposeless, random universe be referred to as evolving evil? Or perhaps you do believe in Moral Law. If so how does a purposeless universe give rise to Moral Law? If not, what standard do you use to determine, say evil, from good?
By Darwinism, I mean evolutionary theory as first understood by Darwin himself - an evolutionary theory that was rooted in the holistic Romanticism of German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, the uniformitarianism of Lyell in order to pump up evolutionary theory with millions of years to make it more plausible, the so-called dismal naturalistic materialism that considers only materialistic causes for evolutionary development, coupled with a racist Victorian view of life that placed the white man on top of the evolutionary totem pole together with Hegel’s evolutionary philosophy of history that came to the same conclusion, albeit a German one. In other words, I do not believe that there is any such thing as a neutral evolution that can ride above the fallibility of people and philosophy and politics that you are so eager to define for me. This is a pure fantasy that only exists in the modern evolutionary mind. Evolutionary theory is just as philosophical and political as it has always been, just with a different push in a different direction.
If you're going to sustain the claim that Hitler didn't misinterpret Darwin, you'll need to provide some evidence that Darwin advocated the extermination of racial groups to enhance human purity.
If not, what standard do you use to determine, say evil, from good?
I use a very simple concept called the Golden Rule. I think your answer to that question would be more interesting given that Biblical morality (ironically) is and has been an evolving concept. Biblical attitudes to everything from rape, slavery, genocide, the treatment of prisoners, women's rights etc., etc have changed radically over years.
Langer has been disproven—as much as the APA “proved” that sodomy wasn’t a mental disease and a Vice. Truth is eliminated in today’s world if you haven’t noticed “by the experts” on every subject-—even Science and Biology now.
Personally, I believe everything that Langer says, because I have read the Pink Swastika and the Hidden Hitler and even found textbooks written in the 50’s that talked about the homosexual nature of the Germans-—particularly the Brownshirts. I have read books on Childhood Trauma in Germany and ran into articles about how Hitler was kicked as a young boy in front of others by his father. (Typical daddy relationship of homosexuals).
I also studied the “Boy Scouts of Germany” in 1890 which were founded by homosexuals to have orgies in the woods with the boys. Diplomats who dealt with the Germans in early 1900s claimed that they were all homosexuals/Lesbians/sexually perverted especially in the big cities.
The Homosexual Agenda since “Will and Grace” is to prevent any unPC information on sodomy. They try to make great men into homosexuals -—like Lincoln, and refuse to allow the MSM to talk about the homosexuality of the most evil people in history-—including all the Serial Killers. That—you can’t talk about. Even their heroes==like that Shepard who was brutally killed was killed by one of his homosexual lovers—NOT Homophobia at all——but lies were perpetrated for decades, because of their agenda to mainstream homosexuality-—like in the Weimar republic.
They have every REASON to demonize Langer.....don’t fall for it.
This has the “Hidden Hitler” author interviewed, too. They have proof of where Hitler lived and whom he lived with....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fMwOzVIYbg
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