Posted on 11/19/2008 9:26:10 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
Ed. Note: this is the first instalment of a detailed critique of a major New Scientist anti-creationist diatribe. This one deals with a substantial section in the article, which tries to downplay the Nazi reliance on Darwinian theories, and instead tries to smear Christianity as a cause of the Holocaust...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationontheweb.com ...
ping!
This is pointless - Evolution stands or falls as a scientific theory. Whether it affected Hitler is beside the point. It has nothing to do with whether Evolution is true or flase. That’s the only scientific question.
Thanks for the ping!
But the creationists pushing this kind of nonsense can't compete with the theory of evolution in the arena of science. They lost that battle decades ago.
Now all they have is slander, libel, guilt by association, misrepresentation and other standard creationist tactics.
What a joke!
And as we all know, no one ever twisted the Bible.
Someone can believe that we were seeded by an alien species and that's their perogative as a free person....hey, don't laugh, I heard that first from Dwarkins, Dawkins, whatever the heck his name is - isn't he the guy who said that teaching religion, particularly Christianity, to your children is tantamount to child abuse? Yes, that winner.
I digress, anyhow, let folks believe what they want...heck, some even believe that Obama is the Messiah...
Anyhoo...these Dawkins of the world, these NEA folks, they need to keep their hands off the reproductive products of MY body. How dare they dictate their "science" or their "religion" (of self/human/government) worship on me and mine.
It figures they have to use tyranny to foister it on us.
Oh, no, claiming to have the truth about eternity...hey, get back to me when "scientists" can peek behind the curtain of both creation and eternity. Unless you can prove, with scientific integrity (not the new, namby-pamby stuff that fronts as science nowadays; metascience? what in the...), the eternal destinations of babies in the womb or the elderly, what business do humans have in consigning them to death involuntarily?
Look at the fruits of the evolutionary tree...proof is in the pudding, as they say.
You are missing the point of my post.
The article at the top of the thread is libeling all of science in order to "demonize" the theory of evolution.
The article does this by comparing scientists to Nazis.
It is an old, and dishonest, creationist trick, used by creationists when they have no scientific evidence to present.
Care to respond to what I have actually said?
I believe Hitler might have also brushed his teeth, eaten potatoes, and cr*pped sitting down. Egads, is there no hope for me?
Those aren’t “scientists using the scientific method” furthering the GW theory......it’s as you say...all about ideology and power....not “science.”
You might want to read the section titled Darwinism and Eugenics before decaring the article pointless. Just a thought.
I don't think all scientists are Nazi's or that science is all garbage. And perhaps some creationists are goofy enough to try to demonize the opposition instead of arguing cogently, which is a shame.
It's just there's now a culture of "trust the experts" that dominates so many realms life, and so many people seek to either escape blame or responsibility for things through "experts" or foister bad policy or control through "experts" (e.g., climate change).
We've become so limp-brained that if we see a white lab coat we think, "ah, vaunted Scientist with special knowledge." Even if it's an actor in a commerical hawking deoderant.
Next up, neuroscience and torture.
It was no accident that Darwin likened his ToE to selective breeding.
And you know this how?
Read Chapter One of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Is that the chapter about eugenics?
No, that is the chapter where Darwin sets the stage to liken natural selection to selective breeding. If you want to read Darwin on eugenics, you may want to give his book The Discent of Man a read.
Mendel must be spending an eternity in Hell.
Mendel was opposed to Darwin’s ToE.
He apparently wasn’t opposed to selective breeding.
And the evoatheists don't miss an opportunity to compare creationists to islam and the Taliban, so you can dispense with the injured martyr routine. It doesn't wear well.
And quite sympathetic to eugenics.
I believe that's the first time I've heard that about Mendel. Source?
Well science leads you to killing people.
I was referring to Darwin being sympathetic to eugenics.
We quit talking about Darwin and started talking about Mendel several posts back.
Hmmmmmmmm where in this quote from Descent of Man would you derive the idea that Darwin was fond of eugenics?
“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.”
Like I said, his sympathies are with the eugenics. He spends the entire passage giving all the reasons why we shouldn’t help the weak and infirm, and the gives one line appeasing victorian sensibilities.
No. What we have here is an explicit condemnation of eugenics by Darwin (hyperbole and fiction by yourself excepted).
Given that you have said that he was sympathetic to eugenics, no doubt you will now be able to produce some evidence from him to support your assertion?
"The influence primarily responsible for the modern eugenics movement was the establishment of the doctrine of organic evolution following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859."- Samuel J. Holmes, Human Genetics, 1936, chapter 25.
"As an agency making for progress, conscious selection must replace the blind forces of natural selection; and men must utilize all the knowledge acquired by studying the process of evolution in the past in order to promote moral and physical progress in the future. The nation which first takes this great work thoroughly in hand will surely not only win in all matters of international competition, but will be given a place of honour in the history of the world."
- Leonard Darwin, Presidential address, First International Eugenics Congress, 1912.
The garden of humanity is very full of weeds, nurture will never transform them into flowers; the eugenist calls upon the rulers of mankind to see that there shall be space in the garden, freed of weeds, for individuals and races of finer growth to develop with the full bloom possible to their species."
- Darwin Medalist Karl Pearson, Life and Letters of Francis Galton, vol.3.
The nature of the connection between Darwinism, eugenics, and Naziism is a legitimate historical question. See my FR homepage.
Alfred Ploetz was one of Nazi Germany's principal architects of race hygiene. Why was he having tea-time with Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton?
From Pearson's Life and Letters of Galton, vol. 3, pg.429...
July 4, 1910 My dear Karl Pearson, Thanks for both of your sendings, (1) the cutting from the Medical Times, which I return, (2) for the letter--how on earth it ever reached you is a mystery--from Eva Brigg's servant (and more than servant), who is now married and settled in New Zealand. Yesterday I got together to tea, Miss Elderton, Crackanthorpe and Ploetz... Ever affectionately yours, Francis Galton.
The Darwin worshippers in this thread don't want you to examine this historical issue any further. The reason being that if you do, you will find that their connection to the Dark Side is a lot deeper than you presently imagine.
John R. Baker was an Oxford biologist who worked on early forms of contraception (and had them tested on Blacks). He is a key figure in 20th century Darwinian history. He contributed to Julian Huxley's Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. He was also Julian Huxley's biographer. The Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar (himself a member of the Eugenics Society) endorsed Baker's major work Race. Baker was a prolific popular writer on "biology". He did BBC radio shows on "biology" too. Here is an exerpt from the "biology" section of a children's encyclopedia (An Outline for Boys and Girls) from the 1930s, written by John R. Baker.
All the hundreds of thousands of kinds of animals have evolved from very simple forms of life, and presumably from inorganic matter originally, without the existence of any mind to plan them. Mind itself is one of the products of evolution, and now at last one kind of living thing only has got the ability to control and plan the course of evolution. That one kind of living thing is the human kind. For centuries men have selected certain types of domestic animals for breeding, and have thus created all the variety of horses and cattle and sheep and pigs and dogs that exist to-day. They have improved all these animals for the purposes for which they require them, but they have not improved themselves. There is no reason at all to suppose that the inborn mental capacity of man has increased since prehistoric times.When men were just evolving from ape-like ancestors, they evolved because the best individuals survived and had young ones, whilst the worst died off and had none. That does not happen in civilisation. With us the weakly are looked after by the strong. If the weakliness is an inherited character, it is unfortunate that the people who have it should have children, because they will pass it on, generation after generation. On the average, the most successful people have the fewest children in most civilised countries to-day, and the least successful the most. It is possible nowadays for ordinary people to arrange whether they will have many or few children, or none at all. It would certainly be better if the most successful people had most children, because success in life is partly due to inherited qualities. Many people with excellent inherited qualities never get an opportunity to show them, from lack of a sufficiently good education. If we wanted to improve our race, we should give everyone an equal chance in life as far as possible. We should then encourage the most successful to have a lot of children. Many people are what is called feeble-minded. Their brain never develops beyond that of a child of six. Often this is a character which is inherited in the same way as blue eyes. If two such feeble-minded people marry, all their children will be feeble-minded. If a feeble-minded person marries a normal person, the children will be normal, but some of their descendants will be feeble-minded. It would be a good plan to prevent people who have inherited feeble-mindedness from having children, because feeble-minded people are not happy themselves, and they are not useful to other people, and they cost other people a lot of money. Unfortunately, they are increasing rapidly in numbers in Great Britain. Before long they will form quite a large proportion of our population, unless we decide not to allow them to have children. Members of Parliament, who decide these things, think it best to let them go on multiplying. When they were young, Members of Parliament did not have An Outline for Boys and Girls.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the Evos, this stuff mostly falls on deaf ears (or tacit agreement). However, it certainly gives the vast middle pause to consider the philosophical pedigree of those who seek to erect a society based on a godless competition for survival.
It's that elephant in the room, the double standard. Like, Margaret Sanger, her sick, racists, bigoted views and her love affair with the Nazi's and her ongoing legacy of aborting undesirables via Planned Parenthood.
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