The Darwin/Trotsky connection

Creation Magazine ^ | Barry Woolley

[GodGunsGuts]

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) was the organizer, propagandist, and military leader of the communist seizure of power in Russia following the revolution of 1917. He was communist dictator Lenin's heir apparent, until Stalin usurped this position. Intolerant, tactless and impatient, Trotsky had an unbounded faith in Marxism, which was reinforced by his uncritical acceptance of Darwinism...

[who_would_fardels_bear]

"Is Disney on your list of evil people?"

The current version of Disney is indeed on my evil people list.

They have Gay Days right around the time when kids get out of school for the summer and they don't warn parents:

Warning! Our parks are swarming with deviants.

So if you're saying Disney led to Hitler led to the slaughter of millions of innocent Jews ... I can almost believe you.

[RegulatorCountry]

Do you slip off into perseverative behavior regarding Hitler very often? You seem to have quite the monomaniacal encyclopaedia going on, there.

I've been thrilled by by the accomplishments and exploits of NASA from my earliest childhood memories, of rocket launches, moon landings and shuttle departures and landings. That organization availed itself of scientists who once were Nazis. Does that render their work undesirable? No, in and of itself, it doesn't. They repudiated the ugly, nihilist philosophy that they had once allowed to become entangled with their science, and did good in the world as a result.

Too bad that institutional memory seems to be fading. NASA has begun falling back into entanglement with bad philosophy parading as science, in the form of so-called “anthropogenic global warming,” or the more handy and versatile, near-Goebbelsian “climate change.” So, on second thought, maybe the institutional memory isn't completely shot.

Some things never change, I guess. I see the same thing with this fixation upon evolutionary speciation. You don't, and are willing to throw religion under the bus for it. That's the difference between us.

[betty boop]

That is the belief by those who claim to have more certain knowledge because their observations are of solid physical stuff ... rather than informed by faith or religious experience. I think that this belief is basically hokum.

But jeepers, who_would_fardels_bear — there is no "solid physical stuff." So what on earth are such people raving about?

I totally agree with your observation, "Scientists who claim that they are more in touch with reality [e.g., because their methods are "superior"), are only admitting that they have a very narrow view of reality." More, they've narrowed down their view of "what is science?" accordingly.

BTW, how did the good professor receive your paper contra Gilbert Harman? The latter sounds like a deconstructionist to me.... Which is the polite way to say he must be a fool ... or a tool ... maybe both.

[RegulatorCountry]

Are you familiar with Intuition, by Buckminster Fuller?

[betty boop]

Are you familiar with Intuition, by Buckminster Fuller?

No RegulatorCountry. But if it's from "Buckey" Fuller, it must be a pretty good read! What's his approach to "intuition?"

[who_would_fardels_bear]

This was my third paper. I was only allowed five double-spaced pages. In the previous papers I "failed to define" some of my terms from his point of view. The terms I "failed to define" from my point of view were standard terms that all philosophers would take for granted. Given the space restrictions I was reluctant to spend too much space defining terms.

So in this final paper I very carefully defined all of my terms ... except one: concept.

So half way through the paper he claimed he got lost because he didn't know what I meant by "concept".

Still I got an A- because he did get through half the paper before becoming befuddled.

He was a very good professor nonetheless. He was very happy when near the end of the course he asked us each which of the moral philosophies we felt was most accurate, and there was at least one person who supported each.

During the class he decimated both relativism and utilitarianism. He also made the case that moral nihilists have nothing to cheer about ... because in doing so they undermine their position.

He was a Kantian along the lines of Thomas Nagel, but he was also fascinated by Rawls.

He was not a big fan of "virtue ethics" or neo-Aristotleanism, but he did expose us to G.E.M. Anscombe and Philippa Foot. Up til then I only knew of Mortimer Adler and a few others.

[RegulatorCountry]

A few of your comments have been somewhat reminiscent, that's all.

Here's a short excerpt:

While one percent of society
has superficial awareness
of the existence of mathematical regularities
synergetically displayed by mass attraction
and supersynergetically displayed as precession,
no scientist has the slightest idea
what mass attraction is
nor why
synergy, precession, or radiation
exists or acts as they do.

Nobel laureate physicists,
in self-conscious defense
of this abruptly discovered ignorance
in regard to such cosmically important matters
(understanding knowledge of which
society has accredited them with possessing)
shrug off the necessity to explain
by saying “Here we will have to assume
some angels to be pushing things around.”
Though popularly unrealized
it is in experimental evidence
that the origins of science
are inherently immersed
in an a priori mystery.

[Tailgunner Joe]

"The idea of evolution and determinism—that is, the idea of a gradual development conditioned by the character of the material world—took possession of me completely."

The theory of evolution said that creatures evolved through tiny changes over long periods of time, but the fossil record does not support this. Because new creatures appear in the fossil record fully-formed, the theory of evolution was amended and now says that evolution happens quickly in rapid leaps and spurts. This is similar to Vladimir Lenin's amendment of communist theory. Karl Marx said that societies would progress slowly and inevitably through stages of capitalism, socialism and finally communism, but Lenin's revolution in Russia skipped right to communism. Like communists, whenever Darwinists' theories are proved wrong, they just change the theory to a new one and assert it even more dogmatically than before.

[QBFimi]

Trotsky ping

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing your insights, dear ColdWater!

[Alamo-Girl]

And I very much look forward to discussing Rosen's book with you, dearest sister in Christ! From everything you have described, it does indeed sound like a (much needed) game changer.

[ColdWater]

The current version of Disney is indeed on my evil people list.

We weren't discussing the current Disney Corp. We were discussing whether or not you thought that the original Mr. Disney was evil because Hitler took an uncritical view of his cartoons which influenced Hitler's work.

[ColdWater]

You claim that Hitler was influenced by Darwin and thus Darwin is evil.

I claim that Hitler was influenced by Newton.

Do you consider Newton evil?

[RegulatorCountry]

My only reference to Hitler in this lengthy thread has been:

And here you sit, all smug and condescending, raining down every slander of the left, falsely equating Biblical literalists to fascists, to Hitler, to God only knows what, and all in defense of some philosophical construct parading as science that actually was utilized by the fascist named Hitler.

Now, tell me, how does this single statement fit into your multiple recitations of the various claims to fame for Hitler? And what, pray tell, does Isaac Newton have to do with it? Did Newton advocate some nihilist philosophy that resulted in the death of millions? To my knowledge, he did not. He was actually quite the Christian man, Newton was. Did you realize he spent a great deal of time, searching for hidden codes in the Bible? He did.

Sounds like Sir Isaac Newton was one-a them there literalists. He probably even believed in *GASP* a six day creation and the flood.

Might want to throw that old knuckle-dragger under the bus, too, lol.

[ColdWater]

He was actually quite the Christian man, Newton was.

Arianism and Socinianism played strong roles in his thinking. He was a very radical 'Christian'.

[ColdWater]

And what, pray tell, does Isaac Newton have to do with it?

He formulated the laws of motion which Hitler followed in bombing England.

[hosepipe]

[ As G. K. Chesterton said: The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in. ]

What a profound statement.. since literally no one even knows all that the cosmos is.. Even the most radical cosmetological theory could be, might be, approaching the perimeter of the cosmos..

[betty boop]

Though popularly unrealized
it is in experimental evidence
that the origins of science
are inherently immersed
in an a priori mystery.

What a marvelously profound insight, RegulatorCountry!

Sometimes I wonder whether the popular ignorance of this haunting truth is a case of (1) scientists don't want us to find out about it, because it might undermine their authority; or (2) they haven't analyzed their own thinking sufficiently to realize that, at bottom, they themselves absolutely depend on faith in order to "do" science. At the very least, they must have faith in the order and intelligibility of the universe. Otherwise, science would be pointless.

But it seems neither of these prosaic insights comes close to what Buckminster Fuller was alluding to in these lines. And that is, there is a limit to human understanding. The ultimate cause of the universe is unfathomable by a finite mind operating within the reference frame of 4D spacetime. Plus logic itself is constrained by Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem.

I like the way Fuller points to experience as the point of contact with the "mystery." David Hume would probably back him up on this; Hume held that there are only three avenues of human knowledge acquisition — sense, memory, and experience. And Albert Einstein observed (paraphrasing), all true knowledge rises from experience. It seems well to bear this in mind, the next time a scientific model or theory fails to "map" to reality as actually experienced.

I have no doubt that "mystery" underlies all that there is — in particular the mystery of Why are things the way they are, and not some other way (i.e., what accounts for the orderliness of the universe)? And Why is there anything at all, why not nothing? Or the scientific conundrum that one can (at least imaginatively) "go back in time" to the Big Bang, or whatever the inception event was — but not all the way back to the First infinitessimal moment of Creation. That's because time as perceived by finite creatures cannot be "quantized" into a smaller unit than Planck time. Until the first unit of Planck time was "produced," the physical laws as we currently know them would not be in operation. We have no idea what "happened" in that time interval, and cannot find out on the basis of contemporary physics. But assuming this bar were to be overcome, looking "back" farther still — there'd be literally nothing to see.

But it's late, and I'm rambling. So please let me wish you good night! And thank you so much, RegulatorCountry, for your kindness in sending along the Fuller excerpt — and for the book recommendation!

[RegulatorCountry]

A little prior exposure to Fuller's Synergetics I & II might be useful. Keep in mind, also, that Intuition was published in the seventies as well. Much of it is timeless, though. I don't always agree with him, but he was brilliant, fearless and completely, warmly human.

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

- R. Buckminster Fuller

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!