Posted on 10/30/2009 11:01:32 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Why is thought, being a secretion of the brain, more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter? It is our arrogance, it is our admiration of ourselves…
— Charles Darwin, age 29, in his notebook
This is an incredible comment. It is difficult to understand how anyone with a brain could not observe that thought produces such things as symphonies, literature and mathematics, while gravity just makes things fall down and holds planets in their orbits.
Furthermore, thought does not secrete like insulin from a pancreas, it is willed (at least that’s what I do, and I assume others do as well).
Darwin was far more simpleminded, naive, and superficial in his thinking than I realized. I already knew that he was simpleminded, naive, and superficial in his thinking when he ignored the obvious evidence of design in nature, in favor of his “random variation and natural selection can turn microscopic bugs into Mozart, given enough time” thesis.
How this patently absurd idea could have completely taken over the intellectual elite is still a mystery to me, when all the evidence of modern science contradicts it. The only conclusion I can reach is that they are desperately trying to deny the obvious, because they hate the light.
If you’re not laughing, you’re crying...PING!!!
No, the vast majority just shake their heads and deeply wish you a swift recovery.
Yeah, no big deal there...
There’s no reason to make this personal. 3G’s just carrying the torch.
I notice the trend in creationism is to at least become familiar with the the science. You don’t see a lot of the old, “I carbon tested a rock and it was only 50,000 years old” nonsense any more.
That’s a very recent and positive trend.
(Now if they can just get the science right.)
Gil needs to go learn some sciency stuff. Without human thought, there would be no mathematics and symphonies and literature. Without gravity, there would be no Earth, no life, no sun, no stars, no universe. No tides, no atmospheres......but hey, let's limit gravity to "making things fall down" so we can bash someone.
You don’t see a lot of the old, “I carbon tested a rock and it was only 50,000 years old” nonsense any more.
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Nope. Now we have arguments from the creationists that our 12 billion year old universe and the ~6000 year old earth owe their existence to the exact same creation event.
GGG doesn’t post much from the ID side of the world, but since this merely opines about the naivete of Darwin, it has passed the post it test.
GGG - All thought is not willed. Since the foundation of the argument laid out here is fatally flawed, it renders his conclusions suspect at best.
Although characterized and vilified as an atheist or worse from the devil, Darwin was actually a religious man. His wonderment was answered in other works by his conclusion that gravity was given to all things and creatures, but thought and the ability to reason, was a gift God gave only to man.
Your brain is obviously secreting.
‘zactly.
Ooooo!
I like it.
That’s the part that’s not going to happen. I take great umbrage at the cherry-picking-science-as-foregone-conclusion to prop up “creationary” beliefs.
It's the same time counted differently.
Like here.
I suspect quantum mechanics can be used to formulate a solution. ;)
(I hope I'm not gonna be sorry I suggested that.)
But it exposes creationist audiences to chunks of science.
This is something they’ve never tried before and I think will have an impact over time.
I suspect this is part of God’s plan for these folks.
My what an optimistic soul... Bless you.
Could you get a little more specific (using links and examples) about what you mean about Darwin being a religious man?
What is your point here, that Darwin's notion that the thoughts we think are of no more significance than any other physical law or process simply because unwilled thoughts might co-exist with willed thoughts?
So you don’t agree with the author that thought is willed? You recognize that his premise is flawed?
What becomes, in your line of thinking, of conclusions drawn from faulty premises?
What becomes, in your line of thinking, of conclusions drawn from faulty premises?
If all thought is not willed, then can we assume that your support of evolution is not willed?
Yes, it exposes evolutionists to rational thought imposed on the science.
This is something they’ve never tried before and I think it will have an impact over time.
I suspect this is part of God’s plan for these folks.
If not, what does his musings about thinking, written in a notebook at the age of 29, have to do with the wide acceptance of his theory of natural selection?
I always thought Darwin a rather simple-minded, spiteful soul who was angry at God for the death of his daughter and set out to point as many people away from God as he could.
And confirmed by the release of his private notebooks.
Sure. Charles Darwin was educated in religious schools and was very active in his parish throughout much of his life. Later in life he became hostile to organized religion and those who claimed religious authority directly in response to the stinging accusations and criticisms he received for suggesting a theory to explain scientific observation. I am sure you have extensive literature on Charles Darwin, but the public entity created by his theory and the private man were two completely different creatures.
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2004/PSCF3-04Lamoureux.pdf
http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_LifeandLettersandAutobiography.html
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: Chapter on religion
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/darwin/index.shtml
Because Darwin is the antichrist. If you looked closely under what hair he had left at his death, I bet you could have found the 666.
Is this your first admission that scientists don't worship at the Temple of Darwin?
But what caught my eye was the madness that philosophical materialism leads to. Namely, when the materialist turns on his own rationality and declares it just as arbitrary and meaningless as every other inanimate law, process, or object.
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I don’t see the words arbitrary and meaningless anywhere in Darwin’s quote. Perhaps it was in the penumbra?
There has never been a period when all scientists worshiped Darwin’s materialist creation myth. Both creationists and evolutionists of various stripes opposed him right from the beginning...and still do. And now the IDers have joined the ever growing chorus of Darwin critics. But neo-Darwinian evolution is still the reigning evo-atheist creation myth, and while it is indeed rapidly crumbling under the weight of massive scientific falsification, they still have the brute government power to enforce their DoDo (Darwin only, Darwin only) policy for a little while longer. But their time is rapidly running out, and they know it. That is why they are frantically searching for a new synthesis, lest they be without a new God-denying evolutionary theory to replace the old one.
He also made this comment that should draw our interest:
"After a brief comment on boyhood morality, he(Darwin) goes on to register a protest against a contradiction in contemporary thought: it is accepted that the whole Newtonian universe of the astronomers, vast and awesome as it may be, operates according to natural law;
N Notebook, p. 36. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library.
* Letter, Charles Darwin to Charles Lyell, August 21, 1861. ML 1, 194.
[page] 369 The Notebooks on Man, Mind and Materialism
but the much more limited universe of living things is deemed so wonderful as to require the idea of a special intelligence, “the artificer,” who designs and creates each living thing. Darwin adds a reflection on human psychology: if we admired the universe as much as we did “the wonderful structure of a beetle,” we would apply the argument from Design to the former as much as to the latter, and not accept the operation of either according to natural law.”
Ellipses added
Do you really believe that a quote can only be assessed with words contained within the quote? Wow, that's rather simplistic. Don't you think?
"Perhaps it was in the penumbra?"
It was just un-willed thoughts...
I’ll take that as a yes. Scientists don’t worship Darwin. That’s how they were able to reject his Pangenesis theory, while the acceptance of Natural Selection became almost unanimous after the work of Ronald Fisher, Edmund Ford and others involved in the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis.
Which, if actually read, reveal a religious but conflicted man who was tormented by the clergy and the pious for daring to express what he has witnessed. As a result Darwin gave up on religion, but never on God.
No one worships Charles Darwin. The attacks on him are an attempt to undermine his message by discrediting or vilifying the messenger.
"..but the much more limited universe of living things is deemed so wonderful as to require the idea of a special intelligence, “the artificer,” who designs and creates each living thing."
This is what I mean about Darwin being simple-minded. There are a couple of classic fallacies in these statements that Darwin should have recognized.
It is a simple thing to recognize that life merely required the same creative start that the universe received, proceeding thereafter according to mechanisms and properties inherent at its creation.
Darwin apparently did not realize that the fact that each new generation of life did not require a creative act on God's part does not mean that God didn't create life any more than the fact that the change of seasons doesn't require a creative act on God's part means that the universe wasn't created.
Were he a true scientist, Darwin should then have looked for the mechanisms and properties of life that generated the things observed. This would have been science. Instead, Darwin promoted the philosophical conclusion that God did not create life.
This is the fallacy of necessity where an unwarranted conclusion is reached based on the necessity of one of the premises. The fact that life proceeds by generation without creative requirement does not necessarily mean that life was not created. Darwin continued his error by invoking the fallacy of affirming the consequent by interpreting all observations strictly in terms of his initial belief.
Pity the poor fools who can't see the massive fallacies Darwin committed and blindly accept Darwin's simple-minded fallacious assessment.
That statement is not correct.
“It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life” (Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. 6th edition, 1882. p. 421).
"That statement is not correct."
Wrong. The statement is correct.
You are using a definition of 'life' as some invisible, simple, self-replicating form that would lead to all others (i.e., evolution). I am using life in the context of the different baramin that could be identified in Darwin's day. Darwin certainly promoted the philosophical conclusion that God did not create the various baramin the were observed in his day, but rather was limited to some simple self-replicating form that eventually led to all others.
This distinction does not remove the fallacies in Darwin or his adherent's thinking. Having admitted that God is needed for the invisible simple form, Darwin's mistake in thinking that all subsequent forms had to be generated by evolution is still intact. As is his mistake in interpreting all observations through his 'a priori' belief that this invisible, simple, original form could generate all of the observed baramin.
It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life” (Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. 6th edition, 1882. p. 421).
All your pseudoscience, misdirection, and distortion, cannot change the facts.
Baramin is a made up pseudoscientific term. Show me one creditable peer-reviewed paper on that subject.
LOL!
Is it part of God’s plan to reveal Himself to the evo-folks as well?
Or do they already know everything?
What do you know about "true science"? Based upon 19th century standards Darwin was a giant. That for over 100 years there has been legitimate, and as yet unresolved debate over his observations and the causes he suggests speaks volumes. Remember, Darwin did not have the advantage of DNA research or Google searches, or a million other tools and discoveries that have happened since his death.
Baramin is the mystic coefficient that resolves all scientific conflicts of the creationist's algorithms.
Darwin wrote a preliminary 230 page essay on the theory of natural selection in 1844, Seven years before Annie Darwin died.
So really your "always thought" supports Darwin's point about the properties of the emmissions of the skull wetware being not that exceptionable.
Thanks for the ping!
Well said.
I think you mean 'plain', but yes.
"It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life” (Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. 6th edition, 1882. p. 421)."
Darwin was trying to equate the origin of life problem with an incomplete theory of gravity. This is why we see evos constantly parroting the same argument. However, when 96% of the matter and energy of the universe is deemed 'invisible' in order for the theory of gravity to work on astronomical scales, one has to wonder if the analogy was a serendipitous indictment of evolution by Darwin's own hand.
"All your pseudoscience, misdirection, and distortion, cannot change the facts."
What fact do you think I'm trying to change?
"Baramin is a made up pseudoscientific term. Show me one creditable peer-reviewed paper on that subject."
As is the assumed, invisible, simple form that Darwin postulated. Even to this day. Using your standard, Darwin would not have been able to publish his philosophy.
I know that 'true science' deals with what is observable and testable. Billions of years of assumed history, assumed life forms and assumed processes are not 'true science'. That is philosophy.
"Remember, Darwin did not have the advantage of DNA research or Google searches, or a million other tools and discoveries that have happened since his death."
Darwin committed several logical fallacies in proposing his new 'theory' that is fundamentally-based on ancient pagan ideas. Maggots spontaneously appearing on carcasses and rats spontaneously being generated by garbage dumps were some of those ancient pagan ideas.
Darwin simply made these ancient pagan ideas untestable by making the organisms 'simple' and pushing them back into unobservable, assumed time frames. Thus making his theory unfalsifiable and dependent on the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
We can use science's term for groups of interbreeding species.
What term would you like to use?
Are you saying that Darwin wasn't angry at God for the death of his daughter or that he didn't set out to point as many people away from God as he could?
"So really your "always thought" supports Darwin's point about the properties of the emmissions of the skull wetware being not that exceptionable."
As does your post...
How about "Bullsh*t", it seems to suit the concept pretty well.
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