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Darwinism the root of the culture of death: expert
LifeSiteNews ^ | 2/17/12 | Kathleen Gilbert

Posted on 02/17/2012 4:17:50 PM PST by wagglebee

WASHINGTON, February 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - What do Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, “father of the sexual revolution” Alfred Kinsey, Lenin, and Hitler have in common?

All these pioneers of what some call the culture of death rooted their beliefs and actions in Darwinism - a little-known fact that one conservative leader says shouldn’t be ignored.

Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation told an audience on Capitol Hill before the March for Life last month that the philosophical consequences of Darwinism has “totally destroyed many parts of our society.”

Owen pointed to Dr. Josef Mengele, who infamously experimented on Jews during the Holocaust, Hitler himself, and other Nazi leaders as devotees of Darwinism who saw Nazism and the extermination of peoples as nothing more than a way “to advance evolution.” Darwinism was also the “foundation” of Communist ideology in Russia through Vladimir Lenin, said Owen, who showed a photograph of the only decorative item found on Lenin’s desk: an ape sitting on a pile of books, including Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” and looking at a skull.

“Lenin sat at this desk and looked at this sculpture as he authorized the murder of millions of his fellow countrymen, because they stood in the way of evolutionary progress,” Owen said. He also said accounts from communist China report that the first lesson used by the new regime to indoctrinate religious Chinese citizens was “always the same: Darwin.”

In America, the fruit of Darwinism simply took the form of eugenics, the belief that the human race could be improved by controlling the breeding of a population.

Owen said that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a prominent eugenicist, promoted contraception on the principles of evolution. “She saw contraception as the sacrament of evolution, because with contraception we get rid of the less fit and we allow only the fit to breed,” he said. Sanger is well-known to have supported the spread of “birth control,” a term she coined, as “the process of weeding out the unfit.”

Alfred Kinsey, whose “experiments” in pedophilia, sadomasochism, and homosexuality opened wide the doors to sexual anarchy in the 20th century, also concluded from Darwinist principles that sexual deviations in humans were no more inappropriate than those found in the animal kingdom. Before beginning his sexual experiments, Kinsey, also a eugenicist, was a zoologist and author of a prominent biology textboook that promoted evolution.

Owen, a Roman Catholic, strongly rejected the notion that Christianity and the Biblical creation account could be reconciled with Darwinism. He recounted the story of his own father, who he said was brought up a devout Christian before losing his faith when exposed to Darwinism in college. He was to become the first ever Secretary General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

“The trajectory that led from Leeds and Manchester University to becoming Secretary General of one of the most evil organizations that’s ever existed on the face of the earth started with evolution,” said Owen.


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: abortion; communism; cultureofdeath; darwinism; deatheaters; eugenics; fascism; gagdadbob; lifehate; moralabsolutes; onecosmosblog; prolife
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To: Alamo-Girl
Interestingly, Marx loathed philosophy and insisted his theories were science, not philosophy:

Any kook or quack can claim that their ideas are "scientific", but that does not make them so.

Very often, kooks use a language similar to that of science and claim a scientific basis for whatever they are advocating, but their purpose is to lend credibility to their ideas so as to impress people who are naive about the methodologies of real science and do not understand its language.

In making a judgment about the scientific validity of such a claim (i.e. that socialism is based in science), one must look at whether there is supporting evidence. True, I have no desire to study Marx, but I have never heard any claim that he undertook any kind of hypothesis-driven scientific study (whether observational or experimental), the carefully analyzed results of which led him to the conclusion that socialism is, in fact, a natural and workable model for human society.

A statement out of your quote, "For these misty formations in the brains of people are necessary sublimations of their material, empirically ascertained life-process, which is bound up with material conditions," is as good an example of pseudoscience as I have ever seen. He put sciency words together, but they express no coherent science-based principle or observation.

601 posted on 03/18/2012 8:23:25 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: Alamo-Girl
I use it to describe a real difference between science disciplines. And I am not alone. From the evolution side of the debate:

This is Science!

I must admit, I find it rather amusing that you decided to link to and quote an article which appears to be written by a scientist, explaining the scientist's perspective, and which corroborates pretty much everything I have said about science and the scientific method. I posted a little while ago about how Marx did not base his socialistic ideas in science, even though he called it "science"--if I had read that article before making that post, I probably could have pointed at quotes in that article that explain the point I was trying to make.

That said, the use of the "historic" vs. "non-historic" terminology as used by that author are different than the way the philosopher used the terms. It is more of a semantic difference than anything else, and approaches into a huge grey area. For example, I may wish to examine the effect of a chemical on gene expression, so I do a series of experiments using successive generations of cells (what I call "passages"). Later, I want to reexamine my experiment, so I repeat it, but I use cells from ten passages later. I find out that my cells have evolved to the extent that they no longer respond to the chemical the way they did during earlier passages. Does this mean my earlier experiments were "historical"? Does it mean my results were invalid (assuming all other components of the experiment were constant)?

I should point out that this situation is not a hypothetical--it really did come up, when I was in graduate school.

Of particular interest is a passage near the end of that same article that you linked:

EVOLUTION IS SCIENCE

Evolution is the scientific study of how organisms — bacteria, archaea, protists, fungi, animals and plants — came to be. Evolution relies on the same sort of scientific processes and evidence as do all other fields of science. The methods and processes of evolutionary biology do not differ in any significant way from those used in any other science. Evolutionary biologists use critical thinking, evidential reasoning, judgment of authority, hypotheses development, data gathering, and hypotheses testing just like all other scientists. Evolutionary biologists practice nonhistorical or historical science or both. All biologists contribute to evolution in one way or another. Some use experiments, for example with fruit flies, while others observe the sequence of fossilized organisms in the rock record. Some rely heavily on the other sciences for complementary data, for example the evolutionary paleontologist is beholden to physicists for the understanding of dating by radioactive decay of various rocks.

Darwin (Darwin, 1859) brought together a large number of observations and developed the hypothesis that the environment acted to select individual variants in a population that had particular characteristics. He did not know what caused the variation, such as eye color, growth rates, or height, but he determined that if a particular character were consistently selected by the environment through successful breeding, in the same way that dog breeders selected characters they desired in their dogs, then changes would ensue in future generations. This hypothesis he called "natural selection". As he and others gathered more evidence and added additional hypotheses in the following decades, his hypothesis became strengthened and called a theory. Evolution is a simple elegant theory in its basics, yet it rapidly becomes complex. This complexity leads to other hypotheses to account for aspects of the overall theory. For example, punctuated equilibrium — the idea that species are in some kind of evolutionary stasis for long periods of geologic time and then rapidly evolve into another species — was presented as an alternative to Darwin's idea that evolution was a gradual affair with changes taking place slowly and evenly over a long time. Punctuated equilibrium enhanced Darwin's theory by clarifying how evolution took place through time — it did not disprove the theory as some religious zealots have claimed. Today, many biologists and paleontologists around the world are working to better understand and test Darwin's theory in all its details. Some of these biologists confirm Darwin's ideas, some develop more critical details, and all constantly test the theory, but the theory of evolution has yet to be disproved in spite of all this effort.

As I mentioned earlier at post 509, Henry Gee, Editor of "Nature" was not so kind. He said: [quote not repeated here]

That quote is almost certainly part of a description of something else. While I couldn't find that quote in context, I will say that while such things as the development of language are difficult to reconstruct in controlled-experiment fashion, we can find enough evidence of language evolution to logically conclude that it is an on-going process. That does not mean that careful documentation of language differences over time is not scientific.

Evidently you have no use for Philosophers of Science like Sir Karl Popper and Carol Cleland - both of whom I've linked earlier in this thread.

True. I have little use for philosophers, and little patience for attempts by people untrained in the scientific method at trying to describe it.

Likewise, I have no use for "just so" stories which constitute much of the hypotheses offered by the historical sciences, e.g. anthropology, archeology, Egyptology, evolution biology.

That we are able to observe adaptation of wildlife in the field or evolution of bacteria in the laboratory does not make "just so" stories any less the fabrications that they are.

In my view, the historical record is simply too spotty for historical sciences to be taken as seriously as the hard sciences, e.g. physics.

Apparently, the only evidence you would accept would be a recording made by a time machine that can go back and observe (maybe by time-lapse photography?) the process of evolution as it occurred. That will never exist. Nor will we ever find every single fossil example of every member of a single unbroken lineage stretching back hundreds of millions of years, in which we can see the morphological changes as they occur. That we cannot document every single step along the way does not mean it didn't happen, or that the progression is fundamentally different than what we logically deduce.

To reject the observations that led to the formulation of the theory of evolution, and to its refinements over the years is to essentially reject just about all science--even physics.

Your use of the word "historical sciences" still does not match the usages of that term by either the philosophers or Lipps. Although you apparently reject my specific scientific discipline as "historical" because I make heavy use of evolutionary theory, I have never heard anyone describing biochemistry as "soft", or any science as "historical".

We are polar opposites here as well. For instance, I would say that the geometry (e.g. circle) exists, and the mathematician came along and discovered it.

Physical matter forms geometric shapes. Humans almost certainly observed natural circles, spheres, squares, trapezoids, etc., for millenia before the development of mathematics.

Obviously they cannot test what is not there. It is equally ridiculous to say that there can only be one explanation for evidence in the historical record.

I'll refer you back to the section of the This is Science! article that you linked earlier, and which I quoted above. There may be many explanations, but only those which are borne out in a systematic scientific analysis are accepted. You are perfectly welcome to propose an alternate explanation, test it scientifically, and publish it if it stands up to the scientific scrutiny.

602 posted on 03/18/2012 10:13:59 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: spirited irish
Fantastic post!
603 posted on 03/18/2012 10:44:04 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: exDemMom; Alamo-Girl
"Apparently, the only evidence you would accept would be a recording made by a time machine that can go back and observe (maybe by time-lapse photography?) the process of evolution as it occurred. That will never exist. Nor will we ever find every single fossil example of every member of a single unbroken lineage stretching back hundreds of millions of years, in which we can see the morphological changes as they occur. That we cannot document every single step along the way does not mean it didn't happen, or that the progression is fundamentally different than what we logically deduce."

Again, this 'begs the question' by assuming that the 'process of evolution' has occurred even as you admit that you cannot scientifically demonstrate that it has occurred. This is the same philosophy that produced the theory of punctuated equilibrium which 'predicted' that the evidence necessary to support it would not be found. This simply isn't science, it is philosophy.

And, as I pointed out previously, logical deduction is firmly grounded in philosophy; making it no better at explaining reality than the philosophy which underlies it. In order for philosophy not to underly belief in evolution, there must be evidence that uniquely supports evolution without appeal to the 'a priori' philosophical belief of the proponent.

If evolution is so firmly established as science, there should be some unique evidence in evolution that would be impossible for a biology created with a broad ability to adapt.

"Does it mean my results were invalid (assuming all other components of the experiment were constant)?"

Where are the results of the 'historical' experiments documenting 'evolution' that were observed in unobserved time and unobservable assumed events? It is the logical fallacy of equivocation to equate observable experiments with assumed unobservable events. It should be obvious that is a non sequitur.

"To reject the observations that led to the formulation of the theory of evolution, and to its refinements over the years is to essentially reject just about all science--even physics."

Straw man warning. It is not the observations that are at issue. It is the underlying philosophy through which those observations are interpreted that is the issue.

"Although you apparently reject my specific scientific discipline as "historical" because I make heavy use of evolutionary theory, I have never heard anyone describing biochemistry as "soft", or any science as "historical"."

Which brings us back to the question that asked what 'remarkable advance' could only have been made using an evolutionary framework?

"You are perfectly welcome to propose an alternate explanation, test it scientifically, and publish it if it stands up to the scientific scrutiny."

Isn't this more 'question begging' since the issue in question is whether or not 'the explanation' (evolution) is itself subject to scientific testing and scrutiny?

604 posted on 03/18/2012 11:13:15 AM PDT by GourmetDan (Eccl 10:2 - The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.)
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To: exDemMom
"I have little use for philosophers, and little patience for attempts by people untrained in the scientific method at trying to describe it."

Unfortunately, failing to appreciate philosophers leaves one ignorant of the degree to which philosophy permeates one's 'scientific' worldview. A person could even end up claiming no philosophical influence on worldview which, as philosophy explains, is impossible.

Wouldn't it be funny if avoiding philosophy in the science curriculum has had the 'unintended' (?) consequence of raising up a whole host of philosophical naturalists who deny the influence of philosophy on their worldview?

605 posted on 03/18/2012 11:24:31 AM PDT by GourmetDan (Eccl 10:2 - The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.)
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To: exDemMom; spirited irish; betty boop; YHAOS
I strongly agree that Marxism is not and never was, science. Nevertheless, Marx tried to claim it was and promoted his theories (falsely) under the color of science. This I aver is what Dawkins, Pinker, Singer and Lewontin have also done - which is to say, ideology is not science.

Popper's falsification philosophy was largely in reaction to both Marx' and Freud's claims that their ideas were scientific - by extension their followers would claim equal standing to the theories of physicists, and in particular to Einstein's.

Their claim was based largely on their "explanatory power" which was due to the ambiguity of their theories and how stories could be written or rephrased to dismiss any challenges. Popper's science as falsification showed that the true value of a theory increases as the theory survives repeated attempts to falsify it.

Popper did not apply his point to the historical sciences, but he could have.

"Explanatory power" will not do - make a "just so" story vague enough and it can explain away most any challenge but it does not make the story science.

606 posted on 03/19/2012 8:16:23 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: exDemMom; spirited irish; betty boop; YHAOS; wagglebee; GourmetDan
It is quite frustrating to discuss these issues with you because you keep accusing me of saying things which I did not say:

Although you apparently reject my specific scientific discipline as "historical" because I make heavy use of evolutionary theory, I have never heard anyone describing biochemistry as "soft", or any science as "historical"

Back at post 529, I explained that biology has a leg in both historical and experimental science.

Biology has a leg in both methodologies; many of its hypotheses are "historical" (e.g. evolution biology and astrobiology) but not all (e.g. molecular biology.)

And I never said biochemistry was a "soft" science. Indeed, the examples of soft science I gave in that post were psychology, social sciences and anthropology:

That said, the opposite of "hard" science is "soft" science, e.g. psychology, social sciences. Such disciplines are so far removed from either historical or hard sciences, they are not even relevant in this discussion.

In most cases, "soft" sciences do not use a historical record for evidence, e.g. psychology. To whatever extent they do, they would be considered "historical" sciences, e.g. anthropology.

You seem surprised that I would use a source you consider to be credible but truly all the sources I have used are widely accepted, credible sources. Indeed, you are the first in fourteen plus years on this forum to disapprove of Sir Karl Popper as a source.

Your use of the word "historical sciences" still does not match the usages of that term by either the philosophers or Lipps.

Carol Cleland, not Karl Popper, used the term "historical science" - and she used it in the same context as Lipps. In fact, her essay on the subject was quite comprehensive compared to Lipps' few paragraphs on the subject. It is her specialty.

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science: Prediction and Explanation in Historical Natural Science (Cleland)

In earlier work (Cleland [2001], [2002]), I sketched an account of the structure and justification of ‘prototypical’ historical natural science that distinguishes it from ‘classical’ experimental science. This article expands upon this work, focusing upon the close connection between explanation and justification in the historical natural sciences. I argue that confirmation and disconfirmation in these fields depends primarily upon the explanatory (versus predictive or retrodictive) success or failure of hypotheses vis-à-vis empirical evidence. The account of historical explanation that I develop is a version of common cause explanation. Common cause explanation has long been vindicated by appealing to the principle of the common cause. Many philosophers of science (e.g., Sober and Tucker) find this principle problematic, however, because they believe that it is either purely methodological or strictly metaphysical. I defend a third possibility: the principle of the common cause derives its justification from a physically pervasive time asymmetry of causation (a.k.a. the asymmetry of overdetermination). I argue that explicating the principle of the common cause in terms of the asymmetry of overdetermination illuminates some otherwise puzzling features of the practices of historical natural scientists.

You also said:

Apparently, the only evidence you would accept would be a recording made by a time machine that can go back and observe (maybe by time-lapse photography?) the process of evolution as it occurred. That will never exist. Nor will we ever find every single fossil example of every member of a single unbroken lineage stretching back hundreds of millions of years, in which we can see the morphological changes as they occur. That we cannot document every single step along the way does not mean it didn't happen, or that the progression is fundamentally different than what we logically deduce.

To reject the observations that led to the formulation of the theory of evolution, and to its refinements over the years is to essentially reject just about all science--even physics.

Piffle.

Physics is the epitome of hard science.

Newton's theory has withstood many attempts at falsification and it remains accurate for classical level physics work.

However, to do physics at the quantum level, one needs Quantum Mechanics/Quantum Field Theory. Newtonian physics does not apply to that level. Likewise, to do physics at the astronomical level, one needs General Relativity because Newtonian physics does not apply to that level.

Newtonian physics is not treated as dogma as if it had to explain everything or the entire discipline of Physics would die along with it. Nor was it rewritten or modified to incorporate observations at the quantum and astronomical levels.

Compare the treatment of Newton's theory to the treatment of Darwin's theory at different levels of biological observations.

If a laboratory scientist went to lunch with streptococci in his petri dish and returned to find anthrax bacilli instead - he would not be claiming that he had just witnessed evolution, he'd be calling the FBI because a biological weapons terrorist had evidently gained access to his lab.

He would not however be surprised to see gradual changes in the bacteria over time. That he might attribute to evolution - or perhaps adaptation if the same environmental pressures evoked the same changes in every instance.

At the classical level, the field scientist would not be appealing to evolution if he found a litter of bobcats in a wolf's den. He'd be looking for a behavioral explanation or perhaps a prankster. But if he found the beaks of the local finch population to be longer than before, he might attribute it to evolution - or perhaps adaptation if the same phenomenon occurred every time there was a drought.

At the historical level, the field scientist would not be appealing to evolution if he found a human skull in the same location as a dinosaur's fossil. He'd be looking for a prankster. But if he found a less advanced dinosaur in deeper strata, he would probably attribute it to evolution.

But when he did not observe what the hypothesis called for - gradual change over time - which would have applied in the laboratory and field level, rather than falsifying the theory or coming up with a new theory for that level, he came up with a revision, i.e. punctuated equilibrium.

Thus, the theory of evolution is more like dogma than Newton's theory, i.e. "it must be preserved!"

And punctuated equilibrium is a "just so" amendment to a "just so" story. It cannot be otherwise because the evidence in the historical record is spotty. If we had the complete hard and soft tissue specimen for every organism that ever lived and witnessed its origin and the cumulative evidence did not falsify the theory of evolution, then I would not call it a "just so" story.

But as it sits, the scientist at that level is connecting the dots in a very spotty quantization of the continuum. It requires faith and thus, again, is more like dogma than Newton's theory.

And so, no, I do not find biology comparable to physics.

607 posted on 03/19/2012 11:01:22 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl; spirited irish; betty boop; YHAOS; wagglebee; GourmetDan
I have long believed (and often stated) that evolution is nothing more than a smokescreen employed by the Darwinists to avoid any discussion of their actual agenda.

There are over six hundred posts on this thread and most of them talk about evolution. However, this thread was never meant to be about evolution, it is about Darwinian eugenics.

The Darwinists have killed MORE THAN ONE BILLION innocent human beings in the past century. But whenever this is brought up the Darwinists immediately try to steer the conversation into a debate about evolution and, unfortunately, we usually take the bait.

608 posted on 03/19/2012 11:23:18 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee; Alamo-Girl; betty boop; YHAOS; GourmetDan

“The Darwinists have killed MORE THAN ONE BILLION innocent human beings in the past century.”

Spirited: This makes sense in a completely perverted way. Darwinists are worshippers of death-—nothingness. According to them life accidently emerged from death and back to death it must go. Death is always and ever the victor and Darwinists its’ murderous helpers.


609 posted on 03/19/2012 11:47:27 AM PDT by spirited irish
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To: spirited irish; Alamo-Girl; betty boop; YHAOS; GourmetDan
Darwinists are worshippers of death

Actually, they would claim to worship life. But if you can pin them down on this you will discover they only think certain types of people actually deserve to live in the first place.

610 posted on 03/19/2012 11:56:05 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee
The Darwinists have killed MORE THAN ONE BILLION innocent human beings in the past century. But whenever this is brought up the Darwinists immediately try to steer the conversation into a debate about evolution and, unfortunately, we usually take the bait.

Guilty as charged.

611 posted on 03/19/2012 2:59:37 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: exDemMom
Throughout undergraduate and graduate school, the subject of philosophy never came up.

Nor, doubtless, did you feel any curiosity, since the subject never came up. You were born on a cloudless Tuesday afternoon, and then suddenly everything went blank? When next you opened your eyes, there you were, along with thousands of other scientists, all busily going about your various science projects? A brand new world?
Remember E=mc2?
You were asked which part of Einstein’s magnificent inspiration impelled the Truman Administration to go into days of agonizing “Existentialist nonsense” before the decision was made to drop the bomb that ended WWII. Further, you were reminded that there was no scientific reason to not just go ahead and drop the bomb without a moment’s hesitation beyond the technical considerations involved in the bomb’s effective delivery. What, then, caused the Truman Administration to hesitate?
No reply . . . although you seem more than willing to preach the standard doctrine about what’s “testable” and what’s “falsifiable.”
Remember the Tuskegee Experiment? What protocol violation or breach of scientific practice brought about the abrupt termination of that experiment?
Again, no reply.

Likewise, we might inquire, as we already have, what part of “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” is to be thought of as “existentialist nonsense”? Is “In the beginning” to be thought “existentialist nonsense”? Is “freedom of inquiry” to be thought “existentialist nonsense”? Or “freedom of association”? Or, are they, instead, all to be regarded as “thought meandering”?

Thanks to the Internet, I can quickly look up Popper (and just about anyone else).

Yeah . . . except when your internet is buggy.

The scientific method was not developed by philosophers, but by scientists.

How would you know? The subject never came up. You’ve not ever heard of Thomas Aquinas? Of Roger Bacon? Aristotle? Ibn al-Haytham? Isaac Newton? Euclid? Galileo Galilei? No more so than Karl Popper, I imagine? Yet, save the redoubtable Karl Popper, the term ‘Science,’ or ‘Scientist,’ properly understood, did not even exist during their days. These men, and others such as they, were scholars, from whom came what is our understanding of philosophy, science and its methodology, logic, geometry, ethics, and many another intellectual skill (such as political philosophy), and from whom the foundation of Western Civilization was built.

In the meantime, no doubt clouds your mind, no question disturbs your thoughts, and I continue to be without invitation.

612 posted on 03/19/2012 7:52:02 PM PDT by YHAOS (you betcha!)
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To: wagglebee
From Dictionary.com:

re·li·gion
   /rɪˈlɪdʒən/ Show Spelled[ri-lij-uhn] Show IPA

noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.

3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.

4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.

5. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.

A person's "religion" is the system of beliefs by which they live their life. It may or it may not be what they CLAIM it is (e.g. plenty of claim to be Christians, but they are actually atheists, secularists or Darwinists).

As I have pointed out many times, science is not a religion. Whether or not one is a Christian, Buddhist, Moslem, atheist, or whatever is completely independent of one's choice to pursue a career in science.

From Dictionary.com:

be·lief    [bih-leef]
noun

1. something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.

2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.

3. confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.

4. a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.

Compare to:

sci·ence    [sahy-uhns]
noun

1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.

2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.

3. any of the branches of natural or physical science.

4. systematized knowledge in general.

5. knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

6. a particular branch of knowledge.

7. skill, especially reflecting a precise application of facts or principles; proficiency.

Of note is the fact that the word "belief" does not appear anywhere within the definition of "science".

613 posted on 03/20/2012 4:02:20 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: spirited irish
When searching for a natural (Godless) mechanism to explain biological evolution Darwin enthroned “randomness and chance,” thereby reviving the very ancient idea of Chaos, ...

This is a brief sketch your religion, exDemMom.

You have no clue what my religious beliefs are.

614 posted on 03/20/2012 4:11:10 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: jda
The problem with the religion of evolution is similar to the problem with the religion of global warming.

The global warming faithful have begun to re-define the term to mean anything they say it means, so any weather anomaly can be said (by them) to be caused by anthropogenic activity.

In the same way, the evolution zealots have begun to re-define the term to mean anything they say it means, so any change or adaptation can be said (by them) to be evolution. No one disputes that adaption takes place, that's part of The Design, but the unproven part is whether or not one species evolves into a completely different species. The religion of evolution tries to disingenuously equate adaption with evolution, and have suckered many uninformed into believing that they are equal.

Global warming is a separate issue. No one doubts that the climate changes. The issue there is that socialist ideologues saw there an opportunity to try to mash socialism down our throats by trying to link human activity to natural climate change. Because politicians direct money to anthropogenic climate change research rather than to other types of research, some scientists (who should know better) started throwing the phrase "because of climate change" as a cause of just about every observation. In some cases, they also discuss what the actual causes might be; in other cases, they don't even discuss potential causes. I've seen scientists who do this at conferences and read it in many scientific papers. Different issue, different background.

OTOH, the theory of evolution is based in scientific observation, and revised as new information is learned. As far as I can tell, it is apolitical. Scientists use it just as one would expect scientists to use any scientific theory.

Science =/= religion.

615 posted on 03/20/2012 4:30:33 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: exDemMom; Alamo-Girl; spirited irish; betty boop; YHAOS; GourmetDan
As I have pointed out many times, science is not a religion.

Science is not a DENOMINATION; however, a twisted devotion to unprovable and false science is the religion of a great many Darwinists.

Whether or not one is a Christian, Buddhist, Moslem, atheist, or whatever is completely independent of one's choice to pursue a career in science.

As I said earlier, a person's "religion" is the principles they employ in their life and that isn't necessarily what they claim is their religious affiliation.

Of note is the fact that the word "belief" does not appear anywhere within the definition of "science".

Very few aspects of Darwinism fall into the realm of actual science.

To the best of my knowledge, NOBODY on this thread has any opposition to science, our problem is with evil philosophies masquerading as science.

616 posted on 03/20/2012 6:04:11 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: exDemMom
Global warming is a separate issue.

I beg to differ. My point is that both should be based on science, but have devolved into religions, where science is secondary to one's beliefs, and scientific fact is therefore distorted and misrepresented.

OTOH, the theory of evolution is based in scientific observation, and revised as new information is learned. As far as I can tell, it is apolitical. Scientists use it just as one would expect scientists to use any scientific theory.

I must ask, then, what you mean by evolution. If you mean that life adapts, yes, that is scientific, observed, irrefutable fact. If you mean that all life "evolved" from nothingness into a single cell, and then into the diversity we observe, that is not based on scientific observation because it has not and cannot be observed. If you are interested in knowing the facts, you might want to research:

- why Darwin "invented" the theory of evolution
- the fact that there has always been a dissident faction of highly distinguished scientists, of impeccable credentials and no religious motivations, who have declined to concede that evolution has been proven
- why the fossil record increasingly does not, honestly viewed, support evolution (there is still "the missing link", in fact, they're all missing)

Let me give you a test, but I'll provide the answers.

The human genome project has shown that man is 90%-99% chimpanzee - our closest "relative" (e.g., we share 90%-99% of the same DNA - let's assume 95% for the sake of this discussion).

Now, let's examine the rest of the story (answers follow, but don't cheat).

1. How many nucleotides are in the human genome?

2. So, then, how many nucleotides are different in the human genome versus that of a chimpanzee (hint: 95% are the same)?

3. How many DNA changes per generation are considered non-lethal?

4. How many years would it take (to make the math easy, let's assume a generation is 50 years) for a chimpanzee to evolve into a human if the changes were in the exact right sequence and there were no "dead ends"?

5. How many years ago did evolved man supposedly "branch off" from chimpanzees?

6. Using this analysis, has there been enough time for man to "evolve" from chimpanzees? Note: Answer not provided - you have to be smart enough to answer this one on your own.

7. How many fossil records show the 25 million year "evolution" of chimpanzees into man (again, you'll have to research this one on your own - hopefully you do so objectively).

8. Finally, to see if you're paying attention: 50% of our DNA is the same as a banana - why aren't we considered half banana and to have "evolved" from a banana (although I do know some whose intelligent matches that of a banana, so maybe we are and did)???

Answers
1. 3 billion
2. 120 million
3. Commonly accepted as 3, but let's use 4 to make the math easier
4. 1.875 billion years
5. 25 million (that's a gap of only 1.85 billion years - not even close enough for government work)

617 posted on 03/20/2012 6:12:43 AM PDT by jda ("Righteousness exalts a nation . . .")
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To: wagglebee
To the best of my knowledge, NOBODY on this thread has any opposition to science, our problem is with evil philosophies masquerading as science.

Precisely so, dear brother in Christ!

A prime example is Lothrop Stoddard who incited murderous hatred under the color of science, specifically anthropology and eugenics.

618 posted on 03/20/2012 8:03:58 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: wagglebee

Claiming that science is not a ‘religion’ is a red-herring that gets thrown out to divert attention from the fact that ‘science’ is based on philosophical naturalism.

The fact that this renders it useless for opining on unobserved, assumed time-frames and unobserved, assumed events must be avoided at all costs.


619 posted on 03/20/2012 8:14:52 AM PDT by GourmetDan (Eccl 10:2 - The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.)
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To: Alamo-Girl; GourmetDan
There have been AT LEAST 1.2 BILLION deaths in the past century that were committed under the guise of "science."

Most of these deaths have been textbook eugenics based on the idea that some people just shouldn't be allowed to live.

But a great many of these deaths (at least 50 million) are a direct result of "environmentalism" which resulted when Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring" and "scientists" decided that it was okay to let tens of millions of Africans die of malaria to save birds (even though a link between the dead birds and DDT has never been established).

620 posted on 03/20/2012 8:30:39 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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