Replies

V3 wrote (some thousand or so posts ago!): I'm seriously asking: Where is evolution supposed to be taking us? It's my understanding that we are supposedly 'evolving' to a higher state physically and in our behavior. If this is a correct (albeit elementary) explanation of evolution, then what is the ultimate end?

PatrickHenry responded: ...your question reveals that your teachers have done a real job of professional malpractice in teaching you.

V3: If you mean my public school teachers, please note that I'm young enough to have been taught in high school and college by leftie evolutionists, so I don't know if you want to call it professional malpractice (altho that's a darned good description and I'll use it in the future). My understanding of the direction evolution is taking us has been formed from observation and studying after my public school education.

PH: Evolution isn't 'taking us' anywhere.

V3: You really must be kidding! Please, I ask you to examine in depth the truth or falsehood of that statement. Evolutionists are always denying the evolution of their beliefs. It's a massive self-denial.

PH: It's a description of how populations change over time. The population changes because individuals (some of whom have mutated genes) either die without offspring (thus taking their genes out of the pool) or they survive long enough to spawn a new generation (thus keeping their genes in the pool). That's it. That's the whole ball of wax. Over time, we get the world of various species that we see -- including us.

V3: This is all well and fine. An interesting mini-lesson in evo applied to genetics.

PH: We, however, are intelligent to decide for ourselves where we're going, so the evolution process is going to be radically different where we're concerned.

V3: Really!?? Where are we going? Is this "going" somehow different from your assertion that evo is not "taking" us anywhere (I can't wait to hear your semantic hair-splitting answer to this one, kiddo)? Exactly who is going to do the deciding (this is one of my bottom line questions/concerns)?

Doctor Stochastic wrote: ...Your entire question presupposes claims not in evidence. "Evolving" has nothing to do with "higher" or "lower", just different; comparing and contrasting a crow with a crocus would elucidate the point. There is no "end," ultimate or otherwise. (If it's not ultimate, it isn't the end.) Evolutionary theory is about process, not about "ends" or "higher" or "lower."

V3: My use of the words "higher" and "lower" may not be scientifically correct to describe the evo process and my belief is actually that evos are promoting an evo on a linear model, so sorry about the terminology: But my point is that your theoretical process has been hijacked by those who are promoting worldviews/ideology contrary to Biblical belief, which hijackers are making foolish your purely scientific process by using it to promote anti-God beliefs that we will ultimately evolve into higher...opps, more advanced beings (certainly this is so on a behavioral model, but I'll bet there are those evos who totally believe it on a physiological model) – they use your theories (some with roots prior to Darwin, but certainly starting exponentially with Darwinism) to feed us a load of crap resulting in a negation of ID and a beginning and end to time, etc. You cannot tell me that many mainstream proponents of evolution are not promoting the idea that higher forms of animal life are derived from lower (especially in the fields of paleontology, comparative anatomy, comparative physiology and behavior, to name a few).

I think all this just gives us an idea of an evo's self-understanding. Evos must conceal, distort, and deceive themselves and would-be followers about their actual identity (or the actual uses of the process of evo theory). To acknowledge the lengths to which your scientific process has warped into a tool for leftie ideology might require a severe and serious re-thinking and repudiation of your roots, your leadership (especially your current leadership), and the results of your beliefs. It might require you to acknowledge a true, living God. Your self-denial would be hilarious if it weren't so fundamentally wretched and if y'all weren't overturning (or at least muddying the waters) without any factual evidence, centuries of belief in ID and, its faults admitted, the attendant good benefits same has provided our lives. Our universities/public schools, our scientific/religious communities, our culture, and our government have all been nearly consumed by these ideas, by the agenda of the evo leadership (giving the benefit of the doubt to the evos on this thread that some believe it to be a mere "process").

One of the most important things I've personally witnessed in this area is the almost universal idea that anyone in academia (no matter what the field, but mostly the sciences) not conforming to the evos way of thinking, and therefore not assisting in their forward movement toward a more advanced human (whether you want to call that linear or vertical), is thought of as ignorant, superstitious, duped by religion – it's damned near an automatic that their theories, altho probably no more, no less valid than the evo's theories, are passed over for peer-review and publication – these folks do not advance in the scientific/academic community, so they form their own groups (such as ICR for example), and are then dismissed by the self-appointed scientific elite because they're not properly peer-reviewed or published in the proper places.

Both sides of the story are not being presented to students (which means, in my book, indoctrination, not education). It's important because many of us (who have previously stood back thinking that all of you academicians possessed more knowledge, more reason, more logic, more critical thinking skills than the rest of us because you have your "university papers" informing us that you are more knowledgeable, reasonable, logical, etc.), many of us believed you without conducting our own studies. But these pre-conceived notions of yours are being challenged now more than ever – the increase of homeschooling is one of the most hopeful things in this regard. Our observation and experience testifies more to decay in the world than to increasing order. We accept that there are crack-pot ideas out there (and therefore the need for some sort of peer-review and dissemination of theories to *GASP* we the people for consideration), but creationism is not one of them.

Furthermore, many of us firmly believe that science has usurped the role of religion by claiming to have answers about our origins and the meaning and direction of our lives, by allowing its theories and processes to be hijacked by people who use those theories to shape a worldview that is diametrically opposed to beliefs about and in God (I only use the proper noun in reference to the God of Israel, Christianity and Islam). Evo is being used not only to find the origin of life, but to define the meaning of life. I would demand y'all give us back Judeo-Christian classrooms in the public schools, but it's too late for that (if we go back to prayer in school, it'll be a mish-mash of all religions, in other words new age prayers). If we want our children to be instructed in the truth, we now have to do it at home or private schools. We'll see how long the lefties and evos and elitists will allow that to go on.

At the risk of offending the pure reason crowd, this self-deception on the part of evos is truly sad and breaks my heart for you and those you seek (knowingly or not) to deceive.

V3 asks Evolutionists: Do you think all conditions in the world have remained static since history? Do you think history had a beginning and is progressing through time along with attendant changes, or has it always been here and always been the same?

Again, may the best and truest worldview win.

Thank you so much for sharing your views, experiences and concerns!

Public schools should not be a forum for political gain. Truly I believe most of the scientists involved with evolution are not aware that their work is being embraced for promoting ideology:

We also stand as a bulwark against the forces of superstition, especially the radical religious right, whose proponents would have us fear knowledge rather than embrace it.

I realize the scientists don't want to bothered by such non-science things, but it is obviously a concern to parents and taxpayers.

Good post

...science has usurped the role of religion by claiming to have answers about our origins and the meaning and direction of our lives, by allowing its theories and processes to be hijacked by people who use those theories to shape a worldview that is diametrically opposed to beliefs about and in God.... If we want our children to be instructed in the truth, we now have to do it at home or private schools. We'll see how long the lefties and evos and elitists will allow that to go on.

Yep. There's the rub. I hate to say it, but it seems clear enough that there are at least a few people at FR who would like to give a monopoly to the "evo" side of the debate, at least as far as educating (indoctrinating) our children is concerned. I wonder how these people square that imperative with the First Amendment....

V3, thank you so much for your insightful and thought-provoking posts. Please check out #3416 if you have the time and interest?

V3 wrote (some thousand or so posts ago!): I'm seriously asking: Where is evolution supposed to be taking us? It's my understanding that we are supposedly 'evolving' to a higher state physically and in our behavior. If this is a correct (albeit elementary) explanation of evolution, then what is the ultimate end? -viaveritasvita-

PH: Evolution isn't 'taking us' anywhere.

Well Patrick is only half right as usual. Supposedly - like Hegelianism with which it is indelibly connected - there is neither an end nor a specific 'goal' to evolution. The 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for life is indeed a very close translation of Hegel's dialectic of synthesis and antithesis and evolutionists call this struggle the creator of more advanced species through a sort of 'arms race'. Hegel's "belief that individual welfare or suffering simply did not matter in the sweep of world history, advancing like a juggernaut over the corpses of individuals."(1) is abundantly replicated in Darwin's works. So like Hegel, who did not know where it all was leading up to, but knew that it was leading to something greater, Darwin too asserted that evolution was also leading to something greater. Like with Hegel, the way to progress was through the corpses of the less fit.

From: Hegel Philosophy and History