Posted on 01/27/2006 11:04:17 AM PST by Lindykim
Greek mythology tells the tale of Prometheus, a Titan who envied Zeus his godlike powers. Driven by his covetousness, he stole some of Zeus's power, then was caught and punished by being tied to a rock. The underlying assumption of this myth is that man and God are antagonists. Man covets godlike powers, but since God refuses to share any of his power, man must take it---or steal it.
In ancient pagan civilizations, Promethean men were able to give free reign to the dark impulses that urged them to become as 'gods.' Although they lacked the ability to create life, they exercised complete control over all matters of life and death. They could dictate who was a free-man with rights and who was a lesser beingan animated tool or animated sex toywith no rights whatsoever. Promethean man was absolute sovereign and lawmaker. His lusts, jealousies, dark impulses---all became law if he so chose them to be.
It was Biblical religion, and more specifically the Genesis account of creation, that overthrew the classic pagan worldview model with its all-powerful State controlled by totalitarian god-like Promethean men. All of this was repugnant to the Biblical model wherein the Genesis account proclaimed God as Sovereign and Lawmaker. It was He who had created all men and no one was to enslave other men or to treat them as 'lesser beings." Neither were His children to be 'subsumed' into nature, for He had given all of His children dominion over the earth, and they could own land and make use of the earth's resources. In America's founding documents, all statements about equality and freedom as inalienable and inherent rights of all human persons have their basis in the Genesis account. Similarly, because our lives are precious to our Creator, we have the right to keep and bear arms in order to protect our lives and those of our loved ones. This view of man and the world was totally alien to the ancient pagan way of doing things.
However, not everyone was pleased with the Biblical model. While all of the former 'lesser beings' were delighted to be free of their oppressors, Promethean men were not happy campers. Thus it was that a group of Enlightenment conspirators, two of whom were Frederick Engel's and Karl Marx, who by temperament was Promethean, devised an ideology based on ancient communal living (communism). Their scheme was to overthrow Western Christian-Judeo civilization and to reconstitute society on the basis of their ideology. What they needed, but lacked, to make their system into a bona-fide worldview was a creation account.
All major civilizations throughout the history of the world began with a creation account which told man where he came from, how he got here, why he is here, and what's wrong with man and the world. The creation account is the authoritative foundation which animates and supports the divine orders (natural laws) that lay down the law for both human and natural order.
Perhaps it was at this point that Screwtape began to choreograph events by steering Marx to Darwin's book. For it was in Darwin's 'Origin of Species' that the conspirators happily discovered the black magic key that would allow them to believe they could steal God's power. After Marx read Darwin's book, he wrote to Engel's and said, " although it is developed in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view." (Source: "Gods that Fail: Peter Singer and the Darwinian Left," review by Eric Jones).
Marx and Engel's incorporated Darwin's theory into their communist ideology. The synthesized version became 'scientific dialectical materialism." It was in this manner that the two conspirators transformed their ideology into 'absolute scientific truth."
The creation story they gained, and by which they declared the 'death of God,' must have been authored by Screwtape thus for obvious reasons, they preferred to keep it out of the limelight. It essentially states: "In the beginning was non-life bearing, non-intelligence bearing matter which, with neither rhyme nor reason, accidentally self-created by virtue of an accidentally caused quantum fluctuation, which had likewise mysteriously self-created for no purpose nor reason." The moral of this story is: Never make deals with Screwtape---he has a devilish sense of humor.
Trumpeting the death of God, Promethean's calling themselves "Darwinian scientists' immediately set about the business of abolishing mankind. With glee born of darkest envy, they stripped him of his soul, free will and conscience, and then declared that he was but a mechanistic monkey-man. Or in Herr Scientist Frederick Engel's words: "Darwin has given us an approximate description of these ancestors of ours. They were completely covered with hair had beards pointed ears and they lived in bands in trees." (www.newyouth.com)
Thus was the world forcefully thrust into Screwtape's "Age of Scientism," wherein Darwinian communiststhe animated tools of Screwtape and his hellish minions-- unleashed rivers of human blood on a planetary dimension---all in pursuit of producing scientifically engineered Un-man and a Promethean Utopia.
In observation of the scientifically-induced hellish madness unleashed onto the world, "The Black Book of Communism" offers the following insights and indictments:
" the roots of Marxist-Leninism are not to be found in Marx at all, but in a deviant version of Darwinism Crimes against humanity are the product of an ideology that reduces people to a condition, be it ideological, racial, or sociohistorical." (pg. 752)
" transformation of ideology and politics into absolute 'scientific' truth is the basis of the totalitarianism dimension of Communism. The party answered only to science. Science justified the terror by requiring that all aspects of social and individual life be transformed." (pg. 739)
"This biological or zoological strain of thinking enables us to understand why so many crimes of Communism were crimes against humanity and how Marxist-Leninist ideology managed to justify these crimes to its followers." (pg. 751)
On page 4, are these grim statistics:
USSR: 20 million deaths China: 65 million deaths Vietnam: 1 million deaths N. Korea: 2 million deaths E. Europe: 1 million deaths Latin America: 150,000 Africa: 1.7 million deaths
The total approaches 100 million 'animalized' humans shot, gassed, burned, electrocuted, starved, gunned down, beaten to death, impaled, beheaded or otherwise murdered under the authority of 'absolute science.'
The soul and life destroying "biological and zoological strain" of madness is at this very moment poisoning and warping the minds of Americans and being force-fed to our children. Our children are being made to view themselves through Lucifer's "burning eye of envy" in Darwinist textbooks. "You are an animal and share a common heritage with earthworms." (Source: Johnson, "Biology" as quoted in Norris Anderson "Education or Indoctrination? Analysis of Textbooks in Alabama, 1995, pg. 6)
The anti-human totalitarianism and Promethean megalomania comes through loud and clear in Thomas C. Clark's odious assertions in "Crime and Causality: Do Killers Deserve to Die?" Keep in mind that Clark, who doesn't view himself as an ape, is obnoxiously lecturing all of the lesser beings whom he believes to be mechanistic monkeys. What he's saying in his pompous gasbag manner is that since "God is dead" and we are but human apes, it's time we accept our fate to become subsumed (embedded) into nature. Naturally his Darwinian-induced thimble-wittedness is hee-hawed under the authority of absolute science: "Many have resisted, and will continue to resist, the epistemic authority of science, since it requires we abandon those beloved conceptions of freedom, dignity, and moral agency and responsibility in which persons are understood to be causally privileged over the rest of nature science proposes naturalized conceptions of freedom, and responsibility which embed persons fully within the causal network" (www.naturalism.org) If Darwinian scientism was a road atlas, it would ever lead to but one destination Hell. If it was a multipurpose set of building instructions, they would ever build but one thing Hell.
Dr. T. N. Tahmision (Atomic Energy Commission USA) pegged Darwinian evolutionists as 'con men." He commented, "Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact." ('The Fresno Bee," Aug. 20, 1959, as quoted by N.J. Mitchell, "Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes," 1983, title page)
Even after the passage of more than two thousand years, we can see that Prometheus has yet to grow up. Still ruled by Narcissus and the dark passions of envy, covetousness, hatred and vengeance-seeking which she so adroitly keeps aflame, Prometheus remains doomed as a result to serve as Screwtape's 'animated tool."
Post 38. Excellent. Couple of general comments on the thread. "Lucifer" means bright star and doesn't refer to satan. Refers to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon who was thrown down because of his pride. Isa 13. In another place, "...the kingdom is within you" is more properly in the Greek "...the kingdom is in your midst". I.e. Christins serving the King (Christ) within the general population. And the special theory of evolution is a fact, but a cockapoo is still a dog. The general theory is not a fact. I will be waiting for the day the evolutionists produce a bird from an alligator. I am also waiting for an explanation of the process of meiosis according to the evolutionary principles of mutation adding genetic material, survival of the fittest, and natural selection.
Yes. Made-up history. Logic not so much poor as nonexistent.
Ping!
Look...perhaps you and I have different definitions of "connections"...I don't know.
All I'm saying to those who claim there is no connection...MARX SAID THERE WAS. Get it? There is a connection in his statement...admittedly not a scientific point-by-point description. But a connection nonetheless.
I find it fascinating that Marx called Darwin's theory a "basis" for his views presumably on capital. That's the connection I see and I only say it when people say there is NO connection...Marx himself said there was.
It's amusing to note that while anti-communist anti-evolutionists "see" evolution as supporting evil Communism, the anti-capitalists "see" evolution as being part and parcel with the worst evils of Capitalism (and likewise, Communist promoters claimed it as "support", and so did promoters of Capitalism):
"The theory of natural selection, it is said, could only have originated in England, because only laissez-faire England provided the atomistic, egotistic mentality necessary to its conception. Only there could Darwin have blandly assumed that the basic unit was the individual, the basic instinct selfinterest, and the basic activity struggle. Spengler, describing the Origin as: "the application of economics to biology," said that it reeked of the atmosphere of the English factory . . . natural selection arose . . . in England because it was a perfect expression of Victorian "greed-philosophy" of the capitalist ethic and Manchester economics"And:
-- (Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1962. Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution. New York: W.W. Norton p. 418).
"Darwinism was also used in a defense of competitive individualism and its economic corollary of laissezfaire capitalism in England and in America."And:
-- ( Hsü, Kenneth. June 1986. "Darwin's Three Mistakes," Geology, (vol. 14), p. 532-534)
"...the law of competition, be it benign or not, is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department"And:
-- (Dale Carnegie, quoted in Hsü, Kenneth. 1986. The Great Dying: Cosmic Catastrophe, Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution. NY: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, p. 10).
"The fact is, however, that it [Darwinism] became very popular among the laissezfaire capitalists of the 19th century because it did, indeed, seem to give scientific sanction to ruthless competition in both business and politics."And:
-- (Morris, Henry and John D. Morris. 1996. The Modern Creation Trilogy. vol. 3. Society and Creation. Green Forrest, AR: Master Books, p. 83)
" . . they attributed such success as they had to their industry and virtue, rather than their achievement in trampling on their less successful competitors. After all, most of them saw themselves as Christians, adhering to the rules of "love thy neighbor" and "do as you would be done by." So, even though they sought to achieve the impossible by serving God and Mammon simultaneously, they found no difficulty in accommodating Christianity to the Darwinian ideas of struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, and by no means all of them consciously thought of themselves as being in a state of economic warfare with their fellow manufacturers."And:
-- (Oldroyd, D.R. 1980. Darwinian Impacts. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, p. 216)
". . . the coal trust preached a social Darwinist ideology, conflating `survival of the fittest' with freedom and individual rights. [...] the popularity of social Darwinism in the US national ideology should be comprehended as an innovation of corporate capitalism"And so on... It appears that the main "link" between evolution and economic systems seems to be that if someone hates both evolution and [fill in the blank], they'll see a "link" between them. And if someone favors both evolution and [fill in the blank], they'll often conclude that evolution "supports" it.
-- (Doukas, Dimitra. 1997. "Corporate Capitalism on Trial: The Hearings of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902-1903." Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 3, p. 367)
This is more a Rorschach test than any actual "link" (pro or con) between evolutionary biology and any alleged application of it *outside* of biology. All too often, people "see" what they want to see, and what they want to see is driven more by their emotions than by their rational facilities.
Thanks for the ping. Bad ideologies, like bad theology, are for each observer to sort out. Meanwhile, is it against the law in the United States to be a Marxist?
And Michael Moore says there's a connection between the Iraq war and America's lust for oil. Maybe now *you* might "get it".
There is a connection in his statement...admittedly not a scientific point-by-point description. But a connection nonetheless.
No, Marx *claims* that there's a connection. But *is* there really?
Michael Moore *claims* that there's a connection between the Iraq war and American imperialism and corporate greed. But is there really?
Would you repeat Michael Moore's slanderous claims without verifying them first? Are you doing that very same thing with Marx's claim?
No, the question is why am I wasting my time discussing this with you?
FRegards,
Ditto.
[Why does DNA information not tend to degrade into randomness as the laws of physics would predict?]
I'll assume you're talking about entropy (if not, please correct me) where order decreases with time and randomness increases in a closed system.
The answer is the Earth and its resident life forms are being infused with energy from the Sun and this has been the case for billions of years. This energy is what drives the chemical reactions necessary for life and for the evolution of life. The Earth is not a closed system and so does not violate any principles of entropy.
"That is a straw man argument as no one claims that the evolutionary process works in such a manner. (see my #122 for examples of new speciation occurring among birds)"
Does this article mis-state the evolutionary assertion that birds decended from dynasouars?
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/471
Correction. dinosaurs.
Does Darwinism align better with Communism (Socialism, Humanism, Big Governmentism to lead the less evolved...) or Christianity (Freedom based on principled responsibility enabling free-markets, self-protection, land ownership...)
[Does science have ways of measuring quantities of information?]
This relates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information
{{Information has a well defined meaning in physics. Examples of this include the phenomenon of quantum entanglement where particles can interact without reference to their separation or the speed of light. Information itself cannot travel faster than light even if the information is transmitted indirectly. This could lead to the fact that all attempts at physically observing a particle with an "entangled" relationship to another are slowed down, even though the particles are not connected in any other way other than by the information they carry.
Another link is demonstrated by the Maxwell's demon thought experiment. In this experiment, a direct relationship between information and another physical property, entropy, is demonstrated. A consequence is that it is impossible to destroy information without increasing the entropy of a system; in practical terms this often means generating heat. Thus, in the study of logic gates, the theoretical lower bound of thermal energy released by an AND gate is more than for the NOT gate (because information is destroyed in an AND gate and simply converted in an NOT gate). Physical information is of particular importance in the theory of quantum computers.}}
The two men lived at a time when world revolution was in the air. However, world revolution required overturning what had gone before and, even though their new systems were largely untested they were taken as fact. Another quote, this time from Engels. Apparently, Engels also found similarity between the 2 systems...a "connection".
"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history"
Interesting stuff and amazing that both Marx and Engels saw similarities between economic evolution and natural evolution. I will have to look into this much more. No more time today.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.