Screwtape's "Age of Darwinian Scientism"

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 being—an animated tool or animated sex toy—with 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 communists—the 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)

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."

The author's characterization of this assertion is grossly wrong. He shows a lack of understanding of how a reptile's lungs operate as compared to a bird's lungs (and this comparison is a central thesis of his article).

Furthermore, he engages in the favorite creationist tactic of "quote-mining" and "expert shopping".

"Quote-mining" is hunting for quotes, usually out of context, in order to "prove" something by the simple tactic of "if I can find someone saying it, it must be true". Or even if the creationist can find a quote that *sounds* like what the creationist wants to "prove", even if that wasn't the author's original meaning. For countless examples, and an explanation of why "quote flinging" doesn't prove a damned thing, see: Quotations and Misquotations: Why What Antievolutionists Quote is Not Valid Evidence Against Evolution , and also: The Quote Mine Project: Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines.

"Expert shopping" is where the creationist finds one alleged authority (even one of very questionable expertise or credentials) who agrees with him, or sounds like he does, and cites him as "the expert" in the field, whose conclusions ought not be questioned, while at the same time totally discounting the work of all other authorities (no matter how numerous, how expert, or even if they are the acknowledged top authorities in their field) as being "obviously" mistaken because they differ with the "unquestionable" conclusions of the creationist's handpicked "authority". The dishonesty of this technique should be obvious to all -- it's a variation on "I'll believe whatever I want to believe, and ignore the rest".

An example of the latter is the author's reliance upon Ruben, who made an offhand remark in a paper about another subject, and to the creationist author that makes him "the" authority on the topic of theropod/avian respiration, despite Ruben's conclusions being disputed by many other researchers.

A look at Ruben's full paper, in contrast with the creationist's quote from it, shows that Ruben's paper did not primarily concern when the avian-style lungs might have developed (or how), it covered when *endothermy* might have arisen. The remark on the rise of the avian-style lung was an offhand comment near the end of the paper, and rather an odd inclusion at that. The creationist took it to mean that Ruben was arguing that birds could not have arisen from theropod dinosaurs due to alleged incompatibilities in their respiratory systems, BUT in the context of the rest of Ruben's paper, the same argument could have been applied to claim that modern birds couldn't have arisen from early *birds* either, since Ruben had concluded that both groups (theropod dinosaurs *and* early birds) had diaphram-driven lungs. So the comment doesn't make much sense unless Ruben also wishes to argue that modern birds are unrelated to more primitive birds! And from the rest of his paper, it is quite clear that he does *not* believe that -- Ruben believes in evolution and common descent.

So the creationist was taking an offhand and apparently rather garbled comment, out of its context, and waving it around as "proof" of the conclusion he was trying to make, while *ignoring* all research results to the contrary. Not very honest, eh?

In any case, Ruben's comment appears to be mistaken, because it falsely presumes (and fails to even attempt to establish) that a diaphram can't co-exist with an avian-style respiratory system. It also incorrectly assumes that air flow to air sacs would have to take place *through* the diaphram, and yet it's well-known that air flow in birds includes vertebral diverticula -- in layman's terms, air tubes extend into and through the spinal column. It's entirely possible that airflow between abdominal air sacs and the thoracic lungs took place through the spine in birds' ancestors which still had a diaphram, thereby *bypassing* the diaphram instead of having to pass *through* it.

In any case, Ruben's conclusion that early birds and theropod dinosaurs did not have avian-style "pass through" respiration has been superseded by subsequent findings (which the creationist webpage has "forgotten" to update accordingly):

Basic avian pulmonary design and flow-through ventilation in non-avian theropod dinosaurs (2005)
Abstract: Birds are unique among living vertebrates in possessing pneumaticity of the postcranial skeleton, with invasion of bone by the pulmonary air-sac system. The avian respiratory system includes high-compliance air sacs that ventilate a dorsally fixed, non-expanding parabronchial lung. Caudally positioned abdominal and thoracic air sacs are critical components of the avian aspiration pump, facilitating flow-through ventilation of the lung and near-constant airflow during both inspiration and expiration, highlighting a design optimized for efficient gas exchange. Postcranial skeletal pneumaticity has also been reported in numerous extinct archosaurs including non-avian theropod dinosaurs and Archaeopteryx. However, the relationship between osseous pneumaticity and the evolution of the avian respiratory apparatus has long remained ambiguous. Here we report, on the basis of a comparative analysis of region-specific pneumaticity with extant birds, evidence for cervical and abdominal air-sac systems in non-avian theropods, along with thoracic skeletal prerequisites of an avian-style aspiration pump. The early acquisition of this system among theropods is demonstrated by examination of an exceptional new specimen of Majungatholus atopus, documenting these features in a taxon only distantly related to birds. Taken together, these specializations imply the existence of the basic avian pulmonary Bauplan in basal neotheropods, indicating that flow-through ventilation of the lung is not restricted to birds but is probably a general theropod characteristic.
Vertebral pneumaticity, air sacs, and the physiology of sauropod dinosaurs (2003)
Abstract: The vertebrae of sauropod dinosaurs are characterized by complex architecture involving laminae, fossae, and internal chambers of various shapes and sizes. These structures are interpreted as osteological correlates of a system of air sacs and pneumatic diverticula similar to that of birds. In extant birds, diverticula of the cervical air sacs pneumatize the cervical and anterior thoracic vertebrae. Diverticula of the abdominal air sacs pneumatize the posterior thoracic vertebrae and synsacrum later in ontogeny. This ontogenetic sequence in birds parallels the evolution of vertebral pneumaticity in sauropods. In basal sauropods, only the presacral vertebrae were pneumatized, presumably by diverticula of cervical air sacs similar to those of birds. The sacrum was also pneumatized in most neosauropods, and pneumatization of the proximal caudal vertebrae was achieved independently in Diplodocidae and Titanosauria. Pneumatization of the sacral and caudal vertebrae in neosauropods may indicate the presence of abdominal air sacs. Air sacs and skeletal pneumaticity probably facilitated the evolution of extremely long necks in some sauropod lineages by overcoming respiratory dead space and reducing mass. In addition, pulmonary air sacs may have conveyed to sauropods some of the respiratory and thermoregulatory advantages enjoyed by birds, a possibility that is consistent with the observed rapid growth rates of sauropods.