The Crafty Attacks on Evolution

The New York Slimes ^ | 23 January 2005 | EDITORIAL

[Thatcherite]

And you're calling ME a hate monger??????

If the cap fits, wear it.

I repeat, I am ashamed that my politics might associate you with me in the minds of others.

[Outraged]

You should google Christian Social Movement in Austria before you embarrass yourself further.

Why?...To prove what?...To this point it has only been you embarassed by your regurgitation that Hitler and nazism were somehow inspired by Christianity...Foolish and blasphemous...good show!

[Doctor Stochastic]

Biology doesn't care about people reaching into old age, just giving them the best opportunity to reproduce and raise young.

Which is why Huntington's corea isn't particularly selected against, nor is Alzheimer's.

[Alacarte]

From the link you gave:

1 - Most of the greatest scientists of the past 1000 years were Christians and creationists.

2 - To these scientists, Christianity was the driving force behind their discoveries.

3 - The Christian world view gave birth and impetus to modern science.

Response to 1: So... since many scientific discoveries from 200-1000 years ago were made by creationists, then science owes creationism something? Hardly a sound argument. They were all men too, does that mean women owe us something? Every serial killer and rapist from that period was a creationist too, why not brag on that?

The only thing all the scientists (and there were no scientists 500-1000 years ago) had in common was naturalistic methods. Without accepting supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, they were able to persevere and learn how things REALLY worked. Since we've discovered purely natural explanations for so much of the natural world already, without any help from supernatural conclusions, I think that point is sound.

Response to 2: If christianity were their driving force, then scientists would not throw away faith and rely on naturalism to find their answers... The whole point of faith is not to ask questions, and just accept everything as the way god wants it to be.

Response 3: How is this again? Today, the vast majority of top scientists deny the existence of a personal god, yet science is at it's pinnacle, and continues to increase on the same exponential function that it's been on for the last 400 years.

A person who desires a more in-depth understanding of scientific topics can learn the vocabulary, sans the interpretations, in a short period of time.

Absolutely false. Perhaps you can learn enough to understand what the experts say, but without formal education, you will NEVER understand well enough to draw your own conclusions. When I graduated from computer science and started my first job, the first thing I learned was that I knew nothing yet. All school had done was give me the foundation so that I could START learning on my own. School provided the theory and technical understanding to teach myself. Only after many years of experience did I feel comfortable with the vast sea of information and methods that I could contribute something based on my educated opinion. If something about computer science were a lie, trust me, us engineers would find it, cause stuff wouldn't work the way it should. Same way genetic engineers or medical researchers would discover serious errors in the current body of evolutionary science. People like this:

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/FAE/fae.html

Note that Johns Hopkins is the best medical school in the US.

Creationists here who think you can read a Dembski book or browse a website for 2 days and suddenly understand why evolution is a lie are fools. If you had any inkling of how over your head a complex scientific field like biology is, you wouldn't even think of arguing from a scientific perspective.

Does this mean that you should just believe scientists? Of course not, I don't trust scientists either, they could be politically, or financially motivated. What I DO trust is the scientific method, the systems of peer review and publication that, by your own admission, work. You mention that many hypotheses are proven wrong, but how? It's not priests or pastors or IDers who discover the errors. The errors get fixed because they fail the test of the scientific method, maybe they got by the author for whatever reason, sloppiness or bias, but they likely won't get by his peers.

Trash scientists all you want, it's not their word that counts, it's what the scientific literature says, and it says overwhelmingly that evolution is true.

[Outraged]

The hate spouted here by the purported "Christians" boggles my mind.

Could you give me some examples?...To narrow the field, use me, for I am surely the greatest offender...PUT UP OR SHUT UP!

[Antoninus]

Ah yes, creationists are evil and crafty for trying to get their agenda into schools. Meanwhile, the butt-sex crowd is just "fighting for tolerance" when they try to force their agenda into the schools. Hypocrisy, thy name is NYTimes.

[Antoninus]

The Theory of Evolution contains nothing about creation. Biology works with the life it sees and the history of life in the fossil record.

That's true. But you wouldn't know it by talking to most people who promote evolution as the solution to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Like it or not, evolution is inextricably entangled with biogenesis. How can one discuss evolution in class without biogenesis entering into the discussion? I was taught, in the 1980s mind you, that life came from a protein soup in the oceans, seasoned with a little lightning. This was taught as scientific FACT along with evolution. I didn't realize that it was a poorly supported theory until much later. And strangely enough, when you point this out to people, they jump down your throat and call you an idiot who doesn't accept evolution. Funny how that works.

[Right Wing Professor]

In examining processes we use Dembski's explanatory filter to determine design.

By all means expound on what Dembski's 'explanatory filter', is and show an example of it being used successfully elsewhere in the mathematical literature.

In determining design, we are concerned about knowing the possible explanations for a pattern. This is part of the "side information" that Dr. Dembski talks about.

Dembski claims design can be detected by means of 'complex specified information'. Specified information is information which follws a pattern which we specify right now; not a means by which that information could have arisen. Of course, I disagree that we can possibly specify a pattern that could not have arisen by thermodynamic processes regardless of mechanism, unless formation of that pattern violates the Second Law; and in fact the entropy of life is quite small.

You seem to think that it is impossible to determine if artifacts are natural or man-made?

If they have 'made in Japan' stamped on them, certainly. You have a fossil with 'made by God, 4004 BC' engraved on the inside of the skull?

Less flippantly, I see nothing in the natural worlds that impels me to believe it could not have been created by natural processes.

Do you think there is no scientific basis for determining intelligent life?What do you think about the SETI projects?

Not as easy as it might seem. You are familiar, of course, with the Turing test?

[superloser]

I sometimes suspect that many atheists impersonate creationists to make Christians look stupid.

There are enough stupid Christians out there who claim to speak for everyone that atheists don't need to help them out. A lot of stuff I see makes me wonder if Christians really do want to make themselves look like idiots, but that usually only comes from the very loud, very vocal Fundamentalist community.

[balrog666]

I'm not aware of any real extermination campaigns against Jews in Europe prior to Hitler and history does not support the idea of anything like that.

Holy CRAP! And you think you have an education? Ask for your refund now!

[Right Wing Professor]

To this point it has only been you embarassed by your regurgitation that Hitler and nazism were somehow inspired by Christianity.

You may have missed this first time:

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.

-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922

It sure seems that he thought he was inspired by it. Of course, Hitler was nothing if not a liar. But it seems to me, if you're going to quote Hitler to claim that Nazi-ism was inspired by the Theory of Evolution, it's legitimate to quote Hitler very passionately claiming he was inspired by Christianity.

[Right Wing Professor]

Holy CRAP!

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Some people seem as completely unfamiliar with history as they are with science.

[Outraged]

It sure seems that he thought he was inspired by it. Of course, Hitler was nothing if not a liar. But it seems to me, if you're going to quote Hitler to claim that Nazi-ism was inspired by the Theory of Evolution, it's legitimate to quote Hitler very passionately claiming he was inspired by Christianity.

Actions speak louder than empty rhetoric, Professor...Extermination of the Jews and eugenicism were byproducts not of Christianity, on the contrary, they are direct intellectual byproducts of Marxism and Darwinism...For every quote you pull, suggesting Hitler was a Christian (which you know was a lie to manipulate) there are 100 others suggesting otherwise.

"I want a powerful, masterly, cruel and fearless youth... There must be nothing weak or tender about them. The freedom and dignity of the wild beast must shine from their eyes... That is how I will root out a thousand years of human domestication."

"It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity," he said in 1933, "because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood." His countrymen would have to choose: "One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both."

Indeed, he understood all too well that Christianity, in the long run, was his enemy. "Pure Christianity — the Christianity of the catacombs — is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into fact. It leads simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely wholehearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics."

NationalReview - David Shiflett

Hitler was no Christian, to suggest otherwise only betrays your lack of information, intentional or otherwise.

[balrog666]

Some people seem as completely unfamiliar with history as they are with science.

No matter how many times I see that, it still surprises me. Such "fundamental" ignorance and complacent self-admiration is just astounding. What have these people ever learned? How do such people think at all? And how much worse will their children be?

[Right Wing Professor]

I mean, Germans are totally competent people, inventive, industrius and all that and, if Martin Luther had convinced them to esterminate Jews, it would not have taken them 500 years.

So he was an incompetent genocide-advocate. Oddly enough, though, we have churches, schools and people here in Lincoln Nebraska, lovingly named after him. You'd think they'd be a little embarrassed.

You claimed there was no philosophical support in Christianity for Naziism. I gave you philosophical support from one of the founders of modern Protestantism. The objection that the Germans didn't get right down to butchering Jews, after Luther spewed out his venom, may have been partly because they were butchering fellow Christians for much of the next 200 years.

The basic reality is that Luther, despite any personal failings he might have had, taught Germans and others as well to read and learn what Christ himself had said instead of relying upon the interpretations of the catholic priesthood and, once the people started doing that, then so long as Christianity prevailed in those lands there would be no fear of genocide since nothing Christ himself ever said could be interpreted that way.

Luther disagreed.

It was only after Christianity had been essentially replaced with one of the great isms based upon the theory of evolution that any of these darker demons in the German psyche would ever be acted upon.

You haven't ever lived in Germany, have you? It's simply untrue to say Christianity has been replaced; it certainly hadn't in 1933. On the contrary, Catholic and Protestant states still have different holidays based on religious feast-days; the state still collects a 'Church tax' which goes to the church of your choice (and which isn't easy to get out of). When I lived there, in the mid-1980's, you still couldn't buy groceries on Sunday. Even today, 64% of Germans are still officially church members.

Some nice pictures of pro-Nazi Christians here. Sure doesn't look like it was supplanted to me.

[general_re]

Wait, are those bagpipes I hear warming up in the distance? ;)

[Right Wing Professor]

Extermination of the Jews and eugenicism were byproducts not of Christianity, on the contrary, they are direct intellectual byproducts of Marxism and Darwinism..

So you keep asserting. Yet both Martin Luther and Adolf Hitler said they felt it was their duty as Christians. I'm not sure Hitler even understood the theory of evolution except in the most superficial, popular sense; but he was most definitely well versed in Christian doctrine, and he used Christian metaphors his whole life.

For every quote you pull, suggesting Hitler was a Christian (which you know was a lie to manipulate) there are 100 others suggesting otherwise.

Find me one with the passion or force equal to the one I quoted.

[judywillow]

I repeat, I am ashamed that my politics might associate you with me in the minds of others.

Near as I can tell, your "politics" appears to amount to coming over here from DU once in a while to corrupt the board with evolutionism. That isn't much of an "association".

[Antoninus]

Here's one of the Dougherty photos you don't see much anymore from the Paluxy River site.