The Crafty Attacks on Evolution

The New York Slimes ^ | 23 January 2005 | EDITORIAL

[Thatcherite]

If it happened gradually, you'd never get there since the necessary intermediate steps would be non-viable.

You'll have to run the demonstration of this by me to convince me. It sounds like a variant of the "of what use is half an eye" argument that even creationists have realised just makes them laughing-stock. Perhaps I'll become a creationist if you can demonstrate that the intermediates are non-viable. But "argument from personal astonishment" is rarely effective.

[shubi]

"his implied superiority of wisdom and intellect. If only he had either they'd be really effective."

Ouch, that's gotta hurt! LOL

[judywillow]

Pretty heavy. For those for whom that was a bit too much, Newt Gingrich may have phrased it best in noting that the question of whether a person views his fellow man as a fellow child of God or as a meat byproduct of stochastic processes, simply has to affect human relations.

[Right Wing Professor]

I don't agree with all of Luther's statements about Jews, but the point that all other religions lead to something else besides God is true -- from a Christian perspective. I am sure Luther would be an advocate of evangelism of the Jews and showing Christian love to them. It is unfair to take a few quotes and label that as only what he believed -- especially considering the extent of his writings.

Luther wrote an entire book called 'The Jews and their Lies'. It's available online. It wasn't a few quotes.

I find it significant that you object to my use of Hitler's and Luther's words to show in the first instance that he was clearly a Christian, and in the second case to show that he was clearly a very rabid antisemite. Yet you, on the other hand, apparently hold to a far weaker case that because Hitler and the Nazis invoked some bastardized social Darwinist beliefs, somehow the scientific theory of Evolution, which has nothing at all to do with antisemitism and says very little about race, is responsible for Naziism. One would hope as a scientist you might be able to step outside and display some objectivity; but apparently your belief system trumps your objectivity.

So let me run you through this again.

• Luther was a vicious antrisemite who preached the enslavement of the Jews and the execution of their rabbis (this isn't a debating point, BTW, it's a fact).
• Hitler was baptized and brought up a Catholic, invoked his Christianity in public pronouncements as a reason to persecute the Jews, and throughout his whole life used biblical references.
• The two major religions in Germany in 1933 were Evangelical Lutheranism and Christianity.
• The Nazis did little more than carry out the program that Luther preached. The people who carried it out were mostly Evangelical Lutherans and Catholics.

Yet despite all this evidence, you claim that the enterprise was inspired by an Anglican Clergyman in another country, who (to my knowledge) never said anything anti-semitic in his life, and who came up with a purely scientific theory of the origin of species.

I would have thought that you, of all people, would have gotten the point that you can use guilt-by-association and selective quotations (though with Luther you don't have to select very much; he was a nasty man) to make a far stronger case for the role of Christianity in the Holocaust than for Darwinism. Indeed, some kind of a legitimate case can be made for a role for Christianity, though I wouldn't say it was the main cause. But Nazi-ism, by and large, was a self-contained ideology that used Christian arguments when it suited, and Darwinist arguments when it suited; and alternately claimed itself to be spiritual and scientific and socialist.

Yet the only thing that you seem to have concluded is that when I do it it's somehow wrong, but when you do it it's OK. Remarkable.

[judywillow]

Half an eye is one thing if the owner is not depending on the proto-eye to do something else while it's developing into an eye. Baleen is a lot worse than that. The owner is absolutely depending on his teeth to kill prey animals and fish with while they are turning into baleen, and he can only go two or three days without food.

[gobucks]

We already know he'll dismiss your post as racist christian-identity propaganda; it has to be such in order to fit what he is vested within.

But, I thank you kindly for this reference. I had not heard of it. I had always been aware of the truth of it, but hadn't done much homework.

(btw, I saw N. Pearcy on CSpan. That woman is utterly beyond belief she is so awesome.)

[shubi]

There isn't much difference between a rabid anti-semite and a rabid anti-scienceite. ;-)

[Antoninus]

Read the above link to try to cleanse your mind of creationist propaganda.

My mind is completely open on the subject. There's propaganda (and outright fraud) on both sides. No one's hands are clean. I read the claims of the creationists and the debunkers with equal quantities of salt and then make my own decision. In the case of Paluxy, I think the jury's still out.

[shubi]

"The owner is absolutely depending on his teeth to kill prey animals and fish with while they are turning into baleen, and he can only go two or three days without food."

Hopeless! Don't you understand that as long as teeth can function as teeth they can get prey? And if teeth can strain a few supplemental crill, all the better.

[shubi]

Bwaahaaahaaa

[Thatcherite]

You seem to be thinking of some kind of Lamarkism the way you phrase your example.

You haven't demonstrated that the intermediate forms are unviable. To help you, the intermediate forms don't have to be good for just a couple of days, they have to last a whale's whole life. Now show that they are unviable to convince me.

[gobucks]

gobucks loves ad hominems that are based on his implied superiority of wisdom and intellect. If only he had either they'd be really effective.

You were obviously never spanked as a child either; otherwise snide side remarks you would not do; you'd do them directly.

[Right Wing Professor]

Uh OH! Now you have done it

But I'm wasting my time here. These people are so taken up in their ideology they can't do the elementary human operation of asking 'If I do this to others, what if they do the same thing to me?'. If they tell lies about others it's right. If others tell lies about them it's wrong. The idea that it is lying itself that is wrong doesn't occur to them.

[shubi]

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

[Thatcherite]

Yep Shubi, you were right, it did hurt. LOL.

[shubi]

"But I'm wasting my time here. These people are so taken up in their ideology they can't do the elementary human operation of asking 'If I do this to others, what if they do the same thing to me?'. If they tell lies about others it's right. If others tell lies about them it's wrong. The idea that it is lying itself that is wrong doesn't occur to them."

I have a Dr. in ministry, Biblical Counseling specialty. There are certain mental illnesses or personality disorders that promote a need for the perception of control. This causes, in some, a very rigid mental state similar to what you might see as someone approaches senility.

When it is difficult for a self-appointed Christian to apply the Golden Rule, we might look to organic systemic problems to explain that. It could just be an IQ under 90, for that matter. ;-)

[gobucks]

" But I'm wasting my time here."

All our disagreements notwithstanding, I don't agree. You have revealed at least one thing that does indeed set you apart from the leftists you so remarkably sound like: you love the truth, and are offended when someone lies.

A leftist wouldn't caught dead stepping outside the game of 'maybe'.

[shubi]

Just because someone doesn't buy superstitious nonsense is no reason to call them a leftist.

In fact, creationists have more in common with leftists than they care to admit. They spout mindless talking points with an absolute refusal to listen to rational argument.

[gobucks]

If they tell lies about others it's right. If others tell lies about them it's wrong. The idea that it is lying itself that is wrong doesn't occur to them.

No, it is not right to lie. Those folks who do it I don't approve of. I don't even really believe that you are deliberately lying. (Other than the sex stuff I have argued elsewhere, for you are a front line witness to this decadence everyday in your culture in academia and remain .... silent; that is called aiding the enemy via lies of omission).

So, I think you are committed to your version of the truth, but only b/c your horizon of experience, you believe, is fixed at about 12 miles at sea level.

So, lying itself is indeed wrong. I'm wondering how you learned that, and why you believe that too ...

For this Christian can easily state why lying is wrong; but a logician has never been able to defend the statement 'all lying is wrong'.

For though I think you are really out to lunch on almost everything you have written, I'll say this much: you set a great example of what it means to be a black and white defender of the truth. It would be our loss if you really thought you were wasting your time.

[shubi]

If your Mom was dying of cancer, but telling her she would get better would extend her life and give her strength, would you lie to her?