Posted on 12/31/2005 12:41:23 PM PST by streetpreacher
| Darwin's Pyrrhic victory Posted: December 28, 2005
By Patrick J. Buchanan © 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc.
"Intelligent Design Derailed," exulted the headline. "By now, the Christian conservatives who once dominated the school board in Dover, Pa., ought to rue their recklessness in forcing biology classes to hear about 'intelligent design' as an alternative to the theory of evolution," declared the New York Times, which added its own caning to the Christians who dared challenge the revealed truths of Darwinian scripture. Noting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is a Bush appointee, the Washington Post called his decision "a scathing opinion that criticized local school board members for lying under oath and for their 'breathtaking inanity' in trying to inject religion into science classes." But is it really game, set, match, Darwin? Have these fellows forgotten that John Scopes, the teacher in that 1925 "Monkey Trial," lost in court, and was convicted of violating Tennessee law against the teaching of evolution and fined $100? Yet Darwin went on to conquer public education, and American Civil Liberties Union atheists went on to purge Christianity and the Bible from our public schools.
The Dover defeat notwithstanding, the pendulum is clearly swinging back. Darwinism is on the defensive. For, as Tom Bethell, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science," reminds us, there is no better way to make kids curious about "intelligent design" than to have some Neanderthal forbid its being mentioned in biology class. In ideological politics, winning by losing is textbook stuff. The Goldwater defeat of 1964, which a triumphant left said would bury the right forever, turned out to be liberalism's last hurrah. Like Marxism and Freudianism, Darwinism appears destined for the graveyard of discredited ideas, no matter the breathtaking inanity of the trial judge. In his opinion, Judge Jones the Third declared:
But if intelligent design is creationism or fundamentalism in drag, how does Judge Jones explain how that greatest of ancient thinkers, Aristotle, who died 300 years before Christ, concluded that the physical universe points directly to an unmoved First Mover? As Aristotle wrote in his "Physics": "Since everything that is in motion must be moved by something, let us suppose there is a thing in motion which was moved by something else in motion, and that by something else, and so on. But this series cannot go on to infinity, so there must be some First Mover." A man of science and reason, Aristotle used his observations of the physical universe to reach conclusions about how it came about. Where is the evidence he channeled the Torah and creation story of Genesis before positing his theory about a prime mover? Darwinism is in trouble today for the reason creationism was in trouble 80 years ago. It makes claims that are beyond the capacity of science to prove. Darwinism claims, for example, that matter evolved from non-matter – i.e., something from nothing – that life evolved from non-life; that, through natural selection, rudimentary forms evolved into more complex forms; and that men are descended from animals or apes. Now, all of this is unproven theory. And as the Darwinists have never been able to create matter out of non-matter or life out of non-life, or extract from the fossil record the "missing links" between species, what they are asking is that we accept it all on faith. And the response they are getting in the classroom and public forum is: "Prove it," and, "Where is your evidence?" And while Darwinism suggests our physical universe and its operations happened by chance and accident, intelligent design seems to comport more with what men can observe and reason to.
If, for example, we are all atop the Grand Canyon being told by a tour guide that nature, in the form of a surging river over eons of time, carved out the canyon, we might all nod in agreement. But if we ask how "Kilroy was here!" got painted on the opposite wall of the canyon, and the tour guide says the river did it, we would all howl. A retreating glacier may have created the mountain, but the glacier didn't build the cabin on top of it. Reason tells us the cabin came about through intelligent design. Darwinism is headed for the compost pile of discarded ideas because it cannot back up its claims. It must be taken on faith. It contains dogmas men may believe, but cannot stand the burden of proof, the acid of attack or the demands of science. Where science says, "No miracles allowed," Darwinism asks us to believe in miracles.
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Only the testimony of several dozen and no dissenters. Of couse, that's only anecdota, not data.
Rather than being a circular argument, it's closer to a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument.
Some Jewish conservatives (delegates to the 1992 GOP convention) have left the party because of Buchannan's speech thereunto. It will be a couple of generations before Pat's damage is undone in this area.
Actually, only the big-spending, big-government, nanny-state, conservatives are left in the GOP since 1964. Many GOP politicians are unreconstructed Democrats that changed their hats.
1709? By then America was no longer hanging "witches"
Uh, no, they didn't. Even Hester Prynne wasn't stoned to death.
Two can play this game. You want to attack religious believers? Well then, the Communists are your allies. Don't like being tarred with that brush? Then you should take a bit more care in your distinctions.
The Scarlet Letter is a novel, guy. Try to separate your fantasy world from reality.
Two can play this game. You want to attack religious believers? Well then, the Communists are your allies. Don't like being tarred with that brush? Then you should take a bit more care in your distinctions.
I'm not attacking religious believers. I'm attacking fundamentalists. And your 'logic' is pretty much what I've grown to expect from them.
I would think so. Given the very large numbers of very liberal Jews in this country, contrasted with the fact that there were no dissenters in your sample, this has "selection bias" written all over it.
And where did they go? To the Democrats or the Libertarians? If the former, then I got news for you: they were never conservative to begin with.
Other than substituting the Klan for mainstream religious organizations in a statement I made and pretending that the same logic applies, like you did at #275, no, you're not attacking religious believers or anything.
To the libertarians (with a small l), as did other non-Jewish GOP members. Buchannan did as much as Perot to defeat Bush and give us Clinton.
You made an argument from analogy. I gave an example where your analogy fails. Logic is logic, and applies everywhere. On the other hand, analogy is the weakest form of logical reasoning.
Now you've abandoned logic, and embraced hysteria. Predictable.
That's answer is a non sequitur. Small-l libertarians are not a political party. It's like saying that somebody left the U.S., and when asked where he went, you say, "to the movies".
Once again, what political party(-ies) did they go to after leaving the GOP? And keep in mind that you yourself just got through saying that many Republicans are just unreconstructed Democrats.
Oh, by the way, do you consider the Unification Church a 'mainstream religious organization'? How about the Church of Scientology? A simple yes or no in each case will suffice.
That's an interesting proposal. But wouldn't you have inequity between schools across the country?
And by the way, I addressed it at the top of #279 to show specifically where your logic went wrong. Predictably enough, you ignored it, the same way you ignore all points that are inconvenient to your position.
Logic is logic, and applies everywhere.
A statement which could only be made to support the use of analogies. But then, as you did earlier when talking about Turkey, you immediately segue into:
On the other hand, analogy is the weakest form of logical reasoning.
So you were for analogy before you were against it?
If those are the only organizations receiving federal funds, and if you honestly are saying that you don't object to federal funds going to mainstream religious organizations, just as long as they don't go to any of the "weird" ones, then your point would be worth addressing.
You made an analogy between the federal government paying religious organizations and the federal government paying employees. I pointed out the federal government can (and in fact must) pay employees even if they're Klansmen, but few would approve of the federal government paying the Klan. This was to illustrate the weakness of your reasoning.
I'm terminating this discussion, because you're clearly out of your depth, and you're getting all hot and bothered. But a parting question for you - is Pat Robertson 'mainstream religious'?
The standard objection that you hear a lot is that introducing ID will make kids "ignorant". But in reality, introducing it as a competing theory and examining the different arguments could just as easily result in a fuller treatment of the subject.
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