Posted on 01/19/2006 2:12:48 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator
We can expect more battles about Darwin before school boards across the country. But who cares? Impatient by now with the legal and religious debate around intelligent design, many of us may wonder just that. In fact we all need to care -- Darwinian theory has practical ramifications beyond the narrow question of what mechanism drives evolution.
Darwinists say the evolutionary mechanism must be purely material. ID theorists find evidence in nature of an intelligent purpose shaping life's history. Which view we convey to our children may affect their adult lives.
The scientific impact: Consider our country's role as the leading exporter of scientific ideas. Modern science from its start has been fueled by religious wonder. In his new book, "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success," sociologist Rodney Stark points out that real science arose only once. That was in Europe at the hands of devoutly Christian scholars: "medieval scholastics, sustained by that uniquely Christian 12th-century invention, the university."
Unlike the ancient Greeks who believed the universe had no beginning and thus no designer, Christians and Jews read the opening chapters of Genesis as an affirmation that nature is God's handiwork. To understand Him, it helps to understand His creation. Writes Stark, "Newton, Kepler and Galileo regarded the creation itself as a book that was to be read and comprehended."
In erasing God's role from the history of biological existence, Darwinism erases a primary motivation to pursue scientific discovery.
The economic impact: In formulating his theory of natural selection, Darwin said he drew inspiration from the work of Thomas Malthus, the 18th-century political economist. Malthus portrayed life as a "struggle for existence," pitting animal against animal. Darwin added that organisms maximized their chances of survival if they possessed favorable variations (later explained as genetic mutations).
In economics, Malthus's view leads to the dismal belief that people are merely consumers, competing with one another for scarce resources. Similarly, Darwin's theory teaches us to think of life as a fierce struggle against others. It thus subtly undercuts the healthy belief that seeking wealth means providing a service to people rather than a way of robbing them. As my friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin points out, humans do best in careers they consider morally commendable. If we want our children to enjoy affluence as we do, it matters what we teach them about the nobility of creating wealth.
The moral impact: In "The Descent of Man" (1871), Darwin spells out the moral implications of his theory, notably that unguided evolution produced the moral laws as much as it did the plants and animals. Such laws could have turned out differently, as the animals could have turned out differently had chance variations led life's history down a different path.
So there is nothing absolute about our ideas of right and wrong. Wrote Darwin, "We may, therefore, reject the belief, lately insisted on by some writers, that the abhorrence of incest is due to our possessing a special God-implanted conscience." If ethics has no such secure foundation, there can be nothing sacred about doing the right thing.
No, I am not saying that Darwinism necessarily leads to scientific, economic and moral breakdown.
On the other hand, one can hardly deny the sad coarsening of our culture. Whatever its merits as science, Darwinism as a philosophy is far from uplifting or ennobling. Today when young Americans could use a little uplift and an appreciation for what's noble, letting them know about intelligent design, an alternative scientific theory with none of Darwin's drawbacks, couldn't hurt and might help.
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LOL! It's more likely to devolve.
"Yawn. Your insults are as lame as they are ignorant."
You are right. I should not have said "not very bright." I should have said "not thinking it through". To anyone who does, the conclusion is inevitable and quite obvios, once reached.
Nice discovery.
FWIW, in every instance I can recall where a FReeper has posted a guest editorial written by a "Discovery" Institute fellow since the Dover case was decided last month, they have inevitably left off the end of the editorial where it gives the author's affiliation. This is roughly the third or fourth time I've seen this in the past month.
As to whether this failure to include the author's association is a deliberate deception, or an honest oversight, I cannot say. But the fact that posters of these sorts of editorials by DI flaks are batting a thousand in the "ommission department" does start to raise an eyebrow.
"Yeah, how come you biblical types gave that up?"
Because the sacrifice of Christ was perfect and final. You really need to pay more attention to your cultural heritage.
Christians, as it happens, still sacrifice out of repentance. They just mostly don't kill beasts.
You need to pay attention to your own superstitions.
I'll give you a "do-over" on that one Herr professor because it makes no sense whatsoever.
> Because the sacrifice of Christ was perfect and final.
I don't know about "final," but you can hardly do better with the "sacrifice." Everybody else, when they sacrifice something.... it's *gone.*. But according to Christian tradition, Christ *came* *back.* So, like Aslan in "Narnia," it's a sacrifice that wasn't a sacrifice. Kinda like the old cartoon gag about using a coin on a string to run a payphone. Way to game the system!
> To anyone who does, the conclusion is inevitable and quite obvios, once reached.
If by "conclusion" you mean violent psychopathic behavior, it's only obvious to violent psychopaths. Quite telling that *you* thus think it's obvious.
In your case... thank God for your fear of damnation.
Darwin's been around along time, so has Marx. But the Marxists have succeeded in taking the American publics eye off the ball and shifting the blame for the "coarsening of our culture" to a scientific theory, Evolution, rather than the real agent of our societies demise, socialism.
Christ suffered horrendously under Pontius Pilate physically and emotionally as a man. He died as a man.
God placed Himself in Time and confronted man as a man. Man abused Him and He returned perfect love. He endured the cruelest punishments and most vile insults and betrayal, and He replied with love.
I'm a pro-life small-l libertarian. Give me your opinion on this. Here in Jersey in the '97 gubernatorial election, there were three candidates. Pro-abortion RINO Christie Whitman, pro-abortion homo Jim McGreevy, and staunchly pro-life Libertarian Murray Sabrin. I voted for Sabrin. In your opinion, did I do the right thing?
Not at all. There are many evolutionarily derived constraints against humans becoming "Natural Born Killers". To not become those kind of killers is part of our genome and by extension our culture.
They have moved up in the world?
> Christ suffered horrendously under Pontius Pilate physically and emotionally as a man.
As *many* men did. Standard punishments for the time.
> He died as a man.
But came back. More to the point, *knew* he'd live on after death. Negates the value of the sacrifice. How much do I sacrifice if I, say, gave someone half a years salary... but I knew to a moral certainty that I'd get it back tenfold three days later?
What you sacrifice you lose.
I agree it makes no sense. We are, after all, discussing a superstition.
Didn't you get the memo? Conservatives now agree with leftists, revisionists and identify group activists: Curricula should no longer be determined by the objective merit and standing (or lack thereof) of various ideas in hard-nosed scholarship and professional practice. What matters is how ideas make the student feeeeeeeeee-el, and (equally important) their "social function". After all, scientific knowledge (like all knowledge) is subjective and "culturally determined". (Yeah, conservatives are now deconstructionsists too.)
Do I really need sarcasm tags?
No they aren't. In fact your conclusion -- that evolved man should (logically should) be unbridled killers -- is actually pretty stupid. Your "logic" doesn't hold up for half a second because it ignores the high costs invariably of agonistic behavior.
Even solitary animals restrict agnostic behavior through various rituals in order to avoid injury, inordinate wasting of time and resources in conflict with conspecifics, and etc. The case is even worse (for your claim) with respect to humans since they are both social and intelligent animals, so that violent behavior is responded to with shunning, retaliation and other highly costly behaviors.
You are not thinking it through. Your idea works for animals because they are automatons. Humans aren't.
ROFL
Shabbat Shalom
David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author of "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History"" (Doubleday).
These always seem to get left off of Discovery Institute written op-eds posted by ID supporters. Chance or Design?
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