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.
> What is it about the application of the First Amendment, to those other than yourself, do you just not understand.
What I "just don't understand" is what you're talking about. You seem to be responding to a different post from a different thread.
Perhaps you should re-read what you're responding to, and see if maybe you didn't understand it the first time.
> //That is certainly the most preposterous notion that some human has ever dreamed up.//
> That notion, your concept, the words you use, are all about balrog666.
WOW!!! You mean to tell me that you didn't recognize that quote from Robert Heinlein, even when it was clearly attributed to RAH? Says much that you leap to such conclusions in the face of the facts.
Perhaps you should re-read what you're responding to, and see if maybe you didn't understand it the first time.
...sigh
Instilling fear of eternal damnation is not, and can not, be a remedy which society exerts, since eternal damnation is the very premise for the theist's argument, and thus the source of antagonism for which you complain.
I didn't address that part of your recent post because it is simply nonsensical, and circular at best. It doesn't, however, invalidate your statement [the quote that I initially responded to in this thread] that: "The sort of peopel (sic) who honestly believe that atheism equates to 'nothing matters" are *exactly* the sort of people who society needs to have some sort of control over."
The rest should be crystal clear....at least I hope so.
We’re not going to become psychopaths just because you tell us that we should want to be.All of us nonbelievers will become psychopaths.
Well no of course not, it will happen with your own will, your own volition, all of you.
Just damn!
Do try to keep up professor, this is the sentence that makes no sense. Smug cynicism is an unattractive trait, even in children.
Your posture here ever demonstrates a contempt for the rich patrimony that is the very foundation of our civilization.
And you a teacher? Only in the pampered, self-indulgent cesspool that passes for "higher" education could such stupidity flourish.
No matter how you trick them out your lessons are poison. They add not one grain to our cultural heritage but rather they undermine it and, left unchallenged, will bring the entire ediface tumbling down.
Ultimately your philosophy, such as it appears, resembles nothing so much as marxism in its desire to rob men of their greatest wealth; their soul.
Not willingly.
What better method for God to demonstrate, in a manner understandable to all, that His love was greater than man's ability to destroy?
That truth is indestructable.
If you don't understand the sentence, ask someone whose first language is English to help you.
And you a teacher? Only in the pampered, self-indulgent cesspool that passes for "higher" education could such stupidity flourish.
Uh huh. I fully understand why someone whose stock-in-trade is abuse unanchored by substance despises education.
Ultimately your philosophy, such as it appears, resembles nothing so much as marxism in its desire to rob men of their greatest wealth; their soul.
How amusing that your greatest wealth is a dream. Not that I doubt the truth of what you say. I expect fictions are worth more than anything else in your life.
> Instilling fear of eternal damnation is not, and can not, be a remedy which society exerts...
It's a fear society *DOES* instill. Look around you. And given the self-admitted psychoses of some Freepers, where they claim that without belief in God they'd go Reaper, then it is, at least in their case, for the best that that fear has been instilled in them.
It's nothign to do with the Constitution. I have no problem witha preacher lying to a psycho to keep said psychoe from tryign to destroy civilization. It's when they lie to people who don't need an invisible eternal tormentor in the sky that I become rather irked.
Well, doesn't that just summarize your entire posting history in one little soundbite! Time to do the superior dance! /church-lady mode
I suspect if we went back and collected all of these little gems, they might make an interesting subsection in the Museum of the Absurd.
> there is a human being (who might be sincere) behind that screenanme and he deserves dignity and respect.
> I (or anyone) only ask the same in return.
Do you, now.
Dimensio: We’re not going to become psychopaths just because you tell us that we should want to be.
RunningWolf: Well no of course not, it will happen with your own will, your own volition, all of you.
Now, consider. You just expressed the view that all atheists will *willingly* turn into violent psychos. Not only does that show zero, zilch, nada in the way of dignity and respect for other people, it shows zero, zilch, nada in the way of respect for *facts.*
My larger concern here isn;t that everybody should play nice. That'd be *boring*. My larger concern here is that you have just demonstrated that *you* believe that if you lost your fear of damnation you'd turn into a danger to society. Since I've known a great many who have lost that fear or never had it in the first place and were perfectly fine people who understood right and wrong at their core and didn’t need a god to keep them in line, this indicates one of two things:
1: You massively misunderstand reality and human nature
2: You yourself are a barely restrained psychopath.
Or, a third:
3: You are lying to score points.
And *that* is a sad, pathetic, unworthy-of-America kind of thing.
The Grand Master -- who sometimes lurks here -- looks with favor on your idea for a Museum of the Absurd. Indeed, he has long been seeking a project worthy of your talents. Will you undertake this mission on behalf of Darwin Central? If you do, and if your conduct meets with the GM's approval, a special lapel decoration will be designed and awarded.
On behalf of the Grand Master, I am,
PatrickHenry
The fear of external justice, i.e., God/eternal damnation, is the source of the psychotic behavior (your belief, not mine) for which you complain. It is the initial state of the theist relative to your perspective. Put another way, it is part and parcel of the set of axioms that he/she already possesses.
Saying then, that fear of eternal damnation is a remedy for such behavior, is again, simply nonsensical and circualr at best.
It's nothign to do with the Constitution.
It has everything to do with the Constitution. Both you and the theist are free to believe whatever the hell you want to believe...even your assumption the theist is psychotic, or the theists assumption that you are.
Expressions of that belief beyond mere words however, may be a problem, such as advocating societal restrictions, which is the only issue I have with you.
Now, it may not have been your intention to portray your reasoning as such, but then, many of us simply do not think before we speak,.
"That's your projection, and it's your delusion."
If that is your position, then your belief that you are an atheist is your delusion. Either that, or you have not thought it through.
" All of us nonbelievers will become psychopaths."
In a manner of speaking that could be true. That is, those who remain in such a state until death will end up that and worse. That is exactly a part of what motivates believers to spread the good news: to bring others to salvation. It is the spiritual equivalent of telling people on a sinking cruise ship where the lifeboats are, yet some of them insist that the boat is fine and they refuse to leave the blackjack table.
Time will tell which group is right, but I hope you at least understand their motivation to talk about the lifeboats - and many of them have been to the lower decks and observed the water rising.
Robert A. Heinlein also said
"One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."
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