Posted on 02/06/2006 5:02:42 PM PST by CobaltBlue
Ricky Nguyen and Mariama Lowe never really believed in evolution to begin with. But as they took their seats in Room CC-121 at Northern Virginia Community College on November 2, they fully expected to hear what students usually hear in any Biology 101 class: that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was true.
As professor Caroline Crocker took the lectern, Nguyen sat in the back of the class of 60 students, Lowe in the front. Crocker, who wore a light brown sweater and slacks, flashed a slide showing a cartoon of a cheerful monkey eating a banana. An arrow led from the monkey to a photograph of an exceptionally unattractive man sitting in his underwear on a couch. Above the arrow was a question mark.
Crocker was about to establish a small beachhead for an insurgency that ultimately aims to topple Darwin's view that humans and apes are distant cousins. The lecture she was to deliver had caused her to lose a job at a previous university, she told me earlier, and she was taking a risk by delivering it again. As a nontenured professor, she had little institutional protection. But this highly trained biologist wanted students to know what she herself deeply believed: that the scientific establishment was perpetrating fraud, hunting down critics of evolution to ruin them and disguising an atheistic view of life in the garb of science.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
on the contrary, we can describe mathematically the action of a falling object; we cannot do the same for "gravity" as an effect over the entire universe of things. The gentlemen in this case assumes that the same principle which "explains" the changes we can see, also explains those changes we have not seen.
Sorry, I do not participate in the cyclical nature of these types of threads.
Intentionally and falsely trying to pass off Pandas as a science book is a far bigger and far more outrageous fraud, and will do more to destroy the ID charlatans at the Discovery Institute, than a whole army of Piltdown Men. I quote from the excellent opinion by Judge Jones:
As Plaintiffs meticulously and effectively presented to the Court, Pandas went through many drafts, several of which were completed prior to and some after the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards [Edwards v. Aguillard], which held that the Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science. By comparing the pre and post Edwards drafts of Pandas, three astonishing points emerge:Source: Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al..(1) the definition for creation science in early drafts is identical to the definition of ID;This word substitution is telling, significant, and reveals that a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change in content, which directly refutes FTE's [FTE = the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, the publisher of Pandas] argument that by merely disregarding the words "creation" and "creationism," FTE expressly rejected creationism in Pandas. In early pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas, the term "creation" was defined as "various forms of life that began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features intact -- fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc," the very same way in which ID is defined in the subsequent published versions.(2) cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which appeared approximately 150 times were deliberately and systematically replaced with the phrase ID; and
(3) the changes occurred shortly after the Supreme Court held that creation science is religious and cannot be taught in public school science classes in Edwards.
From now on -- thanks to the geniuses at DI, the discredited fools on the Dover school board, and their dedicated lawyers -- when the creationists raise the phony issue of Piltdown Man, or Nebraska Man, or Peppered Moths, or Haeckel's Embryos, none of which amounts to anything anyway, the rational side of the argument has been given the all-time slam-dunk response -- Pandas!
RevMoonDidit placemark
I notice you don't bristle equally at the implied abuse of Christianity by fascist idiots...
Anyway, your statement is true but misses the point: locally--i.e., within a time-horizon of one or two generations, and in a particular historical context--it's possible to describe "fitness" in fairly specific terms. Epidemiologists do exactly that when they examine the evolution of new retrovirus strains so they can (hopefully) prepare vaccines in advance of next year's flu season.
Similarly, your average Joe is not a complete idiot when he observes that, say, a person in a vegetative state is "unfit" in a darwinian sense. Extending this definition to the crippled, retarded, sickly, etc., is not strictly valid but is not utter nonsense either. The average Joe is wrong only from the very long-term perspective, where he fails to realize that the future of mankind involves losing all hearing but seeing the entire RF spectrum, say.
So the fascist's main failing is not stupidity per se, but arrogance; he believes he can do natural selection one better with a bit of artificial selection. He has the hubris to feel comfortable assuming the godlike role of identifying and eliminating the unfit. He differs in degree, but not in kind, from the masses of people who are comfortable telling you what to eat, and punishing you for disobedience.
Your link #2 is broken. And why, in 2006, are all your references circa 1999?
First I made the original post in 2001. Also the debate (in the Calvin College/ASA Evolution Listserv) occured in response to several things that happened around that time: e.g. a (very misleading) review of Michael Majerus' book Melanism: Evolution in Action by Jerry Coyne in Nature, and the (mis)use of this by IDer Jonathan Wells to claim that the conventional Peppered Moth story was false, photos were faked, moths had virtually never been found resting naturally on tree trunks, etc.
As to my broken link I don't know what to tell you. I guess google.groups discarded or lost some data when they sucked up the old dejanews.org.
I just read some more recent scientific articles on peppered moths, industrial melanism, several which touched upon the controversy.
I haven't come across a link for Kettlewell's original research.
I originally got interested in the peppered moth story after reading the article I linked previously, in Whole Earth.
That was before the issue became so politicized. "Politicized" is a weak word, cause celebre' might be better.
The recent articles I read seem to me to state that there is a statistical correlation between decline in industrial pollution and decline in percentage of melanic forms of certain moths. This seems entirely appropriate but not nearly as exciting as the way the story was told to me back in the Dark Ages when I was an undergrad.
That's a bit of a non-sequitur: if you don't believe in evolution, then you don't believe there's a need to stop it.
I've already mentioned what happens when a fascist discovers christianity: he decides that heretics should be burned for their own good. That would probably include evolutionists, but they'd have to get in line with the wiccans, queers, low-church Anglicans...
It is crazy to think that in an industrialized modern society, with all the wealth that creates, that you gain much anything by killing weak people instead of letting their relatives provide them with basic food, clothing, and shelter.
I think even arguing that point means you're playing by the madman's rules. Feeding your sick parents isn't about whether it's cheaper to whack 'em--sometimes, it is. You feed them anyway.
That's true at a high level, but deep down we're all wired for socialism because, in small tribal units, it confers a survival advantage. We haven't evolved the right instincts for social structures larger than a dozen or so. That's why even freepers, in a pinch, usually turn out to be statists.
Wrong. Eugenics is artificial selection applied to human beings, not natural selection. Blame practitioners of animal husbandry, if you must blame someone, not Darwin.
Not the Lord-- the Father of Lies understands. (HINT: not the Lord)
Please learn to read. I referred to eugenics as "artificial selection", and never referred to it as "natural selection". In the post you quote, I said, "eugenics is what you get when a fascist ponders natural selection." That's a statement of historical fact; eugenicists and social darwinians explicitly extrapolate their theories from the principle of survival of the fittest.
Obviously, Darwin himself is not to blame. He was dead by the time such movements got off the ground.
There's a third possibility: REVERSING evolution. This is really what the Nazis were all about. They were attempting to undo "race mixing" and restore the "purity of the blood". They were creationists (of a mystical sort) who believed that each race had been created with a distinct "soul". The race "soul" was carried in the "blood".
Please learn to think.
I referred to eugenics as "artificial selection", and never referred to it as "natural selection". In the post you quote, I said, "eugenics is what you get when a fascist ponders natural selection." That's a statement of historical fact; eugenicists and social darwinians explicitly extrapolate their theories from the principle of survival of the fittest.
You may have used "artificial selection" in a later post, but you did not use anything but "natural selection" in the post I responded to (or in any post priot to it on this thread, for that matter). Further, I did not say you referred to it as natural selection; I was responding to the false information which you disseminated in your post. I was making the point that to assert that eugenics results from or is anyway related to natural selection is idiocy.
Moreover, the fact that the eugenicists and so-called social Darwinists idiotically (or ignorantly) attributed their thinking to Darwin and the principles of natural selection does not give anyone license to propagate the error.
Obviously, Darwin himself is not to blame. He was dead by the time such movements got off the ground.
On that we can agree.
However, if you'd read more carefully, you'd find it precisely as I explained it: eugenics was invented by fascists cogitating upon the phenonenon of natural selection.
Moreover, the fact that the eugenicists and so-called social Darwinists idiotically (or ignorantly) attributed their thinking to Darwin...
You appear to again be introducing the red herring that Darwin himself was somehow directly responsible for eugenics. That's ridiculous--which is why nobody made any such claim.
does not give anyone license to propagate the error.
You may have drawn an erroneous conclusion from a true statement, but please don't misplace the blame. Admit your error like a man, and I'll forgive you.
Wow, your history is as screwed up as your prose. Even the modern eugenics movement predated fascism by decades; its core ideas have been around in one form or another since Plato. It certainly was not "invented by fascists."
And it certainly does not make your ridiculous statement any more true. Some fascists contemplated natural selection and understood it to be a scientific theory. Some foolish people (not all fascist) contemplated using artificial selection to "correct" what they foresaw as the consequences of permitting so-called inferior people to reproduce. Again, that they ignorantly attributed it to the theory of natural selection does not give anyone license to repeat their idiocy unchallenged.
You appear to again be introducing the red herring that Darwin himself was somehow directly responsible for eugenics. That's ridiculous--which is why nobody made any such claim.
No, I was simply using "Darwin" as a shorthand for his theory. The fact that I said, "...attributed their thinking to Darwin and the principles of natural selection..." should have made this explicit to the average reader. Not exactly precise, but understandable to all but the daftest minds. I apologize if I overestimated your thinking and reading comprehension skills. I'll try not to repeat the error.
Admit your error like a man, and I'll forgive you.
LOL. That's precious. Really. What are you, twelve years old?
And Hitler explicitly extrapolated his rabid anti-Semitism from his professed Christianity. Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
Can we agree that both natural selection and Christianity have been misused by evil people to justify their policies? Can we also agree that linking either Christianity or the theory of evolution to 20th century tyrannies and genocides is an exercise in sophistry?
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