Psych Prof Advocates Human/Chimp Hybrids – But only to Offend Christians

Lifesite ^ | July 28, 2006 | Hilary White

[NYer]

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an op ed piece in the LA Times, David P. Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that reproductive facilities should work towards creating a race of human/chimpanzee hybrids, but, he admits, only because it would offend Christians.
 
Some geneticists have postulated that their distant evolutionary ancestors may have interbred with those of chimps, and Barash argues that this means there is no moral difference between a human being and a chimpanzee, or indeed, between a human being and a sea sponge.
 
The psychology professor looks forward to the day when IVF facilities will create human/animal hybrids. He reveals, however, that his motivation is not a pure interest in advancing science, but his hatred for “know-nothing anti-evolutionism,” and “religious fundamentalists,” who hold human life to be sacred.
 
Barash says he advocates interbreeding humans with animals not because it would be a good idea in itself, but because it would offend believers. “In these dark days of know-nothing anti-evolutionism,” he writes, “with religious fundamentalists occupying the White House, controlling Congress and attempting to distort the teaching of science in our schools, a powerful dose of biological reality would be healthy indeed.”
 
Barash says that creating animal/human hybrids would effectively quash the belief that “the human species, unlike all others, possesses a spark of the divine and that we therefore stand outside nature.”
 
“Should geneticists and developmental biologists succeed once again in joining human and nonhuman animals in a viable organism,” Barash writes, “it would be difficult and perhaps impossible for the special pleaders to maintain the fallacy that Homo sapiens is uniquely disconnected from the rest of life.”
 
One of the ideological offshoots of Darwinsim is radical environmentalism, advocates of which hold that human beings are a kind of virus threatening the earth’s ecosystems. According to the pure materialist philosophy, the environmental threat is directly the fault of “a bogus ‘faith based’ worldview,” the “Judeo-Christian proclamation of radical discontinuity between people and the rest of ‘creation.’”
 
Such shrill anti-religious polemics are increasingly being challenged from within the scientific community as bigotry, however, and recent revelations have indicated that Barash’s pure Darwinian faith may be going the way of the dodo.
 
In a new book, “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, asks scientific skeptics to approach religious belief God with a more open mind. Collins is among a growing movement in the science world that asserts there is no necessary rift between real science and religious belief.
 
Collins is far from the stereotype religious “know-nothing” presented by anti-religious Darwinists. One of the world’s leading geneticists, he led the international Human Genome Project that mapped the 3.1 billion chemical base pairs in humanity's DNA. He now runs the government research foundation guiding work in the medical applications of this historic international project.
 
Collins attributed his rejection of the atheistic position to the writings of Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, the early 20th century English professor known and loved around the world for his ironclad logic in explaining Christian doctrines and debunking modern liberal atheism.
 
At a conference sponsored by the C.S. Lewis Foundation, Collins said, “For a scientist, it's uncomfortable to admit there are questions that your scientific method isn't going to be able to address.”
 
Collins refutes the Darwinists’ out-of-hand rejection of religion. An article in the Washington Post quotes him saying scientists are “not supposed to decide something is true until [they’ve] looked at the data. And yet I had become an atheist without ever looking at the evidence whether God exists or not."
 
Collins decries both the anti-religious materialists who dominate his profession, and the Christian reaction that, he says, attempts to ignore hard scientific evidence. Both approaches, he said, are “profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary.”
 

[jdm]

So glad that you're back. I clicked on your screen name about a week ago and wondered what happened!

[DManA]

He should be brought up on hate speech charges.

not because it would be a good idea in itself, but because it would offend believers.

[itsamelman]

[DManA]

First they removed Christian principles from government. Then they removed Christian principles from moral debates. Then they banned it altogether because it was irrelevant anyway.

Barash argues that this means there is no moral difference between a human being and a chimpanzee,

[thoughtomator]

What happened is that I learned that even here there are politically correct boundaries that if you cross them you are persona non grata. Whatever you do, don't actually offer an effective solution to the Mexican invasion, or your account is at risk. Oddly enough, being censored didn't do a single thing to rebut my sensible, conservative argument, which was that a military solution involving a buffer zone and minefields should be our starting postion in negotiating with the Mexican government over their deliberate and unlawful export of population to this country, given that their starting position is far more extreme in the other direction (completely unregulated immigration and erasure of national sovereignty). The funny part is that my suggestion was little different than the suggestion offered by a GOP Congressman. I guess Rep. King of Iowa would also find his opinion on the matter unwelcome here.

The moderation of this forum has gone downhill big time in the past two years, and I believe that one of them has it out for me. Unfortunately for that person I've been around a long time (I was at the rally to impeach Clinton, for example), and I've made financial and technological contributions to this forum to prove the value of my participation. No doubt I am deliberately provocative (hence the handle) much of the time. But as long as this is a conservative forum and not a GOP party-uber-alles booster club, any honest person must admit that I properly belong here and that I have a positive contribution to make. Any person who is familiar with my writing knows that I am an uncompromising advocate for the interests of the USA as a nation, not any party, ethnic group, industry, religion, organization, association, or other subdivision thereof, nor of any gloalist coalition. If they have a problem with me then they ought to look at themselves and ask what their problem with the USA is, because I do nothing but advocate for our national interest.

It's not as if time and time again my unpopular positions haven't been picked up by Rush, NRO, and GOP leaders, a year or two down the road. Back in January I got a suspension for - get this - "History of anti-Muslim comments". A mere few months later, my suspension-worthy comments then, IIRC that Islam simply could not co-exist with Western civilization and therefore we have no choice but to destroy it completely for our own continued survival, are the conventional wisdom now.

That's all water under the bridge now. People are human, even mods (although some would dispute that), and human beings are imperfect creatures who make mistakes. But I remain a good canary in the coalmine for the intrusion of political correctness to FR. I've been suspended here no fewer than 8 times over 8 years, and each and every time it has been according to a dogma that was later repudiated by the patrons of this fine forum - and properly so, given that I have always adhered to the mission statment on the home page, which has not changed in all this time.

Thanks for the opportunity to get that out of my system. Now I have a week's worth of "Angry Muslims Ping List" to catch up on...

[firebrand]

Let a sea sponge take care of him if he ever needs medical care.

[CommerceComet]

>>He should be brought up on hate speech charges.

He's perfectly safe from any charges since he is attacking Christians. Charges would have already been filed if he had said something to deliberately offend gays.

[4woodenboats]

The "spark of the divine" is spiritual not physical. It's the human soul that is in the image of God not the human body.

Very well stated.

And when the Angels were passing out souls, Barash was busy spanking his monkey.

He doesn't know what it's like to have a soul, so he determines that none exist. As Collins eloquently pointed out, that's just bad science.

I reeeeeally don't like my tax dollars going to that POS indoctrination center/university.

[Graymatter]

I wonder if he has a daughter he'd like to march down the aisle to a chimp cage.

[cpforlife.org]

Pro-Life PING

Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

[Paperdoll]

It is quite evident that Washinbgon State's bonehead bigot Barash's ancestors definitely did interbreed with chimps!

[Northern Yankee]

Would an ape with a calculator make him a Harry Reasoner?

LOL...

[4woodenboats]

Amazon.com review of his book "Beloved Enemies"

March 5, 2006 Reviewer: Photo czar (Spokane, WA) - See all my reviews

This is a conflicted review. The author allows much of himself to show through this book, so although I enjoyed some parts of the book, I found myself disliking Barash as a person, and especially as a scientist. He loves data that supports his political stance, and ignores anything that threatens that position. Because of this, he overlooks some obvious material that would give a much clearer understanding of the topic.

True to the book's theme, almost of his villians (enemies) are selected from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

For someone who is naive about conflict studies, the book might serve as a general, if rather biased introduction., For anyone who has invested any time in pondering these matters, the book is a waste of time and energy.

[3catsanadog]

This borders on hate speech as far as I'm concerned. No, let me take that back. There are no borders. This is hate speech.

Course I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the Thought Police to do anything about it.

After all, it's only Christians that were offended.

And frankly, chimpanzees have more morals than alot of folks on this planet these days.

[3catsanadog]

PS - I don't believe that murder is right, but boy oh boy some people sure do test my beliefs.

[Old_Mil]

It would be a supreme irony if God were to allow the West to fall to the armies of Islam to stamp out the sort of ideology that drives this individual to make such statements.

[teeman8r]

Paging Doctor Moreau, paging Doctor Moreau...

two legs good. four legs baaaaaaaad.

i bet this guy is real fun at parties...

teeman

[grey_whiskers]

The psychology professor looks forward to the day when IVF facilities will create human/animal hybrids. He reveals, however, that his motivation is not a pure interest in advancing science, but his hatred for “know-nothing anti-evolutionism,” and “religious fundamentalists,” who hold human life to be sacred.

Anti World-Class-Dork ad hominem(*) Sarcasm Torpedo^TM ARMED. FIRE!!

OK, let's see if he'll volunteer his own wife to be the first woman to undergo IVF with chimp sperm.

(*) Sorry, I couldn't find the Latin for chimp, let alone the proper form for the noun acting as the object of a preposition...

Full Disclosure: The first idiot to mention Ronald Reagan and Bedtime for Bonzo gets it.

[grey_whiskers]

Re: Your post 21 this thread...

Copycat! :-)

See my post from 3 days ago...

Cheers!