No 
. no Columbine.
Posted on 08/28/2006 6:31:13 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
The Holocaust wasn't Hitler's fault. Darwin made him do it. Complicit as well are any who buy into the scientific theory that modern man evolved from lower animal forms.
That's the latest lunacy from one of our more fanatical right-wing American Christian television outfits, the Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Coral Ridge espouses that America is not a free-religion nation, but a Christian one. It argues there should be no separation of church and state.
Thus it's America's Taliban, America's Shiite theocracy.
It certainly has a propensity for explaining or excusing Hitler. A few years ago it brought in a conference speaker to argue that American abortion was a more horrible atrocity than the Holocaust.
One year it disinvited Cal Thomas as a conference speaker after Brother Cal got too liberal. You're thinking I must be kidding. But I kid you not. Brother Cal had displayed the utter audacity to co-author a book contending that American Christian conservatives ought to worry a little more about spreading the gospel from the bottom of the culture up rather than from the top of politics down.
Now this: Coral Ridge is airing a couple of cable installments of a "documentary," called "Darwin's Deadly Legacy," that seek to make a case that, without Darwin, there could have been no Hitler.
Authoritative sources for the program include no less than columnist Ann Coulter, noted scientist, who says she is outraged that she didn't get instructed in Darwin's effective creation of Hitler when she was in school. She says she has since come to understand that Hitler was merely a Darwinist trying, by extermination of a group of people he considered inferior because of their religion and heritage, to "hurry along" the natural survival of the Aryan fittest.
Also quoted is Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Project, who tells the Anti-Defamation League that his comments were used out of context and that he is "absolutely appalled" by the "utterly misguided and inflammatory" premise of Coral Ridge's report.
The documentary's theme is really quite simple: Darwin propounded the theory of evolution. Hitler came along and believed the theory. Hitler killed Jews. So, blame Darwin for the Holocaust. Blame, too, all others who agree with or advance Darwin's theory. Get back to God and Adam and Eve and all will be right again with the world.
"To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler," said Dr. D. James Kennedy, president of Coral Ridge Ministries. "The legacy of Charles Darwin is millions of deaths."
Obviously, the theme is breath-taking nonsense. You can't equate academic theory with murderous practice. You can't equate a thinker and a madman, or science and crime.
And you can't ever blame one man for another's actions. That once was a proud conservative precept. In a different context, you'll no doubt find Coral Ridge fervently preaching personal responsibility. Except, apparently, for Adolf Hitler, to whom these religious kooks issue a pass. Ol' Adolf, it seems, just fell in with a bad crowd.
By Coral Ridge's premise, Mohammed is to blame for Osama bin Laden. Actually, Coral Ridge might not argue with that. So how about this: The pope is to blame for the IRA. And Jesus is to blame for Mel Gibson, not to mention Coral Ridge Ministries.
[Omitted some author detail and contact info.]
WOW, what a nice and intelligent language coming from an University - PhD-er-???
What do think that the two Columbine School murderer's shooting actions were based on?
Have you read Hitler's "Mein Kampf"??
Hmmmmm???
Fish with transitional fin/legs: Tiktaalik.
"Ape-man," primitive hominid: Australopithecus.
Brought to you by Darwin Central, the Conspiracy that Cares(TM). Always glad to be of help.
Now that's a syllogism!
Thanks!
Thanks.
I never took such a class when I was a creationist and indeed haven't now either. But I never tried to blame Hitler on Darwin either. The only YEC Darwin myth I thought might be true was the yarn about him recanting on his deathbed, since I was fully in favor of everyone who disagreed with me recanting on their deathbeds for their own good!
Fair enough. And to address the issue there, it is true that science has been reluctant to address genetic differences among the varying peoples of the Earth, probably owing to politics, the shameful legacy of people in the past who used everything from religion to science to notions of "nation greatness" to advance their ideas of racial hatred and the fear of perpetuating that hatred.
There is some interesting data showing that various groups (not races, but groups smaller than "races") display differing abilities owing to their genetic makeup. (Compare, for example, the dominance of West Africans and East Africans in sprinting and distance running, respectively) But that doesn't make any group "more evolved" or "superior" than any other. It just means that their genetic makeup varies. Yet, even with that variety, there is more genetic variety within racial groups than between them.
Further, it is simply not true that "Changing the environment of one group should put them at the disadvantage when placed in a different environment." It can put them at a disadvantage, but it also can put them at an advantage, depending on the particular changes in the environment and the particular adaptations of the various groups.
Finally, a true thorn is a modified stem. Although I've never researched the evolution of the thorn, I would venture to guess that it would consist of a mutation which stunted the growth of some of a plant's stems. But the negatives associated with the loss of that stem's productivity was off set by the protection the stunted stem provided from predation. As the generations went along, those whose stunted stems were sharper and more ridged were disproportionately more successful in keeping browsers at bay, and therefore, reproduced at a higher rate. Eventually, you get thorns.
We can start out by noting that African countries tend to be uncivilized sh*tholes -- there is a rather clear distinction in the civilization levels of, say, the Congo as compared to the United States.
East Germany was an uncivilized shit hole compared to West Germany, and those populations were essentially genetically homogeneous. North Korea is an uncivilized shit hole compared to South Korea and those populations are essentially genetically homogeneous.
Point being, the fact that the Congo is a shit hole compared to the U.S. is a result of political decisions and the contingencies of history. Anyone who would look beyond that in an attempt to tie those outcomes to race has significant issues he needs to deal with. (Not that I'm saying you do, of course.)
Pah! I love the designated hitter. If the pitcher has to bat, I say make the second baseman pitch to him, to make it fair.
Plato wasn't talking about "animal husbandry."
I brought up "animal husbandry." What I was saying was that eugenics is applying the principles of animal husbandry (i.e., artificial selection) to humans. I was not talking about people like cattle. That's what eugenicists do.
No . no Columbine.
That's the test isn't it, soon those "Islamist" who also hate! and advocate overthrow of the american empire will be delt with harshly. Of course this will only happen when a nuke goes off down town NY, and the Islamic haters of america pass out there candy in the streets of american cities. Only then will we understand who we are dealing with.
But only in the sense of "better suited to the local environment." And since local environments change from place to place and time to time, there is no objective, absolute "better" in evolution.
Eugenicists, however, posit universal, absolute "betters": smarter, stronger, more independent, fiercer, more competitive, etc. However, each of these is only advantageous under certain conditions. Change the conditions sufficiently and those conditions become less advantageous. That is the difference.
It's also really not convincing to say that eugenics isn't "evolutionary" just because it claims to see an evolutionary trend and seeks to emphasize it.
But there is no "evolutionary trend" before the fact with natural selection. In other words, we can look back into the past and say that there was a trend in horses getting larger or people getting smarter (and usually that view of a trend is merely selective reading of the evidence, anyway). We can't say that any such trend will continue into the future, because evolution is always contingent on local conditions and local conditions always change.
[Conversely, there can be a trend with artificial selection. A breeder can select for bigger breasts in chickens, for example, and data would show a trend toward that end. Which, again, shows that eugenics is artificial selection and not natural selection.]
The eugenicist asserts that his (subjective) opinions as to what humans should be is the same as what will result naturally if nature is left alone. That is fallacious. First of all, since it is impossible to know what the future holds, that presumption is impossible. Secondly, and more importantly, nature does not share the eugenicist's prejudices and subjective opinions, so it is virtually guaranteed that the eugenicist will be wrong.
I understand the flight analogy you are making, but what you are missing is the fact that eugenics didn't arise from natural selection; they both arose from artificial selection. There is a "connection" to the extent that they both derive from the same source, but that connection simply does not mean that the falsity of eugenics reflects on natural selection, regardless of how much the Coral Ridge Ministries wants it to.
I believe that most Americans already know who we are dealing with, it's the P.C. politicians that either don't understand or would rather make political points than defend our country.
You guys are so funny. You believe evolution as a theory with so little facts it's nonexistent and yet you want us to give you a bucket of facts. If you put all the missing links together your evolution would be held in the palm of one hand.
You can keep saying that all you want, but it still won't be true.
The ToE has been tested and tested and tested for centuries. Every challenge has made it stronger, and every new thing we learn about our planet reinforces that strength. It's solid science, among the most solid we have. The only challenges to it are emotional and therefore weak. You don't want it to be true, but wanting doesn't make it so.
I find it sad that you would prefer to live in such ignorance, but if you insist on denying reality it is not to me to convince you otherwise. Maybe one day you'll actually read something on the subject - the actual facts are readily available.
"The ToE has been tested and tested and tested for centuries."
LOL. Now who thinks Darwin had a time machine?
Do you consider astronomy to be a valid science?
Roughly the same as the odds your legs will be just the right length so your feet just touch the ground when you walk.
;-)
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