Posted on 04/10/2007 3:17:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
There can be a connection between eugenics and evolution.
When scientists study the record of life on the planet, life clearly was here first as very simple lifeforms and developed over a long time to more complex forms - better adapted species survived - individuals who survived and mated had a chance to pass their genes along.
Now its not hard to see how that scientific evidence could be misused. That doesn’t make the science bad - it makes the misuse of the science bad.
Even the Bible can be distorted. Certainly it the bible has been used as an excuse for racism and slavery. That doesn’t make the Bible bad either - it shows good things can be misused.
For example, say a person were to ignore all the rational responses to this question and keep posting misleading allegations on Freep. That would be a similar misuse of something good.
Did the cat walk across your keyboard or something?
Care to try again?
Eugenics goes back to the Bible
Numbers chapter 5
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead:
3 Both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell.
4 And the children of Israel did so, and put them out without the camp: as the LORD spake unto Moses, so did the children of Israel.
Eugenics is an outgrowth of a deliberate misinterpretation of evolution. Smart evolution realizes that it’s a natural process and if human beings are to evolve to a higher form it’s going to happen on its. By attempting to steer that normal process eugenics interferes with it, and could outright prevent it, there’s a built in false assumption that these people can figure out which humans are “better” and steer evolution in that direction. The problem is they don’t really know what’s better, there are too many factors in natural selection for any group of people to really be able to figure out who the good breeding stock is now.
The reality is there’s always some crowd on the planet who use some part of their culture to boost their own ego and maltreat others. Some people abused to idea of Protestant Predestination saying that people whose lives sucked were supposed to have sucky lives so they shouldn’t be helped. Even now many people abuse the Hindu caste system in the same way. It doesn’t mean that of the culture is bad, it just means there’s somebody out there that can screw up anything.
You left out the part where Owen, the backslider, accepted geology and physics. Not all minions of Satan serve Darwin. There's Lyell, Einstein, Dirac, Bell and the rest of the creatures of darkness.
You must've missed something in my post at #40..
Are you a primate?.. If so its understandable (poor reading abilites) ;)
Like punctuation?
Historically it's the other way 'round. Eugenics has been practiced for thousands of years. The oldest surviving essay recommending human eugenics was written by Plato, but we know that animal breeding goes back many more thousands of years.
Darwin's theory was inspired in part by his discussions with animal breeders.
There really hasn't been a time in recorded history when the upper crust of society didn't openly practice eugenics, arranging the best possible marriages for their children. India regulated its eugenics ideology through the caste system.
Well that's one way to look at it, hosepipe! Another way is to say they are simply becoming fully what they were intended to be, so there's no transition from one creature to another, just the perfection of a specifically human nature. After all, God created human nature with the potentiality for this.
As you can see, I do tend to take the view that the human nature that God made is something fairly fixed and constant over time. That nature has both immanent (in time) and transcendent (timeless) extensions, which is imaged in the fact that we are comprised of body and spirit -- your donkey and rider metaphor. The born-again transfiguration is a movement from immanence to transcendence, not a movement of a "lower" species to a "higher" species. Or at least, that's how I view the problem, FWIW.
Maybe..
Could be... or born again is a metaphor about something indescribable.. If so we are talking about the same thing.. A transfiguration.. or even re-figuration.. or re-modeling..
I am glad you are a Bible student as am I, however the Numbers passage you quote enumerates one of God's rules for maintaining health within the Israelite camp. Being "put out of the camp" did not include killing or sterilizing these unfortunate people. In fact, there were rules for purification to enable these people readmittance.
"Historically it's the other way 'round. Eugenics has been practiced for thousands of years. The oldest surviving essay recommending human eugenics was written by Plato, but we know that animal breeding goes back many more thousands of years. |
It's about time someone mentioned this.
This ongoing attempt to falsify evolution through appeal to consequences is really getting tiresome. Bad logic is nothing more than bad logic.
Does Martin Luther's viscious antisemitism count?
It's well documented too that Darwin himself was also a serious racist.
Where is that documented? I find it surprising, given that he was an early proponent of the abolition of slavery.
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