Posted on 06/20/2007 5:24:39 AM PDT by spirited irish
In addition to original Darwinism, today there are two other versions of evolutionary theory: punctuated equilibrium and neo-Darwinism, a revamped version of the original Darwinism. No matter the variant though, evolution serves as the creation myth for the theological and philosophical worldview of Evolutionary Humanism (Naturalism).
“Evolution is a religion,” declared evolutionary Humanist Michael Ruse. “This was true of evolution in the beginning and it is true still today…One of the most popular books of the era was ‘Religion Without Revelation,’ by Julian Huxley, grandson of Thomas Huxley…As always evolution was doing everything expected of religion and more.” (National Post, Canadian Edition, 5/13/2000)
“Humanism is a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view.” (Humanist Manifestos I & II, 1980, Introduction, Paul Kurtz)
The primary denominations of Evolutionary Humanism are Cultural Marxism/Communism, Secular Humanism, Postmodernism, and Spiritual Communism. The offshoots of these are among others, New Age/green environmentalism/Gaia, socialism, progressivism, liberalism, multiculturalism, and atheism. Individually and collectively, these are modernized versions of pre-Biblical naturalism (paganism).
All worldviews begin with a religious declaration. The Biblical worldview begins with, “In the beginning God…” Cosmic Humanism begins, “In the beginning Divine Matter.” Communism, Postmodernism, and Secular Humanism begin with, “In the beginning Matter.” Matter is all there is, and it not only thinks, but is Divine:
“…matter itself continually attains to higher perfection under its own power, thanks to indwelling dialectic…the dialectical materialists attribution of ‘dialectic’ to matter confers on it, not mental attributes only, but even divine ones.” (Dialectical Materialism, Gustav A. Wetter, 1977, p. 58)
In explicitly religious language, the following religionists offer all praise, honor, and glory to their Creator:
“We may regard the material and cosmic world as the supreme being, as the cause of all causes, as the creator of heaven and earth.” (Vladimir Lenin quoted in Communism versus Creation, Francis Nigel Lee, 1969, p. 28)
“The Cosmos is all that is or ever will be.” (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980, p. 4)
Evolutionary Humanism has demonstrated itself to be an extremely dangerous worldview. In just the first eighty-seven years of the twentieth century, the evolutionist project of radically transforming the world and mankind through the power of evolutionism has led to the extermination of between 100-170 million ‘subhuman’ men, women, and children.
Deadly Problems
First, in order that materialist ethics be consistent with the idea that life evolved by chance and continues to evolve over time, ethics must be built on human social instincts that are in a continuous process of change over evolutionary time. This view demolishes both moral ethics and social taboos, thereby liberating man to do as he pleases. Over time this results in a lawless climate haunted by bullies, predators, despots, psychopaths, and other unsavory elements.
Perhaps Darwin could not envision the evil unleashed by his ideas. Nonetheless, he did have some inkling, for he wrote in his “Autobiography” that one who rejects God,
“…can have for his rule of life…those impulses and instincts which are strongest or…seem to him the best ones.” (Fatal Fruit, Tom DeRosa, p.7)
Humanist Max Hocutt realizes that materialist ethics are hugely problematical, but offers no solution. An absolute moral code cannot exist without God, however God does not exist, says Hocutt. Therefore,
“…if there were a morality written up in the sky somewhere but no God to enforce it, I see no reason why we should obey it. Human beings may, and do, make up their own rules.” (Understanding the Times, David Noebel, p. 138-139)
Jeffrey Dahmer, a psychopath who cannibalized his victims, acted on Darwin’s advice. In an interview he said,
“If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then…what is the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought…I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime.” (Dahmer in an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, 11/29/1994)
With clearly religious overtones, atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell summarizes the amoral materialist ethic:
“Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way.” (Russell, “Why I am not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects,” 1957, p. 115)
Next, materialist epistemology and metaphysics dispossesses man of soul, free will, conscience, mind, and reason, thereby dehumanizing (animalizing) man and totally destroying not only the worth, dignity, and meaning of human life, but the possibility of freedom. The essence of this annihilation is captured in the following quotes:
Man is “but fish made over…” declared biologist William Etkin (Pushing the Antithesis, Greg L. Bahnsen, p. 224). And his life is but a “partial, continuous, progressive, multiform and continually interactive, self-realization of the potentialities of atomic electron states,” explained J.D. Bernal (1901-1971), past Professor of Physics at the University of London (The Origin of Life, Bernal, 1967, xv). Furthermore, “The universe cares nothing for us,” trumpets William Provine, Cornell University Professor of Biology, “and we have no ultimate meaning in life.” (Scientists, Face It! Science and Religion are Incompatible,” The Scientist, Sept. 1988)
Man... “must be degraded from a spiritual being to an animalistic pattern. He must think of himself as an animal, capable of only animalistic reactions. He must no longer think of himself…as capable of ‘spiritual endurance,’ or nobility.” By animalizing man his “state of mind…can be ordered and enslaved.” (Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics, “Degradation and Shock,” Chapter viii)
Finally, Evolutionary Humanism posits the notion that despite the fact that man is “but fish made over…” there are in fact, some exceptions to this rule. For it happens---by chance of course---that some lucky ‘species’ and ‘races’ of the human animal are more highly evolved (superior) and therefore enlightened than the others, who are---unluckily for them---less evolved and as a consequence, subhuman. Paired to this view is the idea that if a species or race does not continue to evolve (progress up the evolutionary ladder), it will become extinct. Together, these ideas lead logically to the deadly conclusion that in order to preserve the fittest of the species---or the spiritually evolved, as is the case with Spiritual Communism--- it is morally incumbent upon the superior to replace (via the science of eugenics and population control) and/or liquidate the subhumans. In his book, “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,” (1871) Charles Darwin foresaw this eventuality:
“At some future period…the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world…the anthropomorphous apes…will no doubt be exterminated.” (Descent, 2nd ed., p. 183)
In practice, the materialist worldview is a hellish recipe for catastrophe, as was amply demonstrated by the 20th century’s two most blood-soaked political movements--- pagan Nazism and atheist Communism. Both rejected God, and both were animated by Darwinism
Nazi Germany
Hitler’s murderous philosophy was built on Darwinian evolution and preservation of favored species. In his book, “Evolution and Ethics, British evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith notes,
“The leader of Germany is an evolutionist not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice.” (1947, p.230)
It was Darwinism that inspired Hitler to try to create---by way of eugenics--- a superior race, the Aryan Man. In pursuit of his ambition, Hitler eliminated what he considered were inferior human animals, among which were for example, Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and Christians.
Evolutionism in Nazi Germany resulted in gas chambers, ovens, and the liquidation of eleven million “useless eaters” and other undesirables. Evolutionist Niles Eldridge, author of “Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life,” reluctantly concurs. Darwin’s theory, he acknowledges,
“has given us the eugenics movement and some of its darker outgrowths, such as the genocidal practices of the Nazis.” (2005, p. 13)
The Soviet Union
Even though Karl Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto before Darwin published his “On the Species,” the roots of Communism are nonetheless found in Darwinism. Karl Marx wrote Fredrich Engels that Darwin’s ‘Origin’,
“is the book which contains the basis in natural science for our view.” (Marxian Biology and the Social Scene, Conway Zirkle, 1959)
Stephane Courtois, one of the authors of The Black Book of Communism, relates that,
“In Communism there exists a sociopolitical eugenics, a form of Social Darwinism.” (p. 752)
Vladimir Lenin exulted that,
“Darwin put an end to the belief that the animal and vegetable species bear no relation to one another (and) that they were created by God, and hence immutable.” (Fatal Fruit, Tom DeRosa, p. 9)
Lenin exercised godlike power over life and death. He saw himself as, “the master of the knowledge of the evolution of social species.” It was Lenin who “decided who should disappear by virtue of having been condemned to the dustbin of history.” From the moment Lenin made the “scientific” decision that the bourgeoisie represented a stage of humanity that evolution had surpassed, “its liquidation as a class and the liquidation of the individuals who actually or supposedly belonged to it could be justified.” (The Black Book of Communism, p. 752)
Alain Brossat draws the following conclusions about the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and the ties that bind them:
“The ‘liquidation’ of the Muscovite executioners, a close relative of the ‘treatment’ carried out by Nazi assassins, is a linguistic microcosm of an irreparable mental and cultural catastrophe that was in full view on the Soviet Stage. The value of human life collapsed, and thinking in categories replaced ethical thought…In the discourse and practice of the Nazi exterminators, the animalization of Other…was closely linked to the ideology of race. It was conceived in the implacably hierarchical racial terms of “subhumans” and “supermen”…but in Moscow in 1937, what mattered…was the total animalization of the Other, so that a policy under which absolutely anything was possible could come into practice.” (ibid, p. 751)
21st Century America
Ronald Reagan loved God and America. America he said is, “the moral force that defeated communism and all those who would put the human soul into bondage.” (Republican National Convention, Houston TX, 8/17/1992)
Even though he was optimistic about America’s future he nevertheless cautioned that America must maintain her reliance on God and her commitment to righteousness and morality. He liked quoting Alexis de Tocqueville’s insightful analysis of the source of America’s greatness:
“Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret and genius of her power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” (In the Words of Ronald Reagan, by Michael Reagan)
As America moves into the 21st century, we have yet to admit a shameful, dark secret. Evolutionism…the creation myth, that empowered Nazism and Communism, is being taught to America’s youth in our government-controlled schools. The animalization of Americans is well advanced and coupled to a corresponding slow collapse of human worth. Already we hear of human life spoken of in dehumanizing categories such as ‘vegetable,’ “non-persons,” and ‘uterine content.’
Ominously, Evolutionary Humanism has also outstripped Judeo-Christian precepts in our universities, judiciary, federal bureaucracy, corporations, medicine, law, psychology, sociology, entertainment, news media and halls of Congress. As Biocentrism it fuels the nonhuman animal rights project, the gay rights movement, radical feminism, and the increasingly powerful and influential green environmentalist program, which demands that America submit to the draconian mandates of the Kyoto Treaty.
America, the “moral force that defeated communism” is on the verge of completely rejecting God, the natural order, and moral absolutes and instead, embracing the godless religion of evolution, amorality, and the unnatural.
Evolutionary Humanism is the most dangerous delusion thus far in history. It begins with the ‘animalization of Other,’ in tandem with the elevation of the ‘superior,’ for whom this serves as a license to make up their own rules, abuse power, and force their will onto the citizens. This is accompanied by a downward spiraling process that pathologizes the natural order, moral ethics, virtue, and social taboos while simultaneously elevating narcissism, tyranny, cruelty, nihilism, confusion, perversion, sadism, theft, and lying to positions of politically correct “new morality,” which is then enforced through sensitivity training, speech codes, hate crime laws, and other intimidation tactics. If not stopped, as history warns us, this rapidly escalating downward process leads inevitably to totalitarianism, enslavement, and eventually mass murder.
In a portent of things to come, evolutionist B.F. Skinner said:
“A scientific analysis of behavior dispossesses autonomous man and turns the control he has been said to exert over to the environment. The individual…is henceforth to be controlled…in large part by other men.” (Understanding the Times, David Noebel, p. 232)
Copyright Linda Kimball 2007 www.patriotsandliberty.com/
Linda is the author of many published essays on culture, worldview, and politics. Her essays are published both nationally and internationally. She is a member of MoveOff.org
That is where the idea goes wrong, for both Es and Cs. It is not more or less accidental. We won't get far talking about 'material' until we begin to talk about 'material' per se.
Nothing of the sort. I never suggested anything of the sort. I've just been expressing my view that it's exceedingly strange to insist that Islamists aren't creationists, when obviously they overwhelmingly are. I've no idea how you translated this so.
Yikes, do you really want to get started on what evils Christianity has been a philosophical enabler for?
It seems the idea that there can be a "normal meaning" of words - ie a commonly understood and accepted meaning that everyone agrees on - has been rejected as being unreasonable.
In the first place, there is absolutely no way a human being can ever be "perfectly objective." Objective about what? "Personal bias" necessarily creeps in, because there is no other way for human beings to acquire knowledge -- via sense perception or any other source. The human mind is individuated -- discrete, not a mere flotsom or jetsom of a communal mind, let alone an epiphenomenon of the physical brain.
Each of us has a particular worldview or cosmology. Both of us are equally "observers"; meaning each of us stands on our own turf, in our own spatiotemporal coordinates: We see what we can see from where we stand; we have particular life experiences, and education and so forth. We probably see many different things, from our own unique perspectives. What I don't understand is the reasoning behind the supposition that, because I don't see what you see, my own view is somehow illegitimate, false.
Einstein's Special Relativity comes to mind here. This was the 1905 paper that made E = mc2 famous. But there's much more of interest.
Einstein speaks of different observers as occupying just so many different inertial frames. Inertial frames are such as can be defined and located spatiotemporally in terms of mathematical coordinates. The upshot is that spatially-separated observers who are nonetheless "relative to" or associated with each other, would experience and record different "rates" for their space and time experiences, were they to get together and compare notes. Measurements taken by both their "clocks" and their "rods" would not exactly dovetail. Thus relativity would seem to imply uncertainty, rather than Newtonian precision.
The one thing that Einstein seemed absolutely to hold sacrosanct -- in Special Relativity and beyond -- is that the physical laws of nature -- i.e., Newtonian mechanics -- are (axiomatically) the same for all observers in all inertial frames. Einstein figured (I gather) that the Old One (as he called Him) made a pretty decent piece of work when He made the universe....
Many people think that the "observer problem" -- not to mention the problem of so-called "quantum" uncertainty (aren't Einstein's inertial frames already a sort of quantization of space and time relative to observers?) -- didn't become evident before Bohr and Heisenberg. It seems to me Einstein anticipated them by some two decades.
So where am I going with this, tacticalogic? Something you said set me off on this tangent....
Thanks for letting me rant; and thank you so much for writing!
Blah, blah, blah. Yada, yada, yada.
None of which changes the fact that a person who holds a substantive theological doctrine of creation is meaningfully called a "creationist". And a creationist who substantively rejects evolution is an antievolutionary creationist.
Virtually all Muslims (like virtually all serious monotheists) are creationists, and the vast majority of Islamists (conservative, "fundamentalist" Muslims) are antievolutionary creationists.
Why you would belabor this is astounding.
Again, from your post at 137, early on in this exchange:
Creation is a loving act. Beheading people is not. You cannot hide behind an argument of "moral equivalency," or of groundless personal bias here; i.e., my supposed lack of "objectivity." The distinctions I draw are perfectly "objective." Just open your eyes and look at what's going on. Then if you report back and say there's no difference among religious believers, I'd have to conclude that you are the one who is biased, who lacks objectivity.
The view from my "unique perspective" is that I see you claiming that you can't understand a supposition that you've already made.
Metaphysics Nazi: “No ‘unique perspective’ for you!”
Actually, many of those you label as Islamofascists—perhaps a majority—are in fact secular Communists and Socialists masquerading (and/or treated by the press) as Muslim fundamentalists.
GunRunner-—Yikes, do you really want to get started on what evils Christianity has been a philosophical enabler for?
Irish—Underlying your argument is the second of the two core presuppositions on which every worldview (civilizatiuon) has been founded since the dawn of time.
The first deals with the origins of life and the universe. The second asks: What is the source of suffering (evil)?
Since the dawn of time, naturalism (modern evolutionary humanism) responds to this question by asserting that evil exists external to man. That in fact, the matter deities such as Saturn, Mars, etc. ‘caused’ man to commit evil.
This assumption implies the lack of free will and morally informed conscience in man. Man therefore bears no personal accountability.
The Biblical worldview is completely antithetical to all of this. It tells us that man is created with free will and morally informed conscience. That it is man who freely chooses to either act upon dark impulses or not to.
With regards to your question, yes, men have committed evils in the name of Christianity. But not because the Bible (God) ‘caused’ them to do it as though they lack both free will and morally informed conscience. That is the view of naturalism.
You ought to be asking why the most horrendous evils (human sacrifice, cannibalism, eugenics, infanticide, abortion, slavery, mass exterminations, liquidation of between 100-170,000,000 in 1st 87 yrs of 20th century,etc) have been committed by man in the name of naturalism since the dawn of time.
Since the dawn of time, naturalism (modern evolutionary humanism) responds to this question by asserting that evil exists external to man. That in fact, the matter deities such as Saturn, Mars, etc. ‘caused’ man to commit evil. This assumption implies the lack of free will and morally informed conscience in man. Man therefore bears no personal accountability.
If that is the case, how could any civilization based on a "naturalist worldview" have any kind of system or concept of law, justice, crime, or punishment?
LoL...
My point is simply this: a person whose entire education consists of memorizing the Q'uran by rote has never had an opportunity to cultivate the mind or to engage in a life of reason. The dispute between creationists and evolutionists is premised on reason, on rationality. The vast majority of Muslims in this world -- i.e., those within the orbit of Arab Wahhabism -- are simply irrational. They cannot even get into the debate. You can call them creationists if you want to. I have no objection. Probably that term would mean very little to most of these people.
The exceptions would be such as the "Turk," whose book you cited, and the link to whose website I posted earlier. This is obviously a highly well-educated and cultured person. Which should come as no surprise: Turkey used to be a part of the Christian orbit; Constantinople (now Istanbul) was a highly cosmopolitan city with a rich tradition of scholarship and a culture mainly informed from Christian and Greco-Roman roots. That tradition still has legs in the modern world. Although the Wahhabist infection, a fairly recent phenomenon, appears to be metastasizing in modern Turkey. It now appears that very shortly "secular" Turkey will succumb to a theocracy premised on Sharia. That is the trend in Islam these days: to swallow up cultures premised on liberal traditions that respect education and the life of the mind, replacing them with modes of understanding and social organization that are "reactionary" and primitive.
And you want to argue about whether or not to label these people as creationists? Fine! I have no objection, other than to note that doing so seems pretty pointless to me. FWIW.
My friend, it is you who does not understand it. From what I wrote earlier, you should have noticed that I said that knowledge acquisition was always a perfectly subjective enterprise. "Objectivity" can only enter into the game at the level of the descriptions we make of subjective experiences. If the descriptions are borne out by "facts on the ground," then the objectivity of the statements is validated.
Niels Bohr, recognizing the inherent subjectivity of human experiences of the world, extending particularly to worldviews and undisclosed presuppositions, insisted that science should be epistemologically pure. In effect, this reduces to two points: (1) Don't make claims about things you haven't directly observed; and (2), make full and fair disclosure of all elements that entered into the experimental design in tests of hypotheses, including a complete account of the equiment used, and the basic assumptions that lay behind the experimental design. I gather Bohr figured this would be the best way to "translate" the inherently subjective into something as close to objectivity that one can get -- for the purpose of protecting the integrity of science.
It seems many scientists nowadays fail to take Bohr's advice. And thus we have so many examples of "philosophizing" being done under the color of science. Theories of a materialistic, accidental universe (such as Monod's claim, mentioned earlier) and the common ancestor are prime examples of this phenomenon.
FWIW.
Excellent point, spirited irish: "That is the view of naturalism". And yes indeed, it has a very long history. The modern variants have been particularly deadly.
Thank you so much for your excellent essay/post!
Without any agreement to the terms being used in that description, determining whether those "facts" are born out or not is an entirely subjective proposition.
Tactic..If that is the case, how could any civilization based on a “naturalist worldview” have any kind of system or concept of law, justice, crime, or punishment?
Irish...Yes indeed, there were some good concepts from pre-Biblical times. However, those concepts centered upon and therefore aided and abetted the ‘few’ and not the ‘many.” History of those times speaks of subhumans and of the massive system of slavery in which they lived and died. Gladiators were slaves who fought and died for the amusement of their ‘betters.’ Their lifeless bodies were then tossed into ‘fleshpots’ and cooked as food for the poorest of the poor ‘subhumans.’ Babies were routinely burned to death within the fiery stomach of Molech.
These horrors and much more were committed because the pagans believed that mankind was created by anthropomophized ‘matter’ deities who in turn had, ‘evolved’ out of an eternally existing ‘Original Substance.” In this view, man is an aggressive parasite despoiling his ‘creator.’ The atonement for the sin of living calls for human sacrifice, and various ‘scientific’ means of population control.
It’s man’s duty to ‘die.”
Modern evolutionism is simply pre-Biblical naturalism minus the anthropomorphized matter deities. And as usual, the modern version has been doing everything the pre-Biblical version did: weeding out and killing the aggressive parasites.
"Without any agreement," the human race is lost. For we no longer have any way of making ourselves intelligible to one another, if we begin by saying that there is no standard by which our statements can be judged, in principle.
Are you sure you want to go there? It seems you are advocating in favor of an infinite causal regression that leads to exactly nothing and nowhere.
As against that proposition, may I advance a notion of Eric Voegelin's, that the human psyche -- assuming it has not been tampered with -- has an innate, "indefeasible integrity" in its contacts with/descriptions of nature.
Meaning: We humans seemingly tend to get things right in our descriptions of the universe. Otherwise, the causes that led to our advanced societies would be utterly unintelligible.
Just ask yourself: Why is that???
Short answer: It couldn't (see below). Therefore, under the scenario of the "naturalist worldview," what we in the West call civilization would be impossible.
Yet we see that civilization does occur every now and then. Though it appears to be far more fragile than any of us would have imagined. Possibly this is because people still continue to try to found its ultimate universal principles in nature itself. Which is tantamount to saying that nature is at liberty to make up its own rules as it goes along. Which tells you exactly nothing about the constitution of nature other than that it is a chaos in random distribution, and thus fundamentally incapable of generating universal laws. Thus the statement that systems or concepts of law, justice, etc., can be premised on the assumptions of the "naturalist worldview" is based on a self-contradiction.
Plus the statement does not address Leibniz's two great questions: (1) Why is there something, instead of nothing at all?; and (2) Why are things the way they are, and not some other way?
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