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
And to your post at 415: “Amen!”
I think you're a little confused as to what a metaphor and allegory are. I don't deny that such a story has meaning to us, but there is nothing in the text that indicates such an occurrence did not indeed actually happen. In fact, that's exactly how I interpret it....as a real occurrence. In that case, it is not metaphorical or allegorical.
I would, but the creationists here keep providing new evidence!
A widely held and practiced trait of Islam.. usually by their OWN FAMILYS..
Sometimes Before they are ostracized sometimes After..
Well, obviously that is the case here hosepipe. I'm not sure there is anything we can do about it though....
What I see of the bibles message(s) NOW is quite different than what I saw when I was first "born again".. My vision GREW.. Hey, it could happen.. NO, it DOES happen..
Again, I'm not sure what to say to this. Obviously, people's opinions do change on any number of things, including the Bible.
The bottom line is, I think it's silly for a serious reader of the Bible to conclude that Adam was metaphorical.
You're free to believe what you want though...
Can America survive another Democratic government?
What if I see some things spoken of in the bible deeper than you do?.. or even not deeper but differently than you..
Well, obviously that is the case here hosepipe. I'm not sure there is anything we can do about it though....
What I see of the bibles message(s) NOW is quite different than what I saw when I was first "born again".. My vision GREW.. Hey, it could happen.. NO, it DOES happen..
Again, I'm not sure what to say to this. Obviously, people's opinions do change on any number of things, including the Bible.
The bottom line is, I think it's silly for a serious reader of the Bible to conclude that Adam was metaphorical.
You're free to believe what you want though...
The drunkard does not do the designing, and you continue to assume that evolutionary change has to produce results specified in advance.
Evolution does account for common descent. Everyone having the capacity and training to understand molecular biology -- including evolution critics like Behe and Yockey -- knows there is no rational reason to doubt common descent.
If you wish to argue that variation and selection are insufficient to account for common descent, then you are under some obligation to describe a mechanism that prevents varieties from diverging indefinitely from their original type.
Evolution does not predict that the algorithm would produce the same results on a second run, so evolution is not obligated to explain the exact list of things currently alive. All that evolution seeks to describe is the process by which a branching tree forms.
How about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil..
Was that an actual tree or a metaphor?.. or the Tree of Life?.. or the Snake(Satan).. or God walking in the cool of paradise chatting with Adam?.. Where does the metaphor end and reality begin?..
Why would God include/allow Satan in Paradise as a spoiler to innocence?..
Upon hearing "its raining cats and dogs" do you run to the window to see pets falling?..
There is much much more information in Genesis ch. 1-3 as a metaphor than the literal words(gross language) contain.. Adam and Eve are just as real as a group metaphor symbolically as they would be if NOT a metaphor.... TO US...
Could be the Adam and Eve metaphor is a bootstrap to a much larger story Not Told..
i.e. what happened with the fall of the angels precipitating the need for humans..
But they do have to apply to our method of inquiry, else, all is chaos....
For instance, by your exclusive rule of logic God must either be One or three, yet I am convinced He is both One God and three members ('persons'), in Trinity.
No...according to my principle such a thing would either have to be metaphorical or literal, and as such, we seem to be in agreement on this one....
I should have explained that I see it as metaphorical in this sense, that one does not have to be named "Lazarus," nor need one be sitting at someone's steps begging scraps with the dogs, covered with open sores, in order to find favor with God and reach Abraham's bosom (Heaven), and that one need not be rich, and one may not have a beggar at one's door that one ignores in order for one to end up in hades. In that sense, the parable teaches all of us, applies via the 'metaphors' mentioned above to all our lives. The story applies to all times, all places, and all persons by extension, and, IMO, the extension is seeing the specifics as metaphorical. Sorry I didn't state that clearly earlier. Thanks for the reply.
Oxymoron, or sophistry?
neither.. Not all christians are christians either..
As one guy said; You can put puppies in a muffin tin in a oven, but that don't make them muffins..
Puppies aren’t muffins, so muslims aren’t muslims and christians aren’t christians. Got it.
You can't get the government to obey the Constitution because its members regard themselves as our rulers, not our agents. Which tells me they do not understand the Constitution; or if they do, they have willfully chosen to ignore it. And evidently they think they can get away with this, because the people themselves are ignorant of the founding principles of the Constitution. Meanwhile, we have all been thoroughly "socialized" by progressive doctrines which are totally antithetical to the thought of the Framers, and their original intention for our Constitutional Democratic Republic, wherein the people themselves are sovereign, having no "ruler" on earth, but only God Himself.
I know you will disagree with me. I can't help it -- I just see matters differently than you do. When I read Story, I am not satisfied with merely scanning the text, but in looking for the deeper meanings. Story was writing at a time when the national psyche was still pretty much informed by the Framers' understandings. Indeed, as late as 1957 (or was it 1959?), the words "Under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegience, as a reminder to us of who we are and where we as a nation came from.... Too little, too late; for America has been under seige of Left progressive ideologies (all of which are perfectly conformable with evolutionary humanism and "natural selection") since the early Twentieth Century.
I'll tell you this, based on what I've seen: I do not expect America can or will survive "evolutionary humanism." I'm just waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop....
The only way to get our country back is to once again recognize that we are a nation "under God." Remember the hierarchy I spoke of earlier?
God
Man
State
That's the model the Framers envisioned -- not in a sectarian way, but as the general ethical and philosophical idea of our founding. Here's the hierarchy we've got today:
Tyrant [the "ruling class" together with their ideological supporters]
State [the overweening, inefficient, unaccountable federal bureaucracy]
Man [subject of the rulers; and as taxpayer, the source of all funding for the concerted political power grab that strips us of our dignity and our liberties]
The ideology of our government is largely "progressive," liberal, and Left. You can tell, because the government has become a champion of group politics; the individual grows less and less significant as time goes on.... And his right to be "left alone" by the government has been virtually extinguished.
It's a pretty grim picture. The only way I can imagine America could ever be restored to her roots would be as the result of an absolutely devastating national emergency that paralyzes the government and the economy. Assuming we could survive that, perhaps we'd rediscover the virtues of individual initiative, self-reliance, honesty, hard work, accountability, etc., and be able to start all over again....
Short of that, soon America will resemble the failed states of Europe -- or worse, the failed states of the Middle East.
And all because we have forgotten our Founders and their beliefs, which are the spirit of the federal Constitution they framed: a novus ordo seclorum -- a new order for the ages.
My two cents, FWIW. Thanks for writing, tpaine!
Thank you, .30carbine! I meant to ping you to #456, which continues the discussion with tpaine.
Very good. I noticed that when you remove God from the hierarchy, something else floats to the top.
Who says any of these things are metaphorical to begin with. Your assumption precludes a literal interpretation that is not borne out by the text, or further references to it.
Why would God include/allow Satan in Paradise as a spoiler to innocence?..
I don't know.
Upon hearing "its raining cats and dogs" do you run to the window to see pets falling?..
Now you're being silly
There is much much more information in Genesis ch. 1-3 as a metaphor than the literal words(gross language) contain..
You're comparing apples and oranges here. Genesis, chapters two and three, center around Adam and Eve, therefore it deals with the human condition which can lend itself to allegorical arguments, since moral truths are the nature of such things. I don't agree with these arguments, but at least you have the framework in which to make the arguments.
Genesis, chapter one, does not in any way deal with the human condition, therefore, if it is allegorical, it must relate to a scientific truth, or a truth about the dynamics of nature and matter. Of these arguments, I have found none that have merit when taken in context with the whole of the text. That's just my opinion, and I've spoken on these particular arguments before. Sadly, most people don't even bother to engage me further, and simply ignore my argument.
Adam and Eve are just as real as a group metaphor symbolically as they would be if NOT a metaphor.... TO US...
All you're saying here is that it doesn't matter if Adam and Eve were real or not. I happen to disagree. Everything in the Bible, not the least of which is Christs redemption, follows from this one central event. If you consider that event to be fictitious....then what's the point really.
Look, I've said it before and I'll say it again. You either believe that the Bible is the word of God, or you don't. It's that simple.
This argument that God would create us as incapable of understanding his word is nonsense. How hard would it be for God to have conveyed the idea of great lengths of time, or that all creatures are related to each other. In fact, such a story probably would have made much more sense to the people of the time than some invisible being poofing everything into existence for no apparent reason.
Could be the Adam and Eve metaphor is a bootstrap to a much larger story Not Told.. i.e. what happened with the fall of the angels precipitating the need for humans..
Well, surely God has hidden some things from us, as Christ testifies, but they are not for the benefit of those that would call themselves wise....rather, it is to their detriment.
Again though, such an interpretation doesn't preclude a moral lesson.
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