Posted on 09/18/2007 10:23:38 AM PDT by spirited irish
The worldview of Evolutionary Humanism (or scientific naturalism) has two central components. The first is metaphysical; the second epistemological. Metaphysically, Evolutionary Humanism infers that the natural or material realm either self-created or has existed eternally. This doctrine is known as scientism. In addition, this worldview teaches us to believe that everything---including life and intelligence---came about through unseen (immaterial) processes of motion called evolution. Epistemologically, it demands that sensory knowledge (empiricism) be the only authoritative source of knowledge.
In the words of the Humanist Manifesto II: “Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis…science is the best method for determining this knowledge…” This principle is a universal limitation on knowledge requiring that knowledge be restricted to only that which can be empirically determined (sensed). In short, if it can’t be touched, seen under a microscope, measured, counted, weighed, or otherwise sensed, then it doesn’t exist, meaning that the immaterial or metaphysical realm does not exist.
This worldview’s two-part metaphysical creation story revolves around the atomic theory of matter and evolutionary theory. According to the former, all chemical change is the result of the rearrangement of unseen (immaterial) tiny parts---protons, neutrons, and electrons. By authority of the latter (evolutionary theory), we are expected to believe that random mutations or incremental changes (rearrangement of tiny unseen parts) over time are mostly responsible for causing macro-changes. In other words, this unseen process of change miraculously caused bacteria to change into fish which in turn changed into lizards which then changed into proto-apes which then changed into man. Through this same process, dinosaurs changed into hummingbirds, chickadees, flamingos, and such. Because all life forms emerged out of the same primordial bacterial stew, bacteria are the common ancestors of all life forms. By extension, all life forms share the same genetic material; therefore the idea of species distinctions is a fiction. This makes man a Heinz 57 mutt whose material brain possesses genetic material from bacteria, lizards, fish, and apes. In the words of John Darnton in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005:
“We are all of us, dogs and barnacles, pigeons and crabgrass…equally remarkable and equally dispensable.” (Quote from, “Human Beings Deserve the Right to Life Because They Are Human,” Wesley J. Smith, Life News, 8/27/07)
With profound faith in the humanist worldview, evolutionists and fellow travelers view themselves as thoroughly ‘modern’ ‘progressive’ and ‘intellectually enlightened.’ From their lofty perches they look down their noses in utter contempt and disdain upon the unwashed masses (defenders of God and America’s founding Judao-Christian worldview) for continuing to believe the unenlightened view that man is created in God’s image rather than accepting the ‘enlightened’ superstition that mans’ common ancestor is mindless bacteria. Believing they have arisen to spectacular intellectual heights, in reality the so-called ‘enlightened ones’ have fallen into the abyss of the most absurdly stupid and dangerously delusional belief system the world has yet witnessed. How can this be? Briefly, the entirety of their worldview (including its evolutionary creation story) is not itself scientifically testable. By failing to meet its own empirical requirements, it refutes itself. Yes, here we come to now understand why the emperor has no clothes.
This embarrassingly insurmountable intellectual problem occurs precisely because of humanism’s anti-God and metaphysical bias. Rejecting God and metaphysics is destructive of reason and science. In short, it’s not just anti-intellectual it’s also an insanity inducing deception.
Metaphysics
The word metaphysics is based on the compound of two Greek words meta (after, beyond) and physika (physics, nature). It literally means beyond the physical or knowledge that exists beyond the physical world of sensory perception. Metaphysics is the study of the ultimate nature of reality, that is to say, it encompasses both natural and supernatural realms in its investigation of the origin, structure, and nature of what is real.
Greg L. Bahnsen tells us that worldviews are networks of metaphysical presuppositions and principles “regarding reality (metaphysics), knowing (epistemology), and conduct (ethics) in terms of which every element of human experience is related and interpreted.”(Pushing the Antithesis, p. 280)
Presuppositions provide both foundation and framework for worldviews. Crucial to the process of reason, presuppositions provide starting points and standards of authority by which truth and error are evaluated, the real and unreal can be identified, and the possible and impossible are determined. For instance, “In the beginning, Nothing---then a spark--- then Matter…” (spontaneous generation or something from nothing) is the foundational metaphysical presupposition by which evolutionary humanists determined through a peculiar reasoning process that only the sensory realm exists.
Universals are truths of an immaterial or non-sensory nature and are crucial to the understanding, organizing, and interpreting of particular truths within the context of the material world. Universals are metaphysical constructs such as concepts (i.e., inalienable rights), standards, principles (i.e., our founding principles), moral values, laws, and categorical statements. The Laws of Logic, so vitally important to the practice of science, reason, and coherent communication, are universals.
Metaphysical presuppositions and universals can’t be seen under a microscope, held in the hand, measured, weighed, or otherwise detected by the five senses yet they do exist. They exist within the supernatural or immaterial realm and are absolutely essential to the process of reason and the practice of science.
Additionally, scientists constantly deal with the unseen or immaterial realm in the form of subatomic particles, gravity, numbers, natural laws, laws of thought, causation, and memory (vital to scientific experimentation).
The whole theory of evolution, which drives and authenticates modern materialist presuppositions and assumptions, is a non-sensory (metaphysical) theoretical projection back into time. Yet despite that no scientist was there to witness it nor has anyone ever observed the creation of other universes or witnessed one kind of life change into a different kind, the theory of evolution is nevertheless proclaimed by many to be an empirically determined fact.
In principle, evolutionary humanists cannot even count, weigh, or measure (all of which are essential to the practice of science) because these acts involve an immaterial concept of law (a universal). Additionally, the postulation of universal order, a view necessary to making counting, weighing, and measuring intelligible, contradicts the materialist (metaphysical) proposition that the universe is a random or chance material realm. Furthermore, counting, weighing, and measuring call for immaterial entities which are uniform, orderly, and predictable. This once again contradicts the materialist proposition of continuous and random change over time.
Within the anti-intellectual straitjacket of the sensory realm, reason and science are destroyed. Empirical learning, reason, and intellectual inquiry are impossible without metaphysical presuppositions, universals, and assumptions.
As it is, evolutionary humanists do in fact reason, theorize, propose, presuppose, assume, hypothesize, count, weigh, measure, and practice science. They simply cannot give a philosophically principled account of how they “know” to do these things. All of which highlights the glaring dialectical tensions (i.e., hypocrisy, revisionism, deceptions, self-delusions, outright lying, mysticism) which of necessity are endemic to the humanist worldview.
Yet despite its colossal intellectual and moral failings, Evolutionary Humanism is now the dominant worldview in our secularized schools, colleges, universities, and government at every level. Additionally, it has made inroads into Christian schools, seminaries, and churches.
Regarding education in America, its’ direction can be seen as a downward spiral from Jonathan Edwards (1750) and the Christian influence, down to Horace Mann (1842) and the Unitarian influence, and yet further down to John Dewey (1933) and the evolutionary humanist take-over of our education institutions.
In the words of Charles F. Potter, signatory of the first Humanist Manifesto, 1933,
“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?”
Today, our classrooms are but transmission belts for the weird moral fetishes of humanist indoctrination; a mind-befogging and immorality-inducing process that leads to the adoption of atheism, materialism, politically correct ‘new morality,’ inhumanity, evolutionism, Cultural Marxism, New World Orderism, multiculturalism, sexual egalitarianism (hedonism/androgyny), cruelty, and other destructive anti-traditional views. As a consequence, Americans (and Christians) are walking away from America’s founding worldview---as well as God and their inalienable rights---due to the teaching of Evolutionary Humanism. After being befuddled, filled with unreasoning hatred and paranoid fear of God, Christianity, Orthodox Judaism, and traditional-values America, Americans’ become their own worst enemies. For as they mindlessly destroy traditional-values America in pursuit of universal peace, tolerance, diversity, and inclusion, they are unknowingly setting the stage for their own eventual enslavement and perhaps even death, as Evolutionary Humanism has a proven track-record of mass murder (genocide).
A brief comparison of our founding worldview versus Evolutionary Humanism’s three major permutations---Secular Humanism, Leninism-Marxism, and Post Modernism, will show us why this is occurring.
America’s Founding Judao-Christian Worldview 1. Theology: biblical theism 2. Philosophy: God/supernaturalism/metaphysics 3. Ethics: moral absolutes/Ten Commandments/sanctity of life 4. Biology: Creation 5. Psychology: mind/body dualism 6. Sociology: traditional family, church, state 7. Law: Divine/Natural Law 8. Politics: inalienable rights, individual freedom, justice, order 9. Economics: stewardship of property (private property), free markets
Secular Humanism, Marxism-Leninism, Post Modernism 1. Theology: atheism, atheism, atheism 2. Philosophy: naturalism, dialectical materialism, anti-realism 3. Ethics: moral relativism, proletariat morality, moral and cultural relativism 4. Biology: neo-Darwinism, punctuated evolution, punctuated evolution 5. Psychology: monism (self-actualization), monism (behaviorism), monism (socially constructed selves) 6. Sociology: alternative lifestyles and State control of children, classless society and State control of children, sexual egalitarianism and State control of children 7. Law: positive law, proletariat law, critical legal studies 8. Politics: secular world government, communist world government, secular world government 9. Economics: state control of resources, scientific socialism, state control of resources
As can be seen by this brief comparison, Evolutionary Humanism is not just the antithesis of our founding worldview it is completely destructive of it as well.
Observes William F. Buckley on the disintegration of traditional-values America,
“The most influential educators of our time---John Dewey, William Kilpatrick, George Counts, Harold Rugg, and the lot---are out to build a New Social Order. There is not enough room…for…religion (Christianity). It clearly won’t do…to foster within some schools a respect for an absolute, intractable God, a divine intelligence who is utterly unconcerned with other people’s versions of truth…It won’t do to tolerate a competitor for the allegiance of man. The State prefers a secure monopoly for itself…Religion (Christianity), then, must go…The fight is being won. Academic freedom is entrenched. Religion (Christianity) is outlawed in public schools. The New Social Order is larruping along.” (“Let Us Talk of Many Things,” p. 9-10)
Copyright Linda Kimball 2007 PatriotsandLiberty http://patriotsandliberty.com/
Linda is the author of numerous published articles and essays on culture, politics, and worldview. Her writings are published both nationally and internationally. Linda is a member of MoveOff.net/
Sources: Pushing the Antithesis, Greg L. Bahnsen Understanding the Times, David Noebel What is Scientific Naturalism? J.P. Moreland
Related Articles Can America Survive Evolutionary Humanism? Cultural Marxism
The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism
And if it is wrong, it is wrong in a neutral direction. It is not pejorative.
Personally, I feel that the theory of evolution is incomplete because it fails to address the ethical dilemmas of insider trading, not to mention its appalling failure to specify the proper ignition timing in Chevy short block engines.
My problem is with its appropriation by people who seek to use it to justify sociocultural transformation. I strongly doubt that Darwin had any interest in doing that.
Wait a minute. You've said that the theory of evolution is incomplete because "the theory does not reach to man himself in his radical differentiation from the rest of nature: It has no theory of man."
So on the one hand, you decry its misappropriation "by people who seek to use it to justify sociocultural transformation," and on the other hand you "denigrate" it because it fails to address "sociocultural transformation." After all, to what end other than "sociocultural transformation" would your thoroughly mushy addition of a "theory of man" be put?
If you "strongly doubt that Darwin had any interest in doing that," why on earth do you insist that Darwin "should have done that?"
When a respected biologist like Richard Dawkins claims that Darwin's theory has enabled him to become "an intellectually fulfilled atheist," and uses it as a club to attack the traditions, symbols, and institutions of Western culture -- and above all to claim that people who believe in God are morons -- I am not amused.
Setting aside my view that you are grossly misrepresenting Dawkins, you are ironically engaging in precisely the misbehavior you attribute to him. If your beef is with the views of a few vocal scientists, then argue with them, and stop using their individual views "as a club to attack" the whole of evolutionary biology.
Regarding Eiseley's article, you say -- "Eiseley does not have to cite Marx chapter and verse for me to see how Marx's ideas correspond in so may ways with the "pop" version of evolution theory that is so evident today.
Eiseley's article doesn't address Marx at all -- for the obvious reason that his article has nothing whatsoever to do with either Marx or communism. I get the feeling you don't even make a rudimentary attempt to understand the content of the stuff you quote mine. You just lift out nifty sounding words and sentiments, regardless of whether they support any point you are making, and use them like stuffing to plump up your posts.
In his article, Eiseley does a fairly nice job of setting out in broad strokes the conflict between the nurturing and communal instincts of mankind on the one hand, and mankind's prodigious drive for scientific and technological achievement on the other. While the focus of his article is on the scientific and technological achievements of western culture, he nevertheless views the conflict as a universal condition, unrelated to national boundaries:
I hesitated again before those forgotten engines of the past, for it seemed to me that there was lacking here some clue, some vital essence of the creature man, and that I was looking upon stone and polished sword and catapult from some place just a little remote and distorted. "This is the history of man," the caption ran through my head, and at that moment, finally, I knew I was looking at the past through the eyes of a modern twentieth-century American, or for that matter, a Russian. There was no basic difference.
As I said before, how you read into this article a commentary "on the 'problematic' affinity of Marxian and Darwinian thought" is perfectly mysterious. Are you suggesting that the scientific and technological achievements of western culture are an evil result of a nefarious communist plot? Or are you suggesting that scientific and technological achievements arise only as a consequence of a Marxist ideology, and but for Marxism, westerners would be living an idyllic life of pastoral simplicity? I don't get the connection between your premise and the article, and I don't really think you do either.
If you don't like the way I "cut" Eiseley's article -- which was fairly lengthy -- then I invite you to cut it your way and post your result here. Then we can discuss that. "Equal time"....
Why on earth would I cut it at all? I don't feel any need to manipulate its content to suit an agenda; I provided a link to it; it's a rather short essay (it was, after all, first published in the Saturday Evening Post); and I have no reason to alter what Mr. Eiseley had to say. Folks can read it in five minutes and draw their own conclusions, and I seriously doubt that anyone is going to draw the conclusion that it is a commentary "on the 'problematic' affinity of Marxian and Darwinian thought."
Oh for crying out loud. Where does this compulsion to quote mine come from, and why the desperate need to misrepresent the content of articles and the intentions of authors? Is this the same level of scholarship you bring to your books?
For those who are interested — http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Lewontin_on_materialism
js..I object to untruths being reprated by liars and ignoramuses. Saying it once, Betty, is an error, but saying it again and again after being repeatedly correct is filth.
Irish...Your obvious display of moral outrage is but yet more evidence of the self-contradictory and crassly hypocritical nature of your worldview js1138. If there are lies then there is truth.
And where there are these metaphysical constructs, there are also unchanging universal moral standards (absolutes) by which to judge them. And of course, if these metaphysical constructs exist, it stands to reason that a transcendant Judge—the creator of universal moral law— exists as well. In essence, js, you have said: “Thou shalt not lie.” Your entire argument is contradictory to the postulations (matter-in-motion; chance, random,purposeless, meaningless, accidental, impersonal, etc) of your worldview.
Question: if all that exists is the material or sensory realm, then how do you know of the immaterial? Further, who is it that you cry out to for justice with your claim of untruth? Matter cares nothing for you, nor do its handmaidens: chance and natural selection.
Within the strait-jacket of your worldview where truth and lie do not exist, the most logical reaction from you would have been no reaction at all.
Yes, but that is a transcendental fallacy.
js..Your logic follows from axioms I do not accept. Neither monism nor materialism preclude free will. at any rate
Irish..Axioms are metaphysical concepts which, in your worldview, do not exist. The question arises once more: how does your material brain with its secretions and bacteria and monkey material know of metaphysical concepts?
As for your second claim, you need to research the concept of free will, its origins, and what determinism and Marxism have to say about it. For the only sort of ‘free will’ allowed by them is the sort that obediantly chooses to subjugate itself upon the altar of evolutionary humanism. In other words, there’s neither free will nor freedom at all.
RightWhale..Yes, but that is a transcendental fallacy.
Irish...Apparently you believe your material brain and body believes it possesses a ‘self’ which the ‘self’ hopes has made a’witty” retort. Of course your material brain has simply suffered a brain-drip induced epiphenomenon, for your material brain possesses neither ‘self’ nor reason.
Actually the demonstration by Kant is irrefutable.
Your refusal to apperceive is most impressive, atlaw. There are no distinctions to be made, none whatever. It's not that you fail to get my point; I think you do. You just think you can discredit it by discrediting me, and by bloviating about irrelevancies -- it's all just a smelly smokescreen.
Maybe you should stop trying to think while engaging in the act of sneering. Maybe all that sneering is affecting your ability to think straight.
It is hardly "quote-mining" to raise the comments of a self-confessed Marxist on the subject of materialism and science from an article entitled The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism
I see nothing to be gained by including the full excerpt from your source in the dialogue, nevertheless, here it is altogether so Lurkers can judge for themselves:
gunsofaugust: No doubt about it, yet their cheerleaders are always in denial when even they know it is true. In fact, that goal is what motivates their secular religion.
me: Some like Lewontin actually proclaim it, proudly:
Lewontin: "With great perception, Sagan sees that there is an impediment to the popular credibility of scientific claims about the world, an impediment that is almost invisible to most scientists. Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. When, at the time of the moon landing, a woman in rural Texas was interviewed about the event, she very sensibly refused to believe that the television pictures she had seen had come all the way from the moon, on the grounds that with her antenna she couldn't even get Dallas. What seems absurd depends on one's prejudice. Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity "in deep trouble." Two's company, but three's a crowd.
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."
If we were to refocus on Lewontin's politics vis-à-vis Darwin – we would be obliged to note his opinion:
During the last twenty years, as the externalist view has come to dominate the history of science, no better case for the influence of social forces on scientific discovery has been constructed than for Darwinism. After all, Darwin himself started the whole thing by telling us that he got the idea for the universal Struggle for Existence from reading Malthus's famous tract against the old Poor Law. To the extent that any hypothesis about history can be said to be clearly true, the claim that Darwin's view of the natural economy comes out of his understanding of political economy is clearly true, at least in the view of those who do history of science for a living.
It may be that what is bothering Perutz is the thought that the truth of Darwin's theory is somehow being impeached when its origins are revealed. But no one with a vestige of understanding of elementary questions in philosophy would confuse the context of discovery with the context of justification (certainly not Marx, who had a doctorate in philosophy, and who thought Darwin was right about evolution).
Marxism may indeed be dead in Eastern Europe, but as "bourgeois" intellectual tradition becomes dominant, students will be taught on the banks of the Vltava and Vistula, as they are on the Charles and the Cam, that "Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is obviously nineteenth-century capitalism writ large, and his immersion in the social relations of a rising bourgeoisie had an overwhelming effect on the content of his theory."
It seems to me that Darwin's sharp powers of observation and reasoning would have suffered him to formulate his theory of evolution, even if he had never heard of nineteenth-century capitalism. Perhaps Darwin himself gave the best answer to Lewontin's assertions: "Whether true or false others must judge; for the firmest conviction of the truth of a doctrine by its author, seems, alas, not to be the slightest guarantee of truth."
Repetition does not make this true.
Unless, you are me, posting under another name, You know nothing of my worldview. You have posted claim after claim about my worldview, and all of it is rubbish.
And I suppose you have empirical evidence of this evaluation? Of coarse not. You are being subjective, and then condemning me for the same.
Then you no doubt noticed that my opinions haven't changed much.
js1138 saw a similar weakness in axioms on his list.
Ah, I found a few comments I made on that thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1378599/posts?page=221#221
I think you will find that am not particularly impressed with philosophy as a method for acquiring or evaluating knowledge. Logic is of little value when you set up your definitions so you can’t lose an argument.
I favor Samuel Johnson’s approach to idealism.
Great! By all means, let us consider how to attempt to falsify my assumption that all natural things must have a cause outside themselves. I'm not sure how. Its not that I fear the results of such an experiment, its just that its such a modest assumption there doesn't seem to be a reasonable way to set up an experiment that has any reasonable chance of providing a counter example. Heck the "setting up" part pretty much dooms us.
Alas, a person who does not accept anything unless it can be scientifically verified can not survive at life. Drop the hostility and use your imagination a bit, and you will see that I'm right about this.
How convenient that you would make this absurdly broad assumption, given that you seem to consider the manner in which energy interacts to be a "thing" in some poorly delineated "natural world."
OK the assumption is pretty broad, but hardly unique to me and my desires (I'm a Christian, and I assure you if had invented Christianity from my own imagination, Jesus would not have equated ogling to adultery, rather sexual ethics would be a bit more like a Robert Heinlein novel--now that is some convenient contrivance -- at least from a male view). But it is a pretty modest assumption. It seems no more broad then the laws of thermodynamics, and not nearly as presumptuous (btw, would you think to apply the laws of thermodynamics to God? I kind of doubt it).
As far as the poor delineation. Indeed I don't know exactly how to define such a delineation. If I felt it really necessary I could try to do a better job then I did, but I'm sure there are others who have done it better still. Rather I'm inclined to think that most of the established doctrines of such a delineation already fit the facts, relieving me of any need to contrive one with my particular argument in mind.
Importantly this means that the "convenience" of the fit is simply favorable evidence to my argument rather then a reason to suspect the delineation was contrived for it. Unless you maintain that all such delineations were motivated by the same questionable motives you accused me of.
Does mathematics not do this more then any other branch of philosophy?
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