Posted on 04/30/2008 7:49:41 PM PDT by EveningStar
John Derbyshire finds a rather disturbing comment from Ben Stein in an interview he did with TBN earlier this month, promoting his new film Expelled: The Movie. In explaining his reaction to researching the Holocaust by visiting Dachau and Hadamar, Stein railed against the distortions of Darwinian theory that led to the systematic eugenics murders and genocide of the Nazi regime. However, Stein misses the target by a mile...
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life...."
--http://www.hitler.org/speeches/02-01-33.html
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison."
--Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed.
The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
14th October, 1941, midday: "The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... "Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... "...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... "Christianity the liar.... "We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State." (p 49-52)
19th October, 1941, night: "The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."
Hitler's Table Talk (Adolf Hitler, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953).
My statement is factual.
Inventions are great, but engineering is not the same thing as science.
IMHO, Galileo was the first real scientist, with science as we know it having its roots in Renaisance Italy. Though, of course, the foundations of science go back to Aristotle and certainly the insights of the medieval scholastics are also important. But the pieces did not really get fitted together until the Renaisance.
Yes, science and technology are different, but they also compliment one another like the left and right hands, and that has been why the West has continued to develop in both fields.
The Greeks developed some amazing science and some remarkable technology, but they didn’t keep after it. Basically, they lost interest, because it was purely theoretical, except for building and siege machinery. The West stayed interested and continued to move forward, because the combination of science and technology proved useful and productive.
That was my understanding, as well. I always thought that Galileo, Newton, and some others from the Renaissance era were considered to be the founders of modern science.
The indeed Greeks developed important technology. They also made important advances in mathematics and philosophy that made science possible. However, they were still a long way off from developing the scientific method, i.e. the idea of forming hypotheses and then testing them by gathering evidence or running experiments. As far as I know, Galileo was the first to do that in a systematic way.
Pierre Duhem (of the Gibbs-Duhem equation) wrote a big book or perhaps series of books presenting evidence that there was a continuity of scientific development from the Middle ages up until Newton's time. I've never seen it, but I think it was called "System du Monde" or something like that. Apparently that book was banned in France.
Universities.
It wouldn’t be hard to argue that the scientific method of hypothesis and testing derives from the basic methods of the scholastic theologians.
All the universities and law schools in Europe were originally religious establishments, founded by the Catholic Church. The typical method of academic theologians in the later middle ages was to put forth a thesis or hypothesis and then argue it with other theologians. Pico della Mirandola, who anticipated some of Francis Bacon’s interests in natural philosophy, the earlier term for what we call science (see On the Dignity of Man), proposed 500 theological theses which he was prepared to argue. And of course Martin Luther tacked up his 95 Theses on the church door, but unfortunately the usual theological argument and adducement of proofs proceeded to break down into schism and warfare.
Of course the areas of study are very different, but the method is similar. Put forward a hypothesis and defend it against the logical attacks of your peers. And if the hypothesis is sound, you will find yourself gathering allies.
Yes. I haven’t read that, but there is plenty to that effect in the work of Lynn Thorndike, Alfred North Whitehead, and in a somewhat different vein, Christopher Dawson. (Dawson focuses more on religion and culture than religion and science.)
Christopher Dawson is good. I'll probably be putting up a link to a djvu of Dynamics of History soon.
No doubt, the scholastics definitely had an important influence on the development of the scientific method. There's a difference, however, between arguing to defend a thesis and gathering physical evidence and running experiments to test a hypothesis. The scholastics did not yet make that leap from natural philosophy to science. As far as I can tell, Galileo was the first person to do that, though there might have been some who preceeded him of whom I am unaware. I am not a historian of science.
Having a nominal knowledge of genetics and learning the basic premise of "survival of the fittest" doesn't make Hitler a "Darviwist", anymore than taking bilogy classes in college makes Ben Stein an expert of evolution.
What a crock of ykw. This is all anyone who likes or admires Science needs to know about Mr. Stein or where he is coming from intellectually and the audience he is playing to. Jews contributions to Science are legendary, how would Stein countenance a Palestinian telling him that it was Jew's embracing of Science that leads to their “abuse”, “genocide”, or “apartheid” against Palestinians?
Eratosthenes figured out a system to measure the circumference of the earth around 200 B.C. (yes, they knew it was round) by measuring the angle of the shadow cast by two sticks a known distance apart.
Archimedes figured out how to tell if the King's goldsmith had cheated him by a measurement of density from a weight and volume of water displacement method and comparison to a measured mass of pure gold (less important than the method, but of interesting historic note, the King was on to something and the goldsmith did indeed cheat him by mixing in lesser metals when making his crown).
I think the biggest message of Expelled is that ID scientists are not allowed free speech/academic freedom.
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