Posted on 05/24/2008 9:04:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The folks at Scientific American are steamed at Ben Stein: (see links):
Ben Stein's Expelled: No Integrity Displayed (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie)
Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know...(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know)
Stein's controversial movie Expelled links Charles Darwin to Adolf Hitler, the ultimate scientific hero to the ultimate manifestation of human evil. "A shameful antievolution film tries to blame Darwin for the Holocaust," shouts John Rennie's headline. Rennie then declares that its "heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency."
The problem is, that the link is quite real. In fact, undeniable. One doesn't need to see the film to make that link. Simply read Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Darwin's Descent of Man applies the evolutionary arguments of his more famous Origin of Species to human beings. In it, Darwin argues that those characteristics we might think to be specifically human—physical strength and health, morality, and intelligence—were actually achieved by natural selection. From this, he infers two related eugenic conclusions.
First, if the desirable results of strength, health, morality, and intelligence are caused by natural selection, then we can improve them by artificial selection. We can breed better human beings, even rise above the human to the superhuman. Since human beings have been raised above the other animals by the struggle to survive, they may be raised even higher, transcending human nature to something—who knows?—as much above men as men are now above the apes. This strange hope rests in Darwin's very rejection of the belief that man is defined by God, for "the fact of his having thus risen" by evolution to where he is, "instead of having been aboriginally placed there" by God, "may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future."
Second, if good breeding gives us better results, pushing us up the evolutionary slope, then bad or indiscriminate breeding drags us back down. "If…various checks…do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men," Darwin groaned, "the nation will retrograde, as has occurred too often in the history of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable rule."
Now to Hitler. The first, most important thing to understand is that the link between Darwin and Hitler was not immediate. That is, nobody is making the case that Hitler had Darwin's eugenic masterpiece The Descent of Man in one hand while he penned Mein Kampf in the other. Darwin's eugenic ideas were spread all over Europe and America, until they were common intellectual coin by Hitler's time. That makes the linkage all the stronger, because we are not talking about one crazed man misreading Darwin but at least two generations of leading scientists and intellectuals drawing the same eugenic conclusions from evolutionary theory as Darwin himself drew.
A second point. We misunderstand Hitler's evil if we reduce it to anti-Semitism. Hitler's anti-Semitism had, of course, multiple causes, including his own warped character. That having been said, Nazism was at heart a racial, that is, a biological political program based up evolutionary theory. It was "applied biology," in the words of deputy party leader of the Nazis, Rudolph Hess, and done for the sake of a perceived greater good, racial purity, that is, for the sake of a race purified of physical and mental defects, imperfections, and racial inferiority.
The greater good. We need to remember that, even though we rightly consider it the apogee of wickedness, the Nazi regime did not purport to do evil. In a monstrous illustration of the adage about good intentions leading to hell, it claimed to be scientific and progressive, to do what hard reason demanded for the ultimate benefit of the human race. Its superhuman acts of inhumanity were carried out for the sake of humanity.
Hitler had enormous sympathy for the downtrodden he witnessed as a young man in Vienna. "The Vienna manual labourers lived in surroundings of appalling misery. I shudder even to-day when I think of the woeful dens in which people dwelt, the night shelters and the slums, and all the tenebrous spectacles of ordure, loathsome filth and wickedness."
He believed that the social problems he witnessed in Vienna needed a radical, even ruthless solution if true change were to be effected. As he says with breathtaking concision, "the sentimental attitude would be the wrong one to adopt."
"Even in those days I already saw that there was a two-fold method by which alone it would be possible to bring about an amelioration of these conditions. This method is: first, to create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities among the public; second, to combine this feeling for social responsibilities with a ruthless determination to prune away all excrescences which are incapable of being improved."
The proposed ruthlessness of his solution was in direct imitation of nature conceived according to Darwinism. "Just as Nature concentrates its greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation—which, owing to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred—and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for future development."
How do we secure a better road for future development? By ensuring that only the best of the best race, the Aryan race, breed, and pruning away all the unfit and racially inferior. That isn't just a theory; it's eugenic Darwinism as a political program. As Hitler made clear, "the State is looked upon only as a means to an end and this end is the conservation of the racial characteristics of mankind." Jews have to be pruned away, but also Gypsies, Slavs, the retarded, handicapped, and any one else that is biologically unfit.
That's Darwinism in action. Does that mean that Darwin would have approved? No. Does that mean that Darwin's theory provided the framework for Hitler's eugenic program? Yes.
Have you seen the film?
Darwin was absolutely correct in that...
a) there is natural variation between species
b) selective pressures make some variations more favorable than others.
c) because of this selective pressure upon natural variation species adapt to be able to deal better with their environment.
This has been Demonstrated in thousands of experiments, therefore I must conclude that you have no earthly idea what you are talking about and are dealing from a position of abject and willful ignorance.
You said" "Darwin had a completely correct notion of inherited characteristics", which is of course absurd given the fact that Darwin made no distinctions between hereditary variations and a non-hereditary ones. It is a fundamental error that permeates Origin and Descent. And yet you say that Darwin basically got inheritance right.
Darwin's own theory of "particle" inheritance was so absurd, his friends urged him not to publish it. One of the consequences of this theory is that mutilations are hereditary. That's right. It is not Lamarck's theories that predict this, but Darwin's. Oh, the irony.
But the actual 'theory' that Darwin employed in formulating his opinions on evolution was a much simpler one: anything can be assumed to be hereditary if need be.
And yet despite all this, you say "Darwin had a completely correct notion of inherited characteristics", and you probably wonder why you (and many other Darwinians) are rapidly approaching the status of zero credibility.
[allmendream]You understand very little of the theory if you think somatic mutations are involved in evolution.
Darwin certainly thought so, as he made no distinction. How did he know that a tiny variation in beak length would be preserved by natural selection or be "rigidly destroyed"? He must have known that it was a hereditary variation. How did he know that? Because whatever he wanted to be hereditary was hereditary. Why, even "the character of the american people" and "the progress of the United States" were, to Darwin, germinal variations.
You seem to have Darwin confused with Lamarck. Not surprising you seem confused over the entire range of the subject.
Darwin spoke of natural variation within species. The variation within species is not due to somatic mutations, but to genetic variation due to germ-line mutations in the past. Therefore the natural variation within species can and will be passed down undiluted in ‘particles’ of inheritance.
Somatic mutations when they do anything at all cause cancer. Darwin was interested in Inheritance, not Oncology.
Moreover you act as if Darwin had to have everything 100% correct in order for the basics of his theory to be of any use. Science doesn't work that way, but Prophecy and Revelation does. Maybe that is the source of your ample confusion.
Since you insist on defending Darwin's errors, you can now take this opportunity to demonstrate that "the character of the american people" and "the progress of the United States" are germinal variations, as Darwin claimed they were. After you do that, I will give you a much longer list of variations, from Origin and Descent, whose germinal nature you can demonstrate to the audience.
What do somatic mutations have to do with variation within species?
The “adventurousness” of a person is partly a function of the number of repeats in a persons dopamine receptors. I imagine that those who chose to venture across the ocean to come to America were ‘self selected’ as a group to be more adventurous.
Do you contend that those who choose to leave their society and venture out into a “New World” are genetically indistinguishable from those who chose to stay behind?
I remember the volume “Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
For INTERPRETATION I would recommend you to use the Bible. Creationists have only on possibility for conclusion of their interpretations -> creation. ID's conclusion: we can't explain something -> creation ID!
Here are some creationistic INTERPRETATIONS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS5vid4GkEY
There is a tendency to defend Darwin’s errors, because he has become an icon. No one, however, defends Copernicus’s error about the cicularity of plantary orbits. No one defends Newton’s theories about relativity. So obviously Darwin is more than just a scientsist to a lot of people; he’s a kind of god.
I know it includes what guys like William Dembski and the folks at the Discovery Institute articulate.
My post, above, in blue responded to your previous post, upthread:
And BTW, belief in Intelligent Design should not be equated with creationism. Volumes have been written explaining the difference.The reason I asked that question is that I don't believe there is a difference between intelligent design and creationism, and the book Of Pandas and People is one of the reasons why.
Early drafts of the book used the word "creationism" throughout the text, while subsequent drafts used "design proponents" -- except where a word processing error gave us the immortal "cdesign proponentsists" and ruined any pretense that ID had as being science.
Here is a good reference to the whole sordid tale: Missing Link Discovered!.
In the context of theories about inheritance, "particulate inheritance" refers to inheritance of discrete units as opposed to blending inheritance, which is continuous. These discrete units or particles correspond to hereditary factors, or genes. Darwin did not believe in particulate inheritance. But, Darwin's theory of inheritance, like Buffon's, did have little particles in a literal sense: gemmules. Now, according to you, this should be credited to Darwin as a prefiguration of DNA or genes or whatever, proving yet again that Darwin got it right about heredity. Let's see. Horatio Newmann says...
"Darwin considered all variations as heritable. He did not distinguish between somatic variations and germinal variations. In fact, as we learn from a study of his pangenesis theory, he considered all variations as in the first instance somatic, and subsequently transferred by means of gemmules to the germ cells. Every somatic variation, whether induced by use, disuse, in response to environmental stimulus, or through mere spontaneous variability, was supposed to be able to give off gemmules into the blood stream that would carry to the germ cells the physical basis of the varying character. The pangenesis mechanism is now known to have no basis in fact."And, to compound Darwin's already numerous errors, it turns out that he was putting forth this theory of gemmules to explain inheritance of acquired characteristics, among other things. And yet you say that Darwin's gemmules are just like DNA and genes, and on the basis of their "particle" nature, we should all agree that "Darwin had a completely correct notion of inherited characteristics", and that Darwin's gemmules are just like DNA and genes and so on.
The analogy with Copernicus is a good one. A "Darwinian" style defense of Copernicus's circular orbits would go something like so: 'Copernicus got it basically right, because circles are merely ellipses with the semimajor and semiminor axes equal to each other, so Copernicus was actually talking about ellipses all along, and, because of this, he should be given some of the credit that went to Kepler...' and so on. It's ridiculous, of course, and Copernicus himself would have no doubt objected, if he were alive to hear such inanities. But Darwinians routinely say such things about Darwin.
And Darwinians go a bit further with this theme than our imaginary Copernicans. Not only do they doggedly defend Darwin's errors, they still believe in them (eg, post 266) and this explains why they are so defensive about Darwin's errors. It is comparable to, say, a group of modern astronomers asserting that, not only was Copernicus essentially right about circular orbits because circles are degenerate ellipses, but planetary orbits really are circular. Such nutty astronomers would froth at the mouth if you ask them to prove that orbits are circular, just the way Darwinians froth when you ask them to prove that their favorite variations are not somatic.
I believe that Darwin, like Copernicus, got something important right. Ditto Galileo. But propogandists who wished to discredit the Church misrepresented the opposition to a heliocentric university by giving too much credit to Copernicus, for getting that 1) the idea was not original to him, and 2) it was wrong in one important respect: the sun is not the center of the universe. What happened after 1859 was as if Copernicus had been the leader of a masonic lodge including leading members of society and they used the heliocentric theory to argue for a return to the worship of Apollo, and this worship had spread all across Europe. Of course, in a way it did. The Enlightenment, said Lewis Mumford years ago, was in part a return to the weorship of the sun god, vbut without the iconography. Darwinism, for many people, is likewise a kind of religion.
I am agnostic about ID. But I do agree that it is disingenuous for Darwinians to ascribe a religously motivated anthromorphism to the ID people without conceding that Darwinianism is likewise something generated by human beings and human beings with a view. We are kind of stuck on how much is subjective and how much objective about any theory or even any observation.
After all, quantum theory is at bottom as mysterious as the theory of transubstantiation. We can describe the veil, but not the lady behind it. That is, assuming that what is behind it is a lady.
Darwin, in a letter to his friend Hooker (January 11, 1844) expresses his contempt of Lamarck’s ideas in the following words:
“Heaven defend me from Lamarck’s nonsense of a ‘tendency to progression’, ‘adaptation from the slow willing of animals’, etc..... Lamarck’s work appeared to me to be extremely poor; I got not a fact or idea from it.”
“We can’t explain something, therefore random mutation + natural selection did it.”
Science can/has to explain . Bible can’t explain much.
Mutation is a fact and mutation is no exclusively random.
Natural selection is a fact.
Evolution is a fact.
Don’t mix it up with the theory of evolution.
What can the theory of evolution explain:
How we get from one kind to two kinds.
I said explain and not observe.
Explain is something ID/Creation can’t because ID/God did it is an explanation for everything and therefore for nothing.
Penicillin works - God did it.
The bridge doesn’t collapse - God did it.
My car drives - God did it...
You won’t get anywhere near a computer with that type of explanation.
Who are you trying to kid?
The modern iteration of ID is exclusively about trying to force the fundamentalist Christian religious belief into schools, and hence into dominance in this country.
Have you not read the Wedge Strategy? What do you think those folks are promoting, real science?
If so, I have a nice bridge to sell you. Centrally located, with lots of traffic!
Here is what they say in the Wedge:
We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.
Sounds more like a theocracy than a democracy to me.
No thanks. The Dark Ages belong in the past, not in our future.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.