Posted on 03/30/2009 8:31:35 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Using Religion to Suppress Debate on Evolution
By John G. West Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute
Evolution was back in the headlines this week as the Texas State Board of Education voted 13-2 to require students to "analyze and evaluate" major evolutionary concepts such as common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations, as well as adopting a critical thinking standard calling on students to "critique" and examine "all sides of scientific evidence."
The vote was a loss for defenders of evolution who had pushed the Board to strip the "analyze and evaluate" language from the evolution standards and gut the overall critical thinking standard.
Evolutionists typically cast themselves as the champions of secular reason against superstition, but in Texas they tried to inject religion into the debate at every turn.
Indeed, this past week it seemed that they couldn't stop talking about religion. They boasted about their credentials as Sunday School teachers and church elders. They quoted the Bible and appealed to theology...
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.washingtonpost.com ...
Ping!
Newt Gingrich once stated the problem of evolutionism and morality about as succinctly as is possible in noting that the question of whether a man views his neighbor as a fellow child of God or as a meat byproduct of random processes simply has to affect human relationships.
Basically, every halfway honest person with any brains and talent who has taken any sort of a hard look at evolution in the past 60 years has given up on it and many have denounced it. A listing of fifty or sixty such statements makes for an overwhelming indictment of that part of the scientific community which goes on trying to defend evolution and they (the evolosers) have a favorite term ( "quote mining") which they use to describe that sort of argument.
My own response to that is to note what I view as the ultimate evolution quote by the noted evolutionist (actually, FORMER evolutionist) Jeffrey Dahmer:
"If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…"Jeffrey Dahmer, in an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994.
Dahmer converted to Christianity before he died. The basic tenets of true religion appear to be inprinted upon most of us biologically which is the only reason that Islammic societies and "secular humanist" societies like Britain and Canada function at all. A psychopath like Dahmer is basically somebody on whom that imprint did not take. For those guys, it has to be written down somewhere, and it has to be written down accurately; the bible does that. Telling somebody like Dahmer that we all evolved from "lucky dust" is a formula for getting people killed.
Evolution was the basic philosophical cornerstone of communism, naziism, the various eugenics programs, the out of control arms races which led to WW-I and WW-II, and all of the grief of the last 150 years. Starting from 1913, Europe had gone for a hundred years without a major war. They didn't even have to think. All they needed to do was act cool, go to church, have parades, formal balls, attend board meetings, and they'd still be running the world today; they'd be so fat and happy they'd not know what to do with themselves. Instead, they all got to reading about Darwinism, fang and claw, survival of the fittest and all the rest of that nonsense, and the rest as they say is history.
The most interesting analysis of that sad tale is probably Sir Arthur Keith's "Evolution and Ethics"
Keith apparently viewed belief in evolution as some sort of duty of the English educated classes, nonetheless he had a very clear vision of the problems inherent in it and laid it out in no uncertain terms:
From Sir Srthur Keith's "Evolution and Ethics:
Chapter 3
The Behavior of Germany Considered from an Evolutionary Point of View in 1942
....It is worth noting that Hitler uses a double designation for his tribal doctrine National Socialism: Socialism standing for the good side of the tribal spirit (that which works within the Reich); aud Nationalism for the ethically vicious part, which dominates policy at and outside the German frontiers.
The leader of Germany is an evolutionist not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. For him the national "front" of Europe is also the evolutionary "front"; he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people....
... "Humanitarianism is an evil . . . a creeping poison." "The most cruel methods are humane if they give a speedy victory" is Hitler's echo of a maxim attributed to Moltke. Such are the ways of evolution when applied to human affairs.
...I have said nothing about the methods employed by the Nazi leaders to secure tribal unity in Germany methods of brutal compulsion, bloody force, and the concentration camp. Such methods cannot be brought within even a Machiavellian system of ethics, and yet may be justified by their evolutionary result.
12.
....No aspect of Hitler's policy proclaims the antagonism between evolution and ethics so forcibly as his treatment of the Jewish people in Germany.... ...Hitler is an uncompromising evolutionist, and we must seek for an evolutionary explanation if we are to understand his actions....
It must not be thought that in seeking to explain Hitler's actions I am seeking to justify them. The opposite is the case. I have made this brief survey of public policy in modern Germany with a definite object: to show that Dr. Waddington is in error when he seeks to place ethics on a scientific basis by a knowledge of evolutionary tendencies and practice.
Chapter 4
Human Life: Its Purpose or Ultimate End
IN THE COURSE OF GATHERING INFORMATION concerning man's morality and the part it has played and is playing in his evolution, I found it necessary to provide space for slips which were labeled "Life: Its Ultimate and Proximate Purposes." Only those who have devoted some special attention to this matter are aware of the multitude of reasons given for the appearance of man on earth. Here I shall touch on only a few of them; to deal with all would require a big book. The reader may exclaim: Why deal with any of them! What has ultimate purpose got to do with ethics and evolution! Let a man with a clearer head and a nimbler pen than mine reply. He is Edward Carpenter, who wrote Civilization: Its Cause and Cure (1889).
14.
It is from the sixteenth edition (1923) I am to quote, p. 249:
If we have decided what the final purpose or Life of Man is, then we may say that what is good for that purpose i
s finally "good" and what is bad for that purpose is finally "evil."
...If the final purpose of our existence is that which has been and is being worked out under the discipline of evolutionary law, then, although we are quite unconscious of the end result, we ought, as Dr. Waddington has urged, to help on "that which tends to promote the ultimate course of evolution." If we do so, then we have to abandon the hope of ever attaining a universal system of ethics; for, as we have just seen, the ways of national evolution, both in the past and in the present, are cruel, brutal, ruthless, and without mercy. Dr. Waddington has not grasped the implications of Nature's method of evolution, for in his summing up (Nature, 1941, 150, p. 535) he writes "that the ethical principles formulated by Christ . . . are those which have tended towards the further evolution of mankind, and that they will continue to do so." Here a question of the highest interest is raised: the relationship which exists between evolution and Christianity; so important, it seems to me, that I shall devote to it a separate chapter. Meantime let me say that the conclusion I have come to is this:
the law of Christ is incompatible with the law of evolution as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed.
All of that, of course, deals only with the question of ethics and the logical consequences of evolutionism. The fact that evolution is junk science argues against it as well.
Evolution Theory is the second tenant of the religion of humanism and woe be to those that expose the weakness of evolution theory.
And good. There’s too much anti-conservative and anti-God news out there today. Glad to see the pendulum swing in the RIGHT direction if only for a moment.
All excellent points, Wendy. And thanks for that final link! I have never run across that site before, and I plan on going through it tonight. It looks like a definite candidate for my favorites list.
All the best—GGG
But expose it we will! And thanks for pointing out the evolution is a materialist/man-centered religion. One cannot repeat this fact enough!
Because heaven knows, critically thinking is something that should not be encouraged in students..
It is dizzing the lengths Evolutionists will go to, if they could step back and see themselves surely they would realize how anti Intellectual they are being.
I don’t know if you can feel it or not, but I think the HMS Creation and ID have finally got the Evos on the run.
It’s not about science, it’s about enforcing a world view under the guise of science.
Yeah I can agree with that thought, critical thinking should be a component of every scientific or even philosophical endeavor, to discourage such a standard is to mock both Science and Philosophy and replace it with a sort of skewed humanistic/anti knowledge dogma.
IBTEaCapc!
Actually, that last link looked good when I read the links, but when I clicked on them all I got was a bunch of advertisements. Am I missing something?
I do believe that whatever happens God will prevail. I’m not so sure about God’s creation doing what it was designed by Him to do, but God is always true... Let God be true and every man a liar.
Lies have been on my lips (and the lips of all men) since birth and I have to fight Satan for control of my tongue daily. But that struggle is what this life is about.
I’m not optimistic the world will turn in the right direction, but I am more than optimistic God’s plan and purpose will be seen. Every spark of hope is just a blessing while we wait.
Which means????? You and your super-long acronyms!
The truth of what Newt says is evidenced by what happened after Darwin's "Origin" was published. The emerging elites were swept away by enthusiasm and sought to apply Natural selection to every aspect of human life. Darwin didn't invent social darwinism, but his authority was behind this promiscuous application of nature selection. William Jennings Bryan, to this day, is treated as a buffoon because he was horrified by the bloodymindedness of the elites with regard to the poor and for this reason sought to curb the teaching of it in the schools.
I absolutely agree, GG. That’s not to say that once we have the Evos on the run that they won’t come up with a brand new God-denying “theory” to hide themselves from God (and use the force of government to try and shove down our throats). But in the meantime, the Temple of Darwinistic Materialism is going down!
Some food for thought:
Darwin and eugenics: Darwin was indeed a ‘Social Darwinist’
http://creation.com/darwin-and-eugenics
“But in the meantime, the Temple of Darwinistic Materialism is going down!”
I’ll be glad to see it burn along with all of its idols...
The Evolution religion has bred more intolerance than I think any other faith has. And they will do anything to keep from being labeled what they are: Religious zealots.
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