When and Why Anti-Darwinism First Arose

Discovery Institute ^ | June 2, 2009 | David Klinghoffer

[GodGunsGuts]

When and Why Anti-Darwinism First Arose

I'm a big fan of Rod Dreher. His Crunchy Con blog rarely fails to enlighten me, so I've been looking forward to his reflections on faith and science, generated by his current visit to Cambridge University as a Cambridge-Templeton fellow. Rod blogged today in response to a lecture and discussion in which evolution came up. He writes that "Darwinism wasn't initially opposed by Christians" and credits William Jennings Bryan with rallying the faithful against evolution. This is worth some further elaboration. How soon did opposition to Darwinism develop? Among whom, and why?...

[Boxen]

Who’s Darwood?

[stormer]

Quote mine to your heart's content.

Your explanation make so much more sense.

[GodGunsGuts]

He is the prophet who came to tell all the intellectually unfulfilled atheists that there is no god except the natural selection god.

[GodGunsGuts]

“Do you hear that faint noise?”
“No sir, I don’t hear a thing.”
“Listen closer.”
“Oh, I hear it now.”
“And now its gone.”
“I wonder what that was.”
“Beats me.”
“Sir, we have just learned that we ran over the HMS Beagle.”

[Boxen]

Are you sure that you don't mean Darwin? And that your continued use of Darwood is nothing more than juvenile name-calling?

As an aside, I think it's funny that you use a caricature of Darwin in the stead of logic or reason. Like your argument, Creation science is nothing more than a caricature of actual science.

[Heartlander]

No one can claim that neo-darwinism, which is ultimately a mindless process, made our brains but yet has no relevance on the brain's contents or our existence. IOW, neo-darwinism if true, basically states we were built by a mindless process that employs primal survival and is solely responsible our thoughts and behavior. This underlying fundamental idea that deals with mankind’s very essence is what separates neo-darwinism from other scientific theories as can be seen below:

…the Darwinian process may be described as a chapter of accidents. As such, it seems simple, because you do not at first realize all that it involves. But when its significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and aspiration, to such casually picturesque changes as an avalanche may make in a mountain landscape, or a railway accident in a human figure. To call this Natural Selection is a blasphemy, possible to many for whom Nature is nothing but a casual aggregation of inert and dead matter, but eternally impossible to the spirits and souls of the righteous. If it be no blasphemy, but a truth of science, then the stars of heaven, the showers and dew, the winter and summer, the fire and heat, the mountains and hills, may no longer be called to exhaust the Lord with us by praise: their work is to modify all things by blindly starving and murdering everything that is not lucky enough to survive the eternal struggle for hogwash.
- George Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
– Richard Dawkins River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

[TheClintons-STILLAnti-American]

"Intelligent design is to evolutionary biology what socialism is to free-market economics.

Objective intelligence is to evolutionary biology what poison is to life.

[GodGunsGuts]

Darwin, Darwoin, Darwood, Derwood...see, it’s evolution in action!

[what's up]

bookmark

[<1/1,000,000th%]

It began with the Roman author, Pliny the Elder, who believed that fossil shark teeth fell from the sky.

[MEGoody]

"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. "

I assume Beck would reKant his statement seeing the refusal of many believers in these days to believe in macro-evolution.

[Ben Ficklin]

This is an accurate observation by Discovery I, but like always, DI misses the big picture.

Brian's populism, fundamentalism, and isolationism was a result of the US economy shifting from agrarian to industrial.

Today, the same forces are at work because the US economy is shifting from industrial to information.

[GodGunsGuts]

Bryan was no fundamentalist. For instance, he believed that the days of creation were periods of time rather than actual earth days.

[Ben Ficklin]

Prosecuting Scopes makes him a fundamentalist

[jimt]

That is exactly how most people feel about Darwood’s Evo-religious creation myth.

Wow, now you're the majority as well as the Chosen Prophet on the Falsity of Darwinism ?

Congrats.

[GodGunsGuts]

LOL...Somehow I don’t think you are aware of what Jennings et al were objecting to. If you did, you might find yourself agreeing with them.

[Ben Ficklin]

Somehow I don’t think you realize the congruity between Brian’s power base and today’s GOP power base.

[GodGunsGuts]

You have no clue what you’re talking about. Tell me, do you agree with the textbooks Br(y)an et al were objecting to???

[Ben Ficklin]

Any and everyone can look at your threads and know that you are dumber than a door knob.

[GodGunsGuts]

The only way that could possibly makes sense is if you were looking in the mirror when you said that. Next time you are looking in the mirror, be sure to add copout to the description.