Posted on 07/30/2009 8:21:38 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
FORT WORTH, Texas (BP)--John Holdren's appointment as President Obama's new science czar is emblematic of the abuse of science that we can increasingly expect in our secularized political environment. Holdren, in 1977, coauthored a book with environmentalists Paul and Anne Ehrlich titled “Ecoscience” in which they entertained the sterilization of humans by everything from surgical procedures to doping the water supply.
Now that Holdren’s words are coming back to haunt him, his office denies that he ever meant to "coerce" people into being sterilized. (Who, though, in their right mind would voluntarily consent to being sterilized by having their water supply doped?)
Holdren nevertheless represents the powerful new caste of scientists who have appointed themselves the guardians of humanity and the priests of a new social order. Their agenda and pretensions would be transparently obvious except that, with the mantle of their scientific expertise, they intimidate ordinary people from asking the right questions and thereby exposing their aims. Their strategy is always the same...
(Excerpt) Read more at baptistpress.com ...
Special zoo for these freaks...
I pinged a few Evos to see what they think of fellow Evo forced sterilization types.
Another Joseph Mengele.
Haven’t you heard? Communisim is coming back to our government. Seems as though more and more people surrounding this administration are, or surround themselves with, communists
Absolutely....After all the policies the Nazi Doctors instituted came from the United Staes of the 20’s and 30’s.
According to a vast number of Leftwingtard “scientists” the Holden they knew regularly took his medicines and didn’t have these problems.
From what I have been able to tell, since this guy’s name has been in the news, we have had a fairly high number of quotes being proferred from the book.
The context, or lack thereof, has reminded me a bit of some of your creationist friends taking Origin of the Species out of context.
Forced sterilization is not a tenet of evolution. Your attempt to make it appear so is disingenuous.
I believe at the same time period (late 70’s) there was a study (from New Jersey, I believe) that praised world wars, murder (mafia) and the holocaust as population controls.
The article does make a great point about politicized science but doesn’t distinguish between the press-grabbing (read power grabbing) so-called authorities in any particular field and the men and women who oppose them. Much like the poor press given to those of us who do not find evidence for anthropogenic global warming.
And some evos wonder why we object to keeping faith and science separate.
It’s the connection to God that humanizes us.
We’ll seeing how some of the most celebrated evos were all for forced sterilization and other forms of population control, I was just curious where the modern-day Evos on FR stand on this issue.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6474391/Henry-Kissinger-Population-Control-Document
Here is the memo from Kissinger that begat the study I mentioned - still looking for a link to it - if it still exists anywhere.
Regarding: “Forced sterilization is not a tenet of evolution. Your attempt to make it appear so is disingenuous”
I don’t know what GodGutsGuns is attempting to imply, but what I wonder about materialistic evolution (the idea that the universe “evolved” by a non-designed, ramdom, purposeless process outside the control of any diety or supernatural influence) is:
- Assuming you hold a materialistic evolutionary view, if materialistic evolution is true, isn’t “morality” also part of the purposeless, random process?
Assuming you hold a materialistic evolutionary view, if materialistic evolution is true, isn’t “morality” also part of the purposeless, random process?
_____
Well, I do tend towards materialist (philosophically speaking) thought, and have publically outed myself as one of a handful of remaining admitted secular humanist freepers. At the same time, I consider myself agnostic, raised in the church (sang in the choir), but fell away as I got older.
It is a popularly held position on the crevo threads that capital M morality must involve a transcendant God.
I don’t necessarily agree.
A quick look at the 10 commandments is enough to drive the point home for me.
1-4 have nothing to do with ‘morality’. They are about obedience to God, which provides a control mechanism for that society, as in ‘break the rules and God will deal with you, and He can be a vengeful God’.
5-10 read like a primer on how men and women in a society have to deal with one another in order for that society to remain viable. In other words, society developed to the point where they had learned enough about living together that the leaders codified the ‘rules’, which we call morality, and God is the enforcer.
Morality is a social construct of an evolved species, not the rules handed down by a transcendant God.
Now, I shall go don my kevlar undies for the anticipated responses.
I think they were wrong - just as wrong as some of the most celebrated Creationists who were for sterilization and eugenics (e.g. several of the founders of the Creation Research Society, William Tinkle, Frank Marsh, etc).
The big push for eugenics wasn’t from Darwinism, but from Mendelism. It’s no coincidence that the heydey of the eugenics movement was the 1920s with the emergence of Mendelism.
AS Charles Davenport, a leading eugenicist, put it:
“Formerly, when we believed that factors blend, a characteristic in the germ plasm of a single individual among thousands seemed not worth considering: it would soon be lost in the melting pot. But now we know that unit characters do not blend; that after a sore of generations the given characteristic may still appear, unaffected by repeated unions. . . . So the individual, as the bearer of a potentially immortal germ plasm with innumerable traits, becomes of the greatest interest.”
But, strangely, I rarely hear anyone blame Mendel for eugenics.
Regarding your answer to the question: Assuming you hold a materialistic evolutionary view, if materialistic evolution is true, isn’t “morality” also part of the purposeless, random process?
You said: “Morality is a social construct of an evolved species, not the rules handed down by a transcendant God.”
From your answer above, I think you are saying “yes” that morality is part of the purposeless, random, evolutionary materialistic process.
By the way, I appreciate your friendly response. That doesn’t always happen when discussing these types of questions.
Anyway, back to the subject. If morality is a social construct of an evolved species and not rules handed down by a transcendent God, then would you say that moral rules decided upon by one given evolved species are necessarily going to be accepted by another evolved species?
Regarding: “I think they were wrong - just as wrong as some of the most celebrated Creationists who were for sterilization and eugenics (e.g. several of the founders of the Creation Research Society, William Tinkle, Frank Marsh, etc).”
Nevadan: I agree with you that anyone, whether Darwinian or Creationist, that advocates eugenics on humans is wrong.
What I’m wondering though, concerning Darwinism and eugenics, is - if materialistic evolution is the mechanism by which the universe “came into being” and evolved to its present state - then isn’t morality also a part of that evolutionary process? Isn’t it just another random element of the purposeless (non-designed, non-directed) mechanism of materialistic evolution?
Thanks for the ping!
Evolution says that life today developed naturally - but if one believes that the laws of nature were designed and have a purpose, than there’s certainly no conflict between saying something occurred naturally and saying there’s design and purpose behind it.
The relationship between morality and evolution is a contentious area both among theistic and non-theistic evolutionists. Is it correct to say that morality evolved - or is it more correct to say that morality emerged from empathy and reason (even if empathy and reason themselves evolved)?
I often hear that if evolution is true, or if God doesn’t exist, than there’s no reason to be moral. But regardless of how/why we have morality (whether directly from God, or from evolution, or from God via evolution) we still have empathy. Empathy compels me to have compassion for others regardless of how the empathy got there.
Many also think that religion is necessary as a guide for morality. But other than rules on homosexuality or a ban on eating cows, using religion as a guide on morality wouldn’t change my or most people’s morality much from what our morals would have been anyway just by following our natural empathy. The only people I can imagine becoming immoral (or amoral) as a result of becoming atheist are sociopaths (a severe psychiatric condition).
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.