Posted on 11/11/2009 2:02:08 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
In uncharacteristically bold discussions after dinner Darwin asked his guests "Why do you call yourselves Atheists?" When they responded that they "did not commit the folly of god-denial, [and] avoided with equal care the folly of god-assertion", Darwin gave a thoughtful response, concluding that "I am with you in thought, but I should prefer the word Agnostic to the word Atheist." Aveling replied that, "after all, 'Agnostic' was but 'Atheist' writ respectable, and 'Atheist' was only 'Agnostic' writ aggressive." Darwin smiled and responded "Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind? It is all very well for educated, cultured, thoughtful people; but are the masses yet ripe for it?" Aveling and Büchner questioned what would have happened if Darwin had been given that advice before publication of the Origin, and had confined "the revolutionary truths of Natural and Sexual Selection to the judicious few", where would the world be? Many feared danger if new ideas were "proclaimed abroad on the house-tops, and discussed in market-place and home. But he, happily for humanity, had by the gentle, irresistible power of reason, forced his new ideas upon the mass of the people. And the masses had been found ripe for it. Had he kept silence, the tremendous strides taken by human thought during the last twenty-one years would have been shorn of their fair proportions, perhaps had hardly been made at all. His own illustrious example was encouragement, was for a command to every thinker to make known to all his fellows that which he believed to be the truth."
Their talk turned to religion, and Darwin said ""I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age." He agreed that Christianity was "not supported by the evidence", but he had reached this conclusion only slowly. Aveling recorded this discussion, and published it in 1883 as a penny pamphlet. Francis Darwin thought it gave "quite fairly his impressions of my father's views, but took issue with any suggestion of similar religious views, saying "My father's replies implied his preference for the unaggressive attitude of an Agnostic. Dr. Aveling seems to regard the absence of aggressiveness in my father's views as distinguishing them in an unessential manner from his own. But, in my judgment, it is precisely differences of this kind which distinguish him so completely from the class of thinkers to which Dr. Aveling belongs." Wikipedia
Just noticed that BertWheeler also believes that:
Blacks and their neighborhoods and their nations are hellholes because of the way blacks think and act. Nothing else.Bigots rarely confine themselves to one flavor of bigotry.
Here is what I said: BW believes that it is ok for him to whack your dog as long as he pays the medical bills.
Here is the exact quote: There should be no real penalty for kicking a dog except medical bills paid to the owner of the dog and ONLY if the kick required vet care for the pooch.
Uh, when we bring up the beliefs of the chief proponents of ID, you and metmom always say that what they believe does not matter.
Uh, gross misrepresentation of those comments.
What IDer's believe doesn't matter to creationists only in that it's irrelevant to the connection that evos keep trying to make between the two.
Count-your-change's comment is accurate. What a person believes DOES affect how they interpret the world around them>
Which is why it's so telling when evos claim religious belief but interpret the world according to the secular humanist ideology.
Their interpretation says volumes more about their faith than the words they put on the screen claiming allegiance to God and His Word.
Then your belief on whether God is the ID or not DOES affect your views. Please tell us, do you believe that God in the Intelligent Designer?
Not us. It is GGG and you that keep bringing up the IDers. GGG keeps talking about IDers on FR but has yet to show even ONE! Except maybe for you.
I've never said what a person believes does not matter if that is the subject. What ID folks believe is not what makes Darwinism false, reality does that.
You buddy missed a courtesy ping.
I am not lonely because you keep posting to me reminding me that you are ignoring me.
2346
Good point! The better the man is understood, the better to understand what he wrote.
Your hypocrisy is staggering.
The number of times you’ve *neglected* to courtesy ping GGG, for instance, in the last few days exposes the extent of your hypocrisy.
You should be the last person to complain.
A bigot is someone who won’t change their position no matter what the evidence.
Show me the evidence where I’m wrong about blacks being responsible for themselves and I’ll admit my error.
The argument could very well be made that you are bigoted towards blacks if you try to say that the problems black people face is not their own doing. That’s a belief that implies that blacks are like little children with big bodies.
As for being wrong, I wish I was. But the evidence is on my side.
And young Master Darwin did a great deal of interpreting, assigning of causes to the effects he observed, viewing the world through the lens his world had ground.
Perhaps...however, it is, at best, a moot point, as the question at hand is not the effect of Darwin's beliefs upon his worldview, but the effect (or lack thereof) of his beliefs upon the scientific validity of his discoveries.
Atheists do not float around willy-nilly, unaffected by gravity, simply because Sir Isaac Newton believed in God and they don't.
Nay not so, the article’s point was as I said. If you wish to raise some connected question, that’s something else again.
However the validity of Darwinism IS NOT the point of the article, Darwin’s belief and expression of that belief or disbelief in his writing is.
2344
I don’t “ping” mr. lonely because I don’t want in anyway to encourage more of his nonsense clogging up my account.
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