The Real Ideological Root of Terrorism-DARWINISM AND MATERIALISM

Turan

[slhill]

So let's get this straight. In response to a huge terror attack committed by DEEPLY RELIGIOUS believers in an ISLAMIC THEOCRACY who called upon traditions of violence that stretch back hundreds and thousands of years -- you're quoting an article that blames *Darwin*? That's really something.

[bluetoad]

Here you go…



and instructions.

[Lexington Green]

just another coffee shop intellectual... using his mind as a toy rather than a tool

[Gumlegs]

So, therefore, before Darwin there was no violence and no religious strife.

Right.

[Eddeche]

The Real Ideological Root of Terrorism DARWINISM AND MATERIALISM

Nope.

The correct answer is.... Cheez Whiz

[Plummz]

Yes, the Taliban teaches fundamentalist darwinism to their young men.

[Paradox]

I get it, it was Osama Bin Darwin who is to blame!

[HEY4QDEMS]

I thought it was liquid soap.

[Cicero]

Actually, these guys would be the first to shoot anyone they suspected of being a materialist. That's precisely why they hate the U.S.--because they regard us as materialists and secularists--which is, I am afraid, the face that we show the world, especially when people like Clinton represent us.

I happen to agree with you that Darwinism is one of the sources of violence in the twentieth century. Nazi ideology, and even the Marxist idea of "progress," rely on Darwinist ideas. But those were basically modernist movements. Now we are dealing with people who repudiate modernism, root and branch.

I understand your desire to exonerate Islam of the blame. Turkey has handled these matters better than perhaps any other primarily Islamic country. Nevertheless, the force behind the attacks is a movement, a sect, or a distortion of Islam. I hope a majority of Muslims will regard it as a distortion and treat it accordingly. No one but Muslims can deal with with the festering roots of the problem in the long run. In that regard, I wish you every success.

[Physicist]

We Darwinists have been called nazis and communists on FreeRepublic for years. I wonder why it took three and a half weeks to get around to calling us terrorists, too?

I guess some religious fanatics just have nothing better to do.

[general_re]

Darwin was influenced by the social theories of Malthus, who defined ruthlessness as a law of nature. Darwin's source of inspiration on this subject was the British economist Thomas Malthus's book An Essay on the Principle of Population. Left to their own devices, Malthus calculated that the human population increased rapidly. In his view, the main influences that kept populations under control were disasters such as war, famine and disease. In short, according to this brutal claim, some people had to die for others to live. Existence came to mean 'permanent war.'

...

As a result of this cruel policy, the weak, and those who lost the struggle for survival would be eliminated, and as a result the rapid rise in population would be balanced out. This so-called 'oppression of the poor' policy was actually carried out in 19th century Britain. An industrial order was set up in which children of eight and nine were made to work sixteen hours a day in the coal mines and thousands died from the terrible conditions. The 'struggle for survival' demanded by Malthus's theory led to millions of Britons leading lives full of suffering.

I think you need to go back and re-read Malthus. There are plenty of ways to criticize him, but this overstatement is not a very good one. In a nutshell, Malthus said that either populations check their growth internally, or external forces do it for them in less pleasant ways. Anyone who's ever had the chance to witness population explosions and crashes in their local deer population - good years lead to population rises, and later famine and disease begin wiping them out by the hundreds - can quite readily testify to the basic truth of this notion.

So, as one way of avoiding such things, humans provide a check on the deer population by hunting, among other things. But either way, the deer population will be checked, whether it's by hunting or by starving deer dropping dead on your lawn. This is so obviously true to anyone with any hunting experience, I'm sort of surprised you've disputed it.

Criticize Malthus for the things he got wrong, not the things he got right. The fact that you don't like what you consider to be the implications of what Malthus said has absolutely no bearing on the truth or falsity of it.

[slhill]

Another thing....statements like this:
Actually, when Darwinism is taken away, no philosophy of 'conflict' remains. The three monotheistic religions that most people in the world believe in, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all oppose violence.
are really irritating. Quakers are firm pacifists, but mainstream Judaism, Islam and Christianity are *not* pacifist religions. Each believes in the legitimacy of conflict and killing under certain circumstances (the circumstances being a matter of theological dispute, of course). This sort of mis-characterisation is childish polemic.

[Eddeche]

I thought it was liquid soap.

Dammit, now i'll have to revise my whole theory..

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

So where are all the English terrorists, ya goofball??

[TomSmedley]

For instance, historians note the fact that Stalin was religious in his youth, but became an atheist because of Darwin's books.

Robert E. Heinlein had a similar conversion, at age 13, upon encountering Darwin. His Baptist conditioning allowed him to produce a stream of generally wholesome juvenile adventure stories. As he aged, however, and became more consistent with his adopted faith, Heinlein's work became less coherent, and more pornographic. (c.f. The Rolling Stones vs. The Cat That Walked Through Walls)

I realized at age 9 that my Catholic faith with its doctrine of Creation could not co-exist with the darwinism proclaimed by "science." Since "science" was the source of all the great innovations of modern life, then, "science" must be right!

Yet, the materialist universe is bleak, lonely, impersonal, and ultimately pointless. For a while, I sought solace in new age thinking -- adoration of an evolving deity inside an evolving universe. And learned the hard way that that way lies madness.

Biblical Christianity, with its doctrine of creation, turns out to be a far more reliable foundation for knowledge. Since we are rational creatures, made in God's image, it is possible for us to truly know the unverse which He has also made.

I appreciate Turan's effort to step back from the urgent, and point out the bigger picture. Not all done in the name of Islam is Islamic. The leaders of terrorists do not appear to be true believers, but rather, manipulative users of symbols. They are highly educated products of wealth and priviledge -- who prey upon, and use, the human debris that is looking for a cause.

[jlogajan]

Yes, the Taliban teaches fundamentalist darwinism to their young men.

Yeah, I noticed that. :-)

This screed proves once again that jihadists come in all flavors. Fundamentalist wackos come from every religion.

[TomSmedley]

So where are all the English terrorists, ya goofball??

Seeing to it that a few million offspring of "less favored races" are slaughtered every year. Ever notice how the "populations" that population experts most worry about "controlling" are non-white? And how much wanton slaughter of the unborn is enabled by American and English taxes? And the foundations that also bankroll the eugenicists? Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Review featured articles by German Nazis during the 1930s, since Planned Parenthood and National Socialism are sibligs, daughters of the eugenics movment that sought to create, in Sanger's words, a "race of throroughbreds," and dismissed people of color as "human weeds."

[uncbob]

Yep there was no violence or wars before Darwin's theory