Darwinism the root of the culture of death: expert

WASHINGTON, February 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - What do Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, “father of the sexual revolution” Alfred Kinsey, Lenin, and Hitler have in common?

All these pioneers of what some call the culture of death rooted their beliefs and actions in Darwinism - a little-known fact that one conservative leader says shouldn’t be ignored.

Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation told an audience on Capitol Hill before the March for Life last month that the philosophical consequences of Darwinism has “totally destroyed many parts of our society.”

Owen pointed to Dr. Josef Mengele, who infamously experimented on Jews during the Holocaust, Hitler himself, and other Nazi leaders as devotees of Darwinism who saw Nazism and the extermination of peoples as nothing more than a way “to advance evolution.” Darwinism was also the “foundation” of Communist ideology in Russia through Vladimir Lenin, said Owen, who showed a photograph of the only decorative item found on Lenin’s desk: an ape sitting on a pile of books, including Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” and looking at a skull.

“Lenin sat at this desk and looked at this sculpture as he authorized the murder of millions of his fellow countrymen, because they stood in the way of evolutionary progress,” Owen said. He also said accounts from communist China report that the first lesson used by the new regime to indoctrinate religious Chinese citizens was “always the same: Darwin.”

In America, the fruit of Darwinism simply took the form of eugenics, the belief that the human race could be improved by controlling the breeding of a population.

Owen said that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a prominent eugenicist, promoted contraception on the principles of evolution. “She saw contraception as the sacrament of evolution, because with contraception we get rid of the less fit and we allow only the fit to breed,” he said. Sanger is well-known to have supported the spread of “birth control,” a term she coined, as “the process of weeding out the unfit.”

Alfred Kinsey, whose “experiments” in pedophilia, sadomasochism, and homosexuality opened wide the doors to sexual anarchy in the 20th century, also concluded from Darwinist principles that sexual deviations in humans were no more inappropriate than those found in the animal kingdom. Before beginning his sexual experiments, Kinsey, also a eugenicist, was a zoologist and author of a prominent biology textboook that promoted evolution.

Owen, a Roman Catholic, strongly rejected the notion that Christianity and the Biblical creation account could be reconciled with Darwinism. He recounted the story of his own father, who he said was brought up a devout Christian before losing his faith when exposed to Darwinism in college. He was to become the first ever Secretary General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

“The trajectory that led from Leeds and Manchester University to becoming Secretary General of one of the most evil organizations that’s ever existed on the face of the earth started with evolution,” said Owen.

Once again, there is no religion of Darwinism. As far as I can tell, the term is used to try to discredit a theory of science that *some* people feel somehow threatens Christianity. I do have faith that, eventually, people will get over this perceived threat to Christianity, just like they got over the supposed antitheistic theory of heliocentrism. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the Catholic church un-excommunicated Galileo, within the last few decades.

This cuts both ways: some opposed to Christianity like to use evolution and (shall we re-coin a phrase?) "scientism" as a cudgel to attack faith and Faith.

See also Dawkins, Pharyngula, etc.

There are a number of conflicting undercurrents, of which not all the disputants are explicitly conscious -- empiricism vs. scholasticism, intellectual pride, Pharaseeic impulses, etc.

But why concentrate on the real issues when slinging mud is *so* much more fun, is what many people feel.

Cheers!

Nice quote-mining of Mein Kampf.

It is ironic to find that Creationists are roundly excoriated for out-of-context quote-mining of "Darwinists" to try to show that evolution is either not believed by evolutionists, or is self-contradictory; but in defending evolution, one is allowed to do not only quote-mining, but a type of controlled burn against Godwin's Law.

Try reading the quote in context, mmmkay?

Here's your paragraph:

This urge for the maintenance of the unmixed breed, which is a phenomenon that prevails throughout the whole of the natural world, results not only in the sharply defined outward distinction between one species and another but also in the internal similarity of characteristic qualities which are peculiar to each breed or species. The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger. The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with which the individual specimens are endowed

And here is the last sentence of the paragraph you quoted, which inexplicably got left out from your citation:

It would be impossible to find a fox which has a kindly and protective disposition towards geese, just as no cat exists which has a friendly disposition towards mice.

Hmmm, beginning to sound like "Master Race" yet? Keep reading.

This is the next paragraph:

That is why the struggle between the various species does not arise from a feeling of mutual antipathy but rather from hunger and love. In both cases Nature looks on calmly and is even pleased with what happens. The struggle for the daily livelihood leaves behind in the ruck everything that is weak or diseased or wavering; while the fight of the male to possess the female gives to the strongest the right, or at least, the possibility to propagate its kind. And this struggle is a means of furthering the health and powers of resistance in the species. Thus it is one of the causes underlying the process of development towards a higher quality of being.

Sounds like "survival of the fittest" to a T.

And the next couple paragraphs provide the segue to The Master Race^TM (BARF ALERT):

If the case were different the progressive process would cease, and even retrogression might set in. Since the inferior always outnumber the superior, the former would always increase more rapidly if they possessed the same capacities for survival and for the procreation of their kind; and the final consequence would be that the best in quality would be forced to recede into the background. Therefore a corrective measure in favour of the better quality must intervene. Nature supplies this by establishing rigorous conditions of life to which the weaker will have to submit and will thereby be numerically restricted; but even that portion which survives cannot indiscriminately multiply, for here a new and rigorous selection takes place, according to strength and health.

If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.

History furnishes us with innumerable instances that prove this law. It shows, with a startling clarity, that whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture. In North America, where the population is prevalently Teutonic, and where those elements intermingled with the inferior race only to a very small degree, we have a quality of mankind and a civilization which are different from those of Central and South America. In these latter countries the immigrants – who mainly belonged to the Latin races – mated with the aborigines, sometimes to a very large extent indeed. In this case we have a clear and decisive example of the effect produced by the mixture of races. But in North America the Teutonic element, which has kept its racial stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial stock, has come to dominate the American Continent and will remain master of it as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit of adulterating its blood.

BTW, what does it say that you have to quote Mein Kampf to falsely attack creationists, while utterly misrepresenting the true Darwinist "struggle for survival" memes in it, within a couple of paragraphs of your quote?

So would you rather plead guilty to being a Nazi (YOU quoted Mein Kampf to make your case!); or simply to intellectual dishonesty (I've seen the same arguments posted by Darwin Central members here on FR, btw, but in fairness to you, I don't know where you got the quote from); or to mind-numbing carelessness in your eagerness to score cheap points (you could have Googled the quote and verified the context even as I just did, trivially)?

NO cheers, unfortunately.

Yet they claim to not accept evolution - despite when they need it, accepting it at many hundreds of times the observed rate.

What is the "rate" of evolution?

Not simpleminded: more complex than you're used to dealing with.

Some features are conserved: the "rate" of evolution in those features is essentially zero.

Some features (the ansatz of natural selection) are held to change fairly rapidly by survival of the fittest in a relaxation process akin to Metropolis Monte Carlo.

But, different features are conserved, or subject to change, within different species, or different environments, or different sets of environmental changes, or different changes to the local food web, over different time scales.

And (see the "nylon bug") -- specific changes can apparently be accelerated (given artificial suppression of predation, unlimited food, and a huge population all subject to the same local constraints) for a short time to a specific end.

So who says natural selection must be random?

Or can't God ever put His thumb on the scales without bothering to tell us? (...or YOU?)

Just stirring the pot.

Cheers!

Giraffes did not elongate their necks so as to eat leaves from tall trees; giraffes with longer necks had the advantage of being able to eat leaves in tall trees and therefore they did not have to compete with the animals eating the lower leaves.

Begging the question, but how do we know there were tall trees?

And what was the selection pressure which led to the trees getting taller?

For that matter, what were the list of genetic changes all of which would have to occur in tandem in order for the neck to get longer successfully? (Size of vertebrae, together with proper structure to support the neck; changes in ligaments and musculature; changes in the blood vessels and hormones to signal to the blood vessels in the neck to keep blood pressure to the brain correct despite the increased hydrostatic pressure; etc. etc. ad infinitum).

Some things scale continuously; some have abrupt changes in behaviour beyond a certain threshhold.

Has anyone *done* a bioengineering study on the giraffe to see if there are any discontinuous physical characteristics which would require elemental changes to aspects of the physiology, once the neck got beyond a certain length? And the genetic changes necessary for the individual proteins coded for, the macroscopic structures, and the inbred ('instinctive') behaviours to accomodate these things?

Can you actually demonstrate this, or is it nothing more than hand-waving to be accompanied by personal attacks on the questioner?

Cheers!

All it has come down to is that evos have demanded the right to control the vocabulary and insist on everyone playing by their rules. It is intellectually dishonest to hold people to two sets of standards, forcing them into a heads I win, tails you lose situation.

Full Disclosure: I see a great deal of disagreement among evolutionary evangelists (to coin a phrase) as to whether evolution requires, or is independent of, abiogenesis.

Usually it depends on who else is in the chat room or discussion.

If among the scientifically literate, then it is agreed that "of course" abiogenesis is not part of evolution, it is merely a discussion of "allele changes within a selected population and statistical effects of these changes upon the survival of the population and/or subgroups."

But let fundamentalist Christians show up and it becomes "science disproves the Bible, you stupid fundie, you don't even know what DNA is."

But that of course is anecdotal, and the plural of anecdotes is not data, right?

Cheers!

What is predictable is that if I subject a population of bacteria to ten different stresses, the genome of the population will change such that the stressful conditions become optimal or normal conditions.

Trivial counterexample, but nonetheless instructive.

Subject a petri dish of bacteria to several moles of elemental Fluorine.

Let me know how that hopey-changey adaptation works out for you, mmmkay?

You are taking for granted four *key* elements.

1) The efficacy of the change in killing the target population.

2) The amount of time required / allowed to adapt (special case: something which is uniformly fatal, allowing *no* survivors) 3) 2nd special case: something which is not uniformly fatal, but for which there exists no successful evolutionary adaptation within relevant time scales)

4) The presence of multiple stressors -- lungfish may survive drought, but not backhoes digging in the mud.

And the fact that most individuals do not survive infanthood without being snarfed up for lunch by a predator, also influences the efficiency of how much a beneficial mutation actually *spreads* once it occurs.

Cheers!

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