Posted on 10/17/2001 5:24:59 AM PDT by ThinkPlease
911 RANG AGAIN - A REVIEW OF THE PBS VIDEO SERIES "EVOLUTION"
Ken Cumming, Ph.D. Biology
It was about 10 a.m. in the morning of September 11, 2001 when Barbara Olson called her husband Tom from a cell phone on board American Airlines flight 77 to tell him, "We've been hijacked!"1 Tom told her in turn that he saw on TV along with millions of others that two airliners already had crashed into the World Trade Center an hour earlier. In one grand wakeup call, America heard the cry for "help" from thousands of civilians victimized by Osama bin Laden's god-squad.
Only 13 days later on Public Broadcasting Stations, a seven-part, eight-hour event of grave importance was also witnessed by millions of Americans, but the pall of New York City, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania airline crashes overshadowed all other news. PBS with the aid of WGBH in Boston and Clear Blue Sky Productions televised one of the boldest assaults yet against our public schools and the millions of innocent victims - our school children.2
Both events have much in common. The public was unaware of the deliberate preparation that was schemed over the past few years to lead to these events. And while the public now understands from President Bush that "We're at War"3 with religious fanatics around the world, they don't have a clue that America is being attacked from within through its public schools by a militant religious movement called Darwinists.
"Come on!" you might exclaim. "You're blowing a whistle on American scientists, the very cream of human genius. What evidence do you have for such an outrageous accusation?" To which I say, let this blatant video series speak for it. And let its support documents tell you of mind control beyond anything yet seen in public education. "Evolution" is PBS's assault that's coming to your children's classroom - not soon but now.
The teaching of evolution in public schools isn't new. It was the focus of the "Monkey Trial" in 1925 when John Scopes was found guilty of violating the law by supposedly teaching evolution in a state school.4 Evolution as a philosophy went underground until the advent of Russia's launch of Sputnik in 1945 as the 7th episode points out. This space event opened the schoolyard to the first wave of ideological attack in the form of the Biological Science BSCS science texts for public schools. In 1958 the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study was dedicated to the improvement of biological education and is "generally credited with introducing extensive presentation of evolution while excluding scientific evidence for creation."5
A major theme and some threads for "Evolution" came from the philosophical fantasy of Daniel C. Dennett, Professor at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts entitled "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" published in 1995. (6) Dennett imagines a dollop of "universal acid" that is so powerful that it can't be contained by any known vessel. It is a childhood concoction of his much like a chemical Godzilla that best explains what he thinks has happened since 1859. "Darwin's dangerous idea is that Design can emerge from mere Order via an algorithmic process that makes no use of pre-existing Mind." Put in more simple terms, Darwin imagined that instead of God creating all things because His Mind was sufficient to make it all happen from the top down, chaos created all things from the bottom up to man in a miraculous cosmic pyramid.
How could this be? It can be, writes Dennett because nature selects the best from the past and those survivors have an accumulated advantage to keep on creating new inventions from the lottery of innovations in each generation that can modify life, improve life, and even produce an evolving mind like unto the Mind of the mystical God, only this great and ever advancing mind is in man. Such an idea is at the heart of humanism.7 This "universal acid" then is Darwinism, an idea that can't be contained and is destroying all of the pre-Darwinian concepts (cause and effect, religion, morality, ethics, etc.) much the same way that the Copernican revolution totally changed the way man viewed the heavens. But is Darwinism really a religious idea?
Darwin died on April 21, 1882 and as the video narrator explains in Episode 7. His friends prevailed upon the Royal Society, House of Commons, and Dean of Westminster Abbey to bury him in the floor of that cathedral. These supporters wanted a state occasion with special anthem celebrating the vast social transformation that England was undergoing.
"Darwin's body was enshrined to the greater glory of these new professionals. For, he had naturalized creation and delivered human nature and human destiny into their hands. Society would never be the same. Darwin's vision of nature was, I believe, fundamentally a religious vision with which he ended his most famous work, On the Origin of Species."
Do you see any small parallel to the death of Darwin and that of Jesus? Darwin set the captives free from Biblical interpretation and turned them over to human hands (humanism) to perfect his legacy. And just what was that legacy? God didn't create man, but nature did so by means of amoeba to man evolution by way of the "Tree of Life."
"There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."8
Don't be deceived by that "breathed by the creator" phrase. At this point in his life (1859 and later), Darwin's atheism was under severe attack by the church of his day so he threw in a sop to his readers as if he somehow thought that God was still involved. He really didn't think so.9
In one eulogistic monolog, narrator Moore now elevates Darwin even higher than Jesus for He has no role in man's salvation but the creation in the form of "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" does it for Him. Too bad Jesus, you died for nothing. Can there be any doubt that this is an evolutionary moment when the Great High Prophet of the Humanistic Religion assumes his office, receives homage, and passes his vision on to the evangelists who proselytize those millions of victims that can't protect themselves and whose parents don't understand that another, quiet religious war has been declared on America from within.
Undermining Faith
Lest you think that this isn't a religious war of humanism against theism, let's now look at Episode 7. "What About God?" The narrator puts the sacrifice on the altar: "The majesty of our birth, the beauty of life. Are they the result of a natural process called evolution or the work of a divine creator? This question is at the heart of a struggle that threatened to tear our nation apart," says the narrator. Ken Ham appears on the scene to say, "I think it is a war. It is a real battle between world views." After panning his church seminar in Canton, Ohio and making him look like a huckster through editorial license, the producer unfolds two staged case studies that purport to be objective inquiry into the whole topic of Darwinism but in reality are examples of proselytizing and blocking in action.
Right before your eyes, you can see the destructive "universal acid" at work in undermining both a Christian University and three of its students because the students don't believe that the Bible is literally true and haven't been taught the true nature of humanism.
Wheaton College invited the attack by encouraging a double-minded professor to speak to their students. His message was that there is no problem in being both an orthodox Christian and Darwinist. Dr. Keith Miller, a Geology Professor from Kansas State University was asked to give the keynote address at a symposium on the fossil record and geological history. To no one's surprise he advocates the teaching of evolution and the centrality of evolution as a unifying theory of origins. He didn't find any conflict; he doesn't understand the facts underlying these two opposing religions. There are lots of transitional forms he declares. Some of the silent audience ask, name one and prove that it is. The narrator acknowledges that some students are still troubled after this one-sided presentation. Three students are followed in their developmental thought over time on this challenge to their faith. All three are swayed to an insecure position and acceptance of the propaganda. At least that is the edited version of the video that millions of Americans watched; such editing is seldom trustworthy.
In a second case, students at Jefferson High School in Lafayette, Indiana petitioned their school board to have special creation added to their science curriculum. Over half the student body and 35 members of the faculty supported their petition. "Teach us the facts and let us choose," they asked. They claimed that complex biological structures could not have arisen through natural selection at all, but had to be created by some higher intelligence. After three hours of deliberations, the board decided that creation science couldn't be taught under biology but possibly under the humanities. The religion of Darwinism doesn't violate separation of church and state but creation science does.
Behind the scenes, Dr. Eugenie Scott, Director of the National Center for Science Education (formerly the Committees of Correspondence on Evolution)10 was Available to help the Lafayette students' teacher, Steve Randek, fight off the petition. This is what Scott likes to do - defend evolution. Scott said that Justice Brennan wrote "that alternatives for evolution could be taught, if they have a scientific basis. So that they [creationists] could duck under the first amendment." Darwinists practice their religion in the schools under the first amendment. Since when does a scientific theory of any merit need a body guard to protect it from open inquiry? If the theory has substance, then it should be open to falsifiability and not duck under any amendment.
911 rang again. Did you pick up on it?
References
1. Cantlupe, Joe, "Author calls spouse from doomed plane", San Diego Tribune, September 12, 2001, A13.
2. Hutton, Richard, Executive Producer, The Evolution project, WGBH Boston, September 24-27, 2001
3. Thomas, Evan and Mark Hosenball, Bush: 'We're At War' Newsweek, September 24, 2001, 26.
4. Taylor, Ian T., In the Minds of Men, (Toronto: TFE Publishing, 1991), 232.
5. Bird, Wendell R., The Origin of Species Revisited, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1991), vol. II, 356.
6. Dennett, Daniel C., Darwin's Dangerous Idea, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 83.
7. American Humanist Association, "Humanist Manifesto II," The Humanist, vol.33 (September/October 1973), 4-9.
8. Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species, (Philadelphia: David McKay, Publisher), Sixth edition, 474'.
9. Taylor, Ian T., In the Minds of Men, (Toronto: TFE Publishing, 1991), 126.
10. Bird, Wendell R., The Origin of Species Revisited, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1991), vol. II, 352.
Don't eat much Oriental food?
Not much Moo Goo Lamb Pan or General Tso's lamb fries (apologies to Chevy Chase).
Okay, so you weren't quoting Darwin. Now where are we? I don't thing there's much of a point to be made here, either way. I think we've traveled down a side-road to nowhere.
I think you've stumbled onto something. Rural Tennessee, in the 1920s, was way ahead of the curve.
Please demonstrate your argument as something other than an idea, because as far as I can tell, it is possible that your idea that "other ideas are pernicious infections of the mind that create collectives of men whose purpose becomes the dissemination of the idea and the destruction of competing ideas" could itself be a pernicious infection of the mind that creates collectives of men whose purpose becomes the dissemination of the idea and the destruction of competing ideas. And what do we do with a pernicious virus? We seek to destroy it, since it is propogating itself and thereby threating our existence.
The assertion that "other" ideas are pernicious viral infections appears to be self-negating, as well as dangerous.
I still do not see any foundation for the apparently bootstrapped idea that certain other ideas are "normal" or "abnormal", or that certain ideas are pernicious viral infections. Do you have some type of non-noetic "pernicious viral infection detector" TM that the rest of us don't have?
Cordially,
Everybody has it. It's called skepticism. It seems to work perfectly well when it comes to removing the speck from our neighbor's eye but somehow fails to aid us in removing the beam from our own.
Here are a few simple tests: Does the idea cause the individual to imagine that there exists outside of himself something more important than himself? Does the idea require devotion to any sort of imaginary entity? Is that devotion mediated by gangs of self-appointed practitioners of priest craft? Is unquestioning faith required or expected?
It is not generally a single idea by itself that causes the problem. Rather it is a fatal combination of ideas into a "meme complex" that takes advantage of the evolutionarily successful tendency for humans to ally themselves in groups -- families, tribes, civilizations, nations, etc. for the purpose of collectively preserving themselves in competition with other groups so organized.
Ask yourself what it is that holds the members of a group together? Being in a group was probably the only means of survival through most of hominid evolution. Unfortunately the mechanisms by which men form allegiances to the group can be used against them. That is not to say that even ideas that are utterly false cannot lead to the formation of groups wherein some individuals benefit. But if you examine such groups closely it will be apparent that the good is present in the dynamic of the group simply because it is a collection of humans and totally irrespective of the false idea that binds them together.
I'll wager that if you laid out any religion or false idealogy (Marxism, Nazism, etc.) you could easily separate what is human and therefore real from what is imaginary and therefore not real. Throw out the imaginary, trade faith for trust and live this life as if it is your last.
Thanks. Website looks interesting.
And other objects.
Not last; Only!
Yikes!! The American Revolution/Constitution meme has me in its clutches.
Too bad this meme so rarely infects the very people who have sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Here is the difficulty I'm having with your approach; Your 'test' is itself nothing more than an idea, which under your premise is itself based on chemical and physical processes. How do we know that the information stored in your brain, serving as your instruction set has any more validity than the information stored in someonee else's brain? After all, if the information stored in people's brains all has the same physical and chemical basis, then all have equal validity, based as they are entirely on physical forces. There is no way to distinguish between "good" and "bad" pulses of depolarization racing down axons and neurotransmitters splashing across synapses, since all are physical realities.
To illustrate, your implication that there is something 'wrong' with any idea that requires devotion to any sort of imaginary entity, or something 'abnormal' about devotion mediated by gangs of self-appointed practitioners of priest craft is the result of the same evolutionary process of chemical and physical forces as the opposite of your idea.
It is not generally a single idea by itself that causes the problem.
How can there be a 'problem' with an idea or a group of ideas, since all ideas have a purely physical, evolutionary basis? Saying that there is a 'problem' implies that there is some purpose that is being thwarted. There is no 'purpose' that directs evolution.
Rather it is a fatal combination of ideas into a "meme complex" that takes advantage of the evolutionarily successful tendency for humans to ally themselves in groups -- families, tribes, civilizations, nations, etc. for the purpose of collectively preserving themselves in competition with other groups so organized.
Since taking advantage of the evolutionarily successful tendency for human to ally themselves in groups is itself a product of evolution, what's 'wrong' with it? How can there be any value judgment about any evolutionary events?
If being in a group was probably the only means of survival through most of hominid evolution, then what is 'unfortunate' about the mechanisms by which men form allegiances to the group being used against them? How can there be anything 'unfortunate' about an evolutionary process? An evolutionary process just 'is'. What I am getting at is that your concept of dysfunction, or mental virus, is unintelligable in an evolutionary framework. You have no basis to condemn any mental virus, seeing as how all mental viruses, and indeed, even their mental opposites are the result of evolution.
I'll wager that if you laid out any religion or false idealogy (Marxism, Nazism, etc.) you could easily separate what is human and therefore real from what is imaginary and therefore not real. Throw out the imaginary, trade faith for trust and live this life as if it is your last.
The only possible conclusion I can draw from what you are saying is that if certain people's cognitive equipment were working 'properly', working the way it ought to work, they wouldn't be under the spell of certain illusions, or mental viruses. Yet this is unintelligable, given the premise that that all sensory and cognitive faculties have a purely natural, non-purposeful origin and our respective thoughts are just the result of physical and chemical forces. If that is true, then our brains can only be physically obligated because they operate completely by physical force, and therefore it is irrational to suppose at the same time that they reveal some truth with respect to something other than themselves, that is, electrochemical reactions in the brain.
Cordially,
The knowledge of how to make fire is also nothing more than an idea. But once you actually make the fire you can warm yourself, cook your food, extend your work day, repel predators, and toast marshmallows (assuming that you had successfully converted the idea of a marshmallow into the real thing). You are attempting to deal with this issue as if everything existed on the most rudimentary level -- molecular processes. You are ignoring the fact that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Interactions at higher levels of organization (cellular, tissue, organ, organism, collective, superorganism) follow rules which only apply on that respective level even though they obviously depend on the structure and function of each of the previous levels.
"How do we know that the information stored in your brain, serving as your instruction set has any more validity than the information stored in someone else's brain?" -- Diamond
The information is transmissible by language and art and may be stored and displayed. In other words, it can be scrutinized, dissected, and evaluated, much like we are doing now. Some knowledge of this type is inherently correctible in that it is recognized by all to be a tentative understanding based on the best available evidence. Other types of information are held to be absolutely true and as such cannot be changed without, in some cases, a violent response from the adherents. By placing all information in the tentative category subject to scrutiny and modification the skeptic is increasing his immunity to infectious memes of the sort that plague "True Believers" (Eric Hoffer's book of that title describes the malady well).
"Saying that there is a 'problem' implies that there is some purpose that is being thwarted. There is no 'purpose' that directs evolution." -- Diamond
There has been ever since the rise of civilization. Cultural evolution is very much a product of human purpose and even biological evolution now falls under our command. Our awareness of the laws of nature permits us to purposely decide our fate in ways that were not previously possible . We have in fact been doing something of this sort to our domestic animals and plants for some time (artificial selection). We have been inadvertantly altering our environment in a largely unplanned manner for some time as well. Of course, whatever purpose we choose may well be thwarted by the "Law of Unintended Consequences." Even so, our awareness of these failures improves the chance for later success. The danger lies in having the choice of purpose taken from us by the existence of superorganisms structured to ensure their own survival at our expense. Humans, having been infected with a particulare religion meme (e.g., Jim Jones Cult), become mere cells in that superorganism and have as much choice as to the meaning and purpose of their lives as the mitochondria have about their role in cellular metabolism. That is to say, none. Everything is provided by the meme.
"What I am getting at is that your concept of dysfunction, or mental virus, is unintelligable in an evolutionary framework. You have no basis to condemn any mental virus, seeing as how all mental viruses, and indeed, even their mental opposites are the result of evolution." -- Diamond
I can condemn any "mental virus" I wish. Being human means being capable of value judgment. Evolution has nothing to do with it. Reason, logic, emotion, and just plain common sense are all that is needed to select from among various ideas, condemn the bad ones and adopt the good ones. The ability to define good and bad is also a uniquely human quality though not necessarily refined to the same degree in all men.
Here is an example of how our understanding of physical laws assists us in choosing between good and bad: Attempt to choose the solution that results in the smallest overall increase in entropy. Note that the bigger an entity is and the more energy it consumes the greater the percentage of energy that is converted to entropy.
"Yet this is unintelligable, given the premise that that all sensory and cognitive faculties have a purely natural, non-purposeful origin and our respective thoughts are just the result of physical and chemical forces." -- Diamond
So what? The automobile is just a product of physical and chemical forces yet I can drive it down the road at breakneck speed. Likewise, as I've previously mentioned, the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts. There are properties on the higher levels of organization that can not be predicted from even the most thorough knowledge of the forces that pertain on the levels below. In other words, it is irrelevant how the thinking machine is constructed or upon what laws its workings depend. Eventually we will build a machine that greatly surpasses our own ability to think. When we do that we had better carefully program in a purpose other than the desire to reproduce or we'll be in big trouble then.
"...if certain people's cognitive equipment were working properly, working the way it ought to work, they wouldn't be under the spell of certain illusions, or mental viruses." -- Diamond
Is a cell that becomes infected with a virus working properly? It just has an instruction set that forces the complex machinery of the cell to waste its resources making copies of the virus instead of tending to the business of being a cell.
You make a good point, though. Some people are just plain stupid and will fall for anything. The con men and hucksters profit most from these sorts of folks. The ignorant can also fall prey (children fit this category and may be infected by their parents from an early age). This condition is remediable though and the high frequency with which grown progeny tend to reject the beliefs of their parents proves this.
What if the evolutionary outcome turns out to be that the choice of purpose is 'taken from us by the existence of superorganisms structured to ensure their own survival at our expense'? What if the evolutionary outcome is your fear actualized, that 'humans, having been infected with a particulare religion meme (e.g., Jim Jones Cult), become mere cells in that superorganism and have as much choice as to the meaning and purpose of their lives as the mitochondria have about their role in cellular metabolism'? Not to be flippant, but so what? Who is to say that that particular evolutionary outcome is 'good' or 'bad' in any objective sense? It just 'is'. There is no 'good' evolution or 'bad' evolution. In the grand scheme of things, there would be no significance or meaning to any of it, other than personal preference.
Cordially,
Is a cell that becomes infected with a virus working properly? It just has an instruction set that forces the complex machinery of the cell to waste its resources making copies of the virus instead of tending to the business of being a cell.
Maybe I'm being too skeptical here, but with an evolutionary premise, there is nothing either proper or improper about the workings of a cell infected with a virus, or for that matter, the virus itself. They just 'are'.
Cordially,
The automobile is just a product of physical and chemical forces yet I can drive it down the road at breakneck speed...
Yet we know that you car is not just a product of physical and chemical forces. A car is also a product of design, one of the purposes of which is to allow you to drive down the road at breakneck speed. It makes sense to say that your car is working properly if it performs the function for which it was designed. We also understand the concept of a car not working properly, i.e. dysfunction (i.e. my car) because as I said earlier, the concept of dysfunction is related to the ideas of design and purpose. That is why the notion of dsysfunction is hard to make sense of in an evolutionary paradigm, because evolution is not the product of design or purpose. It is just the impersonal, non-purposed result of a myriad of concatenations of hydrogen atoms over a long period of time. There is no meaning or purpose in any of it. And on that overly optimistic note....
Cordially,
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