Posted on 02/22/2004 2:32:07 PM PST by attiladhun2
Whether a new trend or mode of thought has a generally beneficial or corrupting effect is not usually apparent for some decades or even centuries from the time it first becomes widely accepted. However, in the case of Darwin's hypothesis, the insidious nature of his doctrine was revealed within a very short span of time.
Communists, anarchists, and other social revolutionaries of the nineteenth century were already confirmed materialists before Darwin began to espouse his ideas. What the Origin of Species did, however, was endow their atheism with something of a scientific aura. It turned an emotional attachment to godless materialism into an intellectual one. Bomb-slinging radicals needed not any longer blame their renunciation of the Church and her dogmas on abuse at the hands of some wicked old nun while attending catechism. The lumps on the tops of the heads of budding young radicals as they fidgeted in their chairs administered via the knuckles of Sister Theresa and other holy hags could now be considered only secondary evidence for atheistic materialism.
The old Menshevik revolutionaries were content to let the evolutionary process play itself out. They were still committed to Marx's dialectical process and believed that the Capitalist Stage of human development would eventually advance into the Socialist Stage. Some saw this as the Final Stage, while others foresaw a Communist Stage beyond that of universal socialism where crime and warfare would finally come to an end and the institution of the state itself would become obsolete. The, on the other hand, Bolsheviks believed they could bypass the slow process of social evolution altogether and usher in the Communist Stage outright. In this respect they could be called believers in social-punctuated equilibrium. In a way, they were right, because they did create a Monster, though not the Hopeful one envisioned by some of Darwin's recapitulationist expositors. In this case the lizard did not lay the egg which became a bird, but the lizard laid an egg and a sociopathic-mass murderer was hatched complete with all the accouterments of slaughter.
The notion of progress is an ancient one. A cursory reading of Greco-Roman literature will establish that. It was obvious to a philosopher like Aristotle that human society moved from less to more advanced states largely through the invention of new ideas and products. This was considered quite natural. However, until relatively recent times it was concomitantly believed that some things remained largely fixed. This was considered part of the nature of things as well. Some fixed things included the role of the male as father and provider and the role of the female as mother and nurturer. The institution of marriage between these two was considered as much a part of the natural order as the change of seasons. The law was another one of those things considered fixed. These concepts were like immovable boulders in a phenomenological river.
Darwin's hypothesis has radically changed all of that. Beginning in the late 19th Century, law schools began to replace the Scriptures as the basic legal foundation with the Darwinian hypothesis. Rather than a permanent reference point, the law began to be seen as an evolving concept. With a concept of law now more analogous to a glob of puddy than a slab of stone, the letter of the law and original intent were not as important to jurists trained under the new paradigm. Activist judges could now find ideas like "the separation of church and state" in the First Amendment when such a phrase does not exist there. They then could use this invented phrase to seriously compromise the Free Exercise clause of the Bill of Rights or even to ignore it almost completely.
Although Justice Black and the other members of the Supreme Court who gave us Roe vs. Wade did not dare cite The Origin of Species as evidence in their infamous 1973 ruling, who can doubt that evolution did not influence their thinking? Did they not study the same “monkey to modern man” charts we all did in high school and college? Did they not also hear (erroneously) the same lectures describing gill slits at certain stages of pre-natal mammalian development? This would indicate, one would suppose, a rather fishy ancestry for all us fur-bearing critters!
We are now beginning to see the final outworking of this legal Darwinism. Radical homosexual activists and their allies knew they were making little headway in shoving their lifestyle down our throats in the people's legislative chambers. So what more logical place to turn to have the legal imprimatur stamped upon their particular perversion than a gaggle of judges who see the law as so much silly puddy! The institution of marriage as a union between one man and one woman is now in grave danger of being overthrown by activist judges who see such a definition as outmoded. In their minds if the law is an evolving thing then every other social institution that has a legal basis must be likewise evolving and cannot be considered permanent. Marriage was in a tenuous state to begin with in our modern world, and will not likely survive this latest onslaught.
In the last generation social activists and their friends in the legislative branch gave us the welfare state. This helped to virtually destroy the nuclear family in some minority communities. As a consequence, a horde of fatherless young men was turned loose upon society. Gang violence, drug addiction, and a second and even third generation of fatherless young people are even now spreading their misery far beyond the boundaries of "the hood." Many of these same social activists are now sitting on the judicial bench ready to rule traditional marriage out of existence by fiat. Who can doubt what the whole country will eventually look like after the final nail is hammered into the coffin of traditional marriage by these activist judges. Just drive around any big-city ghetto and view the garbage-strewn streets and the graffiti covering practically every wall. Observe the barred windows and doors. Look at the crowds of aimless young men hanging around the street corners shooting dice and drinking cheap wine. You are looking at the future of your own and nearly every other neighborhood. This is evolution, all right, but not quite what Darwin and his disciples had in mind.
Ah yes, the slimy tenticles of Darwin Central are everywhere. MRRUUUHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh, you said "tentacles" ...
Thank you for that fascinating information, Stultis! Do you have any quotes from Darwin where he says explicitly that evolution has no fixed, predictable direction?Darwin's theory, correctly understood, turned out not to be suitable to uses that the radicals had previously found for Lamarkian evolution. There was no historical inevitability to Darwin's evolution, as there was with Lamark's. There was no driving "will to evolve," but only the lamarkian ghost of "use and disuse" that Darwin retained. Many leftists did make a hero of Darwin, but it was only because they misread him, or because they hailed his winning of general scientific acceptance of evolution, while incorrectly thinking that evolutionary theory would retain its Lamarkian character.
In short, it was in the decades immediately before Darwin the evolution was most distinctively associated with the political left, and it was Darwin more than anyone who took the revolutionary "Mickey" out of evolution.
Sounds like too much fluoridation to me.
I get it, I get it. I've heard of a Gypsy palm-reader named "Mamma La Pinga" but I suspect she's an urban myth.
Confusing the different definitions of the word "evolution" is not a new Creationist tactic.
For those who have not seen this before, I will recapitulate the essentials:
"evolution" in the broadest sense means nothing more than "change over time." Astronomers talk about "stellar evolution" when they refer to the manner in which stars change their structure and characteristics over time. Musicologist talk about the "evolution of modern jazz music", and so on.
None of these forms of "evolution" have anything to do with biological evolution, which is the observed or inferred changes in species over broad periods of time, as explained by "the Theory of [biological] Evolution."
There is no science course in any reputable science department on the planet that I've ever heard of that teaches that there is a single "Theory of Evolution" that encompasses Cosmology, Stellar Evolution, Biological Evolution, and Musical Evolution.
Assertions to the contrary are figments of the imaginations of overactive Creationsists who are looking to inflate the boogey-man with which they have chosen to do battle.
Here's a good glossary of particle terms. We can race to see who gets it right first.
Ughh. I think the creos finally won me over with this. Evolution is eeeeevil!
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