Charles Darwin Knew: Science and Freedom

BreakPoint with Charles Colson | 1 Mar 04 | Charles Colson

[atlaw]

Well, I'm outa here. It doesn't seem profitable to argue evolution with somebody who string cites "classically understood sexual perversions" and proclaims with an apparently straight face that "The real problem is that there is nothing there to understand except the consistent misunderstanding of those who begin their reasoning without a rationale for rationality."

[Doctor Stochastic]

It reads better as:

"Das reale Problem ist, daß es nichts dort gibt, ausgenommen das gleichbleibende Mißverständnis von denen zu verstehen, die anfangen ihre Argumentation ohne ein Grundprinzip für Vernunft."

[Doctor Stochastic]

Or in English:

"The material problem is that there is nothing there to understand excluded the continuous misunderstanding from those to those begins its argumentation without a basic principle for reason."

[VadeRetro]

And what is qualifies as a "selection" of Nature, does Nature "select" things randomly or are you relying on some sort of deification of Nature in which it "selects" things rationally, purposefully, etc.?

"Random" and "directed" are not opposites.

[atlaw]

I'd put a finer spin on it. Lawyer's arguments are not evidence to be considered by the jury. It is, however, the fondest hope of a trial lawyer that the jury will consider their arguments factual.

[js1138]

Everybody's bailing out? Just when Cash is about to steer the thread onto the rocks?

[VadeRetro]

A thread about a Chuck Colson column on evolution is not much of a loss, I'd say.

[C.J.W.]

"So all you are really saying is that evolution is a perversion, and that arguing for evolution is just like arguing for perversion?"

I am saying more than that but yes I am saying that the ideology of evolutionism is based on debasing of natural categories and perverting the clear typology of Nature. There is a reason that Dawkins projected that onto others. It is a universal sense that all is not as it should be. A theory that not only does not admit to this basic human sense as a self evident truth but also denies it is probably not going to lead to correct conclusions. One of Darwin's reasons for his theory was that he believed that it explained suffering better than theism could. (An ironic theological argument.)

But his theory still doesn't explain the universal sense that all is not as it should be in Nature.

This is the type of belief in natural law common to religions bearing the "Jewish influence":

"Most of the [Judaic] rules of the law of holiness relate to the basic categories of the natural world and of human experience. Such categories as the living and the dead; mortal and divine; human and animal; air, sea, and land; male and female; past, present and future are common to most peoples. They provide a framework of basic 'natural'
categories that render the universe meaningful.
......
anything that is ambiguous or threatens to blur the boundaries of
these categories is treated as abominable. Hence
the ban on the consumption of shellfish, which are not fully sea
creatures or land creatures but live on the littoral margin of each, or
on the eating of flightless birds, which do no belong properly to the
air as birds should yet are not proper land animals either (Douglas
1970, pp. 54-72) [. . .]

We can see also why sorcery, necromancy, and witchcraft are forbidden
(Ex. 22:18; Lev. 12:26-27, 20:6-7; Deut. 18:9-15; I Sam. 15;23, 28:7-20;
2 Chron. 33:6) and why 'any man or woman among you who calls up ghosts
and spirits shall be put to death' (Lev. 20: 27). Such people are
dangerous because they bread down the division between the living and
the dead or between the present and future (Is. 8:19-22, 47: 13-15).
......
It is now possible to provide a complete explanation for the harsh
treatment of homosexuality, bestiality, and transvestism in the
scriptures. These are all forms of sexual behavior which break down the
boundaries between some of the most fundamental categories of human
experience--the cateogories of male and female and human and animal.
This is why homosexuality and bestiality are condemned in Leviticus and
why in Deuteronomy God tells the people of Israel through his prophet
Moses: 'No woman shall wear and article of man's clothing, nor shall a
man put on a woman's dress; for those who do these things are abominable
to the Lord your God." (Deut. 22:5)

It is easy to see how transvestites break down the categories of male
and female, but the situation is slightly more complicated in the case
of homosexuality. The essential point to grasp is that 'male' and
'female' are complementary categories, each defined in relation to the
other. The male is by definition complementary to the female and only
remains male so long as his sexual behavior relates exclusively to
females. Any sexual behavior directed by a biological male toward
another male will (at any rate so far as the scriptures are concerned)
automatically place him in the same category as a female, for whom this
is the normal sexual orientation.

Because homosexual behavior involves a person placing himself or herself
in the wrong sex category it erodes the boundary between these
categories. This is why homosexual behavior is linked in Leviticus with
bestiality, a sexual practice which breaks down the division between the
equally fundamental categories of the human and the animal (see also
Epstein 1948, p. 135).
(Sexual Taboos and Social
Boundaries. Christie Davies. American
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 87, No.
5, Mar., 1982 :1032-1063)

In contrast, the Nazis who were fervent advocates of the ideology of evolutionism sought to break down the distinction between humans and animals, etc., (The breaking of that distinction has been typical to genocides throughout history.) also broke down natural law distinctions in their private lives.

E.g.

"Why was it then, since we were completely non-party, that our purely scientific Institute was the first victim which fell to the new regime? "Fell" is, perhaps, an understatement for it was totally destroyed; the books from the big library, my irreplaceable documents, all the pictures and files everything, in fact, that was not nailed down or a permanent fixture was dragged outside and burned. What explanation is there for the fact that the trades union buildings of the socialists, the communist clubs and the synagogues were only destroyed at a much later date and never so thoroughly as our pacific Institute? Whence this hatred, and, what was even more strange, this haste and thoroughness?

The answer to this is simple and straightforward enough—we knew too much.

It would be against medical principles to provide a list of the Nazi leaders and their perversions. One thing, however, is certain—not ten percent of those men who, in 1933, took the fate of Germany into their hands, were sexually normal.... Many of these personages were known to us directly through consultations; we heard about others from their comrades in the party who boasted of their exalted friends...; and of others we saw the tragic results: I refer here especially to a young girl whose abdomen was covered with pin scratches caused through the sadism of an eminent Nuernberg Nazi; I refer also to a thirteen year old boy who suffered from a serious lesion of the anal muscle brought about by a senior party official in Breslau and to a youth from Berlin with severe rectal gonorrhea, etc. etc.... Our knowledge of such intimate secrets regarding members of the Nazi Party and our other documentary material—we possessed about forty thousand confessions and biographical letters—was the cause of the complete and utter destruction of the Institute for Sexology."
(LUDWIG L. LENZ, The Memoirs of a Sexologist (New York: 1954) pp. 429 ff)

This was as I recall the first infamous book burning. A symbolic end of civilization and the natural law it rests on. Would I go so far as to say the majority of the advocates of the ideology of evolutionism are sexual perverts who also break down the distinctions of typology in their private lives? No, I think that is a pattern of only the most radical sorts whose belief in it goes beyond the rest of the weak-minded: "This is what I got taught in school." But it's the weak-minded that are lead by the radicals.

[C.J.W.]

So Nature both "directs" and "selects" things now? It seems to me that there is some deification of Nature going on.

[Last Visible Dog]

The odds of a trait staying in the breed is enhanced by a SMALL number of units breeding: NOT a large amount of them.

That is a pretty good point.

[VadeRetro]

So Nature both "directs" and "selects" things now?

So your hallucinations are real?

[C.J.W.]

"Well, I'm outa here. It doesn't seem profitable to argue evolution with somebody who......proclaims with an apparently straight face that 'The real problem is that there is nothing there to understand except the consistent misunderstanding of those who begin their reasoning without a rationale for rationality.'"

George Washington put it this way:

"It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe,
without the agency of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to
govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being. It is
impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being.

Religion is as necessary to reason, as reason is to religion. The
one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would
lose his reason in attempting to account for the great
phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to."
--George Washington

[C.J.W.]

There is nothing innacurate about the summary. It is a summary of an argument that is dumb.

[Last Visible Dog]

You are confusing breeding with evolution. Breeding juggles existing dominant and recessive traits. Mutation introduces new traits.

But Mutations are passed on by "breeding" making "breeding" one of the two keys of evolution.

Keys of Evolution:

Mutation

Genetics (ability to pass on the mutation)

[VadeRetro]

I'll take that as a "Yes."

[longshadow]

"Parade of Un-Dead Tractionless Trolls" placemarker

[Last Visible Dog]

Evidently, creation science is demanding the answers to the same questions on every thread and forgetting them before the next thread.

Why do you keep falling back on this tired old discredited rhetoric? Most people that have questions or doubts about evolution are not followers of "creation science". Sounds like you are just looking to create a diversion, a bogey man (sorta like what the Nazis did with the Jews)

[VadeRetro]

That, risible, Visible!

[VadeRetro]

Should have been "That's risible, Visible!" Well, us Nazis were never famous for our typing.

[Last Visible Dog]

"Random" and "directed" are not opposites.

Could you elaborate on this position. Random means "having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective" and directed means "to cause to move toward a goal" - those term are opposites so please explain how you can justify your position.