Posted on 03/15/2009 6:23:02 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Some Darwinists will say anything to try to draw attention away from the obvious. The point of my “Scientific Certitude” post was to show that evolutionary theory has been used to support racist views. Darwin was a firmly committed racist, and he was not shy about expressing his racist views:
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.” Charles R. Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (1871; reprint, London: John Murray, 1922), 241-42.
While Darwin was still alive his contemporaries took his racism/evolution link and ran with it. For example, Ernst Haeckl, the great popularizer of Darwin’s theories on the continent wrote:
“The Caucasian, or Mediterranean man (Homo Mediterraneus), has from time immemorial been placed at the head of all races of men, as the most highly developed and perfect . . . In bodily as well as in mental qualities, no other human species can equal the Mediterranean. This species alone (with the exception of the Mongolian) has had an actual history; it alone has attained to that degree of civilization which seems to raise man above the rest of nature.” Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation: Or The Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes. A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution in General, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in Particular, translated by E. Ray Lankester, 6th English ed., First German Publication 1868, (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1914), 2:321
and
“If one must draw a sharp boundary between them [i.e., higher mammals and man], it has to be drawn between the most highly developed and civilized man on the one hand, and the rudest savages on the other, and the latter have to be classed with the animals.” Haeckel, Ibid., Vol. II, 365.
Or how about this from Darwin’s friend Huxley:
“No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried out by thoughts and not by bites.” T.H. Huxley, Lectures and Lay Sermons (1871; reprint, London: Everyman’s Library, J.M. Dent, 1926), 115.
The point of my earlier post was that by the turn of the 20th century the link between racism and evolution was so entrenched in orthodox thought that it made it into the Encyclopedia Britannica, which some would say is the very epitome of current conventional learning.
The link continued to be made well into the 20th Century:
“The new creed [i.e., Christianity] was thus thrown open to all mankind. Christianity makes no distinction of race or of color; it seeks to break down all racial barriers. In this respect the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the races of mankind the evolutionary harvest which Nature has toiled through long ages to produce? May we not say, then, that Christianity is anti evolutionary in its aim?” Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics (New York: Van Rees Press, 1947), 72
Evolutionists, when they are being honest, admit this link:
“We cannot understand much of the history of late 19th and early 20th century anthropology, with its plethora of taxonomic names proposed for nearly every scrap of fossil bone, unless we appreciate its obsession with the identification and ranking of races. For many schemes of classification sought to tag the various fossils as ancestors of modern races and to use their relative age and apishness as a criterion for racial superiority.” Stephen Jay Gould, “Human Equality as a Contingent Factor of History,” Natural History (November 1984): 28, 26-32.
“Since Darwin’s death, all has not been rosy in the evolutionary garden. The theories of the Great Bearded One have been hijacked by cranks, politicians, social reformers – and scientists – to support racist and bigoted views.” M. Brookes, “Ripe Old Age,” review of Of Flies, Mice and Men, by Francois Jacob, New Scientist, January 1999, 41.
The Darwinists who responded to my previous post were not honest. Instead of facing the facts, they tried to deny the undeniable connection between Darwin and racism, or they tried to change the subject by saying, “hey, some people who say they are Christians are racists too.”
This would be amusing if it were not so tragic. Someone said, “There is none so blind as he who refuses to see.”
This is the bottom line:
(1) It takes only the tiniest step to go from Darwin’s theory to the conclusion that some races are “lower” than others. Darwin took that step himself; his contemporaries took it with him, and by the turn of the 20th Century it was “conventional wisdom.” Note to Darwinists: Them’s the facts; you don’t advance your cause by denying them.
(2) Nothing Jesus said gives the slightest credence to racist views. Therefore, racists who call themselves Christians hold their views in the very teeth of the teachings of the Christ they purport to follow. So Darwinists. What is your point? That some people – even some people who call themselves “Christian” – are stupid or evil or both? No one denies that. Sadly for your position, this does notthing to blunt the force of (1) above.
Evolution no more removes God as the creator of man than the study of stellar and planetary formation removes God as the creator of the heavens and the Earth.
Counting down the posts to either a denial that Henry M Morris ever had anything to do with Creationism, or a declaration that the poster had never heard of him.
So if God exercised a logical and sequential process to create the universe why is it heresy to presume he did so in the creation of man? If is accepted that science has demonstrated errors regarding heliocentricity in the old testament because of linguist limitation of archaic Hebrew why isn't it heresy to state that the earth orbits the sun because that is the way God created it?
I base my opinions on my current state of knowledge which I have found to be more than most and less then some. What about you?
Add in:
Histiophryne psychedelica;
the streaked gurnard - Chelidonichthys lastoviza;
and the often overlooked little mudskipper.
I have an MBA and MSME. My undergrad degrees are in Chemistry and Philosophy. However, I defer to those far more educated than me in the Vatican for clarification and illumination on theological issues and peer reviewed science on technical issues. Maybe the point is to recognize your limitations and look outward to increase your knowledge and understanding
The central fallacy of eugenics is that it considers evolution to have a "proper" direction, and that it takes steps to "aid" it in that direction. Embarking on a program to make people "better" invariably means defining what is good, and -- surprise, surprise -- "good" always seems to resemble the person doing the theorizing.
Gould, in "The Panda's Thumb," goes into quite a bit of detail on how biology was tainted by racist Victorian assumptions that persisted well into this century. But I can state flatly that no theory on race has any biological validity, because race is not a concept that has any biological meaning. You can talk about populations that are genetically similar or dissimilar to varying degrees, but the notion of sorting people into a small number of discrete biological categories is sheer nonsense.
What traits are "good" is a fundamental question, and the basis for eugenics. We practice eugenics every day in other species -- hybridized grains, cows bred for their capacity to produce milk, poultry bred for large chest cavities, dogs bred for hunting or as companions of an apartment-friendly size. In all of those cases, "good" traits are those that are useful to man.
When eugenicists talk about "good" traits, the question must be asked: "Good" for whom? To whom are they useful? Eugenics places a value on human life based on how useful it is to someone else, to a ruler or some abstraction of society.
That scale of value is not found in biology. It is found in various forms of philosophy including religion. Bigots throughout history have found ways to tie their prejudices to some widely-accepted view, to give them more persuasive power; in some times and places that's pseudoscience, in others pseudoreligion.
For example, if you are committed to an evolutionary world view, does it make sense to allow people with diabetes to reproduce? How about people with cerebral palsy?
The question presupposes that we should allow or disallow anything in human reproduction. Evolutionary biology is descriptive, not prescriptive; it describes what happens. Evolution does not have a goal and is not a means to an end. The notion that we should control human reproduction comes from somewhere outside science.
There is an apparent contradiction in these two slogans only if we accept Evolution, or perhaps, more generally The Scientific Method, as a complete philosophical set of value systems and ethical constructs. If we understand it to be simply a fact-finding methodology, then we will come to understand that ‘survival of the fittest’ is a theory (at best) based on scientific observational activities, whereas the issue of ‘might makes right’ is a moral/ethical/philosophical question involving cognitive processes much higher than mere fact-finding activities.
You’ve tried that lie before.
The evidence is strong, and totally refutes evolution to all honest, respectable scientists. The rest are irrelevent approval seekers that will get their reward at the appropriate time.
Scientists going to hell ping.
No, it is not a lie.
The vast majority of scientists accept the theory of evolution.
In fact, the more educated a person is, the more likely they are to accept the theory of evolution.
Leaving Creationism the refuge of the uneducated, the ill educated, and those who prey upon them.
A fish with lobed fins and a misleading artist conception to buttress the ‘fish with legs’ fallacy.
You evolutionist guys have no shame.
ROTFLMAO! Evolutionary Linguistics !!!!! No wonder the deficit is so large
What would we do without arrogant, ignorant, self-important bloviating bigots like you?
Once again the theory is of use in explaining and predicting data.
Once again Creationists are reduced to denial of the data, misrepresentation of the data, and “its still a fish” jackanapery.
With the weakness of your argument I am surprised that it took this long for you to resort to name calling.
No need to stop where you are at then, might as well depict the fish crawling up onto hard land. That will be as equally realistic and scientific as the rest of your fantasies.
It is an absolute NIGHTMARE for creationists who would rather muck about in the refuse of their own ignorance.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901168.htm
Catherine A. Boisvert1, Elga Mark-Kurik2 & Per E. Ahlberg1
Correspondence to: Catherine A. Boisvert1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to C.A.B. (Email: catherine.boisvert@ebc.uu.se).
One of the identifying characteristics of tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) is the presence of fingers and toes. Whereas the proximal part of the tetrapod limb skeleton can easily be homologized with the paired fin skeletons of sarcopterygian (lobe-finned) fish, there has been much debate about the origin of digits. Early hypotheses1 interpreted digits as derivatives of fin radials, but during the 1990s the idea gained acceptance that digits are evolutionary novelties without direct equivalents in fish fin skeletons. This was partly based on developmental genetic data2, but also substantially on the pectoral fin skeleton of the elpistostegid (transitional fish/tetrapod) Panderichthys, which appeared to lack distal digit-like radials3. Here we present a CT scan study of an undisturbed pectoral fin of Panderichthys demonstrating that the plate-like 'ulnare' of previous reconstructions is an artefact and that distal radials are in fact present. This distal portion is more tetrapod-like than that found in Tiktaalik4 and, in combination with new data about fin development in basal actinopterygians5, sharks6 and lungfish7, makes a strong case for fingers not being a novelty of tetrapods but derived from pre-existing distal radials present in all sarcopterygian fish.
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Previous data from another ancient fish called Tiktaalik showed distal radials as well -- although the quality of that specimen was poor. And the orientation of the radials did not seem to match the way modern fingers and toes radiate from a joint, parallel to each other.
"The disposition of distal radials in Panderichthys are much more tetrapod-like than in Tiktaalik," Boisvert wrote. "Combined with fossil evidence from Tiktaalik and genetic evidence from sharks, paddlefish and the Australian lungfish, it is now completely proven that fingers have evolved from distal radials already present in fish that gave rise to the tetrapod."
The Scientist: NewsBlog: Ancient fingers and toes
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Curiously, the radial bones of Panderichthys are more finger-like than those of Tiktaalik, a fish with stubby leg-like limbs that lived about five million years later.
Many scientists regard Tiktaalik as a "missing link": the crucial transitional animal between fish and the first tetrapods.
One possibility, Alhberg said, is that finger development took a step backward with Tiktaalik, and that Tiktaalik's fins represented an evolutionary return to a more primitive form.
Michael Coates, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, called the new findings "intriguing" but is not convinced that the digit-like structures in Panderichthys's fin are the equivalent of our fingers.
For one thing, they seem unusually flat for radial bones, Coates said.
"Radials are generally cylindrical. When you look at [a] cross-section [of the digit], they're dumbbell-shaped."
The structures are so peculiar, they might just be fragments of damaged bone, he added.
Coates agreed, however, that fingers and toes—or at least their precursors—were probably present in early fish.
"Nothing comes from nothing in evolution," he said.
Ancient Fish Had Primitive Fingers, Toes --------------------------------
Cordially,
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