Well Arafat was certainly a marxist, there were Christian marxist palestinian terrorists in the PLO too. But it's an evolution thread, only one thought occurs to me.
Posted on 04/07/2009 12:17:49 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Judaism in the Year of Darwin
David Klinghoffer BeliefNet April 5, 2009
Link to Original Article
Welcome to the year of Charles Darwin. In coming months, the secular world will be celebrating two anniversaries relating to the originator of evolutionary theory. February 12 marks what would have been his 200th birthday and November 24, the 150th year since the publication of his book On the Origin of Species.
The cultural and political battle over evolution in the United States will intensify. Yet I believe many Orthodox Jews feel that it somehow isn't "our fight." Darwin argued that a purposeless, unguided process--natural selection operating on random genetic variation--explains the whole history of life's development. But frum Jews have no doubt that life was purposefully designed by our Creator.
Though I'm a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, the think tank best known for advancing intelligent-design theory, I can appreciate this response. However, permit me to argue that the Darwin wars are very much our fight, as Jews, or should be.
Begin with the fact that Hitlerism was no less than an exercise in applied Darwinism. To whip up his fellow citizens in the service of a race war against the Jews, Hitler relied on the language of Darwinian biology.
In the coming year's celebrations, you can bet that the nastier parts of Darwin's writing will be safely ignored. As a young man, during his adventures as a naturalist aboard the Beagle exploring the coasts of South America, Darwin had his eyes opened to the good points associated, as he came to see it, with genocide.
In 1833 he made the acquaintance of General Juan Manual de Rosas, who was busy liquidating the Indian population of southern Argentina. "This war of extermination," Darwin wrote in a cheerful letter home, "although carried on with the most shocking barbarity, will certainly produce great benefits; it will at once throw open four or 500 miles in length of fine country for the produce of cattle." The "extermination" (a favorite word of Darwin in his writings) of failed races, whether animal or human, is a great theme in his books and a key feature in the advance of the evolutionary process as he conceived it.
In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin prophesied: "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races."
Evolutionary theory was embraced and championed in Germany faster even than in England, Darwin's native country. Hitler felt its influence, as the important biographers of him agree. In Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Alan Bullock writes: "The basis of Hitler's political beliefs was a crude Darwinism." Joachim C. Fest, in Hitler, describes how the Nazi tyrant "extract[ed] the elements of his world view" from various influences including "popular treatments of Darwinism."
The key chapter in Mein Kampf is Chapter 9, "Nation and Race," where he discusses the obligation to defend the Aryan race from the Jewish menace. His argument is couched from the start in Darwinian terms. He writes: "In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right of opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a mean for improving a species' health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of higher development." He praises "the iron logic of Nature" with its "right to victory of the best and stronger in this world."
But what if the strong (Aryans) choose not to dominate and exterminate the weak (Jews)? "Eternal Nature," he writes, "inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands." He means those iron laws of Nature, Darwin's laws.
Hitler calculated that an appeal to the Germans against the Jews would be most likely to succeed if framed in scientific-sounding evolutionary terms. Mein Kampf was hugely popular and influential, selling six million copies by 1940.
Nazi propaganda hardly sought to hide the Darwin connection. In a 1937 German propaganda film, Victims of the Past, the audience is shown a retarded person as the narrator intones, "In the last few decades, mankind has sinned terribly against the law of natural selection. We haven't just maintained life unworthy of life, we have even allowed it to multiply." Between 1939 and 1941, German physicians empowered by the state under the Action T4 plan murdered 70,273 children and adults who had been observed to suffer from debilitating mental or physical conditions.
It should not have been surprising that Hitler under Darwin's influence would follow up by seeking to destroy the Jews. Not because Darwin was an anti-Semite (he wasn't), but because his worldview is all about explaining life and its mysteries in purely natural, material terms, leaving no room for God. In Mein Kampf, when his use of Darwinist rhetoric is most pronounced, Hitler decries the Jews for their "effrontery": "Millions thoughtlessly parrot this Jewish nonsense and end up by really imagining that they themselves represent a kind of conqueror of Nature." In Darwinism, Nature sweeps all before her.
Judaism says just the opposite. Torah is marked by the call to defy Nature, to do the hard work of bending our personal natures to God's will. It is almost as if Hitler, following the logic of Darwinism, sensed that Torah and thus the Jews who uphold it must be his ultimate, eternal foes.
Today, the skinhead and Neo-Nazi subculture is full of Darwinian chatter. Whether on aggressively Hitlerian web sites like Stormfront.com or in the writings of the racist and anti-Semitic Louisiana politician David Duke, discussions of evolution as a proof of white supremacy are common.
Darwinian science has otherwise mostly lost its anti-Semitic edge, but its leading contemporary spokesman, Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins, can't be matched for his hatred of the God of Israel and for his attack on the intelligent design of life. His latest bestselling book, The God Delusion, rails blasphemously at the Creator that he denies.
But it's not our fight, as Torah-believing Jews? Historically our rabbis have certainly indicated that it is. Long before Charles Darwin was born in 1809, similar debates were being fought in Europe over scientific challenges to the belief that God created and designed the world. In medieval Spain, the science of the day was carried on by Aristotelian philosophers who denied that the universe had a beginning. So there could be no Creator in any sense recognizable to a Torah Jew.
Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi, among other Jewish philosophers, knew it was necessary to directly address the challenge of this scientific doctrine. In the story he tells in the Kuzari, the religiously searching Khazar king stages a debate between a rabbi and an Aristotelian scientist-philosopher. (A Christian and a Muslim also participate briefly.) The philosopher denies that God intentionally created the world but instead argues that a series of natural causes explains the existence of everything. That is Darwinism in a nutshell. Yehudah HaLevi saw it as totally normal and desirable that a rabbi should engage in an extended and very well informed disputation over such issues.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch lived to see Darwin's influence spread rapidly across Europe after the Origin of Species appeared in 1859. In his Torah commentary, Rav Hirsch was scathing on the morally disastrous effects of Darwinian thought. Ideas, he knew, have consequences for the way we all live. Commenting on the idol Baal Peor, worshipped in the most grotesquely animalistic fashion, Hirsch wrote that it illustrates precisely "the kind of Darwinism that revels in the conception of man sinking to the level of beast and stripping itself of its divine nobility, learning to consider itself just a 'higher' class of animal" (Numbers 25:3).
Western culture has since become widely convinced that human beings, just like animals, lack moral choice and responsibility. Applied Darwinism results in the widespread, easily observable failure to distinguish between people and animals, a moral disease we may call animalism.
Both the elite and mass media are rife with it. So the rights of animals become a sacred cause, justifying even violence in their defense, while ascribing a unique dignity or worth to men and women is increasingly suspect. If human beings lack such a dignity unique to them and transcending whatever condition their body may be in at a given moment--fetus, child, or adult, sick or well, conscious or "vegetative"--then extinguishing a human life when it seems convenient to us becomes very easy to justify.
The social consequences range from animal-liberation terrorism to modern eugenics, right-to-die initiatives, euthanasia, abortion and more. In the state where I live, Washington, voters just this past November overwhelmingly approved an assisted-suicide law, the second in the nation (after Oregon). It permits doctors to help patients identified as "terminally ill" to take their own lives.
And this is not our fight? The Darwin-Hitler connection would be enough reason to acknowledge the evolution debate as one in which religious Jews have a profound stake. The moral and hashkafic aspects of the fight make it, without any doubt at all, ours, perhaps more than it is anyone else's.
I’m not sure what you mean. If you are asking how I put up with the God-denying Evos, it is because Jesus commands us to stand for truth, both in season (when times are easy) and out of season (when times are tough). But my main purpose is not to reach the Evos, although I would be glad to seem them come over to our side, but rather it is to reach the people who have not made up their minds yet, or perhaps others who might find themselves drifting into the Evo camp because they haven’t heard from the other side. These are the people I want to reach with the message that God’s creation is still God’s creation, and not the product of billions of years of blind materialism.
Well Arafat was certainly a marxist, there were Christian marxist palestinian terrorists in the PLO too. But it's an evolution thread, only one thought occurs to me.
Yes, you are attempting to explain that the reality of Islamic terrorism is really a conspiracy of secularists. It is tin foil hat territory. Par for the course with you though, as you willingly invoke conspiracy to explain all things that contradict your idiotic view of reality.
==Like James Madison said, they used the clergy as a willing auxiliary for their tyranny.
So you admit that the Soviets created an imitation Russian Orthodox Church to advance their tyranny. Would you call what they did a secular conspiracy or a Christian conspiracy?
==Yes, you are attempting to explain that the reality of Islamic terrorism is really a conspiracy of secularists. It is tin foil hat territory. Par for the course with you though, as you willingly invoke conspiracy to explain all things that contradict your idiotic view of reality.
It is you who must default to tin foil hat territory, because you are not morally or spiritually equipped to deal with the facts. Tell me Allmendream, does the following constitute a secular conspiracy, or an Islamic conspiracy?
“As chief of Romanian foreign intelligence, I worked closely with Libya’s Muammar Khaddafi before I became, in 1978, the highest-ranking spy from the Soviet bloc to defect to America. I was Khaddafi’s handler as he was gearing up these same weapons programs. Moscow had decided in 1972 to use three leftist Arab governments — Libya, Iraq, and Syria — plus Arafat’s PLO, to wreak terror against our prime enemy, “American imperial-Zionism.” Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB and soon to be the Soviet leader, assigned Libya to Romania because we already had close intelligence connections with Khaddafi, who, along with Kim Il Sung, had long been eager for chemical weapons, and to acquire Romanian technology for “dirty” suitcase-sized radioactive bombs. Moscow kept charge of Iraq for itself. Andropov told me then that Syria would be next, if our Libyan experiment proved successful; President Hafez Assad’s brother was already our well-paid agent.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pacepa200312290001.asp
Not entirely, most of the early terror groups were motivated by marxist/pan Arab objectives rather than religion. The PFLP, the second largest PLO member in the early days, was founded by Christian marxists. However the Islamists have clearly won the day.
Meant to include you in 166
This all got started because Allmendream and Atlaw and a few others keep linking Christian creationists with Islamic terrorists (i.e. Islamist terrorists = creationists, Christian YECs = creationists, therefore Christian creationists and Islamic terrorists are the same).
I’m not denying there are Islamic terrorists. My main point is that the Soviets (read revolutionary materialists) are primarily responsible for most of the terrorist groups (to include Islamist terror groups) that we see today. Not only that, many of the so-called Islamic terrorist groups we see today are in reality revolutionary materialists. That is why we see Che Guevarra’s picture adorning the flags lining the streets of Hezballah strongholds in Lebanon. That is why, in a recent study on suicide bombers, the majority of Hezballah suicide bombers turned out to be secular socialists and communists. The PLO was obviously Marxist-Leninist, but were treated as Muslim extremists by the MSM. That is why the majority of the top commanders in the Taliban were former communists who conveniently grew beards. Almost the entire cast of modern Islamist terrorists got their start because of the Soviet decision to create Muslim terrorist organizations to fan the flames of hatred towards the “main enemy” (read: the United States and Israel). So if they want to try and create a phony link between Christian creationists and Islamist terror, I think it’s only fair to point out the VERY REAL links between revolutionary materialism and the same.
A lot of truth in that, in many cases the Islamists have piggybacked on the success of the early marxist groups.
Left out the creationist “link” since I think it’s nonsensical.
It is, that’s the point!
That you would attempt to portray Hezballah, the “party of God” as a bunch of secular “temple of Darwin fanatics” shows that there is no illogical depths you will not plumb in order to try to break the link between Islam and terrorism.
As you say “the Islamists have clearly won the day” in that region; they own the vast majority of the terrorist groups in that region, and they recruit members and justify their actions using the Quran.
He took a bad thing and made it worse (evolution). He took a good thing and twisted it (Christianity).
About the only thing I can think of on the top of my head he made better was the autobahn. ;)
I answered your question, I even provided a historical quote from James Madison about tyranny using the clergy to curtail liberty. That was what the Soviets used everything for, including the Russian Orthodox Church, to cement their power and to restrict the liberty of its subjects.
It may not be the answer you want, but it is an answer, nor have you denied that it is a correct answer.
Now why don’t you answer my question about the Pope? Do you think he too lacks faith in the Bible for believing exactly as I do?
Why are you so frightened to answer the question GGG?
I’m an evangelical protestant, so why do you keep bringing up the Pope? And yes, like so many protestant compromisers, I think the Pope is wrong to give the Evos priority over GOD’S WORD. And btw, many Catholics still hold to young age creation, which is the traditional position of the Catholic church.
PS YOU HAVE STILL NOT ANSWERED MY QUESTIONS. HERE THEY ARE AGAIN:
So you admit that the Soviets created an imitation Russian Orthodox Church to advance their tyranny. Would you call what they did a secular conspiracy or a Christian conspiracy?
It is you who must default to tin foil hat territory, because you are not morally or spiritually equipped to deal with the facts. Tell me Allmendream, does the following constitute a secular conspiracy, or an Islamic conspiracy?
“As chief of Romanian foreign intelligence, I worked closely with Libya’s Muammar Khaddafi before I became, in 1978, the highest-ranking spy from the Soviet bloc to defect to America. I was Khaddafi’s handler as he was gearing up these same weapons programs. Moscow had decided in 1972 to use three leftist Arab governments — Libya, Iraq, and Syria — plus Arafat’s PLO, to wreak terror against our prime enemy, “American imperial-Zionism.” Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB and soon to be the Soviet leader, assigned Libya to Romania because we already had close intelligence connections with Khaddafi, who, along with Kim Il Sung, had long been eager for chemical weapons, and to acquire Romanian technology for “dirty” suitcase-sized radioactive bombs. Moscow kept charge of Iraq for itself. Andropov told me then that Syria would be next, if our Libyan experiment proved successful; President Hafez Assad’s brother was already our well-paid agent.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pacepa200312290001.asp
Do you feel the Pope lacks faith in God?
You still have not answered the question. I didn't ask if you thought the Pope was wrong. I asked that if you think I lack faith for accepting scientific evidence, do you also think the Pope lacks faith in God?
Do you feel the Pope lacks faith in God?
And it was both a secular and a Christian conspiracy of collusion between the clergy and the tyrant, just as James Madison foretold.
And your second example is both a Communist and an Islamist cooperation; it wasn't much of a “conspiracy” as the entire world knew that while we backed Israel, the Soviets backed the Arabs.
To be honest, I really don’t pay much attention to the Pope, unless he is making statements that affect me politically. As to how much faith the Pope has, I have no idea, why don’t you ask him. But I do know this, when it comes to God’s Word vs. Darwinian evolution, the Pope has chosen to defer to the latter, which represents a compromise of God’s Word...whether it is being done by a Protestant or a Catholic is immaterial.
You still have not directly answered the question GGG.
You say I lack faith in God for accepting scientific findings, yet you quail in fear at extending this generalization to the leader of the largest Christian denomination.
Do you think the Pope lacks faith in God for accepting these same findings?
Do you think the Pope lacks faith in God?
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