Kalamata:
">>Joe the Science Denier says..." Still Rules #5, #6 & #7, post #272.
Kalamata: "Fools will. The wise know that it is God that gives life."
All of natural science then are "fools", for wishing to learn how God does what He does.
Kalamata: "If the schools and parents object to having the religion of evolution rammed down the children's throats, you can always send in the federal troops."
But in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District it was the school board which tried to ram Creationism down the students' throats and the result was voters voted out the school board.
Kalamata: "I seem to recall that "scientists" who clung to the pagan philosophies of Ptolemy and Aristotle in the days of Galileo, also required the assistance of the sword of the State to "stay in business"."
Isn't it odd how memory plays tricks on you?
Galileo was the scientist who discovered things the Church said the Bible didn't approve of.
So it was the Bible-believing Church who tried & convicted the scientist Galileo, and yet, somehow in Kalamata's mind it was the other way around.
How remarkable.
Kalamata: "I always question the motives of fanatical antichristian bigots, as well as fanatical promoters of atheism.
In the case of Shermer, he is both."
So, do you think Shermer was wrong to debunk Holocaust deniers?
Kalamata: "Shermer is wrong in the way he abuses the memory of the holocaust victims to promote his wicked agenda? You, likewise."
So, are you saying, because Shermer agrees with evolution he has no right to debunk Holocaust deniers?
Kalamata: "For example, in Shermer's book, he marginalized the memory of the holocaust victims by attempting to conflate holocaust deniers with those who are attempting to expose the evil of the very theory that helped precipitate the holocaust in the first place.
That, in itself, is a valid reason to question his motives, if not to denounce them."
I have Shermer's year 2000 book debunking Holocaust deniers and it says nothing -- zero, nada -- about other types of deniers.
So I see no reason to question Shermer's motives in attacking Holocaust deniers, do you?
Kalamata: "It is much more likely the holocaust would have never happened, if not for Charlie Darwin's books.
It was Darwin who marginalized humans with his insane ape-to-man myth: the same humans who in western civilization almost universally believed to have been made in the image of God, until Charlie came along."
Sadly, it's not true that Nazis invented anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism has been with us for a very long time, in one form or another.
Nazis were far from the first people to murder Jews just for their religious beliefs, what Nazis did was simply apply concepts of mass production to mass destruction of Jews.
In that sense, the Holocaust owed far more to, for example, Henry Ford than to Charles Darwin.
Kalamata quoting Weikart 2013: "Therein Graf combated Lamarckism and promoted Darwinian evolution through natural selection.
He claimed that knowing about human evolution is important, because it shows that humans are not special among organisms.
He also argued that evolution substantiates human inequality."
I agree that Nazis and Communists used Darwin to help dehumanize classes of people they wished to destroy.
But in Stalin's case especially, he was far more influenced by Darwin's atheist contemporary -- Marx's ideas on class warfare.
Hitler too had no need of Darwin to support his own ideas of "herrenvolk" and "untermenschen".
Indeed, Hitler's propaganda was all about ancient Teutonic myths, Wagner & Nietszche, not Darwin's scientific theory.
Kalamata: "It is not difficult to see how, with only minor extrapolation, the Nazi's were able to take un-natural selection to another "level", breeding only the "fittest" of men to become members of a master race (Aryans, or course), and eliminating all but the slave nations they were to rule over. "
Your point here is not entirely untrue, but there is more to this story.
I'll repeat, Nazis didn't need Darwin to justify their ideas of racial superiority because they had a much better example they could easily see and carefully study -- of just how "herrenvolk" should treat their despised "untermenschen".
It was the United States 1920s era South, of course.
Kalamata: "It is past time the world is freed from the evil religion of evolutionism."
I think any science, not just evolution, in the hands of evil people can become a weapon of evil.
As conservatives must constantly remind opponents of the 2nd Amendment: guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Darwin's theory itself killed nobody. ![]()
>>Kalamata: "Fools will. The wise know that it is God that gives life."
>>Joe said, "All of natural science then are "fools", for wishing to learn how God does what He does."
If that was the case, I would agree with you; and many scientists, especially those in the Renaissance, and even today, were/are trying to understand how God did it. But Origin of Life researchers are almost exclusively trying to prove that God didn't do it.
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>>Kalamata: "If the schools and parents object to having the religion of evolution rammed down the children's throats, you can always send in the federal troops."
>>Joe said, "But in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District it was the school board which tried to ram Creationism down the students' throats and the result was voters voted out the school board.
Nonsense. It was thugs from the evolutionism cult, along with their best buds -- the anti-Constitution, anti-Christian ACLU -- that sued, not the local citizens.
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>>Kalamata: "I seem to recall that "scientists" who clung to the pagan philosophies of Ptolemy and Aristotle in the days of Galileo, also required the assistance of the sword of the State to "stay in business"."
>>Joe said, "Isn't it odd how memory plays tricks on you? Galileo was the scientist who discovered things the Church said the Bible didn't approve of. So it was the Bible-believing Church who tried & convicted the scientist Galileo, and yet, somehow in Kalamata's mind it was the other way around.
'Nice' attempt to spin the truth, but it was not the Bible they were protecting, but pagan philosophies. The same is true for much of the Church orthodoxy, today, who have been brainwashed into promoting the atheist philosophies of Darwin and Lyell, rather than the historical and scientifically accurate doctrines of Moses and Christ.
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>>Kalamata: "I always question the motives of fanatical antichristian bigots, as well as fanatical promoters of atheism. In the case of Shermer, he is both."
>>Joe said, "So, do you think Shermer was wrong to debunk Holocaust deniers? . . . are you saying, because Shermer agrees with evolution he has no right to debunk Holocaust deniers?
I question his motives, in particular his continuous attempt to redefine left-wing socialist neo-Nazis and skin-heads as right-wingers. In fact, he openly labels every Holocaust denying individual and organization as "right-wing". Is it any wonder that brainwashed leftist students think all republicans and conservatives (you know, "us", the "right-wing"), including the Trump administration, are Nazis?
With people like Shermer and his side-kick Prothero out there spreading far-left propaganda, conservatives do not need any more enemies. I cannot imagine how any true conservative could support Michael Shermer, for any reason.
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>>Kalamata: "For example, in Shermer's book, he marginalized the memory of the holocaust victims by attempting to conflate holocaust deniers with those who are attempting to expose the evil of the very theory that helped precipitate the holocaust in the first place. That, in itself, is a valid reason to question his motives, if not to denounce them."
>Joe wrote, I have Shermer's year 2000 book debunking Holocaust deniers and it says nothing -- zero, nada -- about other types of deniers. So I see no reason to question Shermer's motives in attacking Holocaust deniers, do you?
I surveyed Shermer's deceptive book for key words and phrases, in both the text and reference titles. This is what I found, in general:
Shermer mentions the words "right wing" 18 times, all in improper context, for example, he defines left-wing, big-government, socialist neo-Nazis as "right-wing".
Shermer mentions "creationist" or "creationism" 10 times, all in the context of guilt by association of being a "denier". What does that have to do with the holocaust? NOTHING! But Shermer makes it appear that the neo-Nazis, skin-heads, and creationists are all part of the great "right-wing" conspiracy.
Shermer mentions "conservative" or "neoconservative" 12 times, all in the context of guilt by association, apparently relying on the fact that some have labeled a holocaust denier or two as being "conservative".
Shermer mentions "anti-semite" or "anti-semitism" over 60 times, but in no case does he assign "anti-semitism" to any anti-Christian evolutionist, or to the Democrat Party (which is loaded with anti-semites,) but rather reserves his associations to the socialist Neo-Nazi's (e.g., the "right wing") and Christian fundamentalists (e.g, the "right-wing"). He did mention, off-hand, that someone claimed that Karl Marx was anti-semitic, but he didn't elaborate
On the other hand, Shermer mentions the phrase "left-wing" only twice; in one instance regarding a left-winger who who sued for being falsely accused of being a holocaust denier:
"One of those CNRS scientists was Gabor Rittersporn, who was accused in the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung of denying that the Nazi gas chambers had been used for mass homicide. In response Rittersporn successfully sued the paper and cleared his name, but in the trial it came out that in the 1970s and 1980s he belonged to 'extreme left-wing groups that favoured free expression for revisionists.' The article pinpointed the free speech problem for the CNRS, 'which is split between the need to preserve academic freedom and a desire to discipline such individuals.'" [Shermer & Grobman, "Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It." University of California Press, Rev Ed, 2009, p.11]
In the other instance, Shermer attempted to distance the left-wing from the word "authoritarianism", by shifting the word to the Neo-Nazis, who he identifies as "right-wing" in other places:
"An interesting puzzle sociologists have been working on is what is called the phenomenon of “left-wing authoritarianism,” which, as Goertzel notes, should be a contradiction in terms: 'Leftist protesters are usually compassionate people who empathize deeply with the suffering of others, while authoritarians, such as the Nazis and their apologists, have only hatred and disdain for society’s victims." [Ibid. p.91]
All in all, Shermer went out of his way to avoid mentioning the flagrant anti-semitism on the left, except for the case of the Neo-Nazis, which he redefined as "right-wing." At best, his book can be described as an anti-conservative, anti-Christian propaganda piece, disguised as a treatise on holocaust denial.
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>>Kalamata: "It is much more likely the holocaust would have never happened, if not for Charlie Darwin's books. It was Darwin who marginalized humans with his insane ape-to-man myth: the same humans who in western civilization almost universally believed to have been made in the image of God, until Charlie came along."
>>Joe said, "Sadly, it's not true that Nazis invented anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism has been with us for a very long time, in one form or another. Nazis were far from the first people to murder Jews just for their religious beliefs, what Nazis did was simply apply concepts of mass production to mass destruction of Jews. In that sense, the Holocaust owed far more to, for example, Henry Ford than to Charles Darwin.
You can thank Charlie for planting the seed for extermination, as follows:
"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 civilised 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." [Affinities and Genealogies, in Darwin, Charles, "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex." John Murray, 2nd Ed, 1888, Chap VI, p.156]
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>>Kalamata quoting Weikart 2013: "Therein Graf combated Lamarckism and promoted Darwinian evolution through natural selection. He claimed that knowing about human evolution is important, because it shows that humans are not special among organisms. He also argued that evolution substantiates human inequality."
>>Joe said, I agree that Nazis and Communists used Darwin to help dehumanize classes of people they wished to destroy. But in Stalin's case especially, he was far more influenced by Darwin's atheist contemporary -- Marx's ideas on class warfare. Hitler too had no need of Darwin to support his own ideas of "herrenvolk" and "untermenschen". Indeed, Hitler's propaganda was all about ancient Teutonic myths, Wagner & Nietszche, not Darwin's scientific theory."
Not according to the historians I have read. Have you ever read these statements written by an evolutionist about the days of Hitler?
"The leader of Germany is an evolutionist not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. For him the national 'front' of Europe is also the evolutionary 'front'; he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people. He has brought into modern life the tribal and evolutionary mentality of prehistoric times. Hitler has confronted the statesmen of the world with an evolutionary problem of an unprecedented magnitude. What is the world to do with a united aggressive tribe numbering eighty millions!" [Sir Arthur Keith, "Evolution and Ethics." G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ed, 1947, p.10]
"The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution. He has failed, not because the theory of evolution is false, but because he has made three fatal blunders in its application." [Ibid. p.230]
According to a statement by one of Hitler's secretaries, his religion was the "laws of nature":
"One of Hitler's secretaries, Traudl Junge, confirms Dietrich's conclusions. After mentioning that Hitler often led interesting discussions with his entourage about the church and human evolution, she noted that Hitler had contempt for the church. Rather, 'his religion was the laws of nature,' according to Junge. She then explained that the law of nature Hitler invoked most often was the law of struggle, which humans could never escape, because we are 'children of nature.' These laws had brought about evolutionary progress, but only by eliminating the weak and those unfit to live. Hitler would also criticize the churches for taking it upon themselves to protect the lives of the weak, the 'inferior,' and those unfit for life." [Richard Weikart, "Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress." Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p.41]
Hitler frequently used the term "struggle for existence", as follows:
"Naturally, it is easier, as I have said, to consider the authority of the State as nothing but the formal mechanism of an organization, rather than as the sovereign incarnation of a people's instinct for self-preservation on this earth. For these weak minds the State and the authority of the State is nothing but an aim in itself, while for us it is an effective weapon in the service of the great and eternal struggle for existence, a weapon which everyone must adopt, not because it is a mere formal mechanism, but because it is the main expression of our common will to exist." [Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf." Hurst and Blackett Ltd., 1939, p.310]
So did Darwin:
"Natural selection follows from the struggle for existence; and this from a rapid rate of increase. It is impossible not bitterly to regret, but whether wisely is another question, the rate at which man tends to increase; for this leads in barbarous tribes to infanticide and many other evils, and in civilised nations to abject poverty, celibacy, and to the late marriages of the prudent. But as man suffers from the same physical evils with the lower animals, lie has no right to expect an immunity from the evils consequent on the struggle for existence. Had he not been subjected to natural selection, assuredly he would never have attained to the rank of manhood." [Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex - Vol I." 1871, p.180]
Darwin used the phrase "struggle for existence" 11 times in Part I of "The Descent of Man", and over 20 times in the 1859 "Origin of Species". Hitler used the term 16 times in the 1939 translation of Mein Kampf.
Coincidence?
The following book claims the study of Darwinism, especially human evolution, was standard fare for German school children:
"Evolutionary biology had been well entrenched in the German biology curriculum long before the Nazis came to power (this is why it was so influential on Nazi ideologists). The Darwinian explanation for evolution was the most prominent theory taught in German schools, though it was not uncontested. The biology curriculum under the Nazi regime continued to stress evolution, including the evolution of humans and races. The Nazi curriculum and texts espoused Darwinism and rejected Lamarckism, which it sometimes castigated as Marxist, because it flew in the face of the Nazi stress on hard heredity.
"In 1938 the Ministry of Education published an official curriculum handbook for the schools. This handbook mandated teaching evolution, including the evolution of human races, which evolved through 'selection and elimination.' It stipulated, 'The student must accept as something self-evident this most essential and most important natural law of elimination [of unfit] together with evolution and reproduction.' In the fifth class, teachers were instructed to teach about the 'emergence of the primitive human races (in connection with the evolution of animals).' In the eighth class, students were to be taught evolution even more extensively, including lessons on 'Lamarckism and Darwinism and their worldview and political implications,' as well as the 'origin and evolution of humanity and its races,' which included segments on 'prehistoric humanity and its races' and 'contemporary human races in view of evolutionary history.'
"The Ministry of Education's 1938 biology curriculum reflected the biology curriculum developed by the National Socialist Teachers' League in 1936–37, which likewise heavily emphasized evolution, including the evolution of human races. The Teachers' League document, authored by H. Linder and R. Lotze, encouraged teachers to stress evolution, because 'The individual organism is temporary, the life of the species to which it belongs, is lasting, but is also a member in the great evolution of life in the course of geological times. Humans are also included in this life.' Thus evolution was supposed to support the Nazis' collectivist ideals—the importance of the species or race over the individual. This biology curriculum called for teaching plant and animal evolution in classes three and four and human evolution in class five. Of the ten topics required for biology instruction in the upper grades, one was evolution and another was human evolution, which included instruction on the origin of human races."
[Richard Weikart, "The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought." German Studies Review, 36/3, Ed, 2013, pp.542-543]
That was followed up by this statement:
"As seen in [previous] examples, human evolution was standard fare in Nazi biology texts."
"A 1942 biology text by Hermann Wiehle and Marie Harm gave extended attention to human evolution. Of the ten main chapters, two were on evolution generally and another one was devoted exclusively to human evolution. One of the recommended activities for classes was a zoo visit to view the primates: 'Since in the curriculum we have covered evolution and the origin of humanity, during a visit to the zoo the primates will especially grip us.' As this text and the accompanying activity make clear, German school children during the Third Reich were encouraged to see primates as their evolutionary relatives., [Ibid. p.543]
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>>Kalamata: "It is not difficult to see how, with only minor extrapolation, the Nazi's were able to take un-natural selection to another "level", breeding only the "fittest" of men to become members of a master race (Aryans, or course), and eliminating all but the slave nations they were to rule over. "
>>Joe said: "Your point here is not entirely untrue, but there is more to this story. I'll repeat, Nazis didn't need Darwin to justify their ideas of racial superiority because they had a much better example they could easily see and carefully study -- of just how "herrenvolk" should treat their despised "untermenschen". It was the United States 1920s era South, of course."
Have you not read that racism exploded world-wide, post-Darwin, and that Racism in America against blacks was not confined to the South? Blacks were relegated to the rank of second-class citizens in the North, as well.
A book that came out a few months ago titled, "The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North," is reported to argue that racism actually originated in the North, not the South:
"The book ultimately dispels the myth that the South was the birthplace of American racism, and presents a compelling argument that American racism actually originated in the North." [J. T. Roane, "Jim Crow North: A New Book about Segregation and Struggle outside the South." Black Perspectives, May 3, 2019]
https://www.aaihs.org/jim-crow-north-a-new-book-about-segregation-and-struggle-outside-the-south/
I have two books by the co-author, Jeanne Theoharis; and in one she writes:
"We see Rosa Parks not simply as the bus lady but as a lifelong criminal justice activist; Martin Luther King Jr. challenging not only Southern sheriffs but also Northern liberals;" [Jeanne F. Theoharis, "A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History." Beacon Press, 2016, Preface]
"There was no national honor or memorial event for the 1964 school boycott, perhaps because the movement did not prevail, and New York City never comprehensively desegregated its schools. To recognize the long movement in New York and Boston to desegregate schools would have opened a much more uncomfortable set of questions on the limits of Northern liberalism and the pervasive nature of school segregation. It would disrupt the happy ending and challenge the easy morality tale the fable gives us—of Northern good guys who went South to support the movement—and show how white Northerners disparaged and quelled movements in their own backyards... Many scholars and journalists since the 1960s have clung to this false distinction between a Southern 'de jure' segregation and a Northern 'de facto' segregation, making Northern segregation more innocent and missing the various ways such segregation was supported and maintained through the law and political process." [Ibid. Chap.1]
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>>Kalamata: "It is past time the world is freed from the evil religion of evolutionism."
>>Joe said: "I think any science, not just evolution, in the hands of evil people can become a weapon of evil. As conservatives must constantly remind opponents of the 2nd Amendment: guns don't kill people, people kill people. Darwin's theory itself killed nobody."
Guns don't kill, but words create killers out of little minds full of mush. Ask the Columbine killers, who were doing their own bit of "natural selecting".
Mr. Kalamata
