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To: colorado tanker
I agree completely with Johnson that Darwinism as commonly understood is inextricably intertwined with the materialism and determinism that came out of the 19th Century.

Determinism has been dead since Heisenberg's discovery of the uncertainty principle.

41 posted on 05/29/2002 12:47:32 PM PDT by jlogajan
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To: jlogajan
"Determinism has been dead since Heisenberg's discovery of the uncertainty principle." For science, but not for society.

Determinism is the foundation for Marx's dialectic, the view that a "new man" will be born in the socialist future. Determinism underpins the Western secular materialist view that modern society is evolving toward a perfect society and therefore we have outgrown the need for the institutions of the past such as religion, morality or old fashioned political institutions such as the nation-state. This kind of social Darwinism is the foundation for the view that the Constitution is a "living document" that we more highly evolved beings should interprete for ourselves and not be tied down to what was meant in the 1700's. The same view is expressed in liberal churches that teach our more highly evolved society should interprete the Bible according to the "more light" we can shed on the subject today, as opposed to the bad old days when the Bible was written.

If you want to understand why the debate over Darwinism rages you need to understand how Darwin took social and philosopical ideas from his era and applied them to his scientific thinking and in turn how modern society has taken Darwin's scientific ideas and created a social gospel. If you think this debate is about fundy's versus secularists, you've missed the point.

49 posted on 05/29/2002 1:05:50 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: jlogajan
Determinism has been dead since Heisenberg's discovery of the uncertainty principle.

It's the lack of determinism that seems to bother the anti-science crowd.

50 posted on 05/29/2002 1:06:03 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic
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