Sunday, January 23, 2011

Evolution Just the facts Pt.6

Hey all,

So I have a wicked cold right now so I'm going to keep this one short like the last one. I am going to continue my critique of the conservapedia article on evolution, so let's get to it:

Social Effects of the Theory of Evolution:
There have been significant and negative social ramifications of the adoption of the theory of evolution. The theory has been foundational to Social Darwinism, Nazism, Communism, and racism.

- Alright, I'll give you Social Darwinism and racism, but not Nazism and Communism. In the case of Social Darwinism the theory was misapplied to the social structure of Victorian England and some societies since, where the belief was that the poor were poor because they were maladapted to the culture and they deserved to be poor, and later it was meant to imply that the strong were the ones who were wealthy, and they deserved to be wealthy because they were the strongest in society. Evolutionary scientists reject social darwinism as any reasonable person should.
- Racism, yeah I can't escape that one. As an anthropology student I am well aware of my discipline's involvement in perpetuating racism. There was a time when evolution was understood as "getting better" and in social anthropology produced a scale of primitive to civilized when examining contemporary cultures, but not as technologically advanced of the west. Anthropology, and the theory of evolution was also used to promote racist ideas, particularly that people of African decent were not as evolved as people of European decent. The discipline is transparent because we want to undo the harm we have done through promoting the colonial agenda, slavery and the destruction of many cultures. Just because a theory has unfavorable social consequences due to it's misunderstanding does not make it false. Christians are not willing to be this transparent, and even apply atrocities done by people with the same beliefs to atheists, don't believe me? Just wait.

The staunch evolutionist Stephen Gould admitted the following:
Haeckel was the chief apostle of evolution in Germany.... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78)

- I find it interesting that in one part of this article you are condemning Haeckel for falsifying his drawings, and Gould for this theory of Punctuated Equilibrium, and are not using both as an expert here, but let's examine this statement for a second, and ignore the deliberately negative image you paint of the late Stephen J. Gould. It seems to me that Haeckel was towing the party line, no more than Rush Limbaugh was when he suggested killing all but two liberals for universities so people would know what they stood for (I know it's a low blow, but I couldn't help it). But as I have already mentioned, anthropologists did have a hand in this and it was the Holocaust which changed our minds.

Adolf Hitler wrote the following evolutionary racist material in his work Mein Kampf:
If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.

- So the only article you offer for this quote is a newspaper article criticizing the church apologizing to Darwin and forcing me to wade through Mein Kampf myself to see if this was quote mined or not... thanks... back in a few... back, and to my surprise it is not in Mein Kampf... so this quote appears to be fabricated and misapplied to Hitler... nice work guys... way to check your sources.

Hitler also wrote in Mein Kampf:
The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.

- Alright Mein Kampf here we go again... wow.... you quote mined Hitler... nice... here is the whole thing:
Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable.
The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the individual specimens. But you will never find a fox who in his inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice...

To bring about such a development is, then, nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator.
- Seems to me that Hitler didn't accept the evolutionary theory, and promoted the idea of a creator, so let it be known that Hitler was Catholic, and thought by killing the Jews that he was preforming Gods will of punishing the Jews for killing Jesus, and this was not the first time the Jews had been persecuted for the same thing. So can we move on from Hitler now?

Robert E.D. Clark in his work Darwin: Before and After wrote regarding Hitler's evolutionary racism:
The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (Mein Kampf).

- What it seems Hitler was worried about was diluting the German bloodline, which was no different than royal families intermarrying to keep the bloodline "pure". As for the quotation Clark used... I couldn't find it in Mein Kampf.

Dr. Robert E.D. Clark also wrote:
“Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches.”

- So the only citation you give for this is another christian website which is trying to explain the Holocaust, and from what I have found in Mein Kampf Hitler talks about The Creator, more than he talks about evolution and seems to have believed that what he was doing was God's will. 

Richard Hickman, in his work Biocreation, concurs and wrote the following:
It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his psychosis, it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society. 

- Oh, so now accepting the evolutionary theory leads to a psychosis? Hitler used eugenics to promote his racial purity, which was based upon Lamarkian Evolution, which I have pointed out before. Note how all the quotes leave out the part about Hitler being Catholic, and that he didn't accept the theory of Evolution as proposed by Darwin.

Noted evolutionary anthropologists Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler and the theory of evolution: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”

- Whoever quote mined this one did a decent job, but here is the whole thing: The German Fuehrer, 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.
- Though I disagree that Hitler was an Evolutionist, but a fan of Lamark's Theory.

Dr. Josef Mengele's evolutionary thinking was in accordance with social Darwinist theories that Adolph Hitler and a number of German academics found appealing. Dr. Joseph Mengele studied under the leading proponents the "unworthy life" branch of evolutionary thought. Dr. Mengele was one of the most notorious individuals associated with Nazi death camps and the Holocaust.Mengele obtained a infamous reputation due to his experiments on twins while at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

- Wow... that's quite the accusation, how about this one, "a belief in God makes one susceptible to stoning people to death, burning people at the stake and torturing them until they admit to crimes they didn't commit" How does that feel? I don't know what Mengele personally believed in relation to evolution, but his practices were atrocious and no one with a conscience would argue that, but to blame his actions on evolution... well let's put it this way. Mengele also likely accepted the theory of gravity and germ theory, does that mean they were wrong?

Prominent evolutionist and atheist Richard Dawkins stated the following regarding Adolf Hitler in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question." The interviewer of Richard Dawkins wrote the following regarding the Richard Dawkins comment about Hitler: "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own philosophical position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."

- I think the point Dawkins was trying to make was about the difference between objective and subjective morality. If there was such a thing of objective, or God given morality, we may not all understand it and be wrong about some of our ideas, and that if something were commanded by God it would be moral, and since Hitler thought that he was doing Gods will he might have been commanded to do it. See the problem here?

B. Wilder-Smith wrote the following regarding Nazism and the theory of evolution:
One of the central planks in Nazi theory and doctrine was …evolutionary theory [and] … that all biology had evolved … upward, and that … less evolved types … should be actively eradicated [and] … that natural selection could and should be actively aided, and therefore [the Nazis] instituted political measures to eradicate … Jews, and … blacks, whom they considered as “underdeveloped”.

- Alright, instead of blaming it on Lamarkian Evolution, let's look at another theory which was prevalent at the time, and this was the Great Chain of being, by which all life on Earth was ranked, with humans, angels and god at the top.  This is what happens when the great chain of being is applied with evolution. Ever seen the picture of the evolution of man? This is called the march of progress, and it shows an ideology that doesn't exist. Evolution doesn't make one species better than another one, or one "race" better than another, but it does when you use the Great Chain of Being with it.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of Harper’s Magazine:
While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in Europe, it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent... There is indeed historical precedent in the Spanish Inquisition for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science."

- What she seems to be saying is that being Jewish is a heritage, just like being Irish is a heritage, but being born Jewish also has a culture and belief system that comes with it, but I also know a lot of Irish Catholics... So it was the combination of the two, culture and heritage, which was the problem. Nowhere does she mention evolution and it was no secret that Hitler was a racist.

As noted earlier, evolutionary ideas significantly influenced the thinking of the nineteenth and twentieth-century Communists. Karl Marx wrote in a letter the following, ""Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history." Darwin's ideas also influenced the thinking of Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.

- I'm going to let the guys over at rational wiki handle this one:
- Guilk writes of Social Darwinism, and its link, if any, to real Darwinism:
- To a scientist, it's sheer foolishness to try to draw moral lessons from natural phenomena. Most of the so-called "Social Darwinists" were simply looking for justification for their already on-going exploitation of the poor. If they hadn't found it by misreading Darwin, they would have had to go back to misreading the Bible.
- He hits the nail on the head. The writer of a text can't be held liable for the creative, even genocidal, misinterpretations of the original text... just as Gulik says. Most of the objections to evolutionary science from creationists seem to relate to the argument that evolution somehow co-opts the moral role of philosophy & religion. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Evolution offers a how; some people may try to infer a why from the bare facts, but those people are either looking too hard, or too easily offended, or (most likely) both.

Governments under the banner of atheistic communism have caused the death of somewhere between 40 million to 260 million human lives. Dr. R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, is the scholar who first coined the term democide (death by government). Dr. R. J. Rummel's mid estimate regarding the loss of life due to communism is that communism caused the death of approximately 110,286,000 people between 1917 and 1987.

- You know what I'm not going to bother trying to argue numbers here because everyone comes up with their own and will omit things, but what I will say is that evolution is not the cause of these deaths, it was the Great Chain of being, and political ideas, not a theory about biology... sorry. I could point out all the fighting done throughout history done by people who believed that they were God's chosen people and that everyone else was less than themselves, but I wouldn't sink that low.

Previously it was mentioned that evolutionary ideas contributed to the scourge of racism. Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley contributed greatly to the theory of evolution broadly being accepted in the 1900s. Darwin, Huxley, and the 19th century evolutionists were racist in sentiment and believed the white race was superior.  For example, Charles Darwin wrote in his work The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex the following:
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...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 the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.

- Alright so this one wasn't quote mined, but you have to understand that Darwin lived in a time when these ideas were the norm and it was widely believed that the people of different cultural heritages were different races entirely. It is not until fairly recently that we know that there is only one race of humans, the human race, and we know that through DNA. In Darwin's time it was thought that they were from difference races and that accounted for the difference in technologies, but that does not mean that Darwin was a racist. If you read the Voyage of the Beagle you will see that Darwin was deeply upset with how the racial minorities were treated.

John C. Burnham wrote, in the journal Science, the following in regards to the theory of evolution and racism:
After 1859, the evolutionary schema raised additional questions, particularly whether or not Afro-Americans could survive competition with their white near-relations. The momentous answer was a resounding no.... The African was inferior — he represented the missing link between ape and Teuton."

- In 1859 this was the case... and I repeat again we have learned much more since then. It also is important to note again this is not evolution's fault, it is the misinterpretation of it for racist means which is the problem. Please don't point the finger at us and say racism when This passage from Genesis 9:23-25 has been used to perpetuate the slavery of the African's:
23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
 24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
   “Cursed be Canaan!
   The lowest of slaves
   will he be to his brothers.”
- Hello pot this is kettle....

Harvard University's Stephen Jay Gould stated, "Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory." Recent racism directed at Michelle Obama was the result of evolutionary racism.

- I'm Canadian, I don't know the particulars about this Michelle Obama story... sorry. But what Gould said was correct and as I have said above we learn about this in anthropology because the discipline is transparent and wants to undo the harm done.

Also, according to atheist philosopher David Stove the theory of evolution was influential in regards to the sexual revolution.

- So? The sexual revolution was a good thing... wasn't it? Or are you saying that women controlling their fertility is a bad thing? Well if that is the case it will be the topic of another blog post later on.

Genetics, Homosexuality, Evolutionary Paradigm, and Creation Science:

In 1993, Professor Miron Baron, M.D., the renowned medical researcher and Professor at Columbia University, wrote in BMJ (British Medical Journal) that there is a conflict relative to the theory of evolution and the notion of genetic determinism concerning homosexuality. Dr. Baron wrote "...from an evolutionary perspective, genetically determined homosexuality would have become extinct long ago because of reduced reproduction." In the United States, liberals are more likely to believe in the theory of evolution. Also, in the United States, twice as many liberals as conservatives (46% versus 22%) believe people are born homosexual and liberals generally have more favorable opinions about homosexuality. Given Dr. Miron Baron's commentary about homosexuality, many American liberals are inconsistent on the issues of evolution and homosexuality.

- Alright let's examine this statement logically shall we? Yes it is impossible for two men or two women to reproduce, but they have kids. That's right gay men have a child with a woman as the surrogate mother, and gay women have children using donated sperm. So there is a possibility that if there is a "gay gene" it could easily be passed to the next generation.
- Secondly we still don't know exactly why homosexuals are homosexual, it could be genetics, it could be an imbalance of chemicals in the womb, or it could be a number of factors which happen during development, so these statements are meaningless.
- I apologize if it seemed that I was taking a hetero normative point of view there, I have already stated that I'm bisexual and I honestly don't believe that heterosexuality is the "norm" I believe in the spectrum of sexuality and that anyone could fit anywhere on that spectrum.

An individual's beliefs regarding creation science/creationism and the theory of evolution appear to influence their views on homosexuality. Creationist scientists and creationist assert that the theory of evolution cannot account for the origin of gender and sexual reproduction. Creation Ministries International states: "Homosexual acts go against God’s original design of a man and a woman becoming one flesh — see Genesis 1 and 2, endorsed by Jesus Himself in Matthew 19:3–6." In addition, the vast majority of creation scientists reject the notion of genetic determinism concerning the origin of homosexuality.

- Well it can account for the origin of gender and sexual reproduction see here, and here. But that aside the theory of evolution does account for homosexuality... did you know that the world is overpopulated? Think that if we have people who do not reproduce this might help that problem?
- I'm not going to try to argue the bible here, I believe that it was a book written by men, and was not the divine word of god, if that is what you believe then there is nothing I can do to argue against you, but you do realize that by following this dogma and trying to keep the right to marry away from homosexuals you are violating the golden rule right? Just thought that I would point that out.
- yeah creation scientists cannot fathom a god who would "make" people homosexual, but that might indeed be the case... get over it. I didn't choose to be bisexual, I am bisexual, I am attracted to both men and women, and I don't see anything wrong with that, I believe that love is love and it comes in many forms, and homosexuality is one of those forms.

Common Behavior of Online Evolutionists:
In February of 2010, the news organization The Telegraph reported that atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins was "embroiled in a bitter online battle over plans to rid his popular internet forum for atheists of foul language, insults and 'frivolous gossip'." Given that Wired Magazine and Vox Day declared for various reasons that atheists tend to be quarrelsome, socially challenged men, it is not surprising the online dispute was bitter. In addition, Richard Dawkins has a reputation for being abrasive.

- Well this has nothing to do with Evolution, but does have to do with atheists, and I thought that I would point out why online atheists come across the way that they do. They are like this because everything that any theist has put forward is something that we have heard before, and we get tired of hearing the same thing over and over, it's really that simple. This video sums it up nicely.

In 2010, the Christian apologetics website True Free Thinker wrote:
Scienceblogger Chad Orzel described the commentators on PZ Myers ' Scienceblogs.com site Pharyngula, and other Scienceblogs.com commentators, as "screechy monkeys."

- Well what were the creationists doing? Were they repeating things over and over "there are no transitional forms" and things of that like without bothering to do the research that we suggest they do? Information is so easily accessed now, and it's not hard to imagine that although they could, they don't.

In addition, there is a widespread problem with atheist cyberbullying on YouTube toward Christian and creationist YouTube channels. CreationWiki has developed a web page entitled Creationist YouTube video designed to show creationists how to thwart atheist/evolutionist cyberbullies.

- I left the link there because it suggests things like URL redirects, disabling comments, blocking, and using the one star votes... which is something that every creationist uses. Now about this supposed cyberbullying... it happens on both sides...  a lot of atheists often get told that they will go to hell and how much people hope they will die etc etc... this has nothing to do with the validity of the theory of evolution mind you.

That's all for tonight, I'm going to get some sleep,

Until next time,
DD

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