Posted on 12/30/2008 3:42:31 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
I was thinking about this part:
"Evolution is not so much a modern discovery as some of its advocates would have us believe. It made its appearance early in Greek philosophy, and maintained its position more or less, with the most diverse modifications, and frequently confused with the idea of emanation, until the close of ancient thought. The Greeks had, it is true, no term exactly equivalent to " evolution"; but when Thales asserts that all things originated from water; when Anaximenes calls air the principle of all things, regarding the subsequent process as a thinning or thickening, they must have considered individual beings and the phenomenal world as, a result of evolution, even if they did not carry the process out in detail. Anaximander is often regarded as a precursor of the modem theory of development. He deduces living beings, in a gradual development, from moisture under the influence of warmth, and suggests the view that men originated from animals of another sort, since if they had come into existence as human beings, needing fostering care for a long time, they would not have been able to maintain their existence. In Empedocles, as in Epicurus and Lucretius, who follow in Hs footsteps, there are rudimentary suggestions of the Darwinian theory in its broader sense; and here too, as with Darwin, the mechanical principle comes in; the process is adapted to a certain end by a sort of natural selection, without regarding nature as deliberately forming its results for these ends."
"This is "the theory of evolution". Riiiiiight."
You simply don't want to believe that evolution is an ancient pagan idea anymore than you want to believe that 'scientific' origins theories are based on philosophical naturalism.
Is there something about it being an “ancient pagan idea” I’m supposed to find offensive? Is there any reason all the rest of the scientific discoveries made by the ancient Greeks shouldn’t also be classified as “ancient pagan ideas”?
That would be the fallacy of biased sample.
All right, then. I won’t take notes, and I won’t get back to you.
You claimed that, "ToE was arrived at by the scientific method and relies on methodological naturalism, not philosophical naturalism." As I showed, that is false. Evolution was an ancient pagan idea.
"Is there any reason all the rest of the scientific discoveries made by the ancient Greeks shouldn’t also be classified as “ancient pagan ideas”?"
Just proving that you don't know what you are talking about.
You found a web page written by someone with a different opinion.
It's still the fallacy of biased sample. It wasn't your 'getting back to me' that generated the fallacy.
You’ve just committed the fallacy of thinking I care.
No, that evolution is an ancient pagan idea is a fact and is documented in ancient pagan writings.
You simply don't know what you're talking about.
Nope. You've just committed the fallacy of projecting your personality onto me.
I’m finding the proposition that they documented things they didn’t have words for to be dubious.
If I did that, you’d be considerably more agreeable to talk to.
I'm finding the proposition that they had to use the word 'evolution' for the concept to be recognized dubious.
If you didn't do that, you wouldn't have anything to say.
Then I’m apparently arguing with myself.
What’s really fascinating is how the argument shifts over time.
“At Cambridge, along with the idea of an extreme fixity which did not permit the development of new varieties since creation, Darwin was also taught that all modern forms of plants and animals had been created and set down in the very pattern of geographical distribution in which we find them today. These two bits of dogma were presented to the students in theology at Cambridge as the only possible teaching of Genesis on these points.”
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1960/JASA6-60Marsh.html
So take heart. The ground is shifting, however slowly.
Care to substantiate that?
They came from God.
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