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Darwinism: Devilish Gnostic Myth Dressed Up As Science
Renew America ^ | Sept. 24, 2010 | Linda Kimball

Posted on 09/25/2010 9:47:50 AM PDT by spirited irish

Today all people whose faith in God the Father is genuine face a seemingly insurmountable problem with what seems like an overwhelming weight of evidence that evolutionism is true and the Genesis account of creation is false. Mockers and scoffers abound, scornfully accusing the faithful of believing in “an invisible being in the sky and that a dead guy from 2000 years ago is coming back soon…instead of believing in reality,” as one scofflaw said recently.

However, the real issue here is not “superstitious, backward Christianity” vs. “enlightened reason and science” but about one creation account (Genesis) vs. another creation account (Darwinian evolution). The truth of this claim can be seen in the following quotes:

“…one belief that all true original Darwinians held in common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation. This was the flag around which they assembled and under which they marched… The conviction that the diversity of the natural world was the result of natural processes and not the work of God was the idea that brought all the so-called Darwinians together in spite of their disagreements on other of Darwin’s theories. (One Long Argument ,1991, p.99, Ernst Mayr (1904 – 2005) Professor of Zoology at Harvard University)

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” (“Billions and Billions of Demons” Richard Lewontin (b. 1929) PhD Zoology, Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at Harvard University)

In other words, terrible-willed evolutionists have a Cosmic Authority problem, and this is why they rally around Darwinism and force its absurd, counterintuitive teachings upon gullible, misinformed Americans while simultaneously ridiculing and otherwise psychologically terrorizing creationists, among whose numbers are many of the defenders of America's founding traditions. Commenting on the Cosmic Authority problem of many atheists, Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy and law at New York University confesses:

"I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind." (The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me To Faith, Peter Hitchens, pp. 149-150)

Just what is Darwinism anyway?

At bottom, Darwinism is a Gnostic myth notes Dr. Wolfgang Smith, physicist and mathematics professor at Oregon State University:

“…As a scientific theory, Darwinism would have been jettisoned long ago. The point, however, is that the doctrine of evolution has swept the world, not on the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic myth. It affirms, in effect, that living things created themselves, which is in essence a metaphysical claim….Thus…evolutionism is a metaphysical doctrine decked out in scientific garb….it is a scientistic myth. And the myth is Gnostic, because it implicitly denies the transcendent origin of being; for indeed, only after the living creature has been speculatively reduced to an aggregate of particles does Darwinist transformism become conceivable. Darwinism, therefore, continues the ancient Gnostic practice of deprecating “God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth.” It perpetuates…the venerable Gnostic tradition of “Jehovah bashing.” (From Old Gnosticism to New Age I, Alan Morrison, SCP Journal Vol. 28:4-29:1, 2005, pp. 30-31)

Gnostics

Historically, Gnostics have always been notorious God-haters to the extent of consigning Him to hell. The early Church Fathers called them the "lawless ones," as they were idolizers of their own minds, rebels against all authority, immoralists, hedonists, and builders of alternative realities (utopian fantasies) requiring the death of God, for the heart of Gnosticism is "man is god."

While the infamous Tower of Babel was history's first Gnostic project, the Soviet Union and Socialist Germany are modern versions. In his book, "Science, Politics, & Gnosticism," esteemed political philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-85) identifies progressivism, positivism, Hegelianism, Marxism, and the "God is dead" school as modern Gnostic movements. All of these movements are firmly grounded on the Gnostic myth of Darwinism.

In their rage against God the Father, modern Gnostics refuse to be created in His spiritual image, thus they conceptually 'uncreate' themselves through reductionism, which in the words of Wolfgang Smith, means that they speculatively reduce themselves to “aggregates of particles". Reductionism is a tenet of the philosophy of materialism.

Materialist philosophy is neither new nor scientific, but one of the most ancient superstitious beliefs in the world. The ancient version held that matter has always existed and everything that exists consists of matter. According to the modern version, invisible dead-matter spontaneously generated itself from nothing, and then by way of evolution magically produced everything else. To believe this is to believe that the nothingness within the magician’s hat spontaneously generated the bunny.

If evolutionism was a gas-powered generator, then spontaneous generation would be its indispensable fuel, admits Ernst Haeckel, pantheist mystic and ardent defender of Darwinism. In the following quote, observe that Haeckel confesses that spontaneous generation is not scientific but rather metaphysical. Furthermore, this metaphysical doctrine is the essential replacement for creation Ex Nihilo—-the miracle of creation in other words:

“…spontaneous generation appears to us as a simple and necessary event in the process of the development of the earth. We admit that this process, as long as it is not directly observed or repeated by experiment, remains a pure hypothesis. But I must again say that this hypothesis is indispensable for the consistent completion of the non-miraculous history of creation, that it has absolutely nothing forced or miraculous about it, and that certainly it can never be positively refuted. It must also be taken into consideration that the process of spontaneous generation, even if it still took place daily and hourly, would in any case be exceedingly difficult to observe and establish with absolute certainty as such. This is also the opinion of Naegeli, the ingenious investigator, and he, in his admirable chapter on Spontaneous Generation, maintains that “to deny spontaneous generation is to proclaim miracles.” (The History of Creation v.1, 1892, p.422)

Ray Comfort quotes evolutionist Stephen Hawking who in essence affirms that "the nothingness within the magician’s hat spontaneously generated the bunny:"

“According to professor Stephen Hawking, God didn’t create the universe. Instead, nothing created everything. However, Hawking has violated the basic laws of science. In an extract of his latest book, The Grand Design...published in Eureka magazine in The Times, the professor said: 'Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.'”

“It is embarrassingly unscientific to speak of anything creating itself from nothing,” remarked Comfort. “Common sense says that if something possessed the ability to create itself from nothing, then that something wasn’t nothing, it was something–a very intelligent creative power of some sort. ”

Comfort concludes:

“Hawking has violated the unspoken rules of atheism. He isn’t supposed to use words like 'create' or even 'made.' They necessitate a Creator and a Maker. Neither are you supposed to let out that the essence of atheism is to believe that nothing created everything, because it’s unthinking.” (Hawking Breaks Atheists Rules, Comfort, www.worldviewweekend.com)

So as it turns out, spontaneous generation is yet another “just-so” story. However, the importance of this particular fairytale is that it is the irreplaceable metaphysical foundation of the larger Gnostic myth of Darwinism. Without spontaneous generation, Darwinism...indeed all evolutionism…falls apart, leaving only the miraculous creation Ex Nihilo.

Furthermore, the respected scientist Louis Pasteur definitively disproved spontaneous generation just three years after Darwin published his book, “On the Origin of Species:”

“… Darwin’s celebrated tome On the Origin of Species, which had been published just three years before Pasteur’s experiments, sought to discredit the need for God to create the species by showing how one species can transmute into another. But Darwin’s account left open the problem of how the first living thing came to exist. Unless life had always existed, at least one species — the first — cannot have come to exist by transmutation from another species, only by transmutation from nonliving matter. Darwin himself wrote, some years later: “I have met with no evidence that seems in the least trustworthy, in favour of so-called Spontaneous Generation.” Yet, in the absence of a miracle, life could have originated only by some sort of spontaneous generation. Darwin's theory of evolution and Pasteur’s theory that only life begets life cannot both have been completely right. (The Fifth Miracle,1999, p.83, Paul Davies (b. 1946) Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science)

The Darwinian Deception

Colin Patterson writes that after studying evolutionary theory for many years, he finally “woke up and realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way.” Patterson goes on to say:

“One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, or let’s call it a non- evolutionary view, was last year I had a sudden realization for over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. Either there was something wrong with me or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally, I know there is nothing wrong with me, so for the last few weeks I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people….Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, “I do know one thing – it ought not to be taught in high school.” “Evolutionism and Creationism” November 5, 1981 p.2 Colin Patterson (1933 – 1998) Senior Paleontologist at British Museum of Natural History

When C.S. Lewis pointedly observed that the entire edifice of the so-called 'science' of Darwinian naturalism has but one purpose, to keep the supernatural Creator out, he was merely confirming admissions made by Lewontin and many other Darwinists. In sum, Darwinism is a deception perpetrated by self-worshipping swindlers who have been 'pulling the wool' over the eyes of the uninitiated masses, to use Lewontins' own words. (The Oxford Socratic Club, 1944)

Deceptions Have Consequences

Long before Darwinian Gnostics systematically liquidated in excess of 200,000,000 men, women, and children on behalf of communist and socialist utopian fantasies, George Romanes sought to warn the world of the coming catastrophe:

“Never in the history of man has so terrific a calamity befallen the race as that which all who look may now behold advancing as a deluge, black with destruction, resistless in might, uprooting our most cherished hopes, engulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless desolation . . The flood-gates of infidelity are open, and Atheism overwhelming is upon us.” (George Romanes, A Candid Examination of Theism ,1878)

More recently, H. Enock wrote:

“No wonder that Brig. General F.D. Frost stated in the Fundamentalist, January, 1950, p. 21: ‘There is no doubt about it that the doctrine of evolution is the greatest curse in our educational system.’ Whether we read Ward’s Dynamic Sociology, or Russell’s Code of Morals, or Briffalt’s Immoralism or some other book written by the Behaviorist School,—they all seem to endeavour to justify and base their conclusions on the bestial nature of man. This philosophy seeks to.... reduce man to the level of animal nature. The surging unrest, the broken homes, the frustrated lives, the increasing divorce cases, the multiplied number of criminals are but the inevitable outcome of the acceptance and practice of this evolutionary doctrine." (H. Enock, Evolution or Creation ,1966, pp. 1146-1147)

Evolutionism “should not be taught in high school.” Indeed. Gnosticism is the spiritual disorder of our age and Darwinism and spontaneous generation are its toxic roots. Conceptual murderer of God the Father, inverter of reality, hater of humanity, uplifter of Satan as the first 'free thinker,' destroyer of truth and all that is good, normal, and decent; bringer of chaos, blasphemy, hedonism, pathological lying, genocide and other evils too many to be listed, Gnosticism has all but destroyed America and the West.

In his book, "The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me To Faith," Peter Hitchens, brother of the infamous atheist Christopher writes:

"...the Bible angers and frustrates those who believe that the pursuit of a perfect society justifies the quest for absolute power. The concepts of sin, of conscience, of eternal life, and of divine justice under an unalterable law are the ultimate defense against the utopian's belief that ends justify means and that morality is relative. These concepts are safeguards against the worship of human power." (Rage Against God, p. 135)

The Western civilized nations rose to greatness on the wings of just one spiritual faith ...Christianity. Unalienable rights come from the transcendent Creator and not from weak, easily corrupted men. Through abandonment of its’ spiritual roots, the West---which today is a Gnostic-West---is moving inexorably toward its death.

America is the West's last best hope, observed Mark Steyn. Yet America is itself pathologically infected by Gnosticism and near death. Gnosticism must be destroyed. To do this we must tear it out by the roots. This means Darwinism must be uprooted and exposed for what it really is: a Gnostic myth.

copyright 2010 Linda Kimball

Evolution Quotes:

http://bevets.com/equotesh.htm

Related Essays:

The Materialist Faith of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism

Cultural Marxism

Evolutionism: The Dying West's Science of Magic and Madness


TOPICS: Religion
KEYWORDS: creation; darwin; evolution; moralabsolutes; scientism
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To: spirited irish

More Christian blood-libel. You people have no shame.


41 posted on 09/25/2010 5:39:36 PM PDT by Salman
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To: little jeremiah

>> Why not focus on the lies that are told and evidence hidden by evolutionists?<<

You are looking at only a part of the picture. It isn’t much different then the evolutionists. The do not want to take into account all known data by eliminating any understanding of Biblical truth. You are doing the same by trying to focus only on evolution. I believe, to be complete in our analysis, we need to understand all data including that contained in the Bible. Your focus on proving evolution to be in error is correct but needs to include Biblical truth as well to complete the whole picture.

The understanding of the creation account in Genesis is important in that it completes the view of how this world came to be as we know it.


42 posted on 09/25/2010 5:41:56 PM PDT by CynicalBear
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To: spirited irish; Celtic Cross; Grizzled Bear; ScoopAmma; Irisshlass; informavoracious; larose; ...
+

Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:

Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.

43 posted on 09/25/2010 5:42:10 PM PDT by narses ( 'Prefer nothing to the love of Christ.')
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To: CynicalBear

I am more interesting in seeing the motives of those who invented and push evolution theory as though it were fact, and people of religious faith who accept it although they should know better.

And the results in the world of evolution-as-fact.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin interests me not at all. As I said above, with God all things are possible. That’s all I need to know.


44 posted on 09/25/2010 6:15:31 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.)
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To: little jeremiah
I disagree entirely about whether a “day” means this or that in the Bible.

Of course the Vedic/Hindu/Hare Krishna creationism you apparently accept does have a precise meaning of "day":

The Bhagavata Purana says that men and women have lived on earth for a vast period of time called the Day of Brahma, which is composed of a thousand yuga cycles. Each yuga cycle lasts 12,000 "years of the gods." And since each "year" equals 360 earth years, one yuga cycle equals 4.32 million years while a thousand yuga cycles total 4.32 billion years, summing up the Day of Brahma.

Review: Forbidden Archaeology's Impact (NCSE)

Those unfamiliar with Hindu antievolutionism might be interested to know that, although more "liberal" than fundamentalist "Young Earth" creationism in allowing for (actually insisting on) an ancient earth, it is more strict than even "strict" Christian antievolutionism in insisting on absolutely fixed species (i.e. no "micro" evolution; no evolution even "within created kinds".

The reason for this is two-fold. First because the Vedas teach that species are fixed. All (not just man) have existed here through the "Day of Brahma." IIRC correctly, the Vedas even number the "species of life". I don't remember the figure, but think it somewhere in the millions.

The second relates to the doctrine of reincarnation. In short it is the soul that evolves. In doing so in serially inhabits different "species". These species remain fixed. Hindu creationists see affirming (biological) evolution as denying (spiritual) evolution, i.e. rebirth and reincarnation.

45 posted on 09/25/2010 6:23:11 PM PDT by Stultis (Democrats. Still devoted to the three S's: Slavery, Segregation and Socialism.)
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To: betty boop
As it turns out, Darwinist theory has been criticized with increasing effectiveness from within the scientific community in recent times. Word needs to get out on this.

Although evidently Nobel Laureate biologist Jacques Monod continues to uphold the Darwinist doctrine in all its metaphysical purity.

Monod doesn't "continue" to uphold anything. He died in 1976. Does this say something about your idea of "recent times"?

46 posted on 09/25/2010 8:25:41 PM PDT by Stultis (Democrats. Still devoted to the three S's: Slavery, Segregation and Socialism.)
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To: Stultis
In fact darwinian evolution isn't even concerned with the origin of life (let alone "being") but merely how living things change over time.

Belief in universal common ancestry depends on particular assumptions about abiogenesis. Without a specific concept of abiogenesis there isn't any reason at all to assume that life arose once, or that it was simple and then became more complex, or that multicellular organisms descended from unicellular creatures. If darwinian evolution isn't concerned with the origin of life how do you distinguish a fossil sequence that is the result of multiple abiogenesis events separated in time from one that is the result of ancestral lineage?

Cordially,

47 posted on 09/25/2010 8:33:08 PM PDT by Diamond (He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people,)
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To: itsahoot

Ping to self


48 posted on 09/25/2010 9:07:53 PM PDT by itsahoot (We the people allowed Republican leadership to get us here, only God's Grace can get us out.)
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To: Stultis

I’m not even interested in the Hindu understanding of creation or day as it pertains to the topic of this thread. The point is that there are two world views; one is that God is the Creator, the other is that life came from nothing and evolved via random accident.

I feel much more kinship with those who accept that God created everything than with godless evolutionists, despite differences in understanding exactly how God created. No human can adequately comprehend exactly how He created or creates anyway, human minds are too limited. Other than be having such truths revealed from within.

If I wanted to discuss the ins and outs of Hindu cosmology, I’d start a thread about just that.


49 posted on 09/25/2010 9:26:00 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.)
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To: little jeremiah

This actually sounds quite excellent... Having taught World Religions for years on the college level, I largely concur with the writer... Good post!


50 posted on 09/25/2010 9:43:29 PM PDT by patriot preacher
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To: little jeremiah
" The reason Darwinists/evolutionists embrace their belief system - religion, if you will - is because of rejecting God being the creator."

Darwin gets a bum rap from the pious crowd. His book was on the Origin of Species, not the origins of life. He only sought to offer a theory on the variation and adaptation he observed. The last paragraph of "The Origin of Species" states the following:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

51 posted on 09/25/2010 9:59:55 PM PDT by Natural Law (A lie is a known untruth expressed as truth. A liar is the one who tells it.)
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To: Natural Law

Did you read the whole article? Maybe Darwin mentioned a Creator (I have no idea, I didn’t write the article and am far, far from being an evolution scholar!!!) but generally the current proponents of evolution are certainly atheists.


52 posted on 09/25/2010 10:10:46 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.)
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To: betty boop; TXnMA; spirited irish; YHAOS; Quix; Amos the Prophet; mnehring
I thoroughly enjoyed the essay, dear spirited irish!

Although abiogenesis v biogenesis was not addressed in Darwin’s theory, it is readily apparent that the theory became the intellectual justification for men who abhorred God or the very idea of God. A quick scan of the atheist websites and their forums would confirm that is so.

And ironically, the most embittered opponents of the intelligent design movement (esp. atheists) claim a hidden agenda, i.e. that ID is the cover for getting creationism back into public schools.

The hidden agenda crossfire is a goose-gander situation with scientists caught in the middle.

If we ignore the agendas and try to weigh the theory of evolution on its own merits, then we are in betty boop’s ballpark on this thread. Thank you for your illuminating essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

Of a truth, when one closely examines the mathematical models (Rosen and Shannon) required to understand living organisms in nature, it becomes very clear under Rosen that living things entail a final cause whereas non-living things do not and under Shannon that living things successfully communicate whereas non-living and dead things do not.

That’s strictly an objective assessment based on the math and is not anti-evolution. But final cause (temporal non-locality) is a poison pill to anyone relying on happenstance to deny God.

But one cannot say something is random in the system if he doesn't know what the system "is" and we do not know and cannot know the full number and type of dimensions that exist, massless particles that have no measurable effect, etc.

Moreover, order cannot rise out chaos in an unguided physical system. Period. There are always guides to the system. Cellular automata and self-organizing complexity have rules. Chaos theory has initial conditions, etc.

Which brings me to the insights of my dear brother in Christ, TXnMA!

As you truly said, TXnMA, few consider relativistic time.

I very strongly agree with Jewish Physicist Gerald Schroeder that when we consider relativity and the inflationary theory, that six (earth relative) days from the inception space/time coordinates are equal to approximately 15 billion years from our present space/time coordinates.

God was the Creator, the only observer of the creation and the author of the only account of it. So it does not surprise me at all the description would be relative to the inception space/time coordinates.

God the Father has revealed Himself in four ways: in the Person of Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, in the Person of the indwelling Holy Spirit, in Scripture and in His Creation both physical and spiritual. And His revelations do not contradict each other.

Man is not the measure of God.

God’s Name is I AM.

53 posted on 09/25/2010 10:53:14 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Diamond
Belief in universal common ancestry depends on particular assumptions about abiogenesis.

You are correct, although I would say it is really only one assumption: That abiogenesis is a rare, if not unique, event.

This is hardly a wild or arbitrary assumption, however; at least once you reject, as Darwin did, "spontaneous generation," the idea that life arises from non-life as a regular, mundane process of nature. (Some previous scientists, including Creationists of course, had accepted spontaneous generation. Although the number of proponents had been long dwindling, it was universally abandoned as a result of experiments by Louis Pasteur, conducted about the time Darwin's Origin was published.)

Once you've decided that abiogensis is a complex, and probably halting and gradual process, i.e. not "spontaneous," it becomes reasonably obvious that once life does exist, it would adaptively crowd out, and in fact likely and literally eat, the intermediate stages of any further attempt by nature to create life.

Interesting, however, that while you get this right, our article author gets it wrong, and falsely asserts that Darwinian evolutionists not only do, but must accept "spontaneous generation". (The fact that Haeckel also got it wrong, writing at a time before there was any available term contrasting "spontaneous" generation with abiogensis, does not help her.)

Materialist philosophy is neither new nor scientific, but one of the most ancient superstitious beliefs in the world. The ancient version held that matter has always existed and everything that exists consists of matter. According to the modern version, invisible dead-matter spontaneously generated itself from nothing, and then by way of evolution magically produced everything else. To believe this is to believe that the nothingness within the magician’s hat spontaneously generated the bunny.

If evolutionism was a gas-powered generator, then spontaneous generation would be its indispensable fuel, admits Ernst Haeckel, pantheist mystic and ardent defender of Darwinism.


54 posted on 09/26/2010 2:51:56 AM PDT by Stultis (Democrats. Still devoted to the three S's: Slavery, Segregation and Socialism.)
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To: Alamo-Girl

Well put as usual.


55 posted on 09/26/2010 4:04:46 AM PDT by Quix (PAPAL AGENT DESIGNEE: Resident Filth of non-Roman Catholics; RC AGENT DESIGNATED: "INSANE")
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To: Stultis
You are right about this author using the term "spontaneous generation" inappropriately. You are also correct that Darwin rejected spontaneous generation, but I would also note that he did so by invoking special creation of the first creatures.

My comment was directed to your assertion that darwinian evolution isn't even concerned with the origin of life. If that's the case then why, for example, do Darwinists object when someone postulates a complex genome as a starting point?

Without a specific concept of abiogenesis how do you know that the first reproductive cells were simple and then became more complex, or that multicellular organisms descended from unicellular ones, or how would you distinguish a fossil sequence that is the result of multiple abiogenesis events separated in time from one that is the result of ancestral lineage?

Since you answer to these questions necessarily follows from your particular assumptions about abiogenesis, there is a logical connection. Separating evolution from the origin of life is not logically coherent.

Cordially,

56 posted on 09/26/2010 5:41:30 AM PDT by Diamond (He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people,)
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To: Diamond

ping for reading later today. thank you friends for the pings.


57 posted on 09/26/2010 6:56:23 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (They are the vultures of Dark Crystal screeeching their hatred and fear into the void ....)
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To: Stultis; spirited irish; Alamo-Girl; TXnMA; kosta50; YHAOS; Quix; Amos the Prophet; Diamond
Although evidently Nobel Laureate biologist Jacques Monod continues to uphold the Darwinist doctrine in all its metaphysical purity.

Stultis, you wrote: "Monod doesn't 'continue' to uphold anything. He died in 1976."

Well then let me revise and extend my remarks. Monod continued to uphold Darwinist doctrine in all its metaphysical purity until the day he died. I.e., he never "recanted."

Are you suggesting that more recently Darwinian biologists have retreated from their doctrine of random mutation and natural selection as exclusively accounting for the rise of species, or that they have questioned the adequacy of the Newtonian scientific framework with respect to living systems?

This would be news to me.

It seems Monod himself strenuously resisted any departure from the received orthodoxy. Indeed, his ongoing public animosity toward Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a major pioneer of open systems theory, is instructive:

Bertalanffy was a person whom Jacques Monod loathed, and whom he (among many others) castigated as a "holist." By their very nature, open systems require going outside a system, going from a smaller system to a larger one to understand its behaviors. Stated another way, openness means that even a complete understanding of internal parts or subsystems cannot, of itself, account for what happens when a system is open. This flies in the face of the "analysis," or reductionism, that Monod identified with "objective" science. [Robert Rosen, Essays on Life Itself, 2000; p. 18]

Now living organisms happen to be open, not closed, systems.

Bertalanffy, who "has become well known as the father of General System Theory" ... [ibid, p. 31]

...came to develop this [theory] as an alternative to reductionist, Cartesian ideas, which he felt were not only scientifically inadequate for biology but had deplorable social and ethical side effects for humanity at large....

No wonder Monod loathed him!

I have to say that I regard Monod as remarkably closed-minded for a scientist....

This is one of the more interesting — and revealing — "scientific squabbles" I've ever come across....

58 posted on 09/26/2010 8:00:41 AM PDT by betty boop (Seek truth and beauty together; you will never find them apart. — F. M. Cornford)
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To: Quix
Thank you so much for your encouragements, dear brother in Christ!
59 posted on 09/26/2010 8:49:30 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: betty boop
This is one of the more interesting — and revealing — "scientific squabbles" I've ever come across....

Indeed.

And if the hostility of the response is any indication of the effectiveness of the argument, then Bertalanffy obviously won the debate.

Thank you for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

60 posted on 09/26/2010 8:53:22 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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