Posted on 04/17/2008 10:54:25 AM PDT by Boxen
Sorry, I didn't address this.
God IS the beginning. He didn't come from anywhere, he was always there.
Either one believes this or they don't.
I believe John referred to that “singularity” as the Word.
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
I agree. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
Many links on the left side of the page.
If this film was simply part of an attempt to expose creationist bashing in academia, I’d be more sympathetic to it. But I think the reaction they’re reporting on is as I suggested, academia’s push back at activist attempts to insert ID into science curriculums as a scientific theory (then promote the resistance here as an assault on free speech.)
There are more appropriate disciplines in education to promote creationism and promote as you say, “human life as it is lived, experienced, felt and ends in death”. Science will of course effect and be effected by that, but that does not justify teaching it in science.
I think you’re suggesting that creationism’s absence implies the promotion of a materialistic ideology in science. I don’t recognize that scientific exploration outside a religious framework is necessarily materialistic. Here’s an article I like relating to that, but it’s focused on metaphysics and epistemology rather than science: Objectivism Rejects Both Materialism and Idealism: The Monist/Reductionist Fallacy. Unfortunately I’m not able to give the discussion the time it deserves today. Thanks for your reply.
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Exactly. Evolution would be identical to creation if you allowed for multiple recent origin points and extremely focused, rapid evolution postscripted by an extended stabilization period caused by the maturing genome. I have a feeling that the theory of evolution will eventually become this way and scientists will deny there are any theological implications of the changing theory.
Holy Moley. Having just seen the film (we just got back), I am astounded at the utter vacancy of Scientific American's use of this argument.
Any fair-minded person who watches Stein's film will realize:
Stein or his interviewees say--on at least two occasions, and at some length, that Darwinism does not automatically lead to Nazism. The most elegantly stated, in my opinion, is the gentleman who acknowledges the time and space differences between Hitler and Darwin, and then he says something akin to "Darwinism is not a sufficient philosophy to lead one to Nazism, but it is a "necessary" one."
The film explicity states that not every Darwinist turns into a Nazi...but it does show how people like Margaret Sanger and Hitler freely used Darwin's ideas.
Additionally, the quote in question is used after the effect of Darwin's philosophy played itself out--in essence, the words used by Darwin that were adopted by the "pure race" advocates.
The quote takes up probably about 15 seconds of the film, after the evidence had been presented that Darwin's ideas formed the foundation for those actors in history.
In my opinion, this "objection" by SA, especially after having seen the flick, is incredibly weak.
Additionally, the quote in question is used after the effect of Darwin's philosophy played itself out--in essence, the words used by Darwin that were adopted by the "pure race" advocates.
For me, having read both Darwin, and having read some of the Nazi corpus on race theory, your description simply reinforces the fact that the film severely misrepresents Darwin.
Darwin never argued for "pure" human races. Indeed he forcefully argued in exactly the other direction. Darwin concluded for instance that humans are a single, highly variable species; that there is no way to sort humans into distinct races; that for any races one did nevertheless attempt to identify the variation within them swamps the differences between them, and that there are always an array of intermediate characters insensibly connecting all races. Darwin argued all of this in his [i]Descent of Man[/i] (in Chapter VII, "On the Races of Man"), and the Nazis adamantly rejected all of it.
The Nazis acted on the tenets of the race theories of Gobineau, Chamberlain, and the like, as explicitly set out by Alfred Rosenberg and others, that human races WERE distinct, that they originated so, that their racial purity (or that of the "aryan" race) should be restored. This was all incompatible with or foreign to Darwin's teachings and conclusions.
That is an interesting take.
I think the film does a good job of treating Darwin’s words fairly as well as showing how his ideas inspired the Nazis.
Did you see the film? Did you see what the woman who ran the memorial at the Nazi “hospital” said?
(for anyone unfamiliar with the history behind this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amateur_Scientist for more info)
If you accept that Darwin's words inspired the Nazis, then would it not be just as valid to say that Christianity inspired the Nazis as well? See excerpt from Hitler speech:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2003002/posts?page=132#132
“We’re seeing Expelled tomorrow!”
You’ll love it! I saw it Friday.
This movie is also about academic freedom.
If a scientist supports ID, they get punished, and that is wrong, no matter what theory you believe in.
“Dr. Richard Sternberg, a biologist, publishes a peer-reviewed paper, which posits evidence for intelligent design (ID) in the universe. For his efforts, Sternberg’s bosses at the Smithsonian Institution trashed him so badly that it led to a congressional investigation.
Iowa State University denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, an accomplished astrobiologist. University officials admitted that Gonzalez’s work on ID is a factor.
For Richard Dawkins, by contrast, job security is not a problem. To this superstar Oxford University evolutionary biologist, and devout atheist, intelligent design is nothing more than an “ideological cousin of creationism.”’
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzA4N2ZmZjAzYzhhNTU5MGEyOGJlN2FmMWIxMmE5M2I=
Ben Stein DID interview Dawkins in the documentary movie, so Stein is not afraid to let everyone speak.
Notwithstanding the report's conclusions, its appendix contains copies of e-mails and other documents in which Sternberg's superiors and others specifically argued against penalizing him for his ID views.
Interesting that such arguments were even needed in the first place. It sounds like a debate was indeed raging. This revelation only supports the filmmakers' primary contention that IDers are not tolerated by the short-sighted, snobbish elites of the "scientific" community.
“The universe will expand, then it will collapse back on itself, then will expand again. It will repeat this process forever. What you don’t you know is that when the universe expands again, everything will be as it is now. Whatever mistakes you make this time around, you will live through on your next pass. Every mistake you make, you will live through again, & again, forever. So my advice to you is to get it right this time around. Because this time is all you have.” - Prot (’K-PAX’ 2001)
After seeing the film, I responded to the ridiculous notion that Darwin was "taken out of context" in this post:
Free Republic thread regarding "Expelled"
If you want to know how "Expelled" really treats Darwin's words in regard to the sickening ideas of the 20th century, I think I do a decent job there.
As far as your link goes, though I haven't independently verified it, I will assume it is accurate. Certainly Hitler may have tried to invoke his so-called "religion" into his political speeches.
One thing I did notice: the small bit of the speech you gave was from 1922, some eleven years before Hitler's rise to power. At that point, it seems, Hitler was using any and all rhetoric to attract followers to his sick philosophy. Was Christianity a main stepping stone for him? Expelled makes a good case that Darwinism WAS a main stepping stone.
I also believe Hitler may have used some of Martin Luther's anti-semitic rantings in his own "Mein Kempf". But when Stein visits a memorial in Nazi Germany, a former "hospital" where thousands were murdered under the guise of medical experiments, the curator of the place points out that the cruelties inflicted there were justified not by Christiand ideals, but by Darwinian thinking.
How often did Hitler refer to Jesus as his "Lord and Savior" or even to Jesus at all after he seized power?
But "Expelled" also shows recreations of Hitler-era propaganda films, apparently after he was in power, (translated of course) that use language that is undoubtedly Darwin inspired.
I can also say that brave men and women, Christians, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, died under the Nazi thumb because they spoke the truth that Christianity does not endorse the race-cleansing that Hitler pushed.
Anyone who thinks Christianity inspired Hitler as much as Darwin needs to re-think the issue. Clear thinking Christianity cannot logically lead to the desire to erase Jews from the planet, but the logical extension of Darwinism can (though not necessarily) lead one to eugenics and Nazism.
Prime!
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