you: No, of course not. I'm not an essentialist.
If circles did not exist, then why pi?
That's right. And people fell from high places before Newton.
After all, circles are also universals.
And a circle can be drawn without a knowledge of the value of pi. Pi derives from the circle, not a circle from pi. Pi, if you like, is a property of a circle. It had to be discovered.
So you believe there were also no circles before pi was named? After all, circles are also universals. If circles did not exist, then why pi?
Touche, Alamo-Girl! You just nailed Right Wing "Perfesser" to the wall with that one.
In RWP, you are debating an outed existentialist. "It's not green unless I perceive it to be green, and declare it to be so!" "A tree falling in the woods makes no sound unless I am there to hear it! "Pi doesn't exist unless I am there to discover and name it!" Such an inflated sense of prideful self importance these evolutionists have. According to evolutionary premise they created themselves, dontchya know.
RWP is the center of gravity within his vanishingly small universe, which itself resides within the mere 3.5 lbs of grey matter sitting atop a frame desperately in need of student worship.
It's little wonder that with this inflated view of his self-importance he finds comfort in some ivory tower in the outback. His over-stuffed ego is patently unemployable in the real world, so he sits at a desk where his productivity is measured on a scale of metphysical irrelevance and where he pontificates from a third tier institution known more for its football team than its academics anyway.
RWP so glibly belches to r9etb in post 255 “Evolution has no moral implications. It's a scientific theory.” Clearly, RWP has no grasp of some of the more tragic social events of the 20th century, whose outcomes are clearly traceable to the full bore application of evolutionary premise to social science. The ruthlessness of even today's social darwinists and heirs to Sanger's eugenics theories dress up their abortive practice of "evolutionary medicine" with all the the color and cover evolutionary "science" affords them.
Evolution has no moral implications?
Sure, tell that to Karl Marx who wrote Darwin asking his permission to credit Darwin for furnishing a naturalistic premise upon which to base his socio-economic constructs in Das Kapital. Sure, tell it to Lenin’s sidekick, Communist Leon Trotsky, who while claiming Darwin’s writings “intoxicated” him, also said, “Darwin stood for me like the mighty doorkeeper at the entrance to the temple of the universe.” He almost sounds like he’s quoting some of the Sci-Fi worshipping space cadet evo-trolls here on FR.
Tell it to Trotsky’s protégé and ultimately his murderer, Stalin, who equated the murder of millions with the simple mowing of grass -- mankind evolutionarily no different from the pond scum from which he supposedly ascended. Or then the supposedly “Right Wing” Professor can tell that to Hitler, whose racism was embodied in the simple reading of full title of Darwin’s tome as he applied the evolutionary premise to his definition of non-persons: Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). He can then tell it to Pol Pot, disciple of Chairman Mao, whose genocide in 1974-75 made legendary in the “Killing Fields,” clearly demonstrated the outworking of the philosophy of his confessed favorite authors, Darwin and his socialist philosophical protégé, Huxley.
Social application of Darwinism is not something only narrowly acknowledged. Stephan J. Gould, no creationist he, openly mourned the fact that racism increased “by orders of magnitude” due to Darwin’s work supposedly being “misused” by his socially aligned, philosophical acolytes. Gould could criticize Hitler's racism all he wanted to -- even call it immoral -- but his evolutionary basis in materialism gives him, and RWP for that matter no rational basis for criticizing on the basis of immorality any of Hitler's darwinistically inspired racist murder.
But as Rush says, “Words mean things.” Add to that, Godless social premises embodied in evolution-speak can only have tragic social consequences -- that people like RWP are evidently too willing to ignore.
Evolutionary acolytes practice a faith in their premise best termed, scientism. Evolution is science fiction in its most illustrative sense; it is a perversion of naturalistic thought, which poisons its adherents’ ability to view scientific evidence objectively. Witness the bastardization of what was once the objective study of natural science, which is now known as “evolutionary biology.” Nope no inherent bias there (/sarcasm off).
Evolution has no moral implications? What should the materialist existentialist RWP care about the supposed moral implications of anything then? His and Gould's evolutionary perspective leaves no room for morality. No wonder the completely amoral Freud was also such an avid disciple of Darwin's.
Of course, true "right wing" conservatism is founded in application of moral principle, much of which is derived directly from Judeo-Christian principles. Liberalism is amorality in just about every manifestation; it is evolutionary premise put into political practice.
Given his willful ignorance of any of the historical applications of his beloved evolutionary premise, I openly question how truly "right winged" RWP really is at heart. Sure give him his tax cuts, and as any philosophical "user" will do, he'll use the right wing label for what its good for. Right winged morality? When you're an evolutionary sycophant, who needs morality? Morality and the implications thereof have nothing to do with evolution, right?
Therefore, given the resultant historical amorality spawned by his deeply held evolutionary philosophy, RWPs brand of conservatism as he expresses it here on FR is about as credible as Haekel's fraudulent "comparative" evolutionary embryologic drawings, or von Zieten's more recent lectures -- likely now being delivered from prison -- on his putrifying "80,000 year old" radio labeled "fossil" scams.
If evolutionists are anything, they are certainly some of the most gullible suckers among us, aren't they! They so despirately want that evolutionary premise to be true... the facts, the painful history, and the objective study of science be damned! Their precious inflated egos and their academic grants are all at stake.
Alamo-Girl has outted a smarmy existentialist. I have outted just another pompous Right-Wing-in-name-only intellectually and philosophically conflicted troll devoid of any historical prespective.