Posted on 06/20/2007 5:24:39 AM PDT by spirited irish
Look, show me where I said anything about them not existing without the philosophy of evolutionism in the first place. You can answer a simple question, right?
lol
Evolutionists put their faith in a book written by a man on a long sea voyage with nothing better to do with his time.
Quote of the week (at least)!
You claim it is their "basis for existence". How would they exist without it? You didn't say so explicitly, but it is a logical consequence of what you did say. If your statements will not bear examination of their logical consequences, what good are they?
Dunno, But it sure sounds impressive.
V..Evolution proponents (I include myself) know how life progressed from lesser to more complex forms, but the actual origin can only be speculated on.
As the essay reveals, there is NO SOURCE within evolutionism for absolutes. Yet your statement is a ‘declarative’ or absolute in that: Here is how it happened.
By it’s own Laws of Logic-—for which evolution has no source either, since by its nature evolution is anti-intellectual (no mind, no reason, etc)-—theories must be based on something which is testable. Since NO ONE has ever seen bacteria evolve into fish, or fish into proto-apes, the theory of evolution is based on wishful thinking.
Modern studies of DNA have shown that it is entirely consistent with a common descent for almost all life on earth, a prediction of evolutionary theory made before we even knew about genes and DNA. If every major “kind” of animal was a unique creation, why should this be? Why should humans share genetic material with earthworms? Oh, I know, I know, God’s ways are mysterious and beyond our understanding, and He could do things whatever way he desired. But that’s the kind of hand-waving explanation that can be used to explain away anything.
Have you taken a look at Congress and the Courts recently?
Imagine. All those meteorologists with their preconcieved bias towards the water cycle. All those biologists with their preconceived notions about what happens to fish when you pollute all the worlds fresh water with salt. All those geologists with their preconceived notions on what it took to create the Grand Canyon. All living a lie.
Great article, spirited irish! Thank you so much for posting it!
gracesdad: “First, in order that materialist ethics be consistent with the idea that life evolved by chance and continues to evolve over time, ethics must be built on human social instincts that are in a continuous process of change over evolutionary time. “
And this is bad how?
Irish: Tell me, exactly whose ‘social instincts” (impulses, etc) shall morality be based upon? Already millions of people have suffered and died in regimes where the “social instincts” of Mao, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, etc have served as the ‘standard.” The Marquis de Sade had his own version of ‘social instincts’ as did Jeffrey Dahmer, the Columbine killers, etc.
How about we're all carbon based life forms living in the same environment, breathing the same air, drinking the same water, eating each other?
If DNA controls certain functions and describes certain physical characteristics, then it would make sense to use it in all species, much like certain code is used in computer programming. You don't make up new code for each program, you can use the same basic code and rearrange it to make it do what you wish.
It also makes sense that if organisms devour each other, they need to be similar enough so that the components can be metabolized. What good would it be if everything was so different that nothing could eat each other, but might even be poisonous?
Every kind of creature being a unique creation in that is was created and not evolved does not preclude using the same materials and code (DNA).
YYZ..Note that Darwin’s theory was about “Natural Selection”, and there’s nothing “natural” about what the eugenicists were trying to do. In fact, what they were trying to do was a lot closer to traditional animal husbandry and breeding techniques, concepts which predate the theory of evolution by several thousand years.
Irish...Naturalism, which is what evolutionism is a revamped version of, has ALWAYS been about eugenics, population control, aristocracy, state control of the means of wealth, slavery, etc. Why? Because if mankind is the creature of ‘nature’ (matter) then he must be in submission to his creator: nature (matter). Further, he has no more worth than any other animal, and when man’s worth is measured against other creatures, man comes out the loser.
A quagmire of sophistry.
“Every kind of creature being a unique creation in that is was created and not evolved does not preclude using the same materials and code (DNA).”
No, but to my mind, and those of many people who have studied this subject much more than I have, a common descent is a much simpler explanation. And, as I have said, it is a prediction made by evolutionary theory before we even knew there were such things as genes or DNA, nevermind exactly how much of it was common between organisms.
Also, if God was being a good “coder” and re-used things so dilligently, why would He choose to implement the exact same functions in multiple different ways in different species? No, if God was our “designer”, then he gives every appearance of having been a rather poor and sloppy one.
That presumes on the part of the person sitting in judgment of the designer that they know better and more about how the object should have been designed just by looking at it than the designer did knowing vastly more.
Have we reached the place in knowledge of genetics that we can with certainty that we know all the possible functions of every last bit if genetic material that exists? We may have some grasp of what genes control physical features but what controls emotions, thought, will, decision making?
Defining the physical features and breaking it down to simply the mechanical only tells us about the physical mechanical part of the entity. It doesn't tell us what it really is and there's no way that I know of yet for scientists to say for certain that they plummed the depths of genetics and know all every possible function of eery bit of DNA in every creature.
Tell me then, what's the difference between a living body and a dead one? What makes a body suddenly cease functioning when it's structurally identical to the one minutes before it expired? And I'm not talking about long enough for decay to set in, that argument has been used before. I'm talking about a body that's alive one minute and dead the next.
America has little tradition of Evolutionary Humanism. As such, it is going to continue to be a hard sell, especially while the salesmen of Evolutionary Humansim seem so odd to Americans. If they were more like real people they might make some progress, but that would mean selling out their Evolutionary Humanism program.
Could you explain what you mean by ‘transcendant absolutes’ please. Perhaps an example would help to clarify it for me. Thanx
Indeed. Thanks for the ping!
If you can't be forthright about what you're actual qualm is, why should I take it seriously?
That being said, I would indeed say that, without evolutionary philosophy, much of modern Communism and Nazism wouldn't have been possible, at least not in the forms they took. Marxism relies upon the assumption that "progressive scientism" will bring about the "inevitable" establishment of a classless society, once the dialectical middleman is gotten through. This is viewed as being more or less the natural order of things, hence the aura of inevitability that shrouded foundational Marxist thought. Anything that hinders the establishment of this end result, at least in revolutionary Communism, is fair game for being eliminated as unfit, regressive, and retrograde. The philosophy that begat all this, and the resultant attempts to eliminate millions of kulaks, capitalists, and other reactionaries, is the notion that the world is constantly evolving, progressing upward, that change is inevitable, and that those who are unfit deserve to be removed from the equation by the "New Men" who are better fitted for the glorious classless society of the future. Hence, yes, there is an underlying evolutionary aspect to Marxist thought that in many ways mirrors the evolutionary theory of the natural world which later inspired Darwin to refine the theory in his On the Origin of Species, and it is doubtful that Marxism would have had this aspect in its dialectic had there not been intellectual injection from the evolutionary philosophy sweeping Europe at the time.
Likewise, it is doubtful that Nazism would have gotten the idea of exterminating "inferior" groups as unfit, or the rest of its overall eugenic programme, had not the idea appeared to be completely natural and wholesome per naturalistic evolution.
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