Did Darwin Lead to Hitler?
Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Cultural Wars recently wrote about the supposed connection between Darwin and Hitler. He concluded: The bottom line, and I do not think I'm being too strident in using this language, is that this simplistic "Darwin led to Hitler" thesis is laughably ridiculous. It simply cannot be taken seriously by anyone with even a minimal amount of historical knowledge and the ability to reason. See here.
14 comments:
Good post John.
I also destroyed the "Hitler=Darwin" claim through the perfect application of analogies: specifically, applying the natural selection/evolution analogy to the Holocaust.
Check out my post here.
Since Aaron is allowed to plug, I am too ;)
See *HERE* for my review of D. James Kennedy's propaganda film and references for a broader context
Yeah; I caught a little of this crap on tv the other day. Couldn't even keep watching, I was so pissed off. I see on the amazon page for this book, he gets some pretty bad reviews.
Funny, the evidence I've seen supports the view that countries with high levels of knowledge about evolutionary theory also tend to have a higher quality of life and fewer social pathologies than countries where creationist outlooks tend to dominate. Most American christians wouldn't want to live in vast swaths of the creationist Muslim world, for example, even if Muslims tolerated their presence, whereas they readily go on vacation to parts of the world more accepting of evolutionary thinking like Western Europe, Japan and Australia.
One can only get to Hitler from Darwin if one bridges the is/ought gap, but such a bridging is (as I've argued on my blog and elsewhere) unwarranted. Furthermore, even if one could bridge the gap, the holocaust would not follow as a rational course of action.
I don't give two hoots about what Ed wrote, but I do not see the connection myself. I think looney tune Luther's rabid anti-Semitism has a far more direct connection.
Jew-hating makes no sense from a naturalistic viewpoint any way, whether you accept evolutionary thinking or not. Anti- and philo-semites both assume that Jews have supernatural or magical powers, like witches; they just disagree over whether Jews use these powers for evil or good. Naturalists reject this superstition altogether and just view Jews as another human tribe or ethnic group like Cherokees, Kurds or Marshalese islanders.
In case you think I exaggerate, consider how many christian dispensationalists warn that god will zap the countries that don't support the modern nation-state of Israel. This sounds a lot like saying, "Step on a crack, break your mother's back."
Mike,
It is quite clear that you didn't bother to read the links. You seriously need a tutorial in church history. Luther was a rabid anti-Semite, and the Lutheran church was the predominant Christians sect in Hitler's Germany. Luther's theology was used by Hitler numerous times to justify his actions. Hitler and Joseph Stalin also received religious instruction-even served as choir boys (Hitler in the Benedictine monastery of Lambach, Stalin in the Gori Church School).
No, evolutionary theory had nothing to do with Nazism. They tried to use this pseudoscience concept to justify that there had once been an Ayran race of "superior" people that was separate from the Jews, and minorities. However, as we all know, evolutionary biology posits that all species have a common ancestor. This was not acceptable to Hitler, and so he employed a huge panel of hacks to try to prop up his unscientific view of evolution.
Also consider the naturalistic fallacy.
Also read the posts we recommended:
THIS ONE especially, and scroll down to the bottom to read my take on Luther and Nazism. Also, check out the bunk evolutionary science that Hitler attempted to use to justify his artificial selection (no, not "survival of the fittest", which is natural selection) of the Jewish race and eugenics.
Mike,
PS: Read this extensive write-up on the role of Christianity in Nazism.
This does show that evolution can lead to this type of thinking.
non sequitur
Care for me to demonstrate?
"The anti-Semitism of the new movement (Christian Social movement) was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."
[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]
"I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it."
[Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40]
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed."
[Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922, countering a political opponent, Count Lerchenfeld, who opposed antisemitism on his personal Christian feelings. Published in "My New Order", quoted in Freethought Today April 1990]
"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 46]
"What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 125]
"This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.152]
"And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.174]
"Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another... while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.309]
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"
[Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]
"Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook."
[Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, p. 171]
"I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 1]
"I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 2]
"...the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party... was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes!
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct and well-planned."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3, about the leader of the Christian Social movement]
"Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 5]
This does show that Christianity can lead to this type of thinking.
This does show that belief in God can lead to genocide.
This does show that religion can lead to great evil.
This does show that Christians are anti-Semitic.
See how easy that is? But what is wrong with that approach, Mike? Where is the "it does not follow" in the logic?
Just because someone takes a central idea and perverts it, or misunderstands it, or uses it to justify their already existing prejudices, it doesn't follow that the central idea is to blame. If you aren't already aware, racism has existed for milennia (and can be found in the Bible), long before evolutionary theory, and people always use whatever rationale they want to justify their prejudices and biases, don't they?
Also, read up on Hume's is-ought problem and Moore's naturalistic fallacy w.r.t. evolution and normative morality.
I'm sorry, Mike, but you really need to sit down and carefully think about this -- someone is feeding you fear of scientific knowledge in the form of "evolutionary theory is/leads to/makes people evil".
PS: With respect to Haeckel, Mike, who exposed him, how, and when?
You'll find that other scientists did, using the same scientific method that we still use today, and that evolutionary theory has grown stronger since it has been refined via falsification and demonstrated as non-orthogenetic and non-Lamerckian. "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" wasn't a bad idea at the time, before more advanced techniques and work. In fact, recent developments in evo-devo, or evolutionary development, demonstrate that "switches" like the Hox genes often do, indeed, act as "switches" by which we can turn off and on ancestral characters. So Ernst's central idea -- that descendents still contain the genetic material of their ancestors, and are capable of showing those ancestors' traits, is actually sound in limited cases and within a limited scope.
Google chicken teeth, for example.
don't accuse me generalizing all people that believe in evolution.
Yeah because if you did you'd be ignoring the 1 billion + Christians who accept evolutionary theory as established science, wouldn't you?
You said that evolution can "lead to this" where "this" is Hitler. I simply gave you a link to show you the influence of religion upon Hitler, and many more links from my review article show that Hitler was a sort of Creationist, because he did not view the Ayran and Jewish races as having a common ancestor...which leads me to my next point --
However, do you NOT agree that viewing people as less evolved animals is demeaning?
It is not only demeaning, it is scientifically inaccurate. Mike, take a serious look at phylogenetic trees and tell me how any human race is either "more" or "less" evolved than another. Where there is a bifurcation, the resulting deviation is not necessarily slower or faster. I think it likely that you have never taken the time to learn the scientific evidence and reasoning of common descent. I strongly suggest you do.
Wouldn’t believing in evolution encourage this type of thinking?
Wouldn't believing in Christianity encourage anti-Semitism?
[go back and think about non sequitur again, and especially what I said about the is-ought distinction and Moore's naturalistic fallacy]
Mike, drawing invalid moral conclusions from invalid science is not to be blamed on valid science. We share a common ancestor with every race, and no one of us is any more "evolved" than another -- some of our races had technological advances that the others didn't, once they separated from one another. Some of our races have physical advantages over the others. How do we measure "more evolved"? We don't, and can't. It's a silly notion, and it belies the fraudulent Lamerckian/orthogenesis notions of your thinking.
Anyway, Hitler would have only been acting according to natural biological processes…right? According to evolution all of our actions are just a result of our evolved chemical processes?
1) Evolution does not comment on psychology and the mind-brain distinction.
2) Reductionism in the way you've rendered it here can be applied to make many things absurd. For instance: "Mike, you are just the result of a sperm hitting an ovum." "Mike, you mean to tell me that you hit that telephone pole outside today just because you are composed of the element carbon?"
Many silly things can be done in the same way when "just" is thrown in there to devalue a fact statement. Our brains do indeed function via biochemistry. Do you deny that? And, if you are serious about studying the mind-brain questions, you will find in a hurry that drugs and brain damage severely distort human behavior, which is strong evidence that "just" biochemistry is indeed necessary to make someone act or not act a certain way.
That said, what I think you're implying here is that if we have some immaterial shimmery "spirit stuff" inside of us, that this somehow makes your question about Hitler's behavior more intelligible. But does it? Let's see:
Anyway, Hitler would have only been acting according to supernatural spiritual processes…right? According to Christianity all of our actions are just a result of our immaterial minds?
Now, I've taken the question and made it "true" for you. How do you answer it?
Hitler's behavior is not somehow made "more easily understood" if you inject some "soul magic" into him. Hitler was conditioned from his environment and his own choices to hate Jews and lust after power. Just as a dog can be conditioned to bite others, but some breeds are easier to train aggression into than others, so human beings can be genetically and environmentally conditioned to do terrible things, and some human beings seem to have a lack of empathy (which is, indeed, biochemistry).
Does this make more sense in my universe, where there are laws of chemistry that do not "know" that you are a person with a mind, or in your universe, where God is supposed to give us all an equal chance at being good or evil? In your universe, a fair God would not allow people to be born with brains that quite clearly lack the function of empathy, right? But if you disagree that some people lack it, visit your local mental ward and spend some time with the sociopaths and narcissists and the psychiatrists there.
Evolutionary theory is a description of how the species are formed, just as biochemistry describes processes inside our bodies. You can "blame" them if you want to for the way things are, or you can "blame" God, or you can "blame" Adam and Eve. Whatever makes you feel better. To me, God allowing infants to die every day of starvation (~25,000 persons worldwide), and not allowing Adolf to come down with polio or something is quite more ridiculous and absurd than "blaming" biochemistry.
3) Chemical processes don't evolve. Evolution is driven by chemistry, it doesn't drive it.
As far as the Haeckel fraud is concerned it is common scientific knowledge that the recapitulation theory was a fraud:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i2/fraud.asp
I am glad you can read. I am glad that you completely seemed to have missed what I said in my post about Haeckel. I do realize that embryos do not recapitulate their evolutionary history in the strict sense, in the way Haeckel thought. However, are you aware that, for instance, dolphin embryos grow hind limbs, and that tail buds appear on multiple lineages without tails, and what the mammalian ear bones are from?
Perhaps you will understand this a little easier. And check out atavisms as well.
Okay, enough of this. You prefer to stick to AiG and pseudoscience, while I prefer mainstream, evidentially-established and accepted science. I have argued with creationists until I'm blue in the face. The evidence is there, if you refuse to see it, oh well...
Mike,
It appears that we are talking past each other, and I apologize if I am not being very lucid.
As far as Christians that accept evolution as "science" - these people have compromised their beliefs in an effort to be accepting to the masses.
No, Mike. They don't share your belief that Genesis should be taken seriously as history or science, over the mountains of evidence contrariwise. Obviously you see them as compromised, but they see you as an uneducated fool.
Daniel, you said that Christianity leads to anti-Semitism, genocide, etc. Drawing invalid conclusions from invalid religious interpretations does not invalidate Christianity. Many Bible verses quoted by atheists as “evil” show a gross lack of knowledge of the nature of God and the central message of Christianity. You are right about one thing we do have a common ancestor.
This appears to be where we are talking past each other. What I tried to do is point out to you that it is just as invalid to make non sequiturs from theology to Hitler as it is to make them from evolution to Hitler. I think I've said enough about this, and linked to long explications of how Hitler's version of evolution was flawed (eg a "superior Ayran race") and his moral judgments cannot be blamed on evolutionary theory for the same reason that they cannot be blamed on thermodynamics -- science is descriptive, or constative, not normative, nor prescriptive.
You say that I over simplify things and that evolution does not comment on the mind/brain distinction – you seem very knowledgeable in this area, I would be curious to know how atheists account for the psychology of the mind, the conscience, and the knowledge between right and wrong.
Honestly, I fail to see why the question is necessarily one concerning the existence of God. You and I do agree that for a piece of wood to be consumed by fire, all that is necessary is the operation of physics and chemistry, yes? I would simply say that perception and thought are functions of the brain, just as respiration is a function of the lungs. And just as you probably accept that respiration can be explained via physics and chemistry, so can thought processes as electrochemistry involving neurons and synapses.
Whether God exists or not, and whether you believe God does or not, the brain can be described by science. Neuroscience is not my specialty, but if you are seriously interested, do some reading on it.
So, is there more to it than just biochemistry? I have heard evolutionists state that we are just biochemical bags, what a meaningless existence.
The assignment of value has little to do with the composition of the substance. Saying something has meaning because it has a "magical spirit" inside it gives it absolutely no more value than if it does not. Consider the difference between diamonds and graphite, Mike. They're both "just carbon". Why is one more expensive than the other? Is it based on its composition, or is value assigned for other reasons? You should consider that reducing something to its components (how it works) tells you little of the value of its function (how much people value what it does).
I love my wife. My love for my wife means many things, and is expressed in many ways. What we know from biochemistry is that oxytocin plays a huge role in the feelings I have for her. So? Does that mean I should not have those feelings? Does that mean my feelings for her are somehow lessened?
You see, Mike, making the is-ought distinction is essential when you start assigning value to things. What something is made of, versus what its value ought to be, are not necessarily concerned with each other.
You never answered the question yourself; you simply posed another question to me.
Exactly -- I pointed out that your question is meaningless. How does introducing some immaterial substance immediately make sense of why Hitler did what he did?
I am not willing to bear the burden of going into deep and technical explanations of why and what I think. I'm sorry. I will, however, try to make points about the flaws in your thinking.
Again I ask what accounts for the one’s thought process? If it is not “just biochemistry” than what is it? Please tell me how atheists answer this.
I never said that it wasn't. You do not have justification in lumping all atheists together. Some are property dualists. Some are hardcore physicalists-materialists. The question you asked is better posed to a neuroscientist than to someone who doesn't agree with you that God exists. That is, assuming of course, you really want an answer.
Note that even if atheists have no explanation for such things, it doesn't mean that your own answer is correct. That is a false dichotomy. There are a huge number of ways that our minds might work, and if you try to tell me you know how, I would have to ask you on the basis of what evidence you claim this knowledge. I fear that you think that your faith in souls somehow explains the function of the mind. It doesn't. Tell me, Mike, how immaterial substances interact with material ones? How can an invisible, indetectable aura/spirit/soul cause neurons to fire in your brain? Do you realize that it violates the laws of conservation of matter and energy to say that your brain can have energy given or taken from it by your immaterial systems?
I'm sorry, but theists have no explanation whatsoever for how a posited "soul" would work to make a mind. They simply believe one exists, and that it does. Then, they turn around and demand neuroscientists to explain every detail to their satisfaction. Take it or leave it. Wallow in ignorance [you know nothing of how mind works], or accept what science offers. That is the only thing I know to tell you.
Again, you do not have to believe that a spirit/soul/whatever does not exist by simply saying that the mind = the brain, and that the brain = a physical object which works via chemistry and physics.
And who said that that God gives everyone a fair chance at being good or evil?
The Bible: Do you maintain that God is no respecter of persons (2 Chron 19:7, Job 34:19, Acts 10:34-5, Rom 2:11-2, Gal 5:6, 1 Pet 1:17, 2 Pet 3:9)?
Again this misunderstanding of how sin affects the world. God is not to blame for the actions of Hitler or all of the starving people in the world.
So God could not have stopped Hitler? Or God chose not to?
So God could not feed these dying people? Or God chooses not to?
These things occur as a result of man’s choice of freedom.
So when the tsunami hit the islands of Indonesia last year and killed 200,000 people, it was their choice? When Pompeii exploded and burned thousands of children and infants to death, it was their choice? I'm sorry Mike, but your treatment of the problem of evil is pitifully shallow.
It is the price we pay; Many people are in situations or circumstances beyond their control but we are all subject the consequences of sinful behavior even if we are not party to such behavior.
And this is the definition of injustice. Just = getting what you deserve. Mercy = being given pardon from receiving the punishment you deserve. Grace = being given reprieve from punishment, and given something good on top of it, for no reason that you deserve.
God is neither just, nor merciful, nor gracious, when God allows something terrible to happen to someone who doesn't deserve it.
You say that I can blame Adam and Eve if that makes me feel better. Who/what do you blame?
Within my worldview, Mike, there is no reason to expect a volcano to differentiate between Plato and Hitler. Within your worldview there is. My point to you is a hidden argument: reductio ad absurdum.
I am curious as to where you think these chemical processes originally came from? Surely you will not suggest that that they are eternal or infinite.
Surely I would.
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed. The universe has a timespan which we know goes back around 13.7 billion years. Before that, we simply do not know anything. There is absolutely no good reason to suppose that matter and energy just didn't exist before then, but rather, that they were in a state which our current physics just doesn't describe. Our ignorance on the subject (a gap in our knowledge) is not free license for you to create a fable to fill it in.
There are many possibilities to explain the origins of our universe:
1) It came from an infinite regress of cycling through expansion and contraction
2) It is one of an infinite number of other universes, all of which have always existed, or have "given birth" to each other
3) It is the only universe, and its current state is not the only state it has been in -- other configurations and conformations in which the fundamental forces weren't as they are now.
We know that matter and energy exist. We know that they cannot be created nor destroyed. What else should we surmise, but that they have always been? Why is it that God can be eternal but not matter and energy?
If I missed your point I apologize, it was not intentional.
I know. I made a larger point that Haeckel was on the right track, but had the wrong ideas, and skewed his data to make it fit what he thought it should be. If you want to read up on ontogeny and development, you'll find out that hindlimbs on whales and dolphins, and teeth in chickens, and tails in humans, makes no sense whatsoever if they are not expressing ancestral genes.
I am not sure why you make such statements like “I am glad you can read”. You asked “who exposed him, how, and when?” and I simply answered.
Sorry. I was a bit harsh, because you missed my point.
AIG is not pseudo-science; one example is Dr. David Menton, he was a Consulting editor in Histology for Stedman's Medical Dictionary; is he a pseudo-scientist?
Creationism is pseudoscience. AiG is a creationist organization. Therefore, the work that they do is pseudoscience. I am quite aware there are many scientists there who do real, valid science, all of which has nothing to do with Genesis, and is taught in textbooks, of course.
He is just one example there are many credible scientists doing work in the area of creation science.
Name one single "research project" in creation science? I would love to see one successful scientific project which AiG or any other creationists have completed. For example, the RATE results, as you may or may not know, were quite absurd. Joe Meert is a faculty here at UF. Also see this refutation of the work.
As far as your science being “evidentially-established” I can show many examples where the science has been exposed as fraudulent but I am sure you already know about these.
I am quite well aware of the creationist canards about "Nebraska man" and other such things. It is common for creationists to focus on the mistakes made so that they don't have to focus on the work which has been verified by decades of evidence, like the other hominids. In doing so, they also ignore the fact that other scientists are the ones who falsified the claims, using the same methodology that has verified millions of other claims in evolutionary biology.
If evolution is an established fact why would the need arise to falsify evidence? Some of the false evidences still appear in current biology textbooks.
I think you are confused about "falsify evidence" -- science is only about falsification of hypotheses based on evidence. We cannot truly "prove" anything, we can just design experiments and logic by which all alternative explanations (other than our hypotheses) are discounted and falsified. Thus, frameworks of hypotheses are woven together into "theory" -- when multiple hypotheses all converge on a single larger idea, such as common descent, for example.
What you seem to be repeating here about "false evidence" in the textbooks is likely related to Wells' obfuscations.
As a proponent of evolution I am curious to know what are your top evidences supporting evolution…just curious.
I am a general science proponent. I propose teaching sound science in all areas of education -- from biology to chemistry to geology.
And "my" evidences, or at least, those which I find most convincing, are summarized in textbooks like these, as well as being summarized nicely online here.
Again, Mike, best wishes. I'm tired of arguing with creationists. I did it for months and months on end, and saw the same results every time -- if you're dedicated to believing that Genesis is accurate science and history, then you'll go to extravagent lengths to believe. You'll twist logic into a pretzel, and when I show you that, you'll just retreat into divine inscrutability or arguments from authority ("Are you smarter than GAWD?!?!"). I found that trying to teach the method and reasoning behind science generally, and evolutionary biology specifically, to creationists is casting pearls before swine.
If you want to argue, here are two good forums:
1) CreationTalk.com
2) DarwinTalk.com
Cheers!
Mike,
You make an absolute statement about Creation science and then generalize all research done in this area. Are you the absolute authority on what is pseudoscience?
Pseudoscience is, quite simply, that which does not adhere to the scientific method in its philosophical approach. Since "Creation Science holds that the description of Creation is given in the Bible and that empirical scientific evidence corresponds with that description," there is no potential for falsification of the hypothesis that all of the universe, and life on earth, began in a giant "poof" somewhere between 6-10K years ago. [as an aside, 8,000 +/- 2,000 = 25% margin of error, which is unacceptably high as a scientific date for anything]
If you cannot falsify your premises, then you aren't doing science. Sorry.
If you're dedicated to believing that Genesis is accurate science and history, then you'll go to extravagant lengths to believe. You'll twist logic into a pretzel
Evolutionists do the same thing. They are committed to a life without God so they will never accept any alternative. I can show you lots of evidence to support creation but to you its not real science.
Now that is a good question, isn't it -- is evolution merely the attempt by people to "commit to a life without God"? Interestingly, Mike, I and everyone else on this site started out Christians. I was a teenager when I started looking at "Creation Science", and I came to see its folly not long afterwards. I thus accepted evolutionary biology as "the method by which God created life" by the time I was 14. I was a Christian for many many years after that.
So tell me, Mike, how is it that myself and many many many others [Ken Miller, Francis Collins, Pope John Paul II, a few hundred million Anglicans, Catholics, Episcopalians, etc.] find faith in God in no way discordant with evolutionary biology?
I'm sorry, but if I just "didn't want to believe in God" I think I'd just choose to ignore God altogether and not care whether God existed or not. I would also close myself up within my certitude that evolutionary theory is a fact. Instead, I read a lot of material on both sides and spend a great deal of time trying to debate these issues. Hardly the mark of someone disinterested in the truth of a matter.
As far as God goes, and besides the point that I was [and a billion others still are] a Christian and acknowledged the veracity of evolution, I would strongly suggest thinking about the fact that I live a moral and happy life without faith. I lived a moral and happy life with faith as well, although I might argue that I'm a bit more relieved now than before. So where was my motive to "commit" myself? Answer: I didn't have one, and still don't.
If I wanted to, tomorrow, I could just say, "Man, I guess I'll choose to believe in a God," and I could try my very hardest to do so. However, I would not really believe it. Similarly, I could believe in God (if I was still capable) and say, "Well, a God exists, but not the one of the Bible or Qu'ran, and I'm just going to live a good and moral life..."
I have no "commitment" that requires that God doesn't exist. I simply cannot bring myself to believe in such a notion any more. If you want to know more about why, see these arguments.
I guarantee that if you take the time to read them, you will gain some respect for the intellectual position that it is unlikely that a God exists.
As far as Whale evolution is concerned look at this: Whale Evolution.
I read it. I have read much of what AiG writes. As I said, I started out a Christian looking for answers.
Ed Babinski has an enviable collection of whale evolution articles, specifically focused on the atavistic hind limbs found in modern whales, as well as the transitional series shown here.
Take care.
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