February 2, 1809. Both Lincoln and Darwin were born. Who was the greater emancipator?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Jun 28 2007, 07:37 PM) [snapback]469749[/snapback]</div>

I don't disagree with this at all, it seems to be a fairly accurate history from my (admittedly) limited understanding. however, they say great men aren't extraordinary. They're simply ordinary men put into extraordinary situations. I have to give Lincoln a ton of credit for doing the right thing, even if it was for the wrong reasons. He may have had his prejudices, but he didn't allow them to control him while he was President.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Jun 29 2007, 09:16 AM) [snapback]470000[/snapback]</div>

And even most of the abolitionists at the time were still what we would today call "racist." They objected to slavery on religious grounds, not because they actually viewed slaves as equals in any way (they mostly favored sending them all back to Africa or giving them a separate state, not any kind of integration). The recent biography, John Brown by John S. Reynolds, does an outstanding job of vividly recreating the mindset of that time, in which you could basically say the entire population were white supremacists. For any caucasian to not be racist at that time was pretty extraordinary.

That said, I personally favor Lincoln in this poll. Not that I wish to diminish Darwin's acheivement; but I think that idea of evolution would have eventually occurred with or without him (i.e., Wallace). Having Lincoln around at that time (i.e., presidential competence) to defeat the south seems to me an extraordinary stroke of luck.

 

Darwin Rocks! See avatar...
He formed a radical scientific theory despite the danger of opposing church doctrine. The church is still fighting his theories today. Someday, it will be fully accepted, and the churchs will have to portray Adam and Eve as another story with meaning, instead of fact. Just like the battle the church waged on the sun centered theory. I'm not so sure he emancipated anyone though. He just gets his name on the theory, but many many scientists have contributed to the theory, and helped its acceptance in the public and in acadamia.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Jun 28 2007, 12:41 PM) [snapback]469469[/snapback]</div>

LOL Can-O-Worms :huh: :mellow: :lol:

 

Lincoln had such big hands...

...but he was gay, wan't he...?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Jun 29 2007, 05:52 PM) [snapback]470375[/snapback]</div>

I had not heard that. Of course, he would not have gotten elected if he was and it was generally known. But if it's true that 10% of the population is gay, then we've probably had a few gay presidents. I doubt if we could know for sure which ones they were.

 

If we're counting souls emancipated from bodies, then it's Darwin hands-down. His theories energized the movement that became National Socialism and left Europe in ashes after systematically murdering somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 million innocent people.

Darwin recast the pitiless cruelty of nature from something horrid, to be resisted with every effort, into the role of bringing about our very being. Mankind owes its existence to nature's merciless extermination of the weak and vulnerable, according to Darwin. We as a race (as in Homo sapiens sapiens) improve ourselves only to the extent that the best and strongest survive and reproduce while the undtermenchen are sterilised and/or die.

The message wasn't lost on Ernst Haeckel, Karl Binding, Alfred Hoche, or Adolf Hitler.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ethereal @ Jun 30 2007, 10:57 PM) [snapback]470843[/snapback]</div>

It wasn't lost but they misapplied just like you do. Darwin's ideas simply do not apply to interactions between human beings and should not be used as a justification for human actions.

Regardless, human behavior has no bearing on whether a scientific theory is true or not.

Besides, if there is a god he is reponsible, or allows all the merciless killing. Either way he doesn't seem to care.

This is the epicurean argument regarding sufffering:

If he caused it, he is evil
If he can't stop, it he is not all-powerful
If he doesn't care he is cruel

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ethereal @ Jun 30 2007, 07:57 PM) [snapback]470843[/snapback]</div>

While "Social Darwinism" was used by the Nazis as a justification, it had nothing to do with Darwin, and it had nothing to do with the rise of the Nazi Party. It was the Treaty of Versailles, imposed on Germany by England and France, over the objections of president Wilson, which threw Germany into economic collapse, and led to the rise of the Nazis. The social, economic, and political factors that led to their rise owed nothing whatsoever to Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Social Darwinism was invented by Herbert Spencer, and was denounced by Darwin himself. This was the idea that social conditions were the result of the same sort of evolutionary pressures that drive the physical evolution of species.

To blame Darwin for the rise of the Nazis is like blaming the inventor of the hammer every time someone hits someone else over the head with a hammer. It is ludicrous.

Better yet, it is like blaming the discoverer of the circulation of blood every time someone bleeds to death. Darwin discovered the process by which new species arise out of existing ones. To blame the discoverer of a natural process for the crimes of maniacs who extrapolate from that process and derive evil and incorrect conclusions from it is, as stated above, ludicrous. Of course, the opposition to evolution is itself ludicrous, and the opponents of evolution have no arguments to present other than the most twisted and ludicrous ones, since they are arguing against physical facts as obvious as the light and warmth given off by the sun.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Jul 1 2007, 10:19 AM) [snapback]470991[/snapback]</div>

No, Darwin was bright enough to appreciate all the ramifications of his theory:

At some future period, not
very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will
almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout
the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor
Schaaffhausen has remarked,* will no doubt be exterminated. The
break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it
will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may
hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon,
instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.


--Darwin, Descent of Man

Funny thing: I was outside most of the day, and while the light and heat (especially here in sunny FL) were pretty evident, I must have been distracted when the evolution was occurring.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Jun 30 2007, 11:12 PM) [snapback]470844[/snapback]</div>

Why not?
True and horrid is still true, no?

 

"I must have been distracted when the evolution was occurring."

Why is it that people can't understand that evolution occurs over periods of generations, NOT minute, days, or even years?
Genetic codes cannot "Evolve" in your lifetime. Insects can evolve over years, as their life cycles are measured in weeks or months. Humans cannot.

"Darwin's ideas simply do not apply to interactions between human beings and should not be used as a justification for human actions."
"Why not?
True and horrid is still true, no?"

The idea of natural selection DOES apply to human interactions. That's one facet of evolution. But the actual evolution of human genetics takes MANY generations.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ethereal @ Jul 2 2007, 09:41 PM) [snapback]472005[/snapback]</div>

So if you drop a glass of water on the floor, that's Isaac Newton's fault?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ethereal @ Jul 2 2007, 09:41 PM) [snapback]472005[/snapback]</div>

That's right. Even if Darwin's ideas were directly responsible for those atrocities they could still be true. So blaming atrocities on evolution does not falsify it.

However, the point is that Social Darwinism was just false and was probably an intentional misunderstanding of what evolution really is. The basic flaw is that no human could tell what is a selective advantage for a group of other humans. Only circumstance and the environment can through their influence of genetics through many generations. As has been pointed out.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Jul 3 2007, 10:01 AM) [snapback]472223[/snapback]</div>

OK, serves me right: my glibness blurred over the (legitimate) distinction I was trying to make.

The sun can be observed to emit heat and light; evolution is inferred to have taken place based on fossils, radioisotope dating, etc.

I have read accounts that the British lost the Battle of Saratoga because General Howe made an excursion to capture Philadelphia and was thus unavailable to come to General Burgoyne's aid. However, I wasn't there, and I bet I can pile up all available artifacts from the conflict and devise an alternative history that fits the relics but contradicts the accounts of the now long-dead witnesses and participants.

Darwin and his modernist-materialist contemporaries, like their (ideological) Epicurean ancestors, had no place in their worldview for a God who could have made the world, and thus devised an alternative, godless narrative that fit the physical evidence.

Darwin's true contribution to mankind was to add a plank to the laughably pitiful privacy fence Man insists on erecting between himself and his Creator, at a singularly disastrous cost to Man.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Jul 3 2007, 10:38 AM) [snapback]472248[/snapback]</div>

What atrocities? OK, I'm definitely not endorsing National Socialist eugenic policies, but my question is: why aren't you and your scientific materialist buddies?

I understand that some things just can't be predicted (might gills come in handy for humans somewhere down the line?), but surely, owing our very existence to the survival of the fittest (and the non-survival of the unfit), how can we toy with commiting species-wide suicide by allowing the unfit to survive and reproduce as freely as the fit?

While gills might be an unknown, can't we all agree that slow-witted, feeble, sickly individuals are less helpful to our species-wide biological progress than brilliant, robust, healthy ones?

I agree that the selection criteria the Nazis employed for the Holocaust were bizarre, and probably meaningless. However, there was a pre-Holocaust in which hundreds of thousands of disabled and chronically ill "incurables" were provided "final medical assistance." What other position can a good Darwinist take regarding the survival, care, and even reproduction of the infirm?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ethereal @ Jul 3 2007, 08:14 PM) [snapback]472718[/snapback]</div>

Darwin studied for the ministry and was a deeply religious man. He believed that in studying the world and its natural processes he was glorifying god, and he believed throughout his life that his studies and his conclusions were a testimony to the majesty of the creator.

It was only the extremist literalist fringe that declared that Darwin's theory of natural selection was against god, or that evolution and god were mutually incompatible. Today, only the fundies refuse to accept evolution. The vast majority of Christian denominations believe in both god and evolution, and see no contradiction in asserting that evolution was the method god chose to create the species that inhabit the world today, including humans. Of course, this also includes an allegorical, rather than literal, reading of Genesis. Biblical literalism is untenable nowadays. But sadly, the god myth lives on, unhindered by the fact of evolution.

It is typical of the pathetic ignorance of fundamentalists when they assert that Darwin was an atheist. He was a devout believer in the foolish fairy tales about god.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Jul 4 2007, 12:30 AM) [snapback]472768[/snapback]</div>

Darwin disagrees with you:

"I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlasting punished.

And this is a damnable doctrine."

--Charles Darwin, Autobiography

Darwin did espouse belief in a "first cause," which he pared down such that the universe is merely a cosmic scale-up of a kid's chemistry set gone kablooie:

"I feel compelled to look at a first cause having an intelliegent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a theist."

--Ibid

However, Darwin excluded from his worldview a present, personal God with any relevance to how humans lead their lives:

"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."

--Ibid

Thus, I may state "I support the US Constitution," and you would likely presume that I mean I am in favor of its guarantees of freedom, etc. However, if I work at the National Archives holding up a display case containing the document, the statement is still technically true, but the meaning is something different altogether.

Darwin may have "believed" in a "first cause" while still framing a cosmology indistinguishable from atheistic materialism. His "first cause" has no bearing whatsoever upon right and wrong; indeed, in such a universe there is no authoriative voice on right and wrong, and therefore no consequences for one's deeds (or misdeeds) beyond those imposed by the laws of physics.

Finally, it is tempting to speculate that these views were adopted by Darwin only late in life, however, before his proposal to Emma in November 1838:

"Before I was engaged to be married, my father advised me to conceal carefully my doubts, for he said that he had known extreme misery thus caused with married persons. "

--Ibid

Twenty years before Origin of Species was published, Darwin was already posessed of doubts in need of careful concealment.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ethereal @ Jul 3 2007, 10:30 PM) [snapback]472725[/snapback]</div>

No we can't. Consider individuals with sickle cell anemia. The defect lowers your normal red blood cell count but is protective against malaria. You can never predict what will be useful in the future. That is why you want a system that mantains diversity for future use. Evolution through genetics accomplishes this through recessive genes, incomplete dominance, etc.

That is the biological explanation. But ethics should be sufficient from preventing you from judging your fellow man as "sickly" or "slow-witted". Otherwise, you run the risk of being judged yourself.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Jul 16 2007, 05:54 PM) [snapback]479833[/snapback]</div>

Death is the ethic of Darwinism! We owe our existence to the extermination of the unfit!

True and horrific is...still true. See ya' at Treblinka!