Challenging Evolution

In that environment, are you not also aware of Muslim militants in the UK who are actually against human rights and against personal freedoms; who wish to overthrow Democracy and allow Islam to dominate every government at the omission and eradication of every competing religion? Do you see how the integration of church and state in still-free and Democratic nations sort of paves the way for the Islamic agenda?

While the creation issue deeply divides Christianity, and threatens to increase its rate of decline, Islam continues to be the fastest growing religion in the world, and is expected to soon eclipse the entire Christian collective, (all denominations included). Sooner or later, even Christian creationists are going to be my allies, and together we will all be pleading to regain freedom of (and from) religion, and the re-separation of church and state. But by then, I fear, it will be too late.

I'll have time later, DV, to catch up with this fascinating thread properly

For now, another instant event, & more on how to progress & not decay...

@ least 3 top lawyers, separately, began quests to disprove the Resurrection of Christ

During research, all 3 became born-again Christians

Val Greave wrote "Evidence For The Resurrection"

I don't recall who wrote, "Who Moved The Stone?"

The 3rd, whose name & book I forget, was the most eminent - (Sir Fred Catherwood?)

"Those who follow after the flesh will, from the flesh, reap a harvest of destruction

"Those who follow after the Spirit will, from the Spirit, reap a good harvest - everlasting life"

& the Greek words translated as eternal life also mean unlimited in quality

Must dash!

Ian

can we please not derail this thread, if people want to talk about politics or whatever, do so in another thread, thankyou.

100 pages and counting down (up?) to 1,000 posts.

Is this some kind of a record for CF?

Where does modern TE speak about more or less primitive forms of Homo sapiens sapiens? You're just trying to start trouble.

I know what Ian is alluding to. During the Victorian period we saw an advent of attempts to use science to justify racial inequality. For a while it worked, but it is important to look at it in more detail and see why it worked and why it was later brought down .

These attempts were born from a background of western imperial societies seeking to justify differential treatment of various human ethnic groups (although they would have used the term race then). In addition the idea of racial differences would have tied in rather neatly to the Georgian and Victorian love of classifying everything in a hierarchical manner.

What we now refer to as the “scientific racist” movement really got started with Samuel George Morton and his Crania Americana in which he published his conclusion based upon his work with measuring Cranial capacity of various skulls from various “races”. He claimed that because people of other races had smaller skulls they where obviously less intelligent. Now there are a number of problems with Mortons work, the most glairing being the obvious inductive leap that a relatively minor difference in cranial capacity would translate to a noticeable difference in intelligence. Since we now know that people with larger heads are not inherently smarter than those with smaller ones, Mortons inductive leap looks rather silly. Another obvious flaw was that Mortons sample size was small, he seemed to have come to his conclusion in advance and, in fact, the skulls of the Masai are generally larger than the skulls of the Caucasians, but he inexplicably didn’t notice that when he classified black Africans as a single “race“.

I should point out here that although Mortons claims fell from grace in the inter war years he was extensively debunked by Steven Jay Gould in 1981. (Gould was an evolutionist by the way).

The scientific racist movement gained momentum in the early 1850s with the publication of the races of Man by John Knox and The Inequality of Human Races by Count Gobineau. Taken together these books formed the basis for an argument that “race” was the basis for all cultural, literal and artistic achievement and that races could be split into the “Culture creators” (innately superior to all other races of man), the “Culture Bearers” (who where inferior to the creators but still a good long way up the evolutionary ladder) and the “Culture destroyers” who where considered the basest of human racial stock. Gobineau and Knox found their work widely accepted by western imperial societies who sought excuses to treat other, colonised native populations, differently to European ones, a fact the theologians at the time were only to happy to go along with.

In the interwar years the Parkinsons scholars guide produced a taxonomic table of the races of man that placed all human races into 5 primary races (White, Yellow, Brown, Red, Black), further delineating each into others. Popular culture accepted this taxonomic table, although many scientists objected even then.

However by the 1930s evolutionary scientists were attacking the taxonomic approach on all sides, complaining the divisions were arbitrary, untrue to the theory and tended to promote unsavoury political ideology. So when Ian tells us he left school in 1966 that is 30 years after evolutionary science began to debunk the taxonomic approach and promote a less racist claim that humans are pretty much humans and the term “Race” was no longer considered synonymous with “Ethnicity”.

In the natural sciences, taxonomic classifications of race were largely made taboo by the associations with the Nazi party (who, I should point out had revived older taxonomic theories already in general decline by their era). If anything the Social and not the natural sciences retained a semblance of scientific racism for longer, as Hans Eysencks controversial studies into IQ and educational performance attest. By the 1970s however Eysencks work was also largely debunked when it was pointed out that the IQ tests he used where culturally loaded.

Ghost

Ian your entire argument is a disgusting and despicable example of the fallacy of emotive language. The theory of evolution is not a racist theory, it was evolutionists and not creationists who attacked scientific racism successfully and brought it down. You are trying to dishonestly claim it is a racist theory when its not. According to evolution all human ethnic groups are Homo Sapiens Sapens and so none are more primitive than any other.



Do you want to know what I have a problem with Ian? I have a really big problem with white Anglo Saxons trying to co-opt the struggle against racism that those of us who are not white Anglo Saxons have endured. Don’t you dare try and tell me what it is like to be racially abused, I have had it first hand all my life thank you very much. I don’t need a second hand account of it from some one who is using it as a bargaining chip in a debate, that's just low.

Ghost
(About half way down the taxonomic table he mentioned in his earlier post)

this is of course, a misuse of Evolutionary theory, just as the justifications for black slavery based on the bible in the deep south of the US were a misuse of the Bible. trying to tar evolution with something that evolution isn't responsible for won't help your cause at all. That being said, I think you are being exceedingly rude here. as you can see several people are engaged in a conversation with razelflabben, and it is very impolite of you to distract the thread with your posts. If you want to talk about something not related to the thread, please do so in another thread, you wouln'd just butt into someone's conversation on the street would you? so don't do it here please.

Any who know Barnabas Trust work for the Persecuted Church worldwide may well have heard director Patrick Sookhdeo say, "God made only 1 race: the human race"