Define 'species'

[Ondoher]

I was begining to wonder if I was the only one who saw this problem with evolution.

How one misuses a scientific theory says nothing about the veracity of the theory.

I might not like snowball fights, but snow is real.

 

[Jet Black]

oh not hitler. please, someone lock the thread.

 

[USincognito]

...but here's something I posted back in August about the roots of the Holocaust.

Eugenics really came out of the Social Darwinist camp that perverted evolution in the early 20th Century. The overall philosophy of Nazism towards the Jews is more complex than just evolution. There was the bad Archaeology that cooked up with the Aryan concept in the first place, combined with anti-Semitism from the Catholic and Lutheran chruches and Nietzsche's concept of the Untermensch that allowed the Holocaust to happen.

The roots run a lot deeper than any superficial misunderstanding of evolutionary theory on the part of Hilter or Himmler.

 

[Vance]

Thanks for the input and we will take this up again later, I know this because you keep bringing it up.

Only as long as you keep misrepresenting the scientific process and, by implication, insult those Christian scientists who use this process.

Again, your point has been falsified. So, unless you can show why the falsification is itself incorrect, you should not continue to say that naturalistic methodology is atheistic.

And, no, belief in common descent is not atheistic either, for the same reasons. It is equally falsified.

The ONLY thing that you have been able to show with all your posts on this subject is that there are atheists who believe in evolution and common descent and some of them attempt to use this aganist theism.

That is all. You have written reams, but have still never shown one bit of evidence that the naturalistic methodological process, evolution itself, or even a belief in common descent, is inherently atheistic.

 

[Jet Black]

The ONLY thing that you have been able to show with all your posts on this subject is that there are atheists who believe in evolution and common descent and some of them attempt to use this aganist theism.

and the wonderful thing about that, is that the atheists who use that argument are in themselves wrong in doing so.

 

[Physics_guy]

The Scientific Revolution would not have happened had it not been for the Protestant Reformation so you have a nerve calling Martain Luther a monster. Talk about arrogant dogmatisim.

Oh, so I am sure you support Luther's work - The Jews and their Lies. It was a foundational part of Hitler's anti-semitism. Is it part of yours?

 

[Physics_guy]

"Over against all this, the völkisch concept of the world recognizes that the primordial racial elements are of the greatest significance for mankind. In principle, the State is looked upon only as a means to an end and this end is the conservation of the racial characteristics of mankind. Therefore on the völkisch principle we cannot admit that one race is equal to another. By recognizing that they are different, the völkisch concept separates mankind into races of superior and inferior quality."

(Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf )

"Finally, it may not be a logical deduction, but to my imagination it is far more satisfactory to look at such instincts as the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, ants making slaves, the larvae of ichneumonidae feeding within the live bodies of caterpillars, not as specially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences of one general law leading to the advancement of all organic beings--namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die."

(Darwins Origin of Species, Ch. 8 Instinct)

Umm, pretty easy. One describes a natural process on how different organisms struggle to survive in a competitive environment (which even you are not so arrognat to deny actually exists) and another describes the philosophy of government of a racist. Darwin did not put any value judgement in his - Hitler did. If you can't see the difference, you are a moron.

Damn, I thought you could do better - Darwin wrote many things that would actually be considered racists by today's standards. The quote you used is not one of them.

But hey, nice to see that Godwin's Law is still in effect. Weak minds have proven it again and again to be a universal truism.

 

[Jet Black]

Godwin's law.

 

[yossarian]

to borrow from the ridiculous ideas of creation science - eugenics policies are "microevolutionary" and are really no different to the artificial selection of breeding

you'd have to go quite far indeed to find a creationist stupid enough to not agree with all the scientific principles that hitler's policies are based on

 

[Physics_guy]

If you remove Darwin's attack on special creation and his obvious racist tendancies then I would have no problem with his natural selection being a part of biology.

How do Darwin's views on race relations have ANYTHING to do with the validity of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection?

What possible difference would it make if Darwin were a child-abusing, anti-semitic, KKK-founding, date-raping, bad-tipping, really, really bad guy?

Now, as an example, I would chastize anyone for similar lack of logic for arguing that Christianity is false because you are a mind-numbingly arrogant, scientifically-illiterate, logically-challenged, waste of air. (Moderators note - this is a hypothetical, I am not necessarily implying that mark is any (or all) of these things).

That would be poor argumentation because the attack on you would have nothing to do with the validity of a position you may hold. The same is true with your weak attacks on the ToE.

But, hey, if you aren't interested (or, more likely, capable) in even trying to understand the science involved, you may as well make worthless ad hominen attacks on a man that has been dead for more than a 100 years!

 

[Physics_guy]

Godwin's law.

Beat ya to it!

 

[Jet Black]

Beat ya to it!

our timestamp is identical. I wonder how many seconds were in it. must literally be a couple since your reply wasn't there when I started writing.

 

[Jet Black]

What possible difference would it make if Darwin were a child-abusing, anti-semitic, KKK-founding, date-raping, bad-tipping, really, really bad guy?

British are always bad tippers. actually generally we are not tippers at all. I never tip. If they rely on tips, they should get better jobs I say.

 

[Aron-Ra]

The modern synthesis is a philosophy,

As usual, you are dead-wrong on every point. The modern synthesis is the blending of genetics and systematics; the unification of Mendel's theory of inheritence with Darwin's theory of evolution via natural selection, both of which you have already admitted you agree with.

and your 39 questions were introduced well after the debate had allready started.

As all your questions were as well. That's because that's when we're supposed to ask our questions! When else could we do it?

Their signifigance was never elaborated upon,

Not that they needed to be, but yes, they very definitely were. I know you like to pretend that I don't define my terms, but I consistently do, and in message #2, my first post to that debate, I defined taxonomy thus:

"taxonomy: a means of systematic classification of life-forms that reveals distinct relationships of descendant groups nested within ancestral groups that link everything alive today with other groups in the fossil record. This includes many transitional species which appear in the geologic column in a chronology that indicates a fluid sucession of subtle variations over many generations, so that everything that has ever lived is evidently related to everything else through a series of succession in common ancestry at various levels. Systematic taxonomy has been greatly refined and built upon in the last couple hundred years since its inception, and can now be cross-confirmed by DNA sequencing, making it a twin-nested hierarchy that is still one of the most profound proofs of macroevolution."

Then I elaborated on the profound significance of these questions:

"...if evolution from common ancestry is not true, and some flavor of special creation of different (as yet unidentified "kinds") is true, then there would be some surface level(s) in a cladogram where you would accept an actual evolutionary ancestry. But as you reject common ancestry, then there must also be subsequent levels in that twin-nested hierarchy where life-forms would no longer be the same "kind", and wouldn't be biologically related anymore. At that point, they would be magically-created separate "kinds" from those listed around it, and those taxonomic categories would be just as illusory as you imply. Throw away any ideas you have about the importance of any other argument you might be thinking about. None of them compare to this. If creationism is true of anything more than a single ancestor of all living things, or if the concept of common ancestry is fundamentally mistaken, then there MUST be a point in the tree of life where taxonomy falls apart, where what we see as related to everything is really unrelated to anything else. And unless you're a Scientologist or a Raelian, that criteria must apply to other animals besides ourselves. So my challenge to you is this, open up Google.com and investigate any cladograms you can find, (I suggest the Tree of Life pages as they are peer-reviewed) and find for me where that mystic division is in any or all of the sets of questions that I tried to pose to razzelflabben."

the criteria for these classification schemes were never qualified,

Yes they were. I repeated a few times that it didn't matter what names you gave to whatever group you chose to recognize, since the relationships wouldn't change with the name. So there was no criteria except your own in determining whether these examples were biologically-related (evolved) or magically-created as distinct Biblical "kinds".

this was an obvious attempt to to move the goalposts.

This was the goal! It always has been, and still is the goal! I realized that no creationist I had ever met had any understanding of cladistics. And it is my belief that if you knew that as well as I do, it wouldn't even be possible for you to be a creationist anymore, regardless what your religious preferences are. So as I said, since creationists tend to ignore everything evolutionists tell them, dismissing it all out-of-hand and without consideration, then I resolved that I had to involve them in some way that would make them think about all this, by asking them to explain it back to me. But since they always snip and ignore the questions too, I had to set up a ground rule in a formal debate insuring that they would be answered. My goal posts never moved, but you're sure moving yours. After all, you yourself qualified my elaboration on these schemes in the last paragraph of message #15.

Both Dawinism and atheistic materialism are foundational.

Pretending you haven't already lost this point a dozen times isn't going to win it back for you. In this debate, I have already cited a few Christian evolutionary biologists; Theodosius Dobzhansky, paleontologist, Rev. Robert Bakker, my professor, the geneticist Dr. Jill Buettner, and of course, Gregory Mendel and Charles Darwin himself, whom I proved was still a Christian when he published his theory.
Christiananswers
Scibel.Gospelcom

So despite your incessant whining to the contrary, Darwin(ism) isn't foundational, atheism isn't even a factor. You've lost this point, soundly and repeatedly, and everybody knows it. Give it up.

The taxonomic scheme is based on the single common ancestor model so any is based on that foundational premise.

The taxonimic scheme is based on derived morphological similarities and was devised by a creationist living a century before Darwin. You can't be right about anything, can you?

Now who is being accusatory,

Still you.

you call my assumptions deplorable because they are not exclusivly naturalistic.

No. I criticized your assumptions because they were baseless, as you admitted when you said there was no evidence of any kind to back them up.

You have sniped incessantly and mocked at any hint of an omnipotent God creating the living creatures as described in Genesis.

I did not mock any hint of an omnipotent god, and still wouldn't have even if you had presented one. But I did point out that Genesis is still not a literally accurate, and even presented a handful of Christians, (Dobzhansky, Bakker, & Boettner) who all said the same.

If you are waiting for me to apologize for not accepting your naturalistic assumptions your going to have to do more then mock Christian theism.

I did not mock Christian theism, but you do. I am waiting for you to apologize for falsely accusing me of not answering your mutation questions when you now know I already had multiple times, yet you still levy the same charge, knowing its wrong.

You say that I'm being prejudicial and since you were never going to even question the single common ancestor model as the only standard your accusations are most likely just projection.

You have, (and continue to make) numerous pre-judgements, broad, negative generalizations of collective groups which you will neither confirm nor retract. That is prejudice, and I haven't shown any of that in our debate. I did however state that a single universal ancestor wasn't critical to our discussion, and may not even be true. I allowed for a few original ancestors to be possible, remember?

The moderators tend to be rather gracious and that can be credited to the Christian temperment of the board.

You're funny. How does this Christian temperment account for people like you? What about Falwell, Roberston, Hovind or McVeigh? What about Martin Luther, Cotton Matter, Torquemada, Cardinal Bellarmino, Father John Furniss, or Bishop Cyril of the Opposition? If you want, I can provide quite a long list of devout Christians who never showed any tolerant temperment at any point in their lives, including a few Nazis. That doesn't mean that all Christians are bad of course, although that's the sort of generalization you would make, and have with regard to Darwinists, atheists, materialists, and scientists in general. But it does mean that being Christian is not make one gracious.

The topic is the origins of our species and which model best supports it. Don't tell me that you didn't know that the subject matter was so broad that the specifics go on endlessly. If you wanted to have a debate exclusivly on taxonomic relationships of all species you should have proposed that instead of starting a general topic and focusing exclusivly on that.

The topic was the origin of our species, and which model best supported that; that's why I gave some periphrial examples of it. I was, (and still am) prepared to show you however much you needed to see to be satisfied with that. Its not my fault that the topic is so huge, but all I did was give you an idea how big it was. All you were required to see was the structure of the clades; species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, etc. How much of that you needed to delve into was entirely up to you.

And didn't we also have a rule against cutting and pasting large portions of other people's websites for me to argue against, instead of debating you directly in your own words? Didn't we have another rule about honestly conceding points that were clearly lost? Are you going to concede the error in your silly claim that all mutations must be harmful? I think you lost that point clearly enough. And what about your constant insistence that all evolutionists be prejudiced against theism? You lost that one pretty soundly too. Now will you owe up to that like an honest man?

What we agreed to was:
Ad hominem remarks are clearly forbidden in the rules of the forum so if for instance someone is guilty of quoting out of context, quote mining, arguments from incredulity…etc, the statement not the individual will be addressed

You abandoned this concept immediatly,

You abandoned the agreement, not me. You quoted out of context several times where I never did. You were the one quote-mining, and forcing me to argue against articles from Answersingenesis instead of your own words. What few arguments you had were from incredulity. And you kept attacking the individual instead of the position, something you're still doing now. I never did any of this in the whole debate.

instead of addressing the questions I asked about evolutions demonstrated mechanism during the development of organisms you simply accused me of anything you could think of.

Now you're just making things up. I had already addressed the demonstrated mechanism of evolution when you asked, and even before then, had you paid attention. All I have accused you of are the things we've already proven you to be guilty of. We did both agree to answer every direct question posed to us, which I have done, even though you've repeatedly ignore most of mine. And we did agree to concede any errors that were clearly lost. So once again, are you going to concede the error in your silly claim that all mutations must be harmful? I think you lost that point clearly enough. And what about your constant insistence that all evolutionists be prejudiced against theism? You lost that one pretty soundly too. Now will you owe up to that like an honest man? Evidently not.

Instead of addressing the cleavage stage question you took to calling me a hypocrite with only a link to a genomic website as a substantive retort

You are a hypocrite, and this last accusation is proof of that. I did answer your cleavage question, (multiple times in fact) and showing you substantial breakthroughs in genomic research which is peer-reviewed and validated by the global scientific community is very definitely a substantive retort, especially since you have to way to contest other than to pretend that it doesn't mean anything.

You're not only a hypocrite, and an emotionally-charged, prejudiced one, but you're also a sore loser and a dishonest person, and dismal example of a Christian.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Its not a stereotype when you offer substantive quotes from leading evolutionary thinkers and critical commentary. You even admitted that the quote from a biology textbook that was laced with a theological premise didn't belong in a biology textbook.

That's true. But it is a stereotype when you add your negative personal generalizations and your sensationalist emotional associations with nazis, communists, or any other negative element you can imagine.

I don't have a private peanut gallery so when I speak of the evolutionist I am talking about principles in an antithestic worldview.

Yes, that is the stereotype, the bigoted prejudice I was complaining about. When I speak of evolutionists, I speak of atheists, agnostics, pagans, Christians, Jews, Pantheists and anyone else who accepts evolution as the trues, best explanation for the origin of our species. You keep deliberately associating evolution with atheism, and then you pretend that atheism is anti-theistic and out to get you. No one is likely to be more militantly atheist than I am, and I'm not even out to get you. But I will expose you as a bigot.

Incidently, when I speak of Christians, I speak of anyone who accepts all the tenets of the Nicene creed, and this includes Mormons. But when I speak of creationists, I speak of certain cultish factions of superstitious dogmatists who may be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or Helenist, but who believe the world was created by an immortal being with magic powers. When I speak of Biblical literalists, I am speaking only of a small fraction of Christianity whom most other Christians find to be an embarassment to their faith.

Evolution itself is fine but the naturalistic assumptions it has come to include are poison. I have more then explained this and frankly I think this is nothing more then a diversionary tactic.

You have never explained this in any way, not even well enough to let me know what any of these naturalistic assumptions even are.

After 20 years of reading, debating and reflecting on Christian apologetics I dare say that my opinion could not be wrong by chance.

Well, I didn't think it wrong by design, but if you've been at this for 20 years, I guess it must be. By the way, I've been at this for 33 years, beginning these debates, and winning against adults when I was only eight years old. I've never lost a debate with creationist, (nor do I think it even possible anymore) and I would still have beaten you in a debate even if you could have gone back to debate me way back then.

I didn't just happen to choose the Bible as my primary source for epistomology,

No, you just happened never to have investigated any other alternative, and already happened to be indoctrinated into this one

I made a conscious decision to reject the naturalistic assumptions you defend so vigorously.

Since you've never even identified these naturalistic assumptions, I'm going to ask that you do so now.

I have reseached as much of the evidence for the reliability of Scripture as I could, both as history and a philosophical foundation for science.

Yet you wouldn't share any of that. I asked for some, but answer came there none.

I found it to be a far more reliable foundation then the transitory empircal rationalizatins of naturalistic materialism.

What a coincidence. I've studied much more indepth than you ever could have, yet I found it to be dead-wrong about damned near everything back to front, and plagiarized from previously pagan pantheons.

You have done nothing to convince me that I am mistaken, in fact you have confirmed my suspicions that evolutionary thought is an attack on Christian theism.

That twisted, bigoted notion was already priori in your mind before you ever heard of me.

Do you really think I have never had to defend my religious convictions against these things? Hitler spoke of the Arian race as the pentacle of God's creation,

That too was a religious concept. He borrowed it from Hindu mythology.

obviously I am repulsed by this profain, racist rethoric.

Yet your religion is responsible for plenty of that while you pretend it wasn't, and try to blame it all on innocent atheists instead.

Now as far as the Inquistion, witch trials and crusades these were atrocities that were commited by people who had lost their religion. The motivation was allways political and financial which the Bible condemns in all its many forms.

Religion is, and always has been, a means of motivation and manipulation of the masses, even including the horrific atrocities committed by Moses himself; theft, abuse of men, women and animals, murder, genocide, pedofile rape, pillage, torture, even abortion, in a Taliban-like regime. Would you say that Moses lost his religion too?

The truth is that I only compared Darwin to Hitler because I wanted you to condemn the racist implications, thats all. You don't have to defend evolutionary biology from either Darwin or Hitler's racist tendancies just demonstrate how it is different. Ernst Mayr did, and I was impressed with the way he went about it. I was hoping you would as well, obviously you took it wrong but I never said that evolutionary biology was racist, I was saying that Darwin was. All you had to do was condemn the racist implications and move on,

I did. And Darwin wasn't racist, at least not compared to the rest of the English empire at that time, and still for a long time since.

it was never anything personal.

Neither was it relevant.

I have told you several times in our debate that you can't intimidate me, and there's no point in trying to insult me. Yet you continue to try. Remember that I have asked you more than once in that debate to try and discuss this rationally, and try not to jump to such prejudiced conclusions and emotional pleas.

I never accused you of any such thing. If you don't like having racism associated with your worldview and scientific studies then condemn the racism of Darwin and Hitler.

I condemn Hitler's religiously-motivated racism. But Darwin was never racist, so far as I know. And it wouldn't matter even if he and Mendel both were.

Calling me a bigot isn't going to improve the quality of the debate, and by the way, I am not intimidated by this kind of a rant either.

I think that may be due to your own integrity. If you labeled me thus, I would make at least some attempt to correct you. All you did was demonstrate that I was right about you, by doing the very things I predicted you would do.

Similarly, I keep thinking that other people are logical, that their positions are based on reason, and that they will respond honestly.

Me thinks thou does protest too much.

I am committed to correcting every error, which for you averages at least one per sentence.

I don't know how you thought I "went off" because, unlike you, I haven't been riled by anything said or implied so far. This is only an intellectual discussion, one where my passions are not involved, and it wouldn't matter if I turn out to be wrong. If I am, I would want to know that where you, (evidently) don't. And unlike you, I have answered every question that was asked of me. I reply to every point and query systematically. I don't snip the bits I don't want to deal with like you do. So there was never anything you could have called me on.

Right, thats why the name calling has came out in every response. Lets see, Bibleolatry, hypocricy, dishonesty, bigotary...no I don't see any emotionally charged explosions of insults in those terms.

Nor do I. What should have happened though is that you should have curbed these tendancies, and addressed the topic rationally, something you still refuse to do.

I haven't ignored anything you've ever said. Why do you keep saying I have? Besides, didn't you already admit that Homo habilis was related to Homo sapiens?

I suggested that but the size of the skulls makes this hard to reconcile to reality. Like the other fossils its tricky but I was simply looking at the use of tools, I was responding to a list of dozens of terms I had only recently been exposed to. Since we are getting close to the end of the debate I'll put as much into the supposed human ancestor fossils as I can.

Thank you. That's more like it.

The rest is more of the same, I never accused you of anything

Yes you have. You accused me of basing my position on faith, or as part of an antitheistic stance. You also accused me of ignoring your questions, which you're still doing even though you know your allegation is false.

I simply asked you to point out the substantive differnce between Darwin and Hitler.

Which I did.

I provided you with two allmost identical quotes and you failed to answer the question.

Yes I did, twice! You ignored it the first time, and brought it up again twice since then as if I hadn't. Get some ginkoba!

Instead you hurled one insult after another. You keep doing this which is why the length of you posts is a waste of space.

Blame the awesome number of your errors.

Most of them are just emotionally charged attacks on me personally.

There were none that were emotionally-charged. And most of them were countering your attacks against me. All I did was point out your inappropriate methods and request that you desist in using them.

Just point out the subtantive difference or condemn the two statements as racist. That's all you have to do and quit wasting my time with these incessant allegations.

Yours is the allegation, and I have already addressed it several times, including pointing out how they were not only not "almost identical", but not even similar.

The truth is that natural science is a very precise and delicate tool. Its not a club to be used as a blunt force weapon. We are begining round ten so I am going to ignore your accusations and insults and begin to digest and summarize the main points in the debate. This is the last time I trust someone to abhere to the rules of formal debate without a commitment to do so at the outset.

I did commit to the rules at the onset. You did not, and still haven't. But if you'll just answer the questions as I do, without any further allegations of illicit associations, or instigative quips, then we should have no further problems.

I suspected that you were unaware and unconcerned with them when we started this debate but I let you rush me into it blindly, I'll know better next time.

I doubt that. I was aware of all of them. I had to be, since I wrote the agreement myself, (which established certain priorities over the suggested guidlines) and I read and accepted the ones you wrote too.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

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 ... 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. ~ Charles Darwin

The saddest aspect of this quote is that it reflects the norm in the England at that time. Whether religious or scientific, (or both) "Great" Britain belitted everyone else in the world.

Darwin was right about civility eventually replacing savagery, (we hope) and he was (sadly) right about the eventual extinction of anthropomorphous apes also. But the comment relating to negroes being somehow closer related to non-human apes (mostly due to shared skin color) was wrong dispite all he had been indoctrinated to believe. It wasn't really his fault. Imperial England was extraordinarily ethnocentric, and had been long before he was born.

At the turn of the 20th century, British anthropologists had decided that aboriginal Australians were the "missing link" between man and other anthropomorphous apes, and the result was the eventual extinction of indigenous people of Tasmania. This is a lesson that is taught today in modern anthropology, to dissuade such hienous prejudice in the future. But many Britains living in the recent centuries before Darwin had also decided that Native Americans were mere animals that were less than human, and were therefore undeserving of human rights. They held similar disdain for Aborigines, Orientals, Africans, and Dravidians all of whom they took it upon themselves to conquer and rule. That extremely arrogant attitude of assumed superiority permiated the British empire, and was particularly prevailant in the higher divisions of education and administration. The concept of equality didn't yet exist anywhere, not even in the states. Britons even looked down on the "colonists". So I can hardly fault Darwin for being a product of his environment. But I can credit him with being at least a bit more liberally-minded than most of his neighbors. He didn't display any racist tendancies that weren't universally-accepted by his peers and considered to be a matter of demonstrable fact. So for him, it wasn't a matter of prejudicial hatred like it was for Hitler. Although both men were raised to believe as they did; Darwin in a pompous, pseudo-superior society; and Hitler being taught to hate the Jews in his strictly-creationist religious instruction.

One of Darwin's later supporters, and an atheist, was also a much more outspoken critic of Imperial English prejudice and a proponant of human rights. Eric Arthur Blair was a soldier in the Royal armed forces occupying India in the early 1900s. He stayed in India after his term when he realized the criminality of British Imperialism, which he protested many times under the pen name of George Orwell. His books were apparently very influential, and may have had a small role in the near-total conversion of United Kingdom into one of the more tolerant and ethnically-diverse nations of this century.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Origin of Species is an attack on special creation from cover to cover and this same mentality is evident in the modern synthesis.

I'm sorry if the myths you worship turned out not to be true, and still wouldn't be even if Christianity were the truest of the world's religions. And I'm sorry if you would rather imagine yourself as something better than everything else alive. But the truth is you are a part of nature, not a part from it. And doctrinal dogmatism is still a form of idolatry.

I am a little dizzy from preparing my response to Aron-Ra so I am not really up to debating this point right now. Check out the formal debate forum and I will elaborate on this at length.

And I would invite those who do check that debate to comment on it in the non-participant forum. I would very much like to see other's opinions on that.

Just one thing to add, evolution is not contrary to even the most literal reading of the Bible,

Yes it is, and so are several other fields of science; anthropology, geology, cosmology, virology, archaeology, etc.

it is the assumption that we descended from a single common ancestor that is antitheistic.

No it isn't, as my several references to Christian evolutionists, and other theistic evolutionists, and the contrabutions by folks like Bushido and Lucaspa on this board have already proved over and over and over again. I am a supposedly militant atheist, and even a materialist. So of course I should be delighted if evolution were antitheistic, right? But even I know that it is not. You have lost this point, conclusively, repeatedly, and permanently. You can't change that.

 

[mark kennedy]

How do Darwin's views on race relations have ANYTHING to do with the validity of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection?

Because it is at the heart of the emphasis, let the strong live and the weak die. Did you ever read Darwin or realize the profound influence he had on the modern synthesis? For some reason the evolutionist doesn't like the connection of Darwinian evolution to Nazi and Communist political philosophy. It is never the less an obvious fact of history and history often repeats itself.

What possible difference would it make if Darwin were a child-abusing, anti-semitic, KKK-founding, date-raping, bad-tipping, really, really bad guy?

Probably none unless his personal demons became the foundation of evolutionary biology.

Now, as an example, I would chastize anyone for similar lack of logic for arguing that Christianity is false because you are a mind-numbingly arrogant, scientifically-illiterate, logically-challenged, waste of air. (Moderators note - this is a hypothetical, I am not necessarily implying that mark is any (or all) of these things).

Since we are speaking hypothetically I would want to see where all of these things are evident in their work. In Darwin's case it is the heart of the emphasis and has had a profound influence on modern thought. Oh wait, thats not hypothetical, its a fact.

That would be poor argumentation because the attack on you would have nothing to do with the validity of a position you may hold. The same is true with your weak attacks on the ToE.

I attack the naturalistic assumptions of the evolutionist because they are wrong. I don't care if it's theistic evolution because there is no discernable difference between their views and the miltant Darwinian. I get the same condescending tone, the same naturalistic materialism, the same incessant insults.

But, hey, if you aren't interested (or, more likely, capable) in even trying to understand the science involved, you may as well make worthless ad hominen attacks on a man that has been dead for more than a 100 years!

Wrong again, Darwin's work was revived and is inextricably linked to modern evolutionary thought. Now I cannot say whether or not you are aware of this fact but one thing is sure, you are contradicting Mayr. Now if I have to choose between two possible authorities to speak for modern evolution, and the only choices are you and Mayr, I'm going to have to go with Mayr.

 

[Ondoher]

Because it is at the heart of the emphasis, let the strong live and the weak die. Did you ever read Darwin or realize the profound influence he had on the modern synthesis? For some reason the evolutionist doesn't like the connection of Darwinian evolution to Nazi and Communist political philosophy. It is never the less an obvious fact of history and history often repeats itself.

Probably none unless his personal demons became the foundation of evolutionary biology.

Since we are speaking hypothetically I would want to see where all of these things are evident in their work. In Darwin's case it is the heart of the emphasis and has had a profound influence on modern thought. Oh wait, thats not hypothetical, its a fact.

I attack the naturalistic assumptions of the evolutionist because they are wrong. I don't care if it's theistic evolution because there is no discernable difference between their views and the miltant Darwinian. I get the same condescending tone, the same naturalistic materialism, the same incessant insults.

Wrong again, Darwin's work was revived and is inextricably linked to modern evolutionary thought. Now I cannot say whether or not you are aware of this fact but one thing is sure, you are contradicting Mayr. Now if I have to choose between two possible authorities to speak for modern evolution, and the only choices are you and Mayr, I'm going to have to go with Mayr.

Let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that Darwin was a racist, and this racism was directly responsible for his formulation of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution. How does that falsify our current understanding of evolutionary mechanisms and common descent?

 

[Vance]

Or, to use my historical example:

Let's say that an atheist was intent on making Christianity look bad. He goes about doing a lot of thorough research and discovers a great deal of damaging, but very accurate, documents which show Christianity in a bad light (say, pogroms, inquisitions, burning of innocents, etc). Then he uses that accurate data to write a book which castigates the Church, to argue why these facts mean there is no Christian God, the Church is morally bankrupt, etc, etc. Then others read this book, which sets out not only the facts, but also his atheistic attacks.

Now, his facts are still correct, no matter HOW they were used by him and others.

Point: the use to which facts are put does not invalidate the facts.