Reflecting on another Darwin Day (schools, train, rain)

[warptman]

Lord save me from your followers.

[User 2]

Originally Posted by cobolt

Alice2,

Darwin states regarding his belief in God " . . .Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete."

Charles Darwin God religious beliefs quotes

Good Lawd, cobolt....

Did you even consider what that site is all about?

The principal researcher is Brian J. Hayes who actually sincerely practised a mystical spirituality circa 1978-1983 during which years the core mystical and poetical insights contained on these pages were identified or discovered.

The web is full of Christian whackjobs who claim to interpret Darwin's beliefs coincide with their own.

Please, this idea that Darwin believed as they claim is complete rubbish....

...and I think there are much more credible sources rather than that of a self proclaimed mystic with 'poetical insights'......

Powell's Books - The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution (Great Discoveries) by David Quammen

Powell's Books - Charles Darwin (DK Biography) by David King

Powell's Books - Search Results



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[cobolt]

Well...isn't that what we're talking about here? Didn't Alice2 state that Darwin's beliefs coincide with those of the Christian whackjobs? What better illustration of Darwin's writings being morphed into something quite different from his original intent than giving her this link as an example?

[User 2]

...don't take this the wrong way, but I think it may only serve to cloud the issue if the citations aren't from some otherwise a little more credible source.

If one looks on the web, there are many sites which will make odd claims about Darwin's beliefs...

....I just think a collection of quotes, without any context to speak of, allows for more argument and scepticism compared to acquiring the information about Darwin through more rigorous literate means.

I'm only lobbying for people to read more than a collection of quotes, I'm hoping people will read much more about Darwin and his body of works, ...there's so much more there than just the 'belief in God' thing.

..that's all, I just have a wish that perhaps Alice and others will gain a better understanding if they read a few books about Darwin.

(...same as if I'd hope they would conscientiously study anyone else current, or in past history, before making claims about what that person might be about.)
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[Rance]

Get Answers: Charles Darwin

Scientific Evidence against Evolution (concise and short)

[Metlakatla]

What I'm not getting here is why some people think that discussion of religion is "taboo" in pubic schools. It simply isn't. It's discussed all the time in various classes. It cannot, constitutionally, however, be taught as fact. I suspect that's the real issue that some have.

[Weather Girl]

Based only on the limited experience I have, I agree with Met.

My child attended a private christian school (not for religious reasons, but because the public schools here suck) and my younger brother attended that same school K5-12. The high school students are required to take religion/philosophy classes in grades 9-12. They learn about all different types of religions and the belief systems thereof. In the end they are left to decide for themselves. I was really surprised that a Christian school here in the Bible belt would be so open to other ideas.....it was nice!

[Dusty Rhodes]

Originally Posted by User 2

I think the confusion goes much deeper than that.

It's pointless to debate someone who refuses to conform to accepted standards of definitions.

They make no sense........

At least the creationists admit they're not willing to adopt accepted standards of definitions.......
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This really has the ability to boggle what is left of my mind. I really don't understand how someone could not accept the definition, (that which defines, or, the act of stating a precise meaning or significance, or, The statement of the meaning of a word, phrase, or term.) I do hate to belabor the obvious, but, definitions are what makes communication with other rational human beings possible. I need to understand the meanings of words to use them to their fullest effect, to deny an accepted definition is to belie centuries of communication. True, words do change, language is not a static entity, ie. "Cool" is not simply a subjective statement of temperature any longer, 60 years ago it was. Language reflects the ideas, and objects, and actions, reactions, emotions, notions and experiences of a culture, vocabulary, in some instances, reflects experience, education, and culture (ie. the Efik language has 4 words for bad, intentional, accidental, natural, malicious) Communication is dependant upon each of us knowing what each other means when we use specific words, to deny definition because it disagrees with my aims or intents, is sophistry, lying your way around an inconvenient truth.

[User 2]

Originally Posted by Dusty Rhodes

.......to deny definition because it disagrees with my aims or intents, is sophistry, lying your way around an inconvenient truth.

I'm not sure why you find this concept so mind boggling, it's a purpose driven tactic employed throughout the history of language.

Look no further than the Bible, and story of the Tower of Babel, (babble, doesn't that ring a bell?),

.... In the Tower of Babel story, 'God' destroyed the Tower and visited upon the builders of the tower, the Curse of Confusion,

....that 'curse' made language mutually unintelligible,

.....it altered the nature of their language so that their language no longer lucidly expressed the nature of things, but rather obscured and distorted things.

It's use in this parable is to both obviate communication of 'unacceptable orthodoxy' and to punish the speakers of the language which is 'targeted'.

Other similar examples can be found in stories about various attempts to manipulate language throughout history.

Fast forward to Orwell’s Newspeak, his political language described in his parable, 1984,

...Orwell's newspeak was created and wielded as a means of deception and manipulation, to give rise to a new orthodoxy, eventually accepted by the manipulated population through the continual repetition of lies,

....hence, eventually, 'up is really down' and 'war is peace'.

.....its purpose was to restrict understanding of the real world.

The propagandists use of this tactic is a means to isolate and encircle it's target audience within a purposely created altered reality.

This purposeful abuse of language and words eventually conditions the very way in which people think.

Read Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language".

If you can control definitions, you can control the very range of 'accepted' thought, you can even alter collective memory, eventually you can control what is accepted as reality.

You can 'damp down' critical thinking....

A population which comes to accept a narrowed way of thinking has no ability with which to critically analyze the actions of those who wish to control them,

....the various tracts which describe how to use propaganda to achieve an authoritarian or totalitarian system speak directly to this tactic, and what it's results can achieve for those who would employ such tactics.

Add this tactic to the control of information, through making records secret and carefully planning and controlling of only which 'purpose-driven' frame of reference is fed to the media, and eventually you 'own' all the evidence of reality itself.

Once all of the only 'available' evidence shows something to be true,

.....then whenever that truth is questioned, is it not 'found by the evidence' to be true?

WMD's anyone?

The recent report outlining nearly 400 instances of 'incorrect' information fed to the public over a short period of time by members of the current administration no longer begs the question of whether it was a concerted effort to distort the accepted reality.

Propagandists, language manipulation, metaphor framing, and Orwell are studied by todays political handlers and 'public relations' experts.

What is public relations except the manipulation of language to create a certain perspective?

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Everyone is probably familiar with 1984, but not everyone 'gets' that the stories are much more than just enjoyable, suggested reading,

....it's also a treatise on language buried within a morality tale for our own future.

The servers seem to be down at Powell's Books, so here's the links to some further reading through a lesser book distributor:

Barnes*&*Noble.com - Books: George Orwell's Theory of Language, by Andrei Reznikov, Paperback

Barnes*&*Noble.com - Books: Burmese Days, by George Orwell, Paperback

Barnes*&*Noble.com - Books: What Orwell Didn't Know, by Andras Szanto, Paperback

Barnes*&*Noble.com - Books: Finding George Orwell in Burma, by Emma Larkin, Paperback

Oh good, Powell's is back up....

Powell's Books - The Politics of Deceit by Glenn W. Smith

Powell's Books - From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language (Bradford Books) by Jerome A. Feldman

Powell's Books - The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation by Drew Westen

Powell's Books - Metaphors We Live by by George Lakoff
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[Alice2]

I found my reference to the Creator in Darwin's Origin of the Species, last chapter. I put part of it below. The second quote is just the next paragraph down, in which he does not actually speak of God or a Creator, but it is pretty clear from his words that he believes in an intelligent creative force behind it all.

Can anybody disagree with that?

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Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.
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It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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Now, last night / this morning, I was listening to a Radio Liberty broadcast (with Dr. Stan Monteith) dated Friday, 2/15, in which the topic of the show was evolution and Darwin. Very good show for this thread, unfortunately the website that carries free archives no longer posts his show, which I was going to link here.

They talked about a topic I have beaten to death before, which is that the THEORY of evolution has never shown a species to change into something which is not in its DNA. Advancement to something genetically superior to what it came from has not been shown, anywhere, ever.

And so, evolution is certainly a valid THEORY, but it is being taught as FACT in schools, not as theory.

Which I think is pretty much the crux of the arguments here that we are posting about.