Ben Stein: Science Leads to Killing People

[MaryJohnZ]

The point is that Darwinists had effectively refuted classical eugenic ideas long before that. This is why Stein has gotten so much criticism for pretending that Darwinism was the cause of the Holocaust; he is blaming the very people who refuted the premises of eugenics.

You have not provided any strong proof that the Darwinists refuted the eugenics movment. You gave one quote from Dawrin that indictated if anything a change in methodology, but not a refutation of eugenics. We have shown his son was involved in eugenics, his cousin, and close friends. There was one scientist you mentioned that dealt with statistics and genetics, which is the one that probably is viewed by you as refuted the idea that you could do racial/ethnic cleansing as the Nazi’s tried to do, and yet you have not given us a source or quote to show how he refuted eugenics.

Genetic engeneering is on the list of new modern ‘cardinal sins’,
and can be seen as a continuation of positive eugenics. So as a Catholic scientist you must be concerned with explaining the ethical arguments that some forms of research on human persons is immoral to fellow scientists. If Darwinism so thoyoughly refyted eugenic then this would not be a problem. Genetic manipulations and striving for a perfect super human is still a goal of some scientists, and the church teaches that is wrong.

Just like politicians can not be ‘personnaly against abortion’ and then vote for pro-abortion money/legislation because you don;t leave your Catholic faith in the closet when you sit in your legislative seat.

Then so too, the Catholic scientist is responsible to raise the bar in science and help turn the tide of genetic engineering which use the person or even create persons separate from the means God gave for procreation. This concern was shown when the Vatican named genetic engeneering as one of the 7 deadly sins.

Badger Herold Article:
“Perhaps the most controversial new sin is genetic engineering, which has some scientists, students and Roman Catholics alike concerned.”

“We may enhance human life, but not replace or manipulate it,” Nielsen said. “It is permissible and laudable to help people overcome faults in existence such as blindness. But to simply conceive children, then use science to let only those who are genetically superior live or manipulate their genes is manufacturing children for ourselves.”

In this aspect, the Church is concerned with this ever-growing scientific field and its ability to “play God” by manipulating genes. According to the Church, humans were made in God’s image, and we shouldn’t attempt to alter that makeup.
(Father Eric Nielsen, a pastor at St. Paul’s Catholic Church, Madison, wisconsin quoted from the Badger Herold, Thursday April 3, 2008 )

In Christ, maryJohnZ

 

[The_Barbarian]

You have not provided any strong proof that the Darwinists refuted the eugenics movment.

I showed you that Darwinists refuted the very basis of classical genetics.

You gave one quote from Dawrin that indictated if anything a change in methodology,

Nothing to do with methodology. It showed that, from the very beginning, Darwinists were opposed to the sort of things eugenists advocated.

but not a refutation of eugenics.

That came after scientists learned about the existence of genes. And as you see, Darwinists like Punnet, Morgan, and others destroyed any scientific justification for the things eugenists proposed.

We have shown his son was…

Not a scientist. And so, again, refutes your argument.

here was one scientist you mentioned that dealt with statistics and genetics, which is the one that probably is viewed by you as refuted the idea that you could do racial/ethnic cleansing as the Nazi’s tried to do, and yet you have not given us a source or quote to show how he refuted eugenics.

Several of them, but who’s counting? Would you like to see more?

OK…

**In 1917, Punnett calculated how many generations it would take to reduce “feeblemindedness” if all were sterilised in each generation. He worked out that to reduce the frequency from 1/100 to 1/1,000 would require 22 generations, to 1/10,000 90 generations and 1/1,000,000 700 generations! To give an idea of the magnitude of this, 22 generations takes us back to before the Black Death reached Europe. A debate ensued in which RA Fisher was taken to task in his attack on Punnett’s work by Herbert Jennings. By 1932, these criticisms had reached the New York Times. **
talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/nov00.html

Let’s see…

**Dobzhansky wrote an attack on eugenics in 1937 in his classic book that helped found the evolutionary synthesis:

“The eugenical Jeremiahs keep constantly before our eyes the nightmare of human populations accumulating recessive genes that produce pathological effects when homozygous. These prophets of doom seem to be unaware of the fact that wild species in the state of nature fare in this respect no better than man does with all the artificiality of his surroundings, and yet life has not come to an end on this planet. The eschatological cries proclaiming the failure of natural selection to operate in human populations have more to do with political beliefs than with scientific findings.”**
Cox, Ignatius W. “The Folly of Human Sterilization” The Scientific American 188 (October 1934)

But this isn’t about the evidence, is it?

 

[MaryJohnZ]

Thank you for the quotes and links.

I went to the page and was reading the information. The website said that a man named Spencer was the source for the Nazi eugenics approach so I looked him up. On Wikkipedia they said Spencer was sometimes called a “Social Darwin” but he was not a classical Darwin as you are saying, in fact he was a big supporter of natural law and the individual over the state. He basically coined the term “survival of the fittest” and did not believe in social programs to help the poor so much as in individual effort and competition. Whether you agree whith that philosophy or not I found it hard to see how it fit into the German Nazi mode since he apparently was an anti-state control philosopher:

From wikipedia on Herbert Spencer:
“Spencer adopted a utilitarian standard of ultimate value – the greatest happiness of the greatest number – and the culmination of the evolutionary process would be the maximization of utility. In the perfect society individuals would not only derive pleasure from the exercise of altruism (‘positive beneficence’) but would aim to avoid inflicting pain on others (‘negative beneficence.’). They would also instinctively respect the rights of others, leading to the universal observance of the principle of justice – each person had the right to a maximum amount of liberty that was compatible with a like liberty in others. ‘Liberty’ was interpreted to mean the absence of coercion, and was closely connected to the right to private property. Spencer termed this code of conduct ‘Absolute Ethics’ which provided a scientifically-grounded moral system that could substitute for the supernaturally-based ethical systems of the past. However, he recognized that our inherited moral constitution does not currently permit us to behave in full compliance with the code of Absolute Ethics, and for this reason we need a code of ‘Relative Ethics’ which takes into account the distorting factors of our present imperfections.”

But I am beginning to see that tracing the exact source for the Nazi philosophy is very complicated. I can see why Ben Stein points to science because of the eugenics movment, which was a philosophy and social implementation of some concepts in science as well as ideas about creating a perfect man and a perfect society. but where the eugenics movement sprang from is linked to multiple sources in the end.

Evolution was being interpreted in different ways by these two men, Darwin and Spencer. Darwin seemed to believe in a more random process and Spencer seemed to believe in a more progressive, predictable process.

Am I correct on those differences?

If you were to point to a philosophical source for modern eugenics, what would it be? How would pure scientific theory in today’s world counter eugenics and genetic engeneering?
Could Spencer be a part of the modern movment as he puts emphasis on individual choice and effort over the state and he believes in mankind progressing toward a perfect human.

In Christ,
MaryJohnZ

 

[MaryJohnZ]

It seems that the key here is how Darwin’s theory is applied
philosophically, polictically and socially.

Poor old Darwin… it appears his theory is the equivalent of Pandora’s Box in some ways when philosophers, social reformers get a hold of it… he progably didn’t realize what he was unleashing.

The debate over herbet Specer and Darwin has quite a number of u-tube videos associated with it. They are quite interesting to watch. One says Darwin had nothing to do with social darwinism and the Nazis because he died 50 yesrs earlier. But Herbert Spencer preceded Darwin in his approach to evolution…but then coined the phrase 'survival of the fittest after reading Darwin. They were different though .

This video on social Darwinism was interesting I thought…

youtube.com/watch?v=blGS0HdHpWE&feature=related

ok…so it links Mar, Stalin, Hitler, Mao all to social Darwinism…

It almost seems like the debate is getting be which came first the chicken or the egg…and can you prove which one came from the other…

In Christ,
MaryJohnZ

 

[The_Barbarian]

It seems that the key here is how Darwin’s theory is applied philosophically, polictically and socially.

Like Christianity. Some people took God’s message and decided it meant that blacks needed to be enslaved and people who didn’t believe their precise form of Christianity needed to be burned alive.

Only for some reason, you don’t think Christians should be blamed for a few who warped Christianity, but you seem eager to do blame Darwin for people who did just the opposite of the things he advocated. Facts don’t seem to make much impression on you.

In fact, marxism is the opposite of social Darwinism, which advocated completely unrestricted capitalism. But the mishmash of fantasy and supposition in that video depends on imagination, not fact.

It almost seems like the debate is getting be which came first the chicken or the egg…

No, it’s about degenerates like Stein, who accuse Darwinists of the very crimes they denounced. He’s merely a new brand of Holocaust denier.

 

[ribozyme]

Like Christianity. Some people took God’s message and decided it meant that blacks needed to be enslaved and people who didn’t believe their precise form of Christianity needed to be burned alive.

No, I think you are incorrect about the notion that the tenets of Christianity tolerates 19th Century slavery. The wealthy people who wanted to keep their status used Christianity to justify slavery, to pacify the slaves, and to justify their Earthly privileges. Economic servitude is not a fundamental tenet of Christianity, instead, Christianity was simply used to perserve the status quo.

In the United States, where English Protestantism was the dominant religious culture, few efforts were made to convert the slaves to Christianity until the eighteenth century, and these efforts increased only when it was guaranteed that baptism would not alter the “property” status of the slave. That these baptisms were often attempts to pacify the enslaved Africans is indicated by one slave catechism from the mid-nineteenth century: The question **“What did God make you for?” **is followed by the answer “To make a crop.” Another question, "What is the meaning of ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’?" is answered "To serve our heavenly Father, and our earthly master, obey our overseer, and not steal anything."

catholiccincinnati.org/index.php?Itemid=501&id=183&option=com_content&task=view

 

[MaryJohnZ]

Like Christianity. Some people took God’s message and decided it meant that blacks needed to be enslaved and people who didn’t believe their precise form of Christianity needed to be burned alive.

Only for some reason, you don’t think Christians should be blamed for a few who warped Christianity, but you seem eager to do blame Darwin for people who did just the opposite of the things he advocated. Facts don’t seem to make much impression on you.

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I do care about facts and I have been trying to look up the suces you give here.

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In fact, marxism is the opposite of social Darwinism, which advocated completely unrestricted capitalism. But the mishmash of fantasy and supposition in that video depends on imagination, not fact.

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The man was quoting from the Marxist leaders, so Marx saw something good in Darwinism.I am still trying to clarify in my own mind the difference between positive social eugenics and the other kind… One leaves it up to nature and the individual and the other actually intervenes. The Nazi’s were intervening on a large scale. I would say Planned Parenthood intervenes but does it on an individual basis and makes it a personal choice, but they are still intervening into lives.
Do you have thoughts on that? How do you define social Darwinism?

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No, it’s about degenerates like Stein, who accuse Darwinists of the very crimes they denounced. He’s merely a new brand of Holocaust denier.

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I appreciate the quotes you gave on this. Ben Stein is anything but a denier of the holocaust. Since he has Jewish ancestry it is obviously a personal subject and perhaps he gets more emotionally involved in what happened because of that…quite understandable.Since he feels he sees the same types of things happening in our culture he is trying to show what is the root cause. The discussion and examination of the causes is healthy.
Anyone who is knwledgeable about how evil works knows that it tend to change form, yet it still is basically the same evil. Looking at what is in our culture that is parallel to what happened in WWII and maybe connected to it philosophically (Planned Parenthood) can only be a healthy thing to do, These ideas and policies are still in the realm of possibility. here was a portion of a recent interview with the scientist who discovered DNA:
HLG: Let me ask a moral question. If we found out 10 years from now, I come back and I interview you, and geneticists have found a biological basis of intelligence. And the worst of all nightmares is that some people in the human community are genetically different in terms of their intelligence and thoughts. Should we prevent that kind of discovery, given it’s—

JW: I don’t think we can prevent the discoveries. [That would] prevent any possibility of using knowledge to make people’s lives better, so I don’t think that’s the way to go. I do think we have a moral question, a very serious moral question. … To what extent do you help people, at the bottom? What is called social Darwinism, you know, let them go extinct, I find repulsive. *
Henry Louis Gates Jr theroot.com/

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So we can see the spector of social Darwinism is still present.

In Christ,
maryJohnZ

 

[ribozyme]

---

I appreciate the quotes you gave on this. Ben Stein is anything but a denier of the holocaust. Since he has Jewish ancestry it is obviously a personal subject and perhaps he gets more emotionally involved in what happened because of that…quite understandable.Since he feels he sees the same types of things happening in our culture he is trying to show what is the root cause. The discussion and examination of the causes is healthy.
Anyone who is knwledgeable about how evil works knows that it tend to change form, yet it still is basically the same evil. Looking at what is in our culture that is parallel to what happened in WWII and maybe connected to it philosophically (Planned Parenthood) can only be a healthy thing to do, These ideas and policies are still in the realm of possibility. here was a portion of a recent interview with the scientist who discovered DNA:
HLG: Let me ask a moral question. If we found out 10 years from now, I come back and I interview you, and geneticists have found a biological basis of intelligence. And the worst of all nightmares is that some people in the human community are genetically different in terms of their intelligence and thoughts. Should we prevent that kind of discovery, given it’s—

JW: I don’t think we can prevent the discoveries. [That would] prevent any possibility of using knowledge to make people’s lives better, so I don’t think that’s the way to go. I do think we have a moral question, a very serious moral question. … To what extent do you help people, at the bottom? What is called social Darwinism, *you know, let them go extinct, I find repulsive.
Henry Louis Gates Jr theroot.com/

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So we can see the spector of social Darwinism is still present.

In Christ,
maryJohnZ

Eugenics does not equal “social Darwinism.” I personally find many other ideologies much more morally unpalatable than the eugenic policies enacted in the early 20th Century (with the exception of the horrors of Nazi Germany). One such example is the Ayn Rand/Leonard Peikoff conception of Objectivism.

Also, note how Watson finds social Darwinism repulsive.

 

[The_Barbarian]

I appreciate the quotes you gave on this. Ben Stein is anything but a denier of the holocaust.

He’s the worst kind of Holocaust denier; “Oh no, it’s not our fault; it’s not racism and bigotry, it’s those evil Darwinists. Without them, there would have been no holocaust.”

And that, Mary, is what Hitler said about the Jews being responsible for Germany’s troubles. It is the forumula for having another Holocaust.

Since he has Jewish ancestry it is obviously a personal subject and perhaps he gets more emotionally involved in what happened because of that…quite understandable.

It is understandable that he lied. It was his job. But it isn’t excusable. And by glossing over the real cause of the Holocaust, he insults every person killed or damaged by it.

HLG: Let me ask a moral question. If we found out 10 years from now, I come back and I interview you, and geneticists have found a biological basis of intelligence. And the worst of all nightmares is that some people in the human community are genetically different in terms of their intelligence and thoughts. Should we prevent that kind of discovery, given it’s—

Darwin already answered this question. They are human, and entitled to life, liberty, and to whatever accomplishment they can manage. Will you listen to the Darwinists for once, Mary?

And I’m pleased that even a racist like Watson knows this:
What is called social Darwinism, you know, let them go extinct, I find repulsive.

So we can see the spector of social Darwinism is still present.

Among your people, maybe. Not scientists.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Like Christianity. Some people took God’s message and decided it meant that blacks needed to be enslaved and people who didn’t believe their precise form of Christianity needed to be burned alive.

No, I think you are incorrect about the notion that the tenets of Christianity tolerates 19th Century slavery.

I didn’t say that it did. I pointed out that people twisted it to justify slavery. Your quote confirms that fact.

 

[drpmjhess]

Barbarian observes:
Like Christianity. Some people took God’s message and decided it meant that blacks needed to be enslaved and people who didn’t believe their precise form of Christianity needed to be burned alive.I didn’t say that it did. I pointed out that people twisted it to justify slavery. Your quote confirms that fact.

Barbarian, you are quite correct. Let it also be noted, however, that secular humanist religion bashers sometimes ignore the fact that people of religious faith were among the prominent abolitionists.

Petrus

 

[MaryJohnZ]

He’s the worst kind of Holocaust denier; “Oh no, it’s not our fault; it’s not racism and bigotry, it’s those evil Darwinists. Without them, there would have been no holocaust.”

And that, Mary, is what Hitler said about the Jews being responsible for Germany’s troubles. It is the forumula for having another Holocaust.

It is understandable that he lied. It was his job. But it isn’t excusable. And by glossing over the real cause of the Holocaust, he insults every person killed or damaged by it.

Darwin already answered this question. They are human, and entitled to life, liberty, and to whatever accomplishment they can manage. Will you listen to the Darwinists for once, Mary?

And I’m pleased that even a racist like Watson knows this:
What is called social Darwinism, you know, let them go extinct, I find repulsive.

Among your people, maybe. Not scientists.

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Mary:
“My People” are the Catholic Church and the prolife movement in this country which are the ones standing up against invitrio firtilization, artificila birthcontrol, surrogate motherhood, speicalized sperm banks for genetic engineering, sten cell research using embyos, abortion, sex selection, killing of the disabled, euthanasia…all the things which still reek of social Darwinism in some way.

If you haven’t figured that out yet then that is what I stand for.

But the relativistic view scientists are taking right now resembles the relativism that allowed the eugenics movement back then When you say knowledge and the fact that you can do something become more important that if you should do something, then you have the recipe for a repeat of the past history I hope that both of us are concerned about stopping. The fact that there are many horrors in our culture of death due to policies which allow the human person to be de-humanized and killed is trhe concern we both should have.

How can we get there…through darwin, if you wish…I don’t really care. Science, truth and the order God gave His universe in the end are all compatible. So what is you solution to the current situation as a supporter of Darwin and evoltuion. I am all ears.

God Bless,
maryJohnZ

 

[MaryJohnZ]

Barbarian, you are quite correct. Let it also be noted, however, that secular humanist religion bashers sometimes ignore the fact that people of religious faith were among the prominent abolitionists.

Petrus

yes!

They also ignore all the encyclicals and writings of the Popes from the 1400s on that were anti-slavery. I thought I had posted a link and info on that earlier.

God Bless, maryJohnZ

 

[The_Barbarian]

“My People” are the Catholic Church

“Your people” is Ben Stein, whose idea of values is “All’s Fair”, a sitcom in the 70s which broke new ground in having as primary characters two unmarried people living in an um, “relationship”. (He was a writer for the series, which fortunately tanked rather quickly)

and the prolife movement in this country which are the ones standing up against invitrio firtilization, artificila birthcontrol, surrogate motherhood, speicalized sperm banks for genetic engineering, sten cell research using embyos, abortion, sex selection, killing of the disabled, euthanasia…all the things which still reek of social Darwinism in some way.

You know better now. You saw that Darwin denounced such things, and that Darwinists later showed that the ideas of the classical eugenists were scientifically unsound. It’s time to take some personal responsibility, and to stop using Darwin as the boogyman.

If you haven’t figured that out yet then that is what I stand for.

Here, you’ve stood for the man who committed libel against people who refuted eugenics, and denied the very evil behind the holocaust, so he could use it to attack them. That’s what we see you standing for, here.

But the relativistic view scientists are taking right now

C’mon, you just made that up. You have no idea what scientists think. Wouldn’t preaching truth and values, and then giving support to people like Stein be “relativism?” He lied, but it’s OK, because it’s a good cause, um?

The fact that there are many horrors in our culture of death due to policies which allow the human person to be de-humanized and killed is trhe concern we both should have.

I hope we both have that. But your excuses for an apologist like Stein makes me wonder.

How can we get there…through darwin, if you wish…

If you learn nothing else from this, learn that you can’t get values from science. I certainly applaud his rejection of “social Darwinism” and the amoral premises of classic eugenics. But there, he was not speaking as a scientist, but as a believer.

So what is you solution to the current situation as a supporter of Darwin and evoltuion.

I can’t do that as a supporter of science. Science has no way to tell us about values. Only my faith can do find that. Your faith would be a good start. And truth would be a good standard for you to uphold.

I would suggest that the Catholic Church entirely agrees with Darwin as to the value of every human life, regardless of the ability of the person living it. And I think the Catholic faith would be a good place for you to start.

Think about it.

 

[The_Barbarian]

They also ignore all the encyclicals and writings of the Popes from the 1400s on that were anti-slavery. I thought I had posted a link and info on that earlier.

When the American Southwest was settled, the Catholic fathers who founded the missions there were in a constant struggle with many Spanish settlers. The padres were trying to turn the Indians into good Spanish Catholics, and the other settlers wanted the Indians as a source of slave labor.

The Church was constantly appealing to the Crown for relief and freedom for the native population. Sometimes they won, sometimes, they lost. But they came down on the side of freedom for the people in their care.

 

[ricmat]

When the American Southwest was settled, the Catholic fathers who founded the missions there were in a constant struggle with many Spanish settlers. The padres were trying to turn the Indians into good Spanish Catholics, and the other settlers wanted the Indians as a source of slave labor.

The Church was constantly appealing to the Crown for relief and freedom for the native population. Sometimes they won, sometimes, they lost. But they came down on the side of freedom for the people in their care.

This is OT, but I saw a movie recently called “The Mission”, which was based on a similar premise (in South America, not US Southwest). Apparently the Portuguese were allowed (by their own laws) to enslave the Indians, but the Spanish were not. And the Jesuits were caught in the middle. It was a very interesting movie, and not overly anti-Catholic.

 

[The_Barbarian]

I didn’t know that. The Portuguese, as you know, were granted lands in the New World along the Line of Demarcation, which gave them Brazil. The record of slavery in Brazil is at least as bad as it is in the United States. The Spanish government tended to be more inclined to make the Indians into Christians, then to enslave them.

The Church, as Mary said, was almost always strongly anti-slavery.

 

[MaryJohnZ]

I would suggest that the Catholic Church entirely agrees with Darwin as to the value of every human life, regardless of the ability of the person living it. And I think the Catholic faith would be a good place for you to start.

Think about it.

---

I was hoping for an answer that gave your understanding of how science has contributed to a sense of how authentic the Catholic view point is about the nature of the human person. I am disappointed that this is all that you could offer. I had already said I could understand that Darwin explains some aspects of development within a species, but beyond that he doesn’t really explain anything about how the human being who can empathize with other, imagine other worlds, express beauty in arts and music, etc…none of that can really be explained perfectly by environmental influences as far as I know.

Hence, if anything science seems to be very limited in what it can talk about in terms of the human being.

Faith can talk about many more of those things.

Darwin was not necessarily a man of faith however. Materialism in science tends to try to explain even the spiritual side of a person in terms of chemestry and genetics…genes which control shyness, etc…All of that seems contrary to Catholic belief.

I tried one more time to research your claim that Darwin was a man of compassion and empathy…a man whose writings would shun the values found in eugenics. I looked up the phrase you tend to use “reformed eugenics” and found some interesting articles on the ‘search for the perfect child’. I also came across some pages from Darwin’s book, “The Descent of Man”.

here is a quote from one of the pages:

Charles Darwin:
" to save the life of every one to the last moment Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man."

It seems he sees compassion and care for the weak a sad side effect that comes from the development of sympathy in the human being, out of which comes the human tendency to care for the sick and weak, who become burdens on the human race and may even slow the progress of humanity.

I cannot possibly reconcile those beliefs with my Catholic faith.

In Christ,
maryJohnZ

 

[MaryJohnZ]

From Charles Darwin’s “The Descent of Man”
darwin-literature.com/The_Descent_Of_Man/23.html

"It must not be supposed that the divergence of each race from the other races, and of all from a common stock, can be traced back to any one pair of progenitors. On the contrary, at every stage in the process of modification, all the individuals which were in any way better fitted for their conditions of life, though in different degrees, would have survived in greater numbers than the less well-fitted. The process would have been like that followed by man, when he does not intentionally select particular individuals, but breeds from all the superior individuals, and neglects the inferior…He thus slowly but surely modifies his stock, and unconsciously forms a new strain… than the other pairs inhabiting the same country, for all will have been continually blended through free intercrossing.

… We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed amongst the Quadrumana, as surely as the still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The Quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversified forms, from some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the past we can see that
the early progenitor of all the Vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchiae, with the two sexes united in the same individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such as the brain and heart) imperfectly or not at all developed. This animal seems to have been more like the larvae of the existing marine Ascidians than any other known form.

… Thus the interval between the mental powers of one of the higher apes and of a fish, or between those of an ant and scale-insect, is immense; yet their development does not offer any special difficulty; for with our domesticated animals, the mental faculties are certainly variable, and the variations are inherited. … The same conclusion may be extended to man; the intellect must have been all-important to him, even at a very remote period, as enabling him to invent and use language, to make weapons, tools, traps, etc., whereby with the aid of his social habits, he long ago became the most dominant of all living creatures.

…The higher intellectual powers of man, such as those of ratiocination, abstraction, self- consciousness, etc., probably follow from the continued improvement and exercise of the other mental faculties.

The development of the moral qualities is a more interesting problem. The foundation lies in the social instincts, including under this term the family ties. These instincts are highly complex, and in the case of the lower animals give special tendencies towards certain definite actions; but the more important elements are love, and the distinct emotion of sympathy. Animals endowed with the social instincts take pleasure in one another’s company, warn one another of danger, defend and aid one another in many ways. These instincts do not extend to all the individuals of the species, but only to those of the same community. As they are highly beneficial to
the species, they have in all probability been acquired through natural selection.

… But in the fourth chapter I have endeavoured to shew that the moral sense follows, firstly, from the enduring and ever-present nature of the social instincts; secondly, from man’s appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of his fellows; and thirdly, from the high activity of his mental faculties, with past impressions extremely vivid; and in these latter respects he differs from the lower animals. Owing to this condition of mind, man cannot avoid looking both backwards and forwards, and comparing past impressions. Hence after some temporary desire or passion has mastered his social instincts, he reflects and compares the now weakened impression of such past impulses with the ever-present social instincts; and he then feels that sense of dissatisfaction which all unsatisfied instincts leave behind them, he therefore resolves to act differently for the future,–and this is conscience."

Science from an aethiestic point of view…Dawrin does not in anyway present a Catholic view of the human person.

In Christ,
MaryJohnZ

 

[The_Barbarian]

(Darwin writes that all organisms have a common ancestor)

Science from an aethiestic point of view…

While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5-4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism.

Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI

The Pope Benedict XVI has an “atheistic point of view?” I don’t think so, Mary.

Dawrin does not in anyway present a Catholic view of the human person.

Science can’t do that. Science can only tell you about the body and how it formed. But the human person, in the Catholic view, also involves the soul. However, nothing in science, as the Pope mentions, rules out the soul, and anyone who proposes that science can comment on such things has pushed science beyond it’s proper place.

Isn’t it time you you accepted the teaching of the Church on this, Mary?