Ben Stein: Science Leads to Killing People

[The_Barbarian]

You really twist things don’t you?

Funny you should mention that…

Saying that Pope Benedict supports or approves belief in materialistic evolution is false…

No one here said he did. You twisted things to “rebut” an argument never offered here.

All the Pope’s and the teachings of the church say that God intervened when man was created. That the soul was not created through materialistic processes, but that each individual soul is created for the body it is joined to in an instantaneous manner…not over time .

As Pope Pius XII said, there is nothing objectionable in our bodies being formed by evolution, so long as we admit that the soul comes from God.

Thus human beings are different from animals which is my point.

As Darwin pointed out. He said that man’s “spiritual powers” were not accessible to science, but that our bodies were certainly formed by evolution. This is what the Pope said was permissible.

Darwin has this wrong.

I’m sorry you think so. Our soul is the defining difference between humans and other animals.

The science text books are wrong to teach man is just another animal.

I review science textbooks from time to time for schools and publishers. Never saw one that said that. Can you tell us which textbook and the publishers? If you just made it up, feel free to ignore my request.

Textbooks say that all living things evolved from a common ancestor, but do not say that man is no more than an animal.

Don’t try to push the idea that Pope benedict or Pope John Paul II agreed with any of that.

That’s what they wrote, Mary.

 

[The_Barbarian]

(Stein’s libel that scientists were pushing Jews into the gas chambers,)

This is so true.

Turns out it was a complete fabrication. He made it up. That’s why Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League have condemned him.

** The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.

Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.**

It’s not enough to love God. You also have to distinguish the difference between you and God. Luther failed to do that, and his proposals for the Jews became about 90 percent of Hitler’s Final Solution.

As Mary is aware, scientists assailed the thinking that went into Luther’s proposals, but religion won the day, and so the Holocaust. It was not science that instituted pogroms that murdered uncounted Jews. It was misplaced religious zeal, by people who had convinced themselves God wanted them to murder Jewish people.

It amazes me how science was doing so well when it had a sense of ethical and moral responsibility.

What angers Mary the most, it seems, it that Darwin condemned eugenic values when her people were enthused about them.

Nowadays, though, it seems that science is being used as a eugenical cudgel with which to batter society at large.

By the 1920s, Darwinists like Punnett had shown that classical eugenics was scientifically unsupportable. That kind of thinking is pretty much confined to a band of rightwing racists of the sort that produced The Bell Curve. I think you’ll find that almost all Darwinists have jeered at the psuedoscience therein.

 

[MaryJohnZ]

The point you are missing is that I see Darwin as a materialistic theory of evolution. You don’t. On that main point we disagree.

The points I believe we agree on are:
the church teaches the human person is both body and soul and the soul is created immediately at the time of conception.

The church says it is alrright to believe God used evolution to form the human body, but not the soul which God created immediately.

The Church accepts forms of evolution as compatible with Catholic teaching AS LONG AS IT IS NOT A TOTALLY MATERIALISTIC VIEW.

Am I correct on those points?

The Church also says that through reason we can understand spiritual things. That is something Darwin denied when he said science cannot talk about the spiritual side of man. perhaps science cannot measure or control or manipulate, or construct the spiritual aspects of man, but science can reason from observable traits that the spiritual side exists and makes man different from animals. This is what Darwin failed to do. he stated man was not different in kind from an animal…

Are we clear now on what we differ on?

I believe Darwin is a materialistic view of the human person and as such I find it incompatible with church teaching.

Darwin puirposfully sought to take morality, human consciousness and define it all through mechanistic processes. He admited he was a materialist in his “M” notebooks.

In Christ, maryJohnZ

 

[MaryJohnZ]

What angers Mary the most, it seems, it that Darwin condemned eugenic values when her people were enthused about them.

When where and how? That is misleading. I have continually stated that you have failed to show this statemnt to be true. I have pointed out that Darwin’s son and cousin were leaders in the eugenics movement. You try to say Darwin’s son was in disagreement with darwin, but it seems like history shows otherwise:

**"
“The influence primarily responsible for the modern eugenics movement was the establishment of the doctrine of organic evolution following the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859.”

• Samuel J. Holmes, Human Genetics, 1936, chapter 25. **

See the date on the quote? That date is timely with Hitler’s rise to power.

By the 1920s, Darwinists like Punnett had shown that classical eugenics was scientifically unsupportable. That kind of thinking is pretty much confined to a band of rightwing racists of the sort that produced The Bell Curve. I think you’ll find that almost all Darwinists have jeered at the psuedoscience therein.

If Punnett argued against some forms of eugenics, he failed to
make his case as the previous quote shows. The fact that the London eugenics group never completely disbanded and was influential in the US in pre-WWII shows they did not repudiate eugenic views at all.

In Christ, maryJohnZ

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observe:
What angers Mary the most, it seems, it that Darwin condemned eugenic values when her people were enthused about them.

When where and how?

Starting with Darwin, who said that it was an “overwhelming evil” to even let weaker humans die. And starting in the 1920s, Darwinists showed that classical eugenics and Nazi racism were completely unsupportable by science.

That is misleading.

It’s a fact. You saw the statements, from Darwin, Punnett, Morgan, and others.

I have pointed out that Darwin’s son and cousin were leaders in the eugenics movement.

What you didn’t show was what you are claiming; that Darwin was a eugenist. As you learned, he opposed such ideas.

(statement from someone else about Darwin and eugenics)

It’s amusing that you won’t take Darwin’s own word for what he believed, but you’ll accept the opinions of people who hate him as to his beliefs.

Barbarian observes:
By the 1920s, Darwinists like Punnett had shown that classical eugenics was scientifically unsupportable. That kind of thinking is pretty much confined to a band of rightwing racists of the sort that produced The Bell Curve. I think you’ll find that almost all Darwinists have jeered at the psuedoscience therein.

If Punnett argued against some forms of eugenics, he failed to make his case as the previous quote shows.

By the 30s, eugenics was dead as a science. Your people held on to it longer, with devastating results. This is why people judge Stein so harshly; he is blaming the very people who opposed Hitler’s ideas, and is praising the very people, like Luther, who first proposed the ideas Hitler later put into practice.

Why would you want to be connected with people like that? Why are you defending them?

 

[The_Barbarian]

The point you are missing is that I see Darwin as a materialistic theory of evolution. You don’t. On that main point we disagree.

That’s because I actually understand his theory. You, for example were shocked to learn that he thought God created life, and that he recognized a spiritual side in humans that was lacking in animals.

the church teaches the human person is both body and soul and the soul is created immediately at the time of conception.

The church says it is alrright to believe God used evolution to form the human body, but not the soul which God created immediately.

The Church accepts forms of evolution as compatible with Catholic teaching AS LONG AS IT IS NOT A TOTALLY MATERIALISTIC VIEW.

And of course, it is all compatible with Darwinian theory for the reasons I mentioned.

The Church also says that through reason we can understand spiritual things. That is something Darwin denied when he said science cannot talk about the spiritual side of man.

No. That’s not what he said. He said science can’t do it. But scientists can. In fact he did when he mentioned that God created the first living things.

This is what Darwin failed to do. he stated man was not different in kind from an animal…

Even your own quote has him freely admitting that man has an essential difference, a spiritual side that other animals do not have.

I believe Darwin is a materialistic view of the human person and as such I find it incompatible with church teaching.

That’s a problem, but just for you, not for anyone else, unless they are also deluded as to the theory.

 

[MaryJohnZ]

Barbarian:
Even your own quote has him freely admitting that man has an essential difference, a spiritual side that other animals do not have.

It definitely said the opposite. it said mand was not different from animals that man was an animal differing not in kind. but in degree…HOW CAN YOU INTERPRET THE QUOTE ANY OTHER WAY!!! That is what he said!

As for darwin saying God creating the world, man…

WHERE!!! ???he talks of a “creator” which could be identified as materialistic processes or Nature…Pantheism…

He admitted to being a materialist for petes sake. You would like him to be something else, but he wasn’t!
And scientists of today take Darwin and run with him…run away from God, religion, any notion of faith…

"Daniel Dennett is a leading spokesman in our times for Darwinian natural science and, more broadly, for scientific materialism. Known for his long white beard and sense of humor, he is often compared to Santa Claus. But this comparison is very misleading. Dennett’s intellectual mission, one might say, is to tell the world that there is no Santa Claus-no “comforting myths” about God, creation, intelligent design, the human soul, or ultimate purpose and meaning in the cosmos.

Dennett likes to shock audiences by saying that such beliefs are like appeals to mythical “skyhooks”-to miracles from heaven that have been discredited by modern science, which has shown all educated and intelligent people (the “brights,” as he likes to call his superior group) that the universe is just an accident, the laws of nature are accidents, the emergence of life, human beings, and society are simply the incremental accidents of Darwinian evolution. “Get over it!” Dennett implores us: there are only material causes in a material world that is indifferent to man and that has order (if not purpose) only because the incremental accidents that shaped the world have been “frozen” in place over time. We live in a universe of “frozen accidents,” and that is where we must make our home.

Dennett also likes to argue against philosophers of mind who still believe that human consciousness arises from an immaterial substance like a rational soul or in an irreducible free will which gives human beings the power to choose independently of material causation. Nonsense, says Dennett, we are complex machines, and the mind is just the motion of brain cells and neurological processes that will one day be replicated by the fancy robots of Artificial Intelligence.
bioethics.gov/reports/human_dignity/kraynak_on_dennett.html

You might not like it but that is where Darwin has led us.

In Christ, maryJohnZ

 

[MaryJohnZ]

I saw this article and I am posting the link because I totally agree with the proposition offered by the author that within the next hald a century (being generous as i think it will be sooner) Darwinian philosophy will be dead…destroyed,debunked…

I encourage others to read the article;

":Bicentennial of “What Went Wrong”
I believe that at some time well before the bicentennial year 2059 of Origin of the Species, perhaps as early as 2009 or 2019, there will be another celebration that will mark the demise of the Darwinist ideology that was so triumphant in 1959. The theme of this anti- centennial will be “What Went Wrong?” or perhaps, “How could we ever have let it happen?”

What went wrong is that scientists committed original sin, which in science means believing what you want to believe instead of what your experiments and observations actually show you. In small matters, as a scientist you cannot afford to indulge in original sin because your colleagues will show you up and make a fool out of you. If, however, you’re leading the whole research community in a direction it wants to go, your colleagues might not be motivated, or may be even afraid, to challenge you.

What happened in that great triumphal celebration of 1959 is that science embraced a religious dogma called “naturalism,” or “materialism.” Science declared that nature is all there is, and that matter created everything that exists. The scientific community had a common interest in believing this creed because it affirmed that, in principle, there is nothing beyond the understanding and control of science. What went wrong in the wake of the Darwinian triumph was that the authority of science was captured by an ideology, and the evolutionary scientists thereafter believed what they wanted to believe rather than what the fossil data, the genetic data, the embryological data, and the molecular data were showing them.

What are we going to do to correct this deplorable situation? Most of us at this conference are in academic life, and we will be doing the academic job of research, writing, and teaching. We have launched a new journal, Origins and Design, and we have had a very successful first conference here at Biola. Many more people have attended than we originally expected, and a lot of very able people are now making a contribution in the area of intelligent design. We hope to schedule future conferences at major secular universities. We are developing a research agenda. We have confidence in our intellectual position. We are observing that the materialists have to rely on distortion and appeals to prejudice to defend their position. This is a sign that we have taken the high intellectual ground."
origins.org/mc/resources/ri9602/johnson.html

Here Here!!!

I think the revolution has begun, and it is only a matter of time to see it completed!

In Christ, maryJohnZ

 

[The_Barbarian]

What happened in that great triumphal celebration of 1959 is that science embraced a religious dogma called “naturalism,” or “materialism.” Science declared that nature is all there is, and that matter created everything that exists.

No, it didn’t. In fact, it can’t. Science, is unable to make any claims at all about the existence or non-existence of the supernatural. Your guy has no idea what science is about.

He’s just got a superstitious fear of science because he doesn’t understand it. In Darwinism, many of the greatest evolutionary scientists, highly regarded by their peers such as Theodosious Dobzhansky, Kenneth Miller, and Franciso Ayala are devoted Christians. Two of those I mentioned are devout Catholics.

The drivel you posted is not of God. Deceit is never of God, nor is error.

 

[The_Barbarian]

As for darwin saying God creating the world, man…

WHERE!!! ???he talks of a “creator” which could be identified as materialistic processes or Nature…Pantheism…

When we as Christians speak of the Creator, we mean God. Darwin, an Anglican, meant God when he said the Creator produced the first living thing.

Our Pope also means God when he uses the word. That’s what it means for us.

There are atheists in science, and there are believers. Since science is religiously neutral, being unable to address the issue of God, it makes no difference what religion you are.

So is plumbing. Atheists can also be plumbers for the same reason; one can do plumbing or science, regardless of one’s beliefs about God.

 

[MaryJohnZ]

When we as Christians speak of the Creator, we mean God. Darwin, an Anglican, meant God when he said the Creator produced the first living thing.

Our Pope also means God when he uses the word. That’s what it means for us.

There are atheists in science, and there are believers. Since science is religiously neutral, being unable to address the issue of God, it makes no difference what religion you are.

So is plumbing. Atheists can also be plumbers for the same reason; one can do plumbing or science, regardless of one’s beliefs about God.

The problem with all that is you have to prove that Darwin was speaking as a Christian. He came from a family who belonged to the Unitarian Universalists and through his wife he was affiliated with the Anglican but he was not a church goer and as we have seem from his journals he lost his faith and became more an agnostic. His own grandfather who minfluenced him greatly was an atheist. SO why say that Darwin is speaking the same language with the same meaning as Pope benedict or any other Catholic or Christian? It is illogical to do so.

In Chjrist, maryJohnZ

 

[The_Barbarian]

The problem with all that is you have to prove that Darwin was speaking as a Christian.

Anglican, to be precise. He mentions in The Voyage of the Beagle that the ship’s officers kidded him about his orthodox Anglican beliefs.

SO why say that Darwin is speaking the same language with the same meaning as Pope benedict or any other Catholic or Christian?

Because it is the same language. He and the Pope referred to God as the Creator.

It is illogical to do so.

Perhaps you should tell the Pope. BTW, Darwin mentioned that he was “leaning toward agnosticism” late in life, long after having written his book.

 

[MaryJohnZ]

Anglican, to be precise. He mentions in The Voyage of the Beagle that the ship’s officers kidded him about his orthodox Anglican beliefs.

---

Mary:
I guess you missed my previous post that showed Darwin was Unitarian Universalist…only Anglican by marriage and he had problems with the Anglican church not acccepting his writings and teaching all along to the point it was surprising they allowed him to be buried in the honored placed where he now resides.
His wife worried that he wouldn’t make it to heaven to be with her and his children have testified that he died without converting.
Not I hope he was a believer and died with faith in God, but historically he called himself a materialist, all his friends were agnostics…he said he lost his faith in his journals. I already showed those quotes. I won’t repeat them.

Barbarian:
Because it is the same language. He and the Pope referred to God as the Creator. Perhaps you should tell the Pope. BTW, Darwin mentioned that he was “leaning toward agnosticism” late in life, long after having written his book./

MARY:
Darwin was more than “leaning” toward atheism…

Darwin wrote in his journal:

‘I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.’'4

From another Christian website:

“A careful study of Darwin’s writings, especially his posthumously published private notebooks and personal communication, reveals that Darwin was indeed an atheist and his theory of natural selection was formulated to replace a Creator with naturalistic processes…”

equip.org/site/c.muI1LaMNJrE/b.2548839/k.2A55/Is_Darwinism_Atheistic_an_Examination_of_the_Beliefs_and_Practices_of_Charles_Darwin.htm

From the same article:

"Darwin argued that it was natural selection alone that could account for the facts. In Darwin’s worldview, natural selection was incompatible with God and was meant to replace Him. He told Charles Lyell in 1859, “If I were convinced that I required such additions [new powers and attributes and forces] to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish.”14 In his 1868 work he said that either God or natural selection is unnecessary, leaving his readers to decide between the two.15 He had even referred to his theory as “the Devil’s gospel”16 and called natural selection “My deity.”17
Toward the end of the religious section of his autobiography, Darwin summarized his position: “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic…Nothing is more remarkable than the spread of skepticism or rationalism during the latter half of my life.”18

---

So saying that Charles Darwin was speaking as a man of religious faith with the same meaning as Pope Benedict has its problems…it isn’t compatible with the record of what Darwin said about his beliefs.

In Christ, maryJohnZ

 

[The_Barbarian]

I guess you missed my previous post that showed Darwin was Unitarian Universalist…only Anglican by marriage and he had problems with the Anglican church not acccepting his writings and teaching all along to the point it was surprising they allowed him to be buried in the honored placed where he now resides.

In fact, Darwin had joined the Anglican Church and was studying to be an Anglican priest, just before he left on the the Beagle. That was why he was the butt of jokes about his orthodoxy to the Church of England.

Of course, in his old age, he said he was leaning toward agnosticism. But that was long after the books were written.

Because it is the same language. He and the Pope referred to God as the Creator. Perhaps you should tell the Pope. BTW, Darwin mentioned that he was “leaning toward agnosticism” late in life, long after having written his book.

(thing said about Darwin by other people)

More to the point is what Darwin believed when he wrote his books. And he is the final authority on that.

 

[Wolseley]

More to the point is what Darwin believed when he wrote his books. And he is the final authority on that.

He certainly is.

*“I had gradually come by this time, * to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos or the beliefs of any barbarian.”
(Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1911, Vol. 1, pg 277)

"I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.”(Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1911, Vol. 1, pg 278)

**“I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.” **
(Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, Michael Joseph, London, 1991, p. 658)

“I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”(Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, Chatto and Windus, London, 1959, pp. 10, 318)

“Formerly I was led… to the firm conviction of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind.”(Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1911, Vol. 1, pg 281)

“I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.”(Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1911, Vol. 1, pg 278)

Much of what was released in Darwin’s autobiography was “cleaned up” and G-rated for public consumption; Ian Taylor, in his book In the Minds of Men (TFE Publishing, Toronto, 1984), informs us that many of Darwin’s views on the Bible and Christianity “were deleted by his son, Francis, at the insistence of his widow, Emma, in the version published after his death, as were his views on the Old Testament, namely, what he called, ‘its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc. etc.’…the uncensored version of the autobiography, published by Charles’s granddaughter, Lady Nora Barlow, in 1958, contained some 6,000 words expunged by Francis and Emma, much of which related to Charles’s irreligious nature, and which ‘might embarrass the Darwin name’.”**

 

[The_Barbarian]

I’m less impressed by “quotes” dished up by people who hate Darwin, than what he said himself.

From Darwin’s 1872 edition of “The Origin of Species:”

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator 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.

At least at that time, he was still convinced that God was behind it.

 

[Wolseley]

I’m less impressed by “quotes” dished up by people who hate Darwin, than what he said himself.

LOL. Barbarian, you truly are a card.

“MY Darwin quotes are more accurate than YOUR Darwin quotes!”

Wheeeeee!

“You’re traveling through another dimesnsion…”

 

[The_Barbarian]

LOL. Barbarian, you truly are a card.

“MY Darwin quotes are more accurate than YOUR Darwin quotes!”

Mine is cited directly from Darwin’s book. Yours are edited bits from people who hate Darwin. If you’re honest with yourself, that should clear up any conflict between the two.

 

[Wolseley]

Charles Darwin’s letters were written by people who hated him?

Wow. Poor guy had worse problems than just odd ideas about species origins, didn’t he?

Did his multiple personalities have names?

 

[reggieM]

Charles Darwin’s letters were written by people who hated him?

Wow. Poor guy had worse problems than just odd ideas about species origins, didn’t he?

Did his multiple personalities have names?

On a related topic, there’s a new book that indicates that the poor guy did have some serious problems beyond his odd ideas about species.

There is evidence that he plagerized and cheated Alfred Russell Wallace for the material for Origin of the Species.

The Darwin Conspiracy, Roy Davies (2008)

Even when keen Darwinian analysts such as Samuel Butler and A. A. W. Hubrecht began calling for Wallaceism, Wallace himself always refused the designation. Thus as time passed on Wallace simply faded away as a significant player in the development of the theory that would bear Darwin’s name.

This point is more important than one might immediately think. Why was Butler, Hubrecht and others talking about “Wallaceism”? **What is Wallaceism? In brief it is teleological evolution. ** Instead of Darwin’s radical materialism, Wallaceism is a very different kind of evolutionary theory. It was first announced when Wallace made his break with Darwin’s metaphysical presumptions. Wallace simply couldn’t agree that the human intellect could be explained by natural selection; something else, a higher spiritual force or power had to be invoked.

Imagine if you will a rather pathetic little boy oppressed by a domineering father and overshadowed by older sisters assuming maternal roles that directed his every move. Under such conditions it’s not surprising that certain survival strategies would be employed by the boy to establish his place in the family pecking order. Thus it was, according to biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore, that a young Charles Darwin stole his father’s peaches and plums only to “discover” them later in heroic fashion and would invent “deliberate falsehoods” in order to gain attention. In school he would regale classmates with stories of fantastic birds and remarkable flowers, flowers he could change into different colors. “Once,” write Desmond and Moore, “he invented an elaborate story designed to show how fond he was of telling the truth. It was a boy’s way of manipulating the world” (1). But what happened when the boy, whose insatiable need for attention never waned, became a man. How might he then manipulate the world? This question, which few have dared to even pose, has been asked and answered in a provocative new book by former BBC writer/producer, Roy Davies titled, The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime, just released by Goldensquare Books (darwin-conspiracy.co.uk/)).