Thanks for this trove. Starting With Bonnie Rait, whose work I don’t know well but consistently love.
[quote=“T_aquaticus, post:23, topic:50666”]
Dawkins still leaves the possibility that God exists, and that evolution only disproves the YEC depiction of God.[/quote]
Yeah, I think so too. in his conversation with Collins I think he was even open to deism.<
Dawkins, like YEC, is open to claiming anyone he likes and denying connections to anyone he doesn’t like. Thus, he claims that deism is basically atheistic and not a problem in order to claim prominent, more or less deistic, scientists for atheism. But he claims that atheists like Stalin are really religious. Such hypocritical historical dishonesty and philosophical incompetence is most of the substance of The God Delusion.
The reality is that both atheism and religion include a wide range of views. An honest approach recognizes that there are better and worse examples to be found in both. The existence of atheistic and of religious terrorists does not prove that all atheists or all religious people are terrorists.
A similar challenge applies to ID: What is it? There’s a wide range of views within the movement. The call to “teach the controversy” is actually a call to “teach our bad arguments”, not unlike most calls to teach MY side of the story.
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I know “Paradise” from a record of Tom T. Hall. It’s one of my favorite songs, because, in spite of it’s deep sadness, it’s so true.
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There is a lot of ache in his songs – words and music, but we know the only One who truly relieves it.
Tom T. Hall really takes me back. Prine’s parents were from Paradise and I gather that some of his ashes were supposed to be scattered on the Green River in accordance with the song’s request.
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Get your hands on a copy of Magnificent Music Machine (LP). It’s evidence that 1970s country music had some very good music hidden among so much schlock of the GoO.
It was amusing to see people in shock that this ‘unknown’ singer/songwriter won the Grammy for best song this past week.
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A favorite from a long time ago that I don’t listen to very often:
There is a Christian allegory in this (but not the part about old and tired) and a story of God’s providential timing along with it when it was the first thing I heard in English within moments after I boarded an Air China flight in L.A. four decades ago and going through the audio channels:
Indeed. Evil doesn’t care about the boundaries we try to draw around religious affiliation.
It’s not unlike many of the other conspiracy adjacent movements circulating today, like anti-vaxx, Flat Earth, 5G causes cancer and infections, and so forth. These ideas collapse like a wet paper bag when analyzed by those with knowledge in the field, but are still attractive to those who don’t have the requisite knowledge.
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Or even those of us with not very much, but enough to work through basic physics of the scenarios, e.g. “If the 5G tower isn’t burning nearby trees, you’re probably fine.”
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I also think it is a mistake to apply Darwin’s theory of evolution to the realm of human history. That is social darwinism - the survival of the fittest in human societies - and I recognize that that leads to all kinds of evil. I don’t think Darwin intended that.
I am not a biologist, but I think Darwin’s theory of evolution, or “descent with modification by natural selection” applies to the realm of organisms in the natural world. With regard to competition, it is tempting to think that some organisms find a niche in their local environment by living in harmony with it. That may be true to a degree, but there is a finite amount of resources on this earth, and simply by surviving creatures use up resources, putting limits on the survival of other creatures. Darwin used an analogy of wedges in some editions of The Origin of Species:
In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing considerations always in mind — never to forget that every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the number of the species will almost instantaneously increase to any amount. The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force (Chapter 3).
Do I like that there is predation and death in the “groaning” Creation? No, I don’t, but there are hints in the book of Isaiah that predation will come to an end in the new heaven and the new earth. Biology will have to be quite different then, because life seems to be inextricably linked to death in the present world. So, I try to bring God’s kingdom to earth in my puny way. Before I let my dog out at night, I chase out the pesky rabbit from my yard (it is a Good Idea to check for skunks too). When cardinals build a nest in the bush outside our door, I attempt to shoo away the nasty starlings before they attempt to eliminate their competition. And so on.
Andy7, thank you for your response. Sadly, there is only one valid reason to say that something is not true, and that i9s that it is not true. Darwin said that survival of the fittest is true of all organisms. I do not see where he made an exception for humans, and I do not see where you justified an exception for humans. To be sure people like Dawkins make the same mistake, but that is no excuse.
Either survival of the fittest is true or it is not. Ecology demonstrates that it is not true, but for some reason survival of the fittest has become a sacred cow. It is as if people believe that evolution is based on it like the six day creation is based on Gen 1. Please it is the 21st century. Darwin was good for his day, but his day is passed. He was not inerrant.
God provides life and life in abundance for all God’s creatures and in God’s own way… When Jesus returns there will be no death, no predation, and no reproduction.
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@Relates, I feel like I should clarify a misunderstanding. I did not say that Darwinian evolution doesn’t apply to Homo Sapiens, as biological organisms. I think it does indeed apply to humans as organisms. My point was about social darwinism, and applying evolution to human societies. This is about using evolution to say that certain groups of people are more fit than others because they appear to have certain advantages. I do not accept that certain groups of people, based on social factors, are more fit than others. There is a distinction between humans as organisms and groups of humans as social organizations.
I cannot go into a long treatise on social darwinism, and I will have to defer to the biologists on the forum to argue the finer points of the evolution of biological organisms, but I wanted to try to clear up an apparent misunderstanding at a higher level. This is my best attempt at an explanation of what I was thinking.
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Survival of the fittest includes ecology.
Survival of the fittest does include humans. This is why we can see patterns of DNA sequence conservation in the human population and different distributions of specific alleles that are based on geography. For example, alleles associated with malarial resistance are more commonly found in regions with endemic malaria.
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The way in which Social Darwinism was enacted is the opposite of what Darwin proposed. In Darwin’s theory the fittest will increase in number over time without any intervention. Those who supported Social Darwinism seemed to distrust Darwin’s own theory because they felt they had to pick the fittest characteristics themselves and actively make their chosen characteristics increase in numbers. In fact, eugenics of the past stated that humans have to take an active role because otherwise certain unwanted traits would come to dominate the human race, the opposite of what Darwin taught.
There is also a difference between description and prescription. Darwin rightly concluded that those who are more fit tend to have more offspring. That’s a description. There is no logical path for this description to become a prescription that the less fit should be actively prevented from having offspring.
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Yes, eugenics is bad.
Even apart from prescription, there are people out there who argue that certain social groups of people are somehow more “fit” than other, disadvantaged, social groups. One time I was going to order a book from a certain author on an unrelated subject. I went to the author’s website, and they were arguing that because the crime rate of an identifiable social group in their country was higher than the norm, that they were somehow less “fit” as human beings, and that this was a result of “natural selection”, not considering anything else such as socioeconomic factors, or oppression from other groups of people (this is implicit prescription I guess). I didn’t order the book.
I only say these things because I think there is confusion out there about evolution as a biological mechanism, and the use of evolution to explain human societies, which is anthropology, not biology.
I understand that people around here are talking about biological evolution, and I very much appreciate your expertise in this area @T_aquaticus .
Darwin made no such right conclusion, because the only description of evolutionally fit is that they produce more successful offspring. Therefore, it is a conclusion that can be achieved ONLY after the fact. The irony of most racist claims is that many disadvantaged communities are more fit because they are growing faster than others, which is the prime reason for discrimination.
Why is that a problem?
That is new to me. Which denominations of YEC make this claim?
I thought that it was universally accepted that racism has its roots in the historical religious idea that the mark of Cain was manifest in darker or even black skin! I would put it to you that in fact one could place that dogma on Judaism and even the early Christian church (Catholicism).
It may come as a surprise to many here that Adolf Hitler was a rather conservative individual who, in a rather twisted kind of way, considered himself Christian! He wrote many statements supporting Christian beliefs…i was rather shocked to learn of this during my spare time studying at home during COVID lockdowns.
Current religious scholarship has discredited this theology obviously.