- ‹ previous
- 603 of 1510
- next ›
A Dispatch from Darwin Day
Christians have Christmas. Atheists have Charles Darwin's birthday--a date that has inspired months of zealous non-worship in the lead-up to today’s fete of his 200th. Before midnight the world will have witnessed some 600 Darwin Day events, from the Darwin Day Barbecue in Melbourne, Australia, to the Darwin Day Rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to the Darwin Day Evolutionpalooza, a gathering last Sunday in the basement conference room of the San Francisco Public Library, where 100 guests of the local atheist club ate birthday cake and heard the Charles Darwin Backup Singers belt out “The Twelve Ages of Evolution,” a Christmas-inspired ditty that ended with the Pleistocene era’s shopping list of "bisons and humans, hawks and higher primates, horses and whales, conifers and mammals, bipedal dinosaurs, reptiles, trees, and insects, spiders, mites and sharks, land plants and fish!" And the list went on.
Other than taking place in America's most Godless major city, San Francisco’s D-Day was notable for the presence of the mutton-chopped Darwin himself, who took to a podium in a chiffon scarf tied like a cravat and thanked the crowd for "all your great efforts in channeling me into the 21st Century." Forthwith began the kind of autobiography that could only come from a scientist--a mostly dry, rambling affair occasionally enlivened by Far Side jokes. "I have a friend who was Unitarian," Darwin said at one point, without mentioning that he was raised as one, "and the Klu Klux Klan burned a question mark in front of his house."
Evolutionpalooza, which was advertised on Facebook with a drawing of hominids evolving into a man carrying a birthday cake, is the brainchild of atheist author David Fitzgerald, who’d shown up wearing the classic walking fish shirt. "I hesitate to venerate Darwin too highly, to make him sound like he's our prophet," he told me. "There's already so much baggage attached to that kind of thing." But, he added, Darwin was a convenient rallying point in the effort of group’s 1,000 members to counteract the Religious Right. And they certainly had cause to party: President Barack Obama had proclaimed during his inauguration speech that “we are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers.” This followed by Darwin’s bicentennial hinted at sunrise over a decade of darkness: “I have never been more optimistic about seeing Atheism being accepted in America,” Fitzgerald said. “The more we learn, the less plausible any one of those religions out there seems.”
That wasn’t exactly the message of Evolutionpalooza’s keynote speaker, Eugenie Scott, the director of the National Center for Science Education. “I speak for atheists and Baptists and college professors,” she told me. “I’m ecumenical.” Still, Scott, who’d waived her typical speaker fee for the event, clearly had a soft-spot for the Darwinists. She mentioned how the young Darwin earned his nickname, Gas, for his love of blowing things up (“My hero,” sighed a teenage girl sitting behind me). “Then he got into his barnacle stage,” she went on. Her time began to run out. “When I have a smart crowd like you guys I just cut to the chase: Natural Selection is adaptive differential reproduction.”
The homily finished, the festivities moved on to the equivalent of the church talent show. A placard that said “real quotes” was held aloft as one Pammy Mae Paluxy took her best stab at a Southern accent: “To say the Bible was written by men and may contain inaccuracies completely contradicts the word of the Bible,” she said, among other things. Next came a skit between a professor of “paleotheology” and a “scientific” proponent of Intelligent Design (Professor: so the “Intelligent Designer” could be, say, Martians, or Ancient Astronauts or just maybe an immortal, omniscient, all-powerful, super-being and his son and some sort of holy ghost?). Finally came a spirited match of Evolutionary (The Big D for 1000: “Darwin said he has seen enough of this institution throughout. . .” Buzz: “What is slavery?”)
When the official program ended, 78-year-old David Mandell of Silicon Valley wound through the crowd offering shrink-wrapped copies of his book, Atheist Acrimonious. “It means angry, an angry atheist,” he explained. A shirt heavy with buttons advertised the website of his local atheist chapter, godlessgeeks.com. “My personal opinion is agnostics are atheists in the closet,” said Mandell, who also wore a cap with the spinning-atom symbol of the American Atheists. “If you want to get them out, you have to get them to take a big emotional step forward.”
Mandell turned to a man in a shirt that said: “Winning Souls for Darwin,” and asked, “When are you going to buy my book?”
“Maybe later; I’ll be God on Friday,” said the man, whose name was Marc Perkel. On Friday he expected to receive a trademark on the religious use of the word “Reality.” Perkel handed me a business card for his Church of Reality (slogan: “If it’s real, we believe in it”). His church doesn’t hold services, which led me to ask how he filled his 1,200 congregants’ spiritual needs. “Well, at this point I really don’t,” he said. “We’re still in development. We’re always in development. A purpose of the Church of Reality is that we believe in positive evolution.”
For the moment Perkel was more concerned with debunking the competitors. “I can pretty much prove that God doesn’t exist,” he said. “If He exists, why is He hiding? If God is hiding and I don’t believe in God, then it’s God’s will that I’m an atheist. So atheism is still the right answer.”
Things were winding down by then; I joined Darwin on his way out. He was carrying a plastic terrarium containing a western hognose snake that he’d used in another talk earlier that day. I asked what it was like being the world’s most famous biologist. “I find it fun, gratifying, and satisfying,” he said as we left the library and walked past gawkers. His real name was David C. Seaborg and he was the son of the Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg, who’d discovered plutonium. He was planning to appear at two or three more Darwin events, including a debate at the museum of natural history in Santa Barbara where Fitzgerald would play a creationist. I asked why he didn’t just invite real creationists. “I don't want to; It’s just much more fun to do it this way," he said. “[Fitzgerald] gets it; he gets the science. With a real creationist it gets very convoluted.”
Ultimate Reality Check On Darwin's Birthday
A sad reality check on Darwin’s 200th birthday:
Every weekday the U.S. Congress proves that species Homo sapiens has ceased to evolve.
Harvard evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson defined the root cause: “far-off catastrophes engineered by our own species are simply out of the range of human capacity for planning and action” and congress keeps proving that.
Happy Darwin’s Birthday anyway, most ironically as we are led to the precipice of extinction by our failed institutions because the consequences of overwhelming greed prevented us from saving ourselves from climate change as our “leaders” refuse to heed the lessons of history.
Not so fast here. Darwin is
Not so fast here. Darwin is more complex. Under Darwin's process of natural selection, all "beings" — as opposed to the outmoded religious idea of "creatures" — are continually adapting to their natural environment in order to have a better chance of surviving. The weakest and most poorly adapted die off, while the strongest and most improved survive long enough to mate. Their offspring inherit their genes, and thus the species improves from one generation to the next.
Darwin "noted that successful species produce more offspring in each generation than are needed to replace the adults who die . . . The species would thus have changed or evolved to favor traits that favor survival and reproduction."
This means that not only must these beings be able to reproduce sexually, they must actually do so, for evolution to work as posited. Under evolution, then, successful reproduction is the key. Homosexuals would cease to exist because their sexual practices are such that they do not produce natural offspring.
Therein lies the quandary, then, for the gay activist seeking to make his intellectual case for respectability based on science and genetics. These secular gods have abandoned him to oblivion. By their iron laws of Natural Selection, he cannot possibly exist, let alone be genetically preserved and determined.
Gay Persistence
There is no evidence to suggest that gays have not been around as long as hetros. There is no evidence to suggest gay animals are a recent development, Shouldn't gayness have been deselected long ago? The manichean binary perspective of gay or straight is an oversimplification. A continuum between gay & straight seems more likely. Even Kinsey, I believe, reported a significant amount of gay experimentation in the age of Ozzie & Harriet. Anyway, creating kids is fun and easy, raising them is a little more challenging.
If survival and reproduction guarantee success, is the octuplet mom the wave of the future? Cringe.
Sexuality is not a single characteristic
If homosexuality were a simple characteristic controlled be a single gene, you might be right. However, such is not the case - it almost certainly is a result of several genes. One possibility is that there are several genes and only one combination of these will result in homosexuality. What allows it to persist is a selective advantage for a closely related suite. For example, with alleles A&a, B&b, C&c, and D&d, and only the combination of AA bb cc dd will result in homosexuality in a male, while Aa bb cc dd will result in a male who is more charming to females. Or the combination of AA bb cc dd will make a female a more fit parent.
Another possibility is that such a combination above is also under prenatal hormonal influence. This might be something like an AA bb cc dd combination will only result in a homosexual male if the mother produces some factor that reduces testosterone in the fetus at a critical point. This might be the case since some researchers find that a boy with older brothers [but not sisters] is more likely to be gay. This is thought to occur because the mother produces an increased number of antibodies to the H-Y antigen as the number of sons increases.
Another possibility is that homosexuality may have no genetic basis, but is solely the result of neuronal plasticity in fetal development with a major part being maternal influences.
Choice is a crock, maybe even a bigger crock than Freud's speculations [certainly not theories since there are no good empirical studies along that line, only anecdotes]
Ummm Darwinian...so what
Ummm Darwinian...so what about "beings" that reproduce asexually? And since when did sexual functions as defining a human overide being human defining a human. You are a dew-moss.
Not so fast, is it a rational choice?
Natural Selection is the exact point, counter-point argument. The human brain has evolved to do the light work of natural selection. As a human ages from zero, rational thoughts loom stronger with each passing moment. Some realize they are not built or willing to compete to reproduce (noncontenders). Chemical levels in the brian begin to shift based on this realization, and sexuality is diverted. This makes it possible for "noncontenders" to submit any right of passage to the next generation.
The heavy lifting of Natural Selection (collusion, competition, and combat) are works to be performed by "contenders". Really honing the evolution of humans and their offspring, but not likely to extinct the "noncontenders". There will always be humans that realize they are "noncontenders", even within the ranks of ideally concieved offspring.
The argument against this is simple. Why do some homosexuals desire children long after shifting to a "noncontender" role? This is a case by case investigation, but will most likely bear evidence of lonely, empty and/or jealous emotions. Remember, the only real shift made was that from a possible "contender" to a "noncontender". The shift to "noncontender" is likely a direct result of one or more of noted emotions being very prominent early on.
In close, I do not discount the rights of homosexuals as members of society. They have likely endured more emotional punishment as a "noncontender" than any assumed "contender". Peace Love and Happiness to all.
Social Darwinists ?
I never new Darwinists were so social. Well it's good to know that folks are adapting to a world where the likes of superstitions and myths are put in their proper place and hoping is wishing and has nothing to do with faith.
Leading Nazis, and early
Leading Nazis, and early 1900 influential German biologists, revealed in their writings that Darwin’s theory and publications had a major influence upon Nazi race policies. Hitler believed that the human gene pool could be improved by using selective breeding similar to how farmers breed superior cattle strains. In the formulation of their racial policies, Hitler’s government relied heavily upon Darwinism, especially the elaborations by Spencer and Haeckel. As a result, a central policy of Hitler’s administration was the development and implementation of policies designed to protect the ‘superior race’. This required at the very least preventing the ‘inferior races’ from mixing with those judged superior, in order to reduce contamination of the latter’s gene pool. The ‘superior race’ belief was based on the theory of group inequality within each species, a major presumption and requirement of Darwin’s original ‘survival of the fittest’ theory. This philosophy culminated in the ‘final solution’, the extermination of approximately six million Jews and four million other people who belonged to what German scientists judged as ‘inferior races’
this ol' canard
Darwin produced a description of how Nature behaves. A century and a half later, we know that it was a very good description, requiring only relatively minor modifications and explaining a huge diversity of natural phenomena.
That is approximately what the word "theory" means, by the way. You seem to think it's merely a sort of philosophical whim.
The idea that the Holocaust was a consequence of Darwin's theory is in fact nonsense; it simply doesn't make logical sense. What "survival of the fittest" means is that, in the natural order, the fitter generally survive longer to produce more offspring. Kindly show how this relates to murdering six million human beings.
You could make a better case that its philosophical basis was the pseudoscience of eugenics, which the Nazis quite hideously perverted. The truth is, however, the obvious one: Hitler and the Nazis would have done what they did *anyway*.
But, even had there been a connection between "Darwinism" and the Nazis, why try to blame Darwin? He merely showed the reality of the way Nature works. Are you going to blame the Holocaust on reality, on Nature, or both?
Poor little Mendel...
I have always felt Darwin received a little to much credit, surely Mendel was just as important. Also, most of the core ideas in Origin were already known at the date of its publication, Darwin was more of a "compiler" and "empiricist" that a brilliant "theorist".
Also, about the "agnostics are just closet atheists" statement, uhh....no? I mean there is no real evidence for a god, but there is really no evidence against a god either. So since an atheist is choosing to believe in something there is no reason to believe in, how is atheism not just another religion?
No God, wait which one are we talking about?
So many to chose from, so many to be saved by, so many to owe our existence to. How does one know if they are following the proper creator. I guess one could try them all until you get it right, right?
I would describe atheism as more of a hobby (no ranting required). Hobbies don't generally require belief in and reverence for a superhuman power. Just saying. Not mad. Just saying.
"How is atheism not a religion?" For one, we don't even get to capitalize the first letter of our understanding. Two, it doesn't require follow up visits just to "Make It In!" Three, well, I not sure it matters, but I know for a fact that those little crackers and sparkling grape wine came from Larry's Grocery and Gun Shop. Silly Rabbits.
"there is really no evidence
"there is really no evidence against a god either"
In fact there's pretty good evidence against the existence of a God, as you'd find if you went and looked through the science section of a library/bookstore; try Victor Stenger's book "Has Science Found God?" just for a starter.
Naturally enough, the God Squad pretend all of this doesn't exist, just as the Creationists pretend the overwhelming evidence in favour of Natural Selection doesn't exist; and the mainstream media go along with the pretence. After all, it's difficult to fit the scientific evidence against the existence of God into a 96-point newspaper headline or a 15-second soundbite.
"there is really no evidence
"there is really no evidence against a god either"
In fact there's pretty good evidence against the existence of a God, as you'd find if you went and looked through the science section of a library/bookstore; try Victor Stenger's book "Has Science Found God?" just for a starter.
Naturally enough, the God Squad pretend all of this doesn't exist, just as the Creationists pretend the overwhelming evidence in favour of Natural Selection doesn't exist; and the mainstream media go along with the pretence. After all, it's difficult to fit the scientific evidence against the existence of God into a 96-point newspaper headline or a 15-second soundbite.
Darwin, it is a choice, not
Darwin, it is a choice, not genes. It can be treated. Freud had four theories of homosexuality:
Homosexuality arises as an outcome of the Oedipus conflict and the boy's discovery that his mother is castrated. This induces an intense castration anxiety that causes the boy to turn from his castrated mother to a "woman with a penis," i.e., a boy with a feminine appearance.
In the Three Essays, Freud developed the theory that the future homosexual child is so over attached to his mother that he identifies with her and narcissistically seeks love objects like himself so he can love them like his mother loved him.
If a "negative" or "inverted" Oedipus complex occurs, a boy seeks his father's love and masculine identification by taking on a feminine identification and reverting to anal eroticism.
Finally, homosexuality could result from reaction formation: sadistic jealousy of brothers and father is safely converted into love of other men.
So Darwin, your thesis doesn't apply today.
so sure?
"Homosexuality arises as an outcome of the Oedipus conflict and the boy's discovery that his mother is castrated. This induces an intense castration anxiety that causes the boy to turn from his castrated mother to a "woman with a penis," i.e., a boy with a feminine appearance."
Just out of interest, how does this explain all those millions of male homosexuals who don't look in the slightest feminine?
And how does it explain the existence of female homosexuality?
"Darwin, it is a choice, not genes."
Darwin wouldn't have said it was a matter of genes. They hadn't been discovered in his day.
America's Contribution to Eugenics
Lieber Horst Wessel, you give far to much credit to the Germans in their development and application of eugenics. Don't you know anything about Charles Davenport? His credentials included instructor in Zoology at Harvard, member of the National Academy of Sciences and founder of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He was generously suported by funds from the Carnegie Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation. Long before the Nazis introduced their concept of "life unworthy of life" Davenport was deeply involved in programs which led to the sterilization of thousands of women in the United States. His enthusiastic collaboration with members of the Master Race should certainly be recognized.
Mark, you are right, both
Mark, you are right, both the American Eugenicists and the Nazis owe a lot of gratitude to the Englishman Charles Darwin.
You're looking at the wrong sientist
Hitler doesn't mention Darwin or Natural Selection, but he does emphasize two things. First, is that he is doing God's work - the Holocaust is essentially a religious phenomenon. The religious history of persecution of Jews by Christians is long and blatantly obvious. The religious person most likely connected to the Holocaust is Martin Luther with his tract "On the Jews and Their Lies" - a blueprint for Kristallnacht.
Second, the scientists that Hitler wanted to emulate would be Pasteur and Koch. In Mein Kampf Hitler frequently refers to Jews and other untermenschen as an infection, to be eliminated from German society.
Natural cynic, why must you
Natural cynic, why must you hateful Jews turn this into hate speech against Christians. Give it a rest please. You are entirely incorrect in you hateful allegations. Stop reading the hateful Talmud. There is ample evidence that the Nazi's were very scientific(e.g. rockets and etc.) and very advanced in the field. Most of what they did was motivated by science, divorced from religion and philosophy, hence the living hell that they made. They believed Darwin's principles and used it as the reason to murder homosexuals and others.
Ps. Natural cynic, look at the living hell that the Jew Marx made. He also subscribed to Darwin and looked at human beings as mere animals and not created in the likeness of God.
Darwinian Atheism
Wait a minute here. This whole article is based on the assumption that being a supporter of Darwin's theories makes one an automatic atheist. I happen to be a hearty supporter of CD as well as an ordained Lutheran minister. I am just as happy to witness the cringe of the Religious Right at this celebration as anyone who was able to attend. But to continue the belief that you must be an atheist in order to affirm evolution is as backward as assuming that they are mutually exclusive.
Not thinking clearly
As to this idea that evolution should have eliminated homosexuality: homosexuals are perfectly capable of reproduction, many do produce children. Most human sexual activity is not reproductive, it is of no evolutionary consequence whether that non-reproductive sex is gay or straight.
science and religion aren't necessarily incompatible
Students today are being indoctrinated to believe science and religion are incompatible. Religion, we are told, is the shadow of the past: the last vestige of a dark, gloomy age, in which the masses were subjected to the fear of spirits, ghosts, devils, God, and other imaginary beings by ecclesiastical authorities seeking to maintain political control. Science, however, supposedly provides humanity with empirically verifiable knowledge -- understanding the world through quantifiable observation, analysis, reduction and reason.
Current theories in astrophysics cannot account for the formation of galaxies. General relativity contradicts quantum mechanics: these theories cannot be integrated on a sound mathematical basis. The equations needed to explain planets condensing from clouds of gas and dust have not yet been solved, and the origin of the solar system itself remains a mystery.
Evolution is mostly speculation. The physical evidence from the past is fragmentary; of the one billion species believed to have existed, 99 percent did not leave fossils. In the deliberate breeding of species, there are limits to the changes one can make. When pushed beyond a limit, species become sterile and die out or revert to their standard design. We can induce changes in existing forms via breeding, but cannot generate new complex structures.
If this cannot happen by man’s conscious efforts, why should it happen by blind natural processes? No satisfactory evolutionary models have ever been made.
In an article on animal rights entitled "Just Like Us?" appearing in the August 1988 issue of Harper's, Ingrid Newkirk, Executive Director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said:
"You cannot find a relevant attribute in human beings that doesn't exist in animals as well. Darwin said that the only difference between humans and other animals was a difference of degree, not kind. If you ground any concept of human rights in a particular attribute, then animals will have to be included. Animals have rights."
Many in the animal rights movement still base their ethical system upon the Darwinian theory of evolution. This will have to change, as Darwin's theory is being demolished. Michael Cremo & Richard Thompson's Forbidden Archaeology (1993) is a step in that direction. This controversial book shocked the scientific community and became an underground classic.
The book's premise is that evolutionary prejudices held by powerful groups of scientists act as a "knowledge filter" which has eliminated evidence challenging accepted views, and left us with a radically altered understanding of human origins and antiquity. Forbidden Archaeology shocked the scientific world with its evidence for extreme human antiquity. It documented hundreds of anomalies in the archaeological record that contradicted the prevailing theory and showed how this massive amount of evidence was systematically "filtered" out. This is how mainstream science reacts (almost like a religion) to any challenge to its deeply held beliefs.
The doctrines of karma and reincarnation as taught in the the Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism) provide a valid theistic foundation for animal rights ethics, but are not yet accepted in the secular arena.
In Wheels of a Soul, Rabbi Phillip S. Berg, a renowned contemporary Kabbalist, explains: "...the concept of reincarnation is by no means exclusive to Judaism. The idea was prevalent among Indians on the American continent; and in the Orient, the teaching of reincarnation is widespread and influential. It is the basis of most of the philosophical systems of India, where hundreds of millions accept the truth of reincarnation the way we accept the truth of gravity--as a great natural and inevitable law that only a fool would question."
Research by credible scientists into mind-body dualism and past-life studies suggest it is a real possibility.
In biology, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe calculated the probability of proteins forming from the random interaction of amino acids -- the building blocks of life. They found the odds were one out of ten to the 40,000th power. Given these extreme odds, it is hard to imagine the self-organization of matter without the deliberate intervention of some kind of higher power(s) or intelligence(s).
All life is thus precious and sacred. Dr. Francis Crick has admitted, "the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle." Future scientists and science teachers would do well to approach the study of the phenomenal world with this kind of reverence.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Saturday there were worrying signs of a new type of eugenics based on perfection and physical beauty.
"Certainly, the eugenistic and racial ideologies that in the past humiliated man and provoked immense suffering are not being proposed again, but a new mentality is creeping in that tends to justify a different consideration of life and personal dignity," the pope said in a speech to the Pontifical Academy for Life.
"So it tends to privilege the capacity to operate, efficiency, perfection and physical beauty at the expense of other types of existence considered unworthy."
Eugenics is a belief in the possibility of improving the human race by weeding out those with what are considered undesirable traits and encouraging procreation by those with desirable traits.