Racist Darwin ?

Presumably you would consider your position to be anithetical to this, so according to that link you must be a Believer which using the argumentum ad thesaurum makes you a dogmatist, a freak, a junkie, a nut, a chump, a sucker and a crackpot amongst other things.TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : wrong identity and wrong forumEdited by Wounded King, : Actually it was just the wrong identity

Not at all Ray.If you actually look at your own definition you will find that it is in fact not really for 'materialist' at all, the main entry is for 'skeptic'.Would you not agree that 'skeptic' is as generic a term as 'believer'? Indeed you yourself are a 'skeptic' with regards to evolution are you not, does that then make you an atheist materialist? Your reasoning would seem to suggest it does.So in fact you are saying that all synonyms of 'skeptic' are also synonyms of each other as the terms you used are all listed as synonyms for 'skeptic' not for 'materialist'.I simply applied this same logic. If you actually scrolled down at the 'believer' link you would see that as well as a main entry for 'believer' there are a number of other main entries which have 'believer' as a synonym, such as 'admirer','devotee' and 'client', the terms you objected to are all alternative synonyms for those other main entries and therefore by your logic synonyms for the term 'believer' itself.So in fact there was nothing 'made-up' in my post, and I have indeed proved you wrong.TTFN,WKEdited by AdminWounded, : No reason given.Edited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

You do realise that dictionaries and thesauruses(thesauri?) just record how words are used? They aren't some magical absolute unchanging reference. If enough people decide to use a word in a particular way then that will in time make its way into such reference works. The fact that being an agnostic and an atheist are 2 quite distinct philosophical positions should surely be enough to make you question the tenuous logic of this indirect definitional approach.TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

A lot of this seems entirely superfluous to the hypothesis that Darwin was a racist, or even that Darwin's racism was part and parcel of, or indeed a product of, his development of evolutionary theories.Pretty much everything discussing Darwin's religious beliefs seems to be superfluous, especially if you characterise the change in those beliefs as a sequelae of Darwin's researches and theorising concerning evolution.If you wan to make a case that there is a causal link between Darwin embracing atheism and then being a racist that needs something more than your dubious post hoc arguments, which have not even been shown to apply to Darwin's opinions on evolution.This is the heart of the matter and something you entirely fail to address while you put Darwin making a particular 'racist correspondence' (albeit a scantily referenced one, doesn't Larson provide a reference to his primary source? I couldn't find something similar in any of Darwins writings available online) you fail to show anything suggesting that his 'open racism' was a later development than his atheism.Was Darwin less openly racist when he was a 'Paleyan creationist'?
How does the 'late 1830's' when Darwin became an atheist compare chronologically to the time of his writings of 1838? How do you know that the atheism is first? The late 1830's could be 1839. And simply because these ideas are first mentioned in 1838 does not mean they first ocurred to Darwin in 1838 indeed the fact that his 'thoughts returned' suggests that this was an already extant line of thinking. Were his ideas less openly racist than those of the creationist Louis Agassiz? From Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence by Agassiz and Agassiz 1885 (I'm using the project Guttenberg version, if you paste it directly into a word document then the references are on page 316 and 319 respectively)Yet both men were against slavery, albeit for quite different reasons.So does your actual argument boil down in essence to a claim that Darwin's racism was a product of his evolutionary though or rather that his theories regarding evolution were a product of his already existing racism. At the moment it isn't quite clear what position you were actually putting forward beyond Darwin=Racist=Bad => Evolution=Bad.TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

What is up with your reading comprehension ray? The link is the very same one I gave earlier for 'Believer', here it is again for the hard of clicking Thesaurus.com .That link has both the main entry for 'believer' but it also has other main entries for words whose entry has 'believer' as a synonym.I even told you exactly what words they were in Message 6 they are 'admirer','devotee' and 'client' the three entries right under that for 'believer' at the link I already posted and the word 'believer' is highlighted in the lists of synonyms for those entries. In what way are yours' not synonyms of synonyms since the actual reference is for 'skeptic'? They are all grouped with, or direct synonyms of, 'believer' within lists of synonyms, giving them exactly the same relationship as the ones you are waving about. Did you just mistakenly forget to add 'materialist' to that list Ray, oops, no, looks like it just isn't there in that entry for 'agnostic', kind of shooting yourself in the foot there Ray. As for the equivalence of atheist and agnostic, again these reference books are a record of usage, if people use these terms interchangably, and a lot of people do, then that usage is recorded, it doesn't make it a correct usage. Because I already did, I didn't realise you couldn't scroll up a screen and click on a link I provided earlier, but I have provided a link in this post to save wear and tear on your mousewheel.TTFN,WK

I didn't deny either of these things, I asked if there was any evidence to support your chosen chronology. The OP 'facts' don't show that 'human evolution was an idea conceived AFTER God as Creator was rejected'In fact Darwin himself denied being an atheist... of course since you equate atheist with agnostic I can see how this cuts no ice with you personally.Since you are now saying that all you are trying to say is that Darwin was no longer a christian then fine.What you have singularly failed to show is how a racist frame of mind is required to produce the theory of human evolution, although certainly particular interpretations can be heavily racist.TTFN,WK

Why bother pasting all that reference if you are going to ignore the vast majority of it just to cherry pick what you want.A statement that begins with the answer to the question 'Are agnostics atheists?' being 'no' is not one which supports your contention that agnosticism and atheism are synonymous, outwith the extent to which they are commonly lumped together.Rather than confused Bertrand Russell was able to discern that beliefs are not monolithic but that there are varying degrees which shade into one another.TTFN,WK

Well make up your mind Ray, who was Darwin trying to keep the secret of his big fat Atheism from? Contrast with So Darwin didn't talk about his atheism so as not to hurt the feelings of his wife and friends, and he didn't talk about it with people who weren't his wife and friends because he didn't want to offend them. So who did he talk about it with? Where is it discussed?The obvious answer is it isn't it is something you infer from his writings. Your making that inference, or even Mayr making it, does not automatically trump Darwin's own account of the changes in his religious views. Neither Mayr wishing Darwin to be the poster child for atheism, nor your wishing him to be the whipping boy for same, can change what Darwin's beliefs actually were.I don't claim to know exactly what those beliefs were, but I certainly don't think you have made your case even remotely convincingly that he was a determined atheist. You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means, in fact I think we have established the idosyncracy of your views, although I appreciate that they aren't idosyncratic for the hordes of true believers so blinkered they can't concieve of more than one category for beliefs different from their own. Just because he doesn't believe in a christian revelation Darwin is an atheist? You are true to form as ever.TTFN,WKP.S. In fact you seem to have taken up a radically new interpretation of the word 'objective' as well.Edited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

Sure I can identify them, we all use the secret Athiest Evolutionist Conspiracy handshake after all. Wow, now as well as inferring what Darwin meant but never actually said you are inferring both what my 'true' position is despite its being almost diametrically the opposite of my stated position and you are also inferring the beliefs of 'at least 10 other atheists' as to Darwin's atheism*.Is it just that you are really intuitive or are you maybe a little bit psychic? What ignorance? My intransigent refusal to accept your interpretation of Darwin's beliefs from his work rather than his own self-stated beliefs, vague as they may have been. So by this reasoning every single scientist in the world must be an atheist since they write and theorise within the framework of scientific materialism or naturalism. I'm quite happy to agree that "We have none" is the most likely answer to this. In the absence of any evidence for evolution I can't think of an 'origins' theory which seems not to be almost as ridiculous as Genesis, it would need some other almost equally magical deus ex machina such as aliens putting us down on earth.I'm quite happy to agree that Dawkin's has a point when he says that... But that has absolutely no relevance to what Darwin's own beliefs were. The fact that a coherent plausible atheist world narrative is possible with evolution does not make the creation of such a narrative the motivation for Darwin's formulation of his theories.That atheism requires evolutionary theory to appear coherent with the real world does not mean that evolutionary thoery requires atheism.In my opinion christian beliefs also require evolutionary theory to appear coherent with the real world and that is where your particular brand of those beliefs fails miserably.TTFN,WK* Perhaps we should try an experiment for this, I also post at the Internet Infidels which message board which has a fair proportin of hardcore atheists. I could set up a poll asking atheists specifically whether Darwin was an atheist and the people there would have no vested interest in supporting my dissembling pretence that Darwin was not an atheist, unlike the '10 other atheists' here. Then we could see if Atheists claim Darwin as one of their own.

Now Ray, have you been smoking crack again?Where are the weasel words in agreeing with you? My personal answer would be 'we have none' but I can't answer for all atheists but I would imagine that would be the answer, hence 'most likely'. Oh wait, I get it, my agreeing with you proves the wrongness of your position, therefore you must infer that I secretly disagree with you but am pretending to agree with you to protect Darwin's secret identity as the grand high lodge master of the illuminati!! Exsqueeze me? What did you make me renounce? I must have missed that part, or were you doing more of your sneaky inferring Ray? Insane logic usually is invulnerable, to reason.Unfortunately your faith is so strong that it is quite capable of totally blocking out considerations of reality. This does, as you suggest, rather preclude any meaningful dialogue.Once again Ray, it's been.TTFN,WK

Wow, that bare repetition of your consistent assertion really moved this debate forward.TTFN,WK