... the point is that the theory of evolution itself promotes an anti-morality ...
Please support that statement. No bald assertions, please.
... and in its early years it did justify a very ugly racism and Nazism itself.
On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, though ideas about evolution date back to revolutionary France (Lamarck) and beyond. I've heard that some ancient Greek philosophers broached the subject, but I forget by whom.
The National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, hence the initials NSDAP) -- in German, the 'z' is pronounced as it is in Italian, as "ts", and that is how "national" is pronounced, So NSDAP was abbreviated to the first four "letters" of the full name, "Nazi" (similarly, socialists are called "Sozis", as you will hear when you watch "Das Schlechte Mdchen" (billed in English as "The Nasty Girl", so-called because she insisted on digging up the truth of what had happened in her hometown during the Hitlerzeit, the "Hitler Times") -- started forming shortly after WWI. Unable to accept Germany's defeat, they attributed it to a "Dolchsto", a stab in the back from within the country by traitors. The party sought out scapegoats within their society and who better to serve as scapegoats than the Jews -- they were disproportionately represented in banking, since milennia of Christian rule in Europe forbade Christians from lending money and charging for it (something about the chasing out of the money-changers), so the Jews were the only ones who could provide that much needed service (the term, "bank", refers to the benches on which such transactions would be carried out).
The point is that some 59 years transpired from 1859 to 1918. Evolution's "early years" would have been expected to have lasted maybe 20 years, 30 at the most. But
sixty years? No, Faith, you are pushing that one far too far!
As has been pointed out already, the Nazis' anti-semitism was derived much more from Christianity, both from the Catholic Church's teachings and Martin Luther's, than it ever could have been from Darwin. Besides, at the time, Darwin had been refuted! Genetics and the discovery of mutations in the early 20th century were found to contradict Darwin's own ideas about inheritance of traits -- that was a perplexing problem for Darwin, even though he had a copy of Mendel's monograph on his bookshelf, so Darwin imagined a kind of mixing of paint pigments rather than the discrete quanta of Mendelian genetics and ended up with his theory of
pangenesis which effectively regressed him back to Lamarckism. Darwin remained "refuted by mutation" until the "Grand Synthesis", AKA "
The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis", that combined Darwinian evolution with genetics to create neo-Darwinism and
population genetics.
Some early Nazi propaganda films did stress "survival of the fittest", with the intent that the survival of the obviously superior Aryan races was a good thing. Darwinian? No, that was invented by Herbert Spencer. Darwin did adopt it in his fifth edition of
Origins of Species (1869), but meaning "better designed for an immediate, local environment" instead of its much broader use by the Nazis. Though we are still left with that single exploiting of "survival of the fittest" by the Nazis and their countless appeals to Christianity.
Now, the Nazis were involved in eugenics, a craze for "improving the human race" which was also being practiced in the USA. Was that a product of Darwinism? No, that was a product of genetics, which had "refuted" Darwin, remember?
BTW, just as an aside, I trust that everyone's heard of the 1933
Reichskonkordat. It was a treaty between Hitler and the Catholic Church that gives the Catholic Church preferential treatment in Germany. It is still in effect. In the late 1980s, a student group, the Bunde Liste Freiburg, had posted some posters that criticized the Catholic Church's stand on birth control and the Church had them arrested for blasphemy.
So for anti-Semitism the Nazis drew much more from Christian tradition than they ever did from Darwin. And as for "very ugly racism", good Christians never needed any help form Charles Darwin for that! Indeed, Darwin's first encounters with that racism during the voyage of the Beagle, hence very early in his formulation of the ideas for
On the Origin of Species, had left him absolutely appalled.
But the theory itself does not promote morality, it still works against the morality that made civilization and still contributes to the downfall of the civilization for that reason.
Yet again, please support this statement.
Faith, I fully expect you to ignore that request or else to try to divert attention away from the question. That is no criticism of you, but rather that expectation is born out of long bitter experience with Christians and creationists. In many ways, you have proven yourself to be just as bad as the rest, but you have also proven yourself to be better than the rest, especially in the way that you have acquitted yourself of late in the discussions about genetics and your model of hyper-rapid post-Ark speciation. Just when I have grown to expect to have to roll my eyes at your latest post, you completely surprise me. I do hope to see much more of this Faith-capable-of-constructive-conversation.
The thing is that I realize that I'm touching on matters that "True Christians" wish to avoid like the Plague. But touch on them I must.
I think that the problem with evolution that you have presented here is based entirely on your ideas of what morality is, where it comes from, and what is needed for it to work. In particular, I think that the primary reason for your objection to evolution here is the extent to which it can lead people to conclude that "goddidit" may not apply.
The standard "True Christian" line that I've been seeing ever since 1970 (hence for 43 years; no occurrence since January ... so far) is that:
- Morality comes directly from YHWH (AKA "God", but don't say his actual name!). Without God, there would be no morality.
- Morality is about Responsibility (I would agree). We are solely responsible to God for our actions (eeeh!). Without God, we are not responsible to anybody (Bolshoi! *).
- The only reason that atheists want to get rid of God is so that they can not have anybody to be responsible to (Bolshoi! *).
And so on.
Faith, as far as I can see, the only possible "moral" objections you could have against evolution is that it might possibly cause some people to doubt the existence of God and hence remove that requirement that "We are solely responsible to God for our actions". Furthermore, evolution shows us the true necessity of morality within a social species such as ourselves and shows us that morality has a very practical purpose that has nothing to do with appeasing any god.
You interpret that as removing any reason for us to behave morally. I have had rabid creationists and fundamentalists insist to me in complete sincerity that if it weren't for God, they would be mass axe murderers. So if those individuals were to arrive at the conclusion that God does not exist (not a necessary conclusion of evolution, mind you!) and they did indeed become mass axe murderers, whose fault is it? Evolution's? No, because never ever in any way did evolution teach that. Christianity?
Hell yeah! (I did suppress quoting from "Team America: World Police" there, so don't damn me quite so much to Eternity) Who was it who taught them that without God they'd be mass axe murderers? Not evolution, but rather
Christianity! Teenagers who learn about evolution and turn to hedonism, who taught them that that was the choice to make? Not evolution, but rather
Christianity!
A local creationist activist makes much about "having been an atheist", but then he made the mistake of posting his story. He was raised as a believing Christian, but as a teenager with his "bubbling hormones" working overtime, he decided that if he were an atheist then he wouldn't be responsible to anybody and could do whatever he wanted guilt-free. Did evolution ever teach him that? No,
Christianity did! He even admitted to me that each and every night that he was an "atheist" he prayed to God. That is not what an actual atheist would do. He was blatantly a pretend-atheist, just pretending in order to exploit the gaping loop-hole that his
Christian doctrine had tempted him with.
You want to blame evolution for immorality?
Really? It is solely
Christian doctrine that is to blame.
Now a final comment about morality and responsibility.
In my dealings with creationists, I have been wronged many times. When we have wronged somebody, what do we do about it? We make amends, don't we? But to
whom? If I wrong you, then I should make it up to you in some way. But that is not the Christian way.
To a Christian, when they have wronged somebody, then they have sinned. From whom do they seek forgiveness? From Jesus, of course! Does Jesus ever not forgive you? Think about that. Has there ever been even one single instance when Jesus has not forgiven you? Of course not! That is the primary benefit of having an invisible friend; he always forgives you! Unless you are pathological, in which case he never forgives you, but that's between you and your therapist.
To Christians, it's all between them and Jesus. And Jesus always forgives them! (Good little invisible friend!) But what about the people whom they had wronged? Christian or non-Christian, when you have wronged somebody then they have been wronged! A Christian takes care of everything between him and Jesus. But what about the person he had wronged? Nothing. The damage that wrong had done remains unresolved. But a non-Christian knows whom he has wronged and knows that he needs to make amends to that person. Insufficient though it may be, he at least needs to try to make that gesture.
That, to me, is the major difference between "True Christians" and normals.
{ * FOOTNOTE:
Around 1970, a 1969 French-language movie made in Algeria, "
Z" ("Il est vivant!"; 'He lives!"), made its way to USA cinemas. I saw it the first week it was out, when it was still in French (I was in my first year of French then) with English sub-titles. After that first week, it was distributed dubbed in English. It dealt with the assassination of a leftist member of the Greek government, a deputy, by right-wing members and the subsequent cover-up which was exposed during the investigation, which in turn led to the military take-over of the goverment. Elements of the movie are classic. As the deputy (played by Yves Montand) crossed the street, a pick-up truck careened through the crowd and the guy in the back hit the deputy on the head with a pipe -- you later knew him in "French Connection" as "Frog 2"; he was the one on the movie posters having been shot while running up the stairs of the "L" (to see that poster, click on
this link). One man chased the pick-up down and leaped into it to fight the assassin, only to be thrown from it. One of the assassins described him as "leaping lithe and supple, like a tiger". When the commander of the police forces is being interviewed by the investigating judge, he also uses the exact same wording, "leaping lithe and supple, like a tiger" and the typist transcribing the interview freezes suddenly, realizing full well what he had just heard. Classic!
In the movie while all this was going on, the Soviet Union's "Big Ballet", the Bolshoi (that's what the word means), is in town. As the deputy's entourage is planning the event, the hot-head among them who's trying to warn them of danger goes on a rant about the Bolshoi, which ends with his exclamation of "Eh, Bolshoi!", which of course sounds like the English, "Bullshit!" and is clearly what that character meant to convey. The funny thing is that that is exactly how it had played out in the original French!
}
{FOOTNOTE -- not linked to: From the imdb.com entry of the movie, Z
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065234/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2:
quote:
Trivia
The movie is based on the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis. On May 22, 1963, Lambrakis was attacked and struck on the head (in the same manner depicted in the film) by right-wing extremists after giving an anti-war speech in Thessaloniki. He died of brain injuries from the attack on May 27, 1963. Following Lambrakis's assassination, a military junta of right-wing generals seized control of the Greek government in 1967. During this time, the letter Z (meaning "He is alive") became a common piece of protest graffiti in Greek cities, in memory of Lambrakis and his democratic ideals. The military junta banned the use of the letter "Z" as graffiti, in response to these protests. The Greek junta collapsed in 1974, following a disastrous invasion of Cyprus by Turkey (which led to the occupation of almost half Cyprus by the Turkish army), and democracy was restored to Greece. In the film, the Examining Magistrate (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) is in reality Christos Sartzetakis, who later served as President of the Hellenic Republic (1985-1990).
}
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