Links for the Creation/Evolution Controversy (not a debate topic)

There was an extremely well balanced discussion amongst experts on Social Darwinism on BBC radio this morning. There's a podcast available - I don't know whether US people can get it or not.This should fill in the details for a discussion that was going on elsewhere on another topic. Social Darwinism 20 Feb 14Thu, 20 Feb 14
Duration:
42 minsSocial Darwinism was the idea that Charles Darwin's theory about evolution, as set out in his masterpiece On the Origin of Species in 1859, could also be applied to human society.One thinker particularly associated with this movement was Herbert Spencer, who argued that competition among humans was beneficial, because it ensured that only the healthiest and most intelligent individuals would succeed.Social Darwinism remained influential for several decades, although its connection with eugenics and adoption as an ideological position by Fascist regimes ensured its eventual downfall from intellectual respectability.Melvyn Bragg is joined by Adam Kuper, Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the LSE, University of London; Gregory Radick, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds and Charlotte Sleigh, Reader in the History of Science at the University of Kent. BBC - 404: Not Found

You're kidding, right?Pretty much every non-creationist to ever visit that site has been summarily banished without warning or explanation. Nothing can be discussed there, it's a pulpit.If you want to discuss it, do it here where both sides of arguments are not only tolerated but actively encouraged.

This is jibberish - jumbled, confused thinking and newage babble.Atheism is a non-belief in god/s. That's it, nothing more.For some reason believers need to make it a really complicated thing invoving all sort of pseudo-philosophical bunk like this. Accept it.

That an atheist is simply someone that accepts that there is no god/s. That's it end. Nothing more. I am. I'm stating that the article is built on the false premise that there is some underlying philosophical notion in not believing in a fantasy god. There isn't. The concept that there is a counter-philosophy, is a believer's fallacy. There isn't. You see, you just can't understand or even contemplate the idea that there is nothing beyond what we have now. That's why this silly straw man keeps being built by believers about non-believers, the crudest version being that atheism is a belief system. That is not a replacement for 'infinite wellsprings' whatever they are. Nor is it a 'belief'; the scientific method is just a useful tool for properly understanding how stuff works. It saves us from wrongly making stuff up. Human knowledge is the sum of what we've learned - it's not a belief system. If you must make me believe in something, it's that people need to create their own mechanisms for the survival and well-being of our societies out of what we have here and now and prepare our children to do the same. How can god=reality if he doesn't exist? He's totally inaccessible even to those who believe in him.Discussions of what reality is are irrelevant to atheism and always end in semantics and a logical mess. Like this one.

Then you're just wrong. All you're doing is inflicting your own views on others - you simply don't get it. 'I don't believe in god' is atheism. Period.You imagine that a non-belief in god must leave a hole to that must be filled by a belief in something else. It doesn't. You can't get that can you?

I fear it may not be quite what you think it is"....writing his third book, currently titled "Biology's Second Law: Evolution, Purpose and Desire", which builds the case that evolution operates through the complementary principles of Darwinian natural selection (biology’s "First Law") coupled to homeostasis (biology’s "Second Law")."He at least seems like a real scientist but he's funded by the Templeton Foundation which is a very large flashing red light.