Reminiscings & Revelations

[Vandyyke]

Woops sorry Joe! You were saying that!


I saw the counterfeit illustration and I automatically placed in the other context! 


  Wasn't my fault! (3 Carona Lights + 1/2 glass of cheap Merlot) 

[Vandyyke]

I started a thread about my project on another BB. We got on the subject "Lack of Empathy" I thought this post was interesting!


I think you are definately onto something here. The nazi's did what they did because they did not believe the people they murdered were HUMAN... they believed Jews, people of color, etc - everyone who was not Aryan - were INFERIOR, even less valuable than animals and thus they didn't feel any moral angst about killing them.

The kind of Christians you talk about sound similar to the kind I grew up with. They believed they were the ONLY true church, and that God had chosen THEM and THEM only... they definately believed god was on their side. We had members kill themselves, we had members lose everything because of the church and there wa no empathy at all - because these people were judged to be "lacking" or to be "inferior" to the rest. It was the same psychology the nazi's had IMHO.

I remember a sermon where a minister talked about a teenage girl who had killed herself. He was reading from her journal and, basically, making fun of her. There was no sympathy for her, no understanding, no compassion or love. He told the congregation that she was selfish and cruel to her family for what she did. She was judged.

Another sermon I remember was about a boy who drowned because he went swimming. He happend to go swimming on the Sabbath, so because he "sinned" by swimming on the sabbath - he was judged. There was no sympathy for him in the sermon, even though he drowned. He had sinned so somehow that made him inferior I guess.

I don't pretend to understand this way of thinking at all - I can try to explain it, but in my own heart I really have a hard time understanding it. This was a big part of why I left the church - the kind of judgement and lack of empathy or compassion... which eventually was turned against me when I began to feel myself leaving the fold.

I remember after I stopped attending services... the minister never made any attempt to contact me or ask how I was doing. But a couple months down the road I received a letter from him telling me I was disfellowshipped. He had my address, and he could have contacted me (to be honest I'm glad he didn't - it would only have prolonged my departure because I was going to leave anyway) but instead, he judged me and wrote me off.

This post has been edited by Zenobia: Yesterday, 03:20 PM

[Vandyyke]

Former members of "The Family" were on Larry King tonight. I find it interesting that this group started so close in proximity and time to The Assembly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_God

[Oscar]

VanDave,

You said:

I think you are definately onto something here. The nazi's did what they did because they did not believe the people they murdered were HUMAN... they believed Jews, people of color, etc - everyone who was not Aryan - were INFERIOR, even less valuable than animals and thus they didn't feel any moral angst about killing them.

A recent book, "From Darwin to Hitler" by Weikart points out that they had accepted Darwin's teachings in his, "Descent of Man".  He taught that the different races were actually different stages of human evolution.  Since the strong usually eliminate the weak in nature, he believed that it was inevitable that the "higher" European race would exterminate the "lower" darker races.

By 1875 German academic life was entirely dominated by Social Darwinism and Eugenics.  The NAZI's just took what German "intellectuals" already believed and made it into a government policy.

Now...what is it that our "intellectuals" believe.   Hmmmmmm.

Tom Maddux

[Vandyyke]

"The National Government regards the two Christian confessions as factors essential to the soul of the German people. ... We hold the spiritual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in the moral uplift of most of the German people." At one point he described his religious status: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."

                                                                                                 Adolph Hitler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_beliefs




   There are a number of directions this could go so I will try to eliminate a few.  Do I believe Hitler was Christian? NO. Do I believe that professing Christians embraced Hitler? Yes. Hitler, like many other politicians used Christianity as a way to manipuilate the masses. We all just experienced this in our own country. Tom, can you find anywhere in Hitler's speeches where he said, "Darwin has shown us that Jews are inferior!"?


   Somehow the leap from science to genocide just doesn't add up for me. I'll have to research it!

[Vandyyke]

http://www.texscience.org/reviews/darwinism-racism.htm


In conclusion, Tony Campolo has seriously distorted the scientific and historical record to make his bigoted claims against Darwin and evolution. Bigotry is an irrational hatred of something or someone, and Mr. Campolo obviously hates science and scientists. He is free to believe that biological evolution by natural selection is "dangerous," but his belief is as irrational as believing that gravity, quantum mechanics,  and plate tectonics are dangerous. He has imposed his own narrow and sectarian views on a natural process and constructed specious and reprehensible arguments against it. He should immediately apologize for his ignorance and hatred, ask readers to forgive him, and encourage them to become better informed about subjects before criticizing them in such a harsh and bigoted manner.

Tony Campolo may draw his antipathy to Darwin and evolution--and a willingness to distort and discredit them by illogical arguments and shoddy scholarship--from the same source as Marilynne Robinson: an overweening evangelical Christian anti-science zeal. Most Christians--especially those with some reliable knowledge of science and evolutionary biology--do not exhibit such hatred for Darwin and evolution as these two authors, so these two should step back and re-evaluate their personal perspectives. Evolution is not an ideology opposed to other ideologies and religions. Evolution is not a proximate source of morals and values inimically opposed to the morals and values of religions. Evolution is just a natural process. Humans are the source of all morals and values, through either their religions or philosophies. Human knowledge of science in general and evolution in particular can be perfectly consonant with any religion, although many individuals choose not to believe that.

[Vandyyke]

Campolo complains that those who argue against Darwin at school board meetings "seldom have taken the time to read him." Actually, this is true of Campolo himself. If he had actually read and understood Darwin's writings, he would know that Darwin uses the nineteenth century terms "races" for what today we term "varieties" and the "struggle for life" in the modern sense of environmental selection pressure. There is nothing racist or exploitive about these terms. If Campolo had read The Origin of Species, he would know that "survival of the fittest" is a misnomer, and that Darwin's theory of natural selection actually involves the differential reproductive success of species populations in response to random and unpredictable environmental stresses and pressures. The biological terms that both Darwin and modern biologists use do not have the same meaning that they do in popular language, so repeating them in an alarmist fashion meant to inflame emotional antagonisms is both ignorant and dishonest.

Campolo writes, "Had they actually read [the] Origin, they likely would be shocked to learn that among Darwin's scientifically based proposals was the elimination of 'the negro and Australian peoples,' which he considered savage races whose continued survival was hindering the progress of civilization," and "Then [Darwin] went on to propose the extermination of races he 'scientifically' defined as inferior. If this were not done, he claimed, those races, with much higher birthrates than 'superior' races, would exhaust the resources needed for the survival of better people, eventually dragging down all civilization." These statements are all vile and damnable libels and lies. Darwin said nothing of the kind that Campolo quotes. Campolo undoubtedly read these claims in some Creationist tract and foolishly believed them. He should be ashamed of being both so ignorant and credulous.

Campolo is not correct that Ernst Haeckel drew on Darwin's writings to justify racism and nationalism. Haeckel accepted evolution immediately but never fully accepted natural selection in Darwin's sense, the theory that makes evolution Darwinian. Haeckel believed that the environment acted directly on organisms; i.e., Haeckel was a Lamarckian, so nothing following from his writings can be blamed on Darwin or even the influence of Darwin. It is true that Haeckel justified racism, nationalism, and social biological determinism (usually but incorrectly termed Social Darwinism) in his evolutionary writings, and he believed that "politics is applied biology." Haeckel was a nationalist, but was not a racist himself. Contrary to Campolo and other anti-evolutionists, Haeckel's views did not later influence Nazi theorists, who rejected any theories or doctrines that invoked evolution. But, again, even if Haeckel had influenced the Nazis, there is no connection to Darwin or modern biological evolution that follows from Darwin. Campolo fails to understand that Haeckel selectively drew on Darwin's work and constructed his own evolutionary theory that supported his own values that included nationalism and social determinism.

Campolo is also wrong about Heinrich von Treitschke, who supported nationalism, militarism, racism, and anti-Semitism, but did not derive any of his ideas from Darwin's writings. Von Treitschke was not a scientist and was suspicious of evolution; he derived his extreme views from non-scientific philosophies. Campolo apparently obtained his misinformation about Haeckel and von Treitschke from Marilynne Robinson's "Darwin" essay in her book The Death of Adam. This superficial essay was written by a novelist and has no scientific or historical value whatsoever. In fact, Robinson obviously does not understand evolution or have any great knowledge of its history, for her very biased conclusion that Darwin's scientific writings were used to justify racism, nationalism, and influence the Nazis is complete nonsense. I grant that significant distortions of Darwin's scientific writings by non-Darwinian writers were used to justify and support racism, nationalism, and laissez faire capitalism, but it is quite unfair to blame Darwin and his evolutionary theory for the errors, misinterpretations, and excesses of later writers and (mis)interpreters. They all invoked Darwin's name to give their own extremist ideologies a false veneer of legitimacy, much as Intelligent Design polemicists call their doctrine "science."

Konrad Lorenz was a Nazi for a time, but he admitted his mistake and later was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the biology of animal behavior. Wikipedia says about this episode: "When accepting the Nobel Prize, he apologized for a 1940 publication that included Nazi views of science, saying that 'many highly decent scientists hoped, like I did, for a short time for good from National Socialism, and many quickly turned away from it with the same horror as I.' It seems highly likely that Lorenz's ideas about an inherited basis for behavior patterns were congenial to the Nazi authorities, but there is no evidence to suggest that his experimental work was either inspired or distorted by Nazi ideas."

[Vandyyke]

Since Darwin's day, his biological explanations have been misapplied by all forms of ideologies to justify their ethical claims or counter-claims, all mistakenly, since it is illogical to invoke natural processes to prove the correctness of cultural, social, and economic human values. This is the naturalistic or is/ought fallacy: what IS true in nature justifies what OUGHT to be morally true for humans. In reality, as explained above, nothing in nature justifies the truth of any human moral beliefs. Yes, some of our ultimate instincts are derived from evolution, and our scientific understanding of nature often can help us see ethical imperatives and the moral path, but final moral decisions and actions must be made by humans in human terms and for human reasons.

The naturalistic fallacy is the fallacy in which Tony Campolo indulges throughout his article. He claims that we should fear the "ethical implications" of evolution, its "racism" and "extreme laissez-faire political ideology." These ethical implications only exist in Tony Campolo's mind but not in the real world, because evolution and natural selection are just natural processes, similar to digestion or development or parasitism or predation, and are devoid of moral meaning because they are the result of an amoral natural system. One might as well claim that we should fear the "ethical implications" of parasitism and predation for the "wasteful and painful destruction of living organisms" (in reality, parasites and predators prevent the over-population of host and prey organisms, a highly-beneficial ecological process), or fear the "ethical implications" of metabolism and excretion, for "relentless efficiency" and "disregard for less fortunate molecules."

Most human ethical beliefs are cultural or social, but some are instinctual and derive from evolution, such as territoriality and competition, but so do cooperation and altruism. Far from being racist, evolution is the opposite, for it reveals that all human beings are closely related. Far from supporting exploitive laissez-faire capitalism, the evolutionary history of the social primates reveals the social-affirming, altruistic, and caring nature of our species (as well as, of course, our competition and territoriality under certain circumstances, equally part of our human nature). If one wanted to derive our modern economic system from our evolutionary biology (and I don't recommend this), socialism or the modern, regulated, mixed economy would be more apt analogues than laissez-faire capitalism. Campolo has everything backwards.

[Vandyyke]

Darwinism Does Not Lead to Racism:
Refutation of a Creationist Argument

Steven Schafersman, Ph.D.
Texas Citizens for Science
2008 January 21

Science, considered solely as an explanation of how nature works, is value free, but any person can impose their own values on scientific explanations. This is what Tony Campolo--who believes that "Darwinism" leads to racism--has done in the op-ed column reprinted below, sent to me by a colleague, and he is not the first person to do this. Many anti-evolutionists before him have interpreted natural selection to be racist, exploitive, mercenary, cruel, and morally repugnant when in fact it is none of those. Nature is amoral; only humans have morals and can impose their moral values on nature if they wish, even though this is both illegitimate and unwise. Nature has no morality and is therefore not cruel, with all the pain, killing, death, animals preying upon and eating other animals, and parasites infecting hosts causing diseases and slow, horrible deaths. This is not cruelty because there is no intention within nature to cause unnecessary pain, the definition of cruelty. (If you believe an Intelligent Designer created nature this way, then blame Him, Her, or It for being cruel!) Nature is just the way it is, because living nature evolved by a natural, mechanistic, unplanned, amoral process during eons of time before humans and their moral values even existed. Associating a natural process, such as natural selection, with an ethical or moral value is nonsense.

Darwin's natural selection is not racist except in the eyes of those who wish to believe and claim it is. Darwin himself was an abolitionist and was horrified by slavery. By the standards of the day, Darwin was one of the least racist of all Victorians, because he understood that all humans were bound together by their mutual natural origin. The notorious phrase "survival of the fittest" was Herbert Spencer's, not Darwin's, and the even more notorious phrase "Social Darwinism" is even more of a libel, since it refers to a Lamarckian evolutionary version of biological determinism, not a Darwinian evolutionary version, and should be termed either Social Lamarckism or social biological determinism. Both of these terms--neither of which have anything to do with legitimate biological evolution and natural selection--were applied to late 19th century laissez-faire capitalism for the purpose of describing it as mimicking or following the natural world order, to demonstrate that the prevailing exploitive economic system was natural, good, and just. In fact, Gilded Age laissez-faire capitalism was nothing like the evolution of social organisms, especially humans, in which cooperation and altruism are just as important as competition and territoriality.

The persistent misidentification of evolution with economic exploitation, racism, euthanasia, eugenics, infanticide, and genocide all depend on someone's persistent confusion about the vital difference between social and scientific Darwinism, that is, between social biological determinism--not a science but a discreditable doctrine--and biological evolution--an accurate and highly reliable science. By mendaciously ignoring this vital distinction, anti-evolutionists try to discredit evolution by illogically associating it with historically disreputable ideologies. Anti-evolutionists believe that if people come to believe evolution, under the misnomers of "survival of the fittest" and "social Darwinism," is equivalent to evil ideologies, they will then doubt the veracity and necessity of evolutionary science. Guilt by association is the anti-evolutionist's goal for scientific evolution, and their fondest wish is to promote this distortion. Even the fact that economic exploitation, racism, euthanasia, eugenics (in the sense of favorable breeding), infanticide, and genocide were all common in human history long before either evolution or Darwin does not dissuade the true believers. How can "Darwinism" be responsible for things that historically predate it? The obvious answer is that it can't.

[Vandyyke]

http://www.texscience.org/reviews/darwinism-racism.htm

You access the same article here or read below.

[Oscar]

Dave,

Dr. Shafersman makes this statement:

Darwin's natural selection is not racist except in the eyes of those who wish to believe and claim it is. Darwin himself was an abolitionist and was horrified by slavery. By the standards of the day, Darwin was one of the least racist of all Victorians, because he understood that all humans were bound together by their mutual natural origin

However, Charles Darwin said:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla. [2]

Descent of Man, 1874 edition, page 174

Seems to me that Dr. Shafersman has not read Darwin lately.

Tom Maddux

[Vandyyke]

   When Darwin refers to exterminate the "savage" is he just concluding a fact? Many Native Americans tribes were exterminated. The name "savage" may-not have had the same connotation then as it does now.

     Regardless, he refutes the notion quite well that science is somehow responsible for the holocaust.

  My original post had to do with the lack of empathy from the leaders in the Assembly. Another "poster" brought up the Nazis. Leaders in the Assembly like GG could be heartless when it came to other people suffering.

     I remember an encounter I had with GG one Sunday morning. I was standing just outside the door of the Assistance League (remeber how we did that befor the meetings) when out of the blue GG walks by and barks at me. "Did your wife divorce you yet?"   O.K. here is someone who seems to take no consideration of how painful this subject could be to someone going through a divorce. Its like I've been kicked in the groin and he come along and kicks me again. But its no big deal to him. He acts like the issue shouldn't even bother me. It shouldn't bother me that the person I swore my love and life to has rejected me. It shouldn't bother me that I will now be single for the rest of my life. People like GG and leaders like him don't even take a second to consider someone else's pain and suffering. It doesn't matter to them. They are on God side or rather God is on their side and if someone else's life is left fragmented, disabled, destroyed......so what!





   GG and other like him have no trouble expecting someone who is divorced to just "suck-it-up" and live single the rest of their lives. Yet would he? If GG's doormat uh- Betty decided to stand up to him and split, when he was 21 years old and had his whole life ahead of him, would he just "suck-it-up"?



        No way! 

[Oscar]

VanDave,

I remember an encounter I had with GG one Sunday morning. I was standing just outside the door of the Assistance League (remeber how we did that befor the meetings) when out of the blue GG walks by and barks at me. "Did your wife divorce you yet?"   O.K. here is someone who seems to take no consideration of how painful this subject could be to someone going through a divorce. Its like I've been kicked in the groin and he come along and kicks me again. But its no big deal to him. He acts like the issue shouldn't even bother me. It shouldn't bother me that the person I swore my love and life to has rejected me. It shouldn't bother me that I will now be single for the rest of my life. People like GG and leaders like him don't even take a second to consider someone else's pain and suffering. It doesn't matter to them. They are on God side or rather God is on their side and if someone else's life is left fragmented, disabled, destroyed......so what!

I'm sure that that was a very stressful and painful time for you, Dave. You are correct, ultimately GG was so into his own agenda that others problems were important to him only if they hindered his plans.

 A question comes to mind.   Was your association with the assembly a factor in the divorce?

Tom Maddux

[Vandyyke]

Yes and no,

     My wife was from a very abusive background. "I rescued her." Yet when the abuser was out of the picture I was no longer "Prince Charming". The Assembly speeded up our divorce.

    Initially I blamed myself! "If I was only a better Christian this wouldn't have happened!"  So I committed myself more and more to the Assembly thinking this would rectify the problem.

    No such luck.


    It was pretty humiliating to go through the divorce in the Assembly. I became an object lesson, "Don't let this happen to you!"

     The only people who understood me were those who had sufferered the same fate or a death of a spouse. It was horrible to be so alone! To attend wedding after wedding after wedding and feel more and more alienated.


    I think some of the singles, people who had joined during the 70's and were still single into their forties must have been going through some pretty harsh trials.  Imagine a sister who is being ignored in the Assembly but pursued by a guy on her job! She knows she can't respond to him because even if he is a Christian George will say "NO WAY!" (I heard that things like this went on.)

  How could someone be so heartless and cruel???