A Challenge ...
- Thread starter ViRedd
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ViRedd
New Member
April 20, 2008
Ben Stein's Expelled
Bruce Walker
[FONT=times new roman,times]Ben Stein's new film, Expelled, should be seen by anyone interested in the new Dark Age of totalitarianism which seems to be creeping through our institutions of communication, information and education. Perhaps only Stein could properly portray the Kafkaesque persecution of scientists, journalists and other professionals who challenge the increasingly untenable proposition that an almost incomprehensibly complex mechanism -- the living cell -- could have evolved through the oafish mechanism of natural selection.
[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The object of hatred by the automatons of hoary Darwinism are not just those honest and open minded thinkers -- some of whom are Christians, some of whom are Jewish, some of whom are agnostics -- but also hated is the very idea of a Blessed Creator. Not only are these haters clear about the necessity of Darwinism to be true, even if it is not true, but they are equally clear about their lust to deconstruct morality and to reduce life itself to a meaningless treadmill.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]These haters have no compunction about destroying careers simply for the sake of intellectual terrorism. The merits of guided evolution are dismissed without discussion, and the victims of this terrorism are dealt with in a manifestly dishonest way. Stein shows his audience the letters from academic thugs who deny tenure to promising professors or who deal roughly with tenured professors -- letters which show that the official explanations for their "discipline" were transparent lies.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Science is not science at all, he shows us: It is simply an effort to compel any representatives of academia or foundations to parrot the core principles of nihilism, leaving man as god. Stein is not afraid to pursue that nihilism to its ultimate conclusion in the Nazi "mercy killings" of the handicapped or the Nazi extermination of Jews as "inferior creatures" in his grim walk through Dachau. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The ugly tapestry includes many threads. Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, respectable institutions in the eyes of ordinary Americans, held beliefs similar to Hitler; and before Hitler otherwise upstanding Americans were proposing things, in concept, as awful as Hitler. The perfection of humanity through selective breeding, though, comes earlier than Sanger or Hitler. Ben Stein quotes directly from Darwin in his Origin of Species, making it clear that to Darwin man was an animal, just like any farm animal, and that the perfection of humanity through "scientific" methods was commendable. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Stein closes the familiar escape hatch for this sort of malice toward human life and human purpose. Did Hitler know what he was doing? He certainly gobbled up Darwinism whole, and the "survival of the fittest" as a moral principle (or, rather, and amoral principle) fairly leaps from the pages of Mein Kampf. Hitler was not ignorant. But more importantly, Hitler was not insane. He was evil.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]That is the darkest theme that runs like a cold, black undercurrent through Expelled. Evil is real, very real. Unless one is prepared to say the Holocaust was not evil (and some of the people who Stein interviews are quite willing to say just that), then evil is real. Unless one is prepared to say that firing serious professors to intimidate others into silence, and then lying about the reasons for the firings is evil, then evil is real. Unless one is prepared to say that concealing truth while hiding behind the banner of science is evil, thus insuring that science itself cannot progress, is not evil, then evil is real.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Our lives have been saturated with scientific lies. Men and women are interchangeable parts, scientists once said, because the reality demanded by feminists required that lie. Millions of men and women have been sacrificed on the altar of that pseudo-scientific theology. More torment is being invented each day by the priests of political theology so that mythical global warning can be appeased like some vengeful Aztec deity. What has been called science is increasingly a sterile, humorless theology.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The limits of human knowledge are well known to scientists. You or I can have no real information about reality that at the time of our birth is travelling away from us at the speed of light. We can refer to what other people have said or seen or written, but we can never know anything at all. Nor can we know with precision what will happen at the subatomic level. The Uncertainty Principle is an absolute bar to anything more than statistical patterns and probabilities. And we have no idea at all how life began. One of the funny parts of Expelled is when Stein tries to pry from certain foes of God and guided evolution how life began. The first cell glommed on to a crystal, one hater opined. Space aliens brought life to Earth, another suggested, hastily adding that this civilization itself arose through Darwinian means.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]It might have been nice if Stein had pointed out that the example typically given of evolution by natural selection -- white moths in industrial Great Britain dying when the smokestacks appeared and black moths surviving -- was a proof that no change in species and no mutations were required at all: The black and white moths were both of the same species. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]It might also have been nice if Stein had delved a bit into the necessity of the Medieval university, which was profoundly religious, as the birthplace of all of what we call science today (thus showing that not only is religion not incompatible with science, but religion may be indispensable to science.) [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]But these are small criticisms indeed. Expelled is a masterpiece. Watch it. Tell your friends about it. And most of all, show it to your children. [/FONT]
Ben Stein's Expelled
Bruce Walker
[FONT=times new roman,times]Ben Stein's new film, Expelled, should be seen by anyone interested in the new Dark Age of totalitarianism which seems to be creeping through our institutions of communication, information and education. Perhaps only Stein could properly portray the Kafkaesque persecution of scientists, journalists and other professionals who challenge the increasingly untenable proposition that an almost incomprehensibly complex mechanism -- the living cell -- could have evolved through the oafish mechanism of natural selection.
[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The object of hatred by the automatons of hoary Darwinism are not just those honest and open minded thinkers -- some of whom are Christians, some of whom are Jewish, some of whom are agnostics -- but also hated is the very idea of a Blessed Creator. Not only are these haters clear about the necessity of Darwinism to be true, even if it is not true, but they are equally clear about their lust to deconstruct morality and to reduce life itself to a meaningless treadmill.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]These haters have no compunction about destroying careers simply for the sake of intellectual terrorism. The merits of guided evolution are dismissed without discussion, and the victims of this terrorism are dealt with in a manifestly dishonest way. Stein shows his audience the letters from academic thugs who deny tenure to promising professors or who deal roughly with tenured professors -- letters which show that the official explanations for their "discipline" were transparent lies.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Science is not science at all, he shows us: It is simply an effort to compel any representatives of academia or foundations to parrot the core principles of nihilism, leaving man as god. Stein is not afraid to pursue that nihilism to its ultimate conclusion in the Nazi "mercy killings" of the handicapped or the Nazi extermination of Jews as "inferior creatures" in his grim walk through Dachau. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The ugly tapestry includes many threads. Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, respectable institutions in the eyes of ordinary Americans, held beliefs similar to Hitler; and before Hitler otherwise upstanding Americans were proposing things, in concept, as awful as Hitler. The perfection of humanity through selective breeding, though, comes earlier than Sanger or Hitler. Ben Stein quotes directly from Darwin in his Origin of Species, making it clear that to Darwin man was an animal, just like any farm animal, and that the perfection of humanity through "scientific" methods was commendable. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Stein closes the familiar escape hatch for this sort of malice toward human life and human purpose. Did Hitler know what he was doing? He certainly gobbled up Darwinism whole, and the "survival of the fittest" as a moral principle (or, rather, and amoral principle) fairly leaps from the pages of Mein Kampf. Hitler was not ignorant. But more importantly, Hitler was not insane. He was evil.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]That is the darkest theme that runs like a cold, black undercurrent through Expelled. Evil is real, very real. Unless one is prepared to say the Holocaust was not evil (and some of the people who Stein interviews are quite willing to say just that), then evil is real. Unless one is prepared to say that firing serious professors to intimidate others into silence, and then lying about the reasons for the firings is evil, then evil is real. Unless one is prepared to say that concealing truth while hiding behind the banner of science is evil, thus insuring that science itself cannot progress, is not evil, then evil is real.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Our lives have been saturated with scientific lies. Men and women are interchangeable parts, scientists once said, because the reality demanded by feminists required that lie. Millions of men and women have been sacrificed on the altar of that pseudo-scientific theology. More torment is being invented each day by the priests of political theology so that mythical global warning can be appeased like some vengeful Aztec deity. What has been called science is increasingly a sterile, humorless theology.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The limits of human knowledge are well known to scientists. You or I can have no real information about reality that at the time of our birth is travelling away from us at the speed of light. We can refer to what other people have said or seen or written, but we can never know anything at all. Nor can we know with precision what will happen at the subatomic level. The Uncertainty Principle is an absolute bar to anything more than statistical patterns and probabilities. And we have no idea at all how life began. One of the funny parts of Expelled is when Stein tries to pry from certain foes of God and guided evolution how life began. The first cell glommed on to a crystal, one hater opined. Space aliens brought life to Earth, another suggested, hastily adding that this civilization itself arose through Darwinian means.[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]It might have been nice if Stein had pointed out that the example typically given of evolution by natural selection -- white moths in industrial Great Britain dying when the smokestacks appeared and black moths surviving -- was a proof that no change in species and no mutations were required at all: The black and white moths were both of the same species. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]It might also have been nice if Stein had delved a bit into the necessity of the Medieval university, which was profoundly religious, as the birthplace of all of what we call science today (thus showing that not only is religion not incompatible with science, but religion may be indispensable to science.) [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]But these are small criticisms indeed. Expelled is a masterpiece. Watch it. Tell your friends about it. And most of all, show it to your children. [/FONT]
Jointsmith
Well-Known Member
Hmmmm.......Bible Belter by any chance?
Are you really questioning the validity of Evolution and natural selection?
On a side note....Have you heard about this 'Creationist Museum' somewhere in the states?.....what a joke.
Are you really questioning the validity of Evolution and natural selection?
On a side note....Have you heard about this 'Creationist Museum' somewhere in the states?.....what a joke.
ViRedd
New Member
Jointsmith
Well-Known Member
Yes, definately.
Creationism is the belief that the universe was created as described in Genisis.
Most Christians are NOT Creationists.
HA HA I just re-read where stien tries to Pry answers from 'Foe's of God'.......that is TOTALLY fucked, not to mention Hilarious.
I hate how christians have this idea of 'Us' and 'Them' just because we don't think the same things you do, we are not 'Foes of God' or 'Evil'.
Creationism is the belief that the universe was created as described in Genisis.
Most Christians are NOT Creationists.
HA HA I just re-read where stien tries to Pry answers from 'Foe's of God'.......that is TOTALLY fucked, not to mention Hilarious.
I hate how christians have this idea of 'Us' and 'Them' just because we don't think the same things you do, we are not 'Foes of God' or 'Evil'.
natrone23
Well-Known Member
150 years of solid peer reviewed science and evidence VS "God did it"\
YouTube - Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed (Expelled parody)
YouTube - Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed (Expelled parody)
natrone23
Well-Known Member
Dear Mr J
Michael Shermer forwarded me a letter from you which suggests that you have unfortunately been taken in by Ben Stein's mendacious and/or ignorant suggestion that Darwin is somehow to blame for Hitler. I hope you will not mind if I write to you and try to undo this grievous error.
1. I deeply sympathize with you for the loss of your relatives in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, I don't think that could really be said to justify the tone of your letter to Michael Shermer, who is a kind and decent man, as even you seemed to concede in your second letter to him, and the very antithesis of a Nazi sympathizer.
2. Hitler's horrible opinions were not all that unusual for his time, not just in Germany but throughout Europe, including my own country of Britain, by the way. What singled Hitler out was the fact that he somehow managed to come to power in one of Europe's leading nations, which was also one of the world's most technologically advanced nations. Hitler had a lot of support in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist. It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to win the Church's support for his regime. In this he was very largely successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened. And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism. For example, here is a typical quotation, from the end of Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf.
3. Going further back in history, where do we think the toxic anti-Semitism of Hitler, and of the many Germans whose support gave him power, came from? You can't seriously think it came from Darwin. Anti-Semitism has been rife in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as "Christ-killers". While, as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that "All Jews should be driven from Germany." By the way, do you hear an echo of those words in your own letter to Michael Shermer, "We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States." Don't you feel just a twinge of shame at those truly horrible words of yours? Don't you feel that, as a Jew, you should feel especially regretful that you used those words?
4. Now, to the matter of Darwin. The first thing to say is that natural selection is a scientific theory about the way evolution works in fact. It is either true or it is not, and whether or not we like it politically or morally is irrelevant. Scientific theories are not prescriptions for how we should behave. I have many times written (for example in the first chapter of A Devil's Chaplain) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes to the politics of how humans ought to behave. I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at the beginning of my very first book, The Selfish Gene, that we should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics. Darwin himself said the same thing, in various different ways. So did his great friend and champion Thomas Henry Huxley.
5. Darwinism gives NO support to racism of any kind. Quite the contrary. It is emphatically NOT about natural selection between races. It is about natural selection between individuals. It is true that the subtitle of The Origin of Species is "Or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" but Darwin was using the word "race" in a very different sense from ours. It is totaly clear, if you read past the title to the book itself, that a "favoured race" meant something like 'that set of individuals who possess a certain favoured genetic mutation" (although Darwin would not have used that language because he did not have our modern concept of a genetic mutation).
6. There is no mention of Darwin in Mein Kampf. Not one single, solitary mention, not one mention in any of the 27 chapters of this long and tedious book. Don't you think that, if Hitler was truly influenced by Darwin, he would have given him at least one teeny weeny mention in his book? Was he, perhaps, INDIRECTLY influenced by some of Darwin's ideas, without knowing it? Only if you completely misunderstand Darwin's ideas, as some have definitely done: the so-called Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and John D Rockefeller. Hitler could fairly be described as a Social Darwinist, but all modern evolutionists, almost literally without exception, have been vocal in their condemnation of Social Darwinism. This of course includes Michael Shermer and me and PZ Myers and all the other evolutionary scientists whom Ben Stein and his team tricked into taking part in his film by lying to us about their true intentions.
7. Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed out. Darwin's great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realise that the same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of the whole of life: "natural selection", the "survival of the fittest". Hitler didn't apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidiently is. Hitler tried to apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers, gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of NATURAL selection; and Hitler's eugenic policies had nothing to do with natural selection.
8. Mr J, you have been cruelly duped by Ben Stein and his unscrupulous colleagues. It is a wicked, evil thing they have done to you, and potentially to many others. I do not know whether they knowingly and wantonly perpetrated the falsehood that fooled you. Perhaps they genuinely and sincerely believed it, although other actions by them, which you can read about all over the Internet, persuade me that they are fully capable of deliberate and calculated deception. You are perhaps not to be blamed for swallowing the film's falsehoods, because you probably assumed that nobody would have the gall to make a whole film like that without checking their facts first. Perhaps even you will need a little more convincing that they were wrong, in which case I urge you to read it up and study the matter in detail -- something that Ben Stein and his crew manifestly and lamentably failed to do.
With my good wishes, and sympathy for the losses your family suffered in the Holocaust.
Yours sincerely
Richard Dawkins
Michael Shermer forwarded me a letter from you which suggests that you have unfortunately been taken in by Ben Stein's mendacious and/or ignorant suggestion that Darwin is somehow to blame for Hitler. I hope you will not mind if I write to you and try to undo this grievous error.
1. I deeply sympathize with you for the loss of your relatives in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, I don't think that could really be said to justify the tone of your letter to Michael Shermer, who is a kind and decent man, as even you seemed to concede in your second letter to him, and the very antithesis of a Nazi sympathizer.
Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!
Just look at those words of yours. Probably you regret them by now. I certainly hope so, but I'll continue to write my letter to you, on the assumption that you still feel at least a part of what you wrote. 2. Hitler's horrible opinions were not all that unusual for his time, not just in Germany but throughout Europe, including my own country of Britain, by the way. What singled Hitler out was the fact that he somehow managed to come to power in one of Europe's leading nations, which was also one of the world's most technologically advanced nations. Hitler had a lot of support in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist. It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to win the Church's support for his regime. In this he was very largely successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened. And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism. For example, here is a typical quotation, from the end of Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf.
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
Hitler's obscene anti-Semitism was able to hold sway in Germany because there was a deeply embedded history of anti-Semitism in Germany, and indeed in Europe generally. 3. Going further back in history, where do we think the toxic anti-Semitism of Hitler, and of the many Germans whose support gave him power, came from? You can't seriously think it came from Darwin. Anti-Semitism has been rife in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as "Christ-killers". While, as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that "All Jews should be driven from Germany." By the way, do you hear an echo of those words in your own letter to Michael Shermer, "We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States." Don't you feel just a twinge of shame at those truly horrible words of yours? Don't you feel that, as a Jew, you should feel especially regretful that you used those words?
4. Now, to the matter of Darwin. The first thing to say is that natural selection is a scientific theory about the way evolution works in fact. It is either true or it is not, and whether or not we like it politically or morally is irrelevant. Scientific theories are not prescriptions for how we should behave. I have many times written (for example in the first chapter of A Devil's Chaplain) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes to the politics of how humans ought to behave. I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at the beginning of my very first book, The Selfish Gene, that we should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics. Darwin himself said the same thing, in various different ways. So did his great friend and champion Thomas Henry Huxley.
5. Darwinism gives NO support to racism of any kind. Quite the contrary. It is emphatically NOT about natural selection between races. It is about natural selection between individuals. It is true that the subtitle of The Origin of Species is "Or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" but Darwin was using the word "race" in a very different sense from ours. It is totaly clear, if you read past the title to the book itself, that a "favoured race" meant something like 'that set of individuals who possess a certain favoured genetic mutation" (although Darwin would not have used that language because he did not have our modern concept of a genetic mutation).
6. There is no mention of Darwin in Mein Kampf. Not one single, solitary mention, not one mention in any of the 27 chapters of this long and tedious book. Don't you think that, if Hitler was truly influenced by Darwin, he would have given him at least one teeny weeny mention in his book? Was he, perhaps, INDIRECTLY influenced by some of Darwin's ideas, without knowing it? Only if you completely misunderstand Darwin's ideas, as some have definitely done: the so-called Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and John D Rockefeller. Hitler could fairly be described as a Social Darwinist, but all modern evolutionists, almost literally without exception, have been vocal in their condemnation of Social Darwinism. This of course includes Michael Shermer and me and PZ Myers and all the other evolutionary scientists whom Ben Stein and his team tricked into taking part in his film by lying to us about their true intentions.
7. Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed out. Darwin's great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realise that the same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of the whole of life: "natural selection", the "survival of the fittest". Hitler didn't apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidiently is. Hitler tried to apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers, gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of NATURAL selection; and Hitler's eugenic policies had nothing to do with natural selection.
8. Mr J, you have been cruelly duped by Ben Stein and his unscrupulous colleagues. It is a wicked, evil thing they have done to you, and potentially to many others. I do not know whether they knowingly and wantonly perpetrated the falsehood that fooled you. Perhaps they genuinely and sincerely believed it, although other actions by them, which you can read about all over the Internet, persuade me that they are fully capable of deliberate and calculated deception. You are perhaps not to be blamed for swallowing the film's falsehoods, because you probably assumed that nobody would have the gall to make a whole film like that without checking their facts first. Perhaps even you will need a little more convincing that they were wrong, in which case I urge you to read it up and study the matter in detail -- something that Ben Stein and his crew manifestly and lamentably failed to do.
With my good wishes, and sympathy for the losses your family suffered in the Holocaust.
Yours sincerely
Richard Dawkins
medicineman
New Member
Again, Stein was Nixons speech writer. enough said. But, the continous assault on scientific facts is not Steins doings alone. In the "Global Warming" wars, the assault on scientific facts was and is being waged by big business, big oil, and specifically Republicans who get most of their re-election money from these same interests. It was the republican led congress that voted us out of Kyota and any compliance with reduction of carbon emissions. I'm not saying the Democrats aren't complicit, but the anti-scientific fact crowd, in fact the main debunkers, were led by republicans, and still are. I'm still waiting for a sensible answer to why the scientists that are warning about Glonal warming are lying. Just what do they have to gain, more employment? That seems like a very transparent reason and I, as a thinking person, would dismiss that perfunctorily.
ZenMaster
Well-Known Member
Thats a pretty ignorant statement. If they are truly Christian than they are taught to love their fellow neighbor, and not to judge. It is the church that corrupts religion with their way of doing things, I am christian and I totally against catholicism. You want me to confess my sins to a dude? You want me to worship Mary? You think you can excommunicate me from Heaven, a man? Please.
You should read The Bible, not judge it on what you've heard about it. It will enlighten you.
On Stein's movie, if I see it I will give it a watch, but it doesn't surprise me, Einstein said the further he ventures into science the more he believes in God.
Jointsmith
Well-Known Member
You're right, that was a sweeping generalization that isn't true of all Christians (I know some really sound christians).
However, it CAN be applied to a LARGE number of christians, especially in the southern states (bible belt w/e)....and furthermore it can DEFINATELY be applied to whoever wrote that piece of prose, as well as anyone who takes it seriously.
So to edit my remark, I hate how FUNDAMENTALLIST, JUDGEMENTAL, NARROW MINDED christians have this idea of 'Us' and 'Them' just because we don't think the same things you do, we are not 'Foes of God' or 'Evil'.
ZenMaster
Well-Known Member
Well that can be said the same toward the narrow minded, judgmental atheists have this idea of "us" and "them" because we don't believe the same things as you do.
But I hear you man, I call them "over vigilantes". E.G., back in the day I knew a girl who wasn't really religious and later on during the year her grandfather died, and she was pretty upset. This "holier than thou" dude approached her and asked if her grandfather was religious, she said she didn't think so. His response was, oh, then he's in hell. And that moment on, turned her away from religion forever. Rest assured, I let that kid have it.
We are human, and we all have sinned, who are we to judge anyone?
medicineman
New Member
Zen says: We are human, and we all have sinned, who are we to judge anyone?
My god you are Human. I had my doubts. I wondered if you weren't some alien robot from the planet "Fuck-em-all".
My god you are Human. I had my doubts. I wondered if you weren't some alien robot from the planet "Fuck-em-all".
ZenMaster
Well-Known Member
I do have a pen pal from there, great beer.
ViRedd
New Member
Go see Stein's move, then post here. The movie isn't about creationism ... its about intelligent design and the complete stifling of debate in academia. Stein does a good job in presenting the idea that evolution and intelligent design are mutually compatable. Again ... go see the movie.
Vi
Vi
VTXDave
Well-Known Member
I'll check it out Vi. Although I am a firm believer in natural selection, it's always good to view other aspects. For example, one of my favorite classes in High School was Theology; "Religions of the World" to be more precise.
AlphaNoN
Well-Known Member
I've seen it, almost walked out when it was insinuated that evolutionary theory was responsible for the holocaust, left feeling dirty. Expelled is filled with half truths and outright lies..
IMO "intelligent design" is "creationism" in a modern shell. Even if intelligent design was different than creationism, it is no more scientific. They're just slapping some lipstick on that pig..
Jointsmith
Well-Known Member
Yeah man, I agree, ANYONE unwilling to question their beliefs is ignorant.
I'm a firm Agnostic myself. I don't 'believe' in anything. I only have my own thoughts and ideas.
Seamaiden
Well-Known Member
I used to live right down the road from it. It's in Santee, California. Not too far, actually, from the Unarians.
I agree with that.
ViRedd
New Member
Was Darwin's concept of the single cell a little different than what we know today?
And, Stein's take on the Holocaust was that it was the result of a mindset that debased human life. How else could the pursuit of eugenics evolve? Consider that we have our own Holocaust going on right here in this country with the debasement our unborn. If you poo-poo this idea, then reflect on what is meant by a mindset. Next will be the aged and the infirmed. In Nazi Germany it became the Jews, Catholics, Homosexuals and the infirmed.
Here's more on that mindset:
BlackGenocide.org | The Truth About Margaret Sanger
Vi
And, Stein's take on the Holocaust was that it was the result of a mindset that debased human life. How else could the pursuit of eugenics evolve? Consider that we have our own Holocaust going on right here in this country with the debasement our unborn. If you poo-poo this idea, then reflect on what is meant by a mindset. Next will be the aged and the infirmed. In Nazi Germany it became the Jews, Catholics, Homosexuals and the infirmed.
Here's more on that mindset:
BlackGenocide.org | The Truth About Margaret Sanger
Vi
Jointsmith
Well-Known Member
You realise Hitler was a Catholic? and that the Catholic church backed the Nazi Party in thier persecution of the Jews?
To say that Darwin was even indirectly resposible for the holocaust is rediculous. Eugenics is the POLAR OPPOSITE TO NATURAL SELECTION. (look up the word NATURAL.)
To say that abortion is the debasement of human life shows no regard for the psychology behind any mother to be who has to make that 'Choice' (from experiance I know it to not FEEL like a choice), I hope you're never in a position where you have to make that choice.
......and furthermore, what are Stiens veiws on Homosexuals? I bet they're not far off Hitlers.