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Darwinism and popular culture: So we really ARE allowed to critique the little god Darwin now?

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Apparently, the sort of comments made in my article in Touchstone – about the little god Darwin – have been noticed by at least one person.

THE DARWIN MOVIE’S NOT SELLING, but John Scalzi doubts those evil Creationmongers are a part of the reason:

How about this: The movie is not selling because it is not believed … Huh? Maybe the story is not believable?

People now generally guess that Darwin was a materialist atheist long before his daughter died. And his whole coterie was committed to promoting the view that he lost his faith over her death , and it is still fronted today.

Fact: In North America, you cannot legally line up people at gun point and force them to watch some propaganda film worshipping Darwin – or worshipping anything – and threaten to shoot or otherwise punish them if they say they do not believe it. If that is not the law where you live, please hold a revolution now.

As a traditional Canadian, I am not a fan of revolution in general. Nature is our vast antagonist, not man. Check a map. But in some places maybe people need a revolution, to get the point across that there are some areas government must not infringe, including freedom of religion and freedom of media. (We have big problems with that just now, but we are getting the message across.)

While I am here, one of the most significant books published this year, because it – potentially – rids us of much Darwin nonsense, endlessly iterated in textbooks, teacher’s manuals and popular films, is Michael Flannery’s republishing, with a useful introduction, of Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory Of Intelligent Evolution . We would be vastly better off if Wallace, rather than Darwin, had been the main theorist. For example, we would never have dealt with the awful eugenics movement and the completely ridiculous evolutionary psychology movement. Wallace was far wiser than his co-theorist, Darwin, about the stuff that really matters.

Comments
Frost "in fact the theory of evolution in general goes back a long way. I once read in a biography about Leibniz that he was very enthusiastic about the potential of evolutionary theory to guide science. Leibniz died over 100 years before Darwin." In fact the roots of evolution go back much further than 100 years: The Ancient Pagan Root Of Evolution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtC-vU7ufeg The Roots and Fruit of Evolution http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/roots.xml The Fruit of Evolution http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/fruit.xmlbornagain77
November 2, 2009
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O'Leary one of his issues was his grand father who came up with most of "his" theory before he did. The idea of evolution was known at his time- minus a few tree of life details- in fact the theory of evolution in general goes back a long way. I once read in a biography about Leibniz that he was very enthusiastic about the potential of evolutionary theory to guide science. Leibniz died over 100 years before Darwin. All of this coupled with Darwin's position in life which was his and his family's desire to see him become an intellectual light of England- accounted for his issues. He spent time in medical school and even clergy school- but did not like either of these professions. So he settled on developing evolution theory. Once again his material philosophy was deemed beneficial to the institutions and the intelligentsia but not by the general public. Only recently with the public largely indoctrinated with anti-religious propaganda- and of course Darwinian theory presented as fact and truth or at least as "the only viable theory"- has the public began to show some support for it. But this is expected as people tend to support what the have been lead to believe. And of course that has been the plan- to "educate" people into what to think and weed out what not to know about (like ID). As Einstein said, "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."Frost122585
November 2, 2009
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I have always counselled my students, when dealing with the Internet, "If it sounds unbelievable, don't believe it." The death of Darwin's daughter was, of course, sad - but not a reason for a Christian to lose his faith, given that all humans are mortal. It is a reasonable guess that in Annies' father's mind something else was going on. Forget Annie's box. Darwin had other issues on his mind, issues he had long before she was born.O'Leary
November 2, 2009
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Elite society is now post-modern---the direct result of believing Darwin. Nothing matters except questioning that nothing matters. There is no truth, no logic, and language's only purpose is political. Not all ordinary folk are on board, and though a logical argument no longer interests the sophisticates, it draws the plebs. So maybe the only solution is to shut down free speech. That's been dead in the academy for a couple of generations now---might as well extend it to the prolies.Rude
November 2, 2009
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Of course since the article was written "Creation" has gained a US distributor. However, as Scalzi says, it is not the controversy or credibility that made the distributors nervous and will probably means sales are moderate. "Life of Brian" sold well. It is just not the kind of subject that makes for a box office smash hit.Mark Frank
November 2, 2009
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The reason why the Darwin stuff does not sell out in the real market is the same reason that left wing talk radio doesn't either. People dont believe in this stuff and don't want to hear it. If Darwinian evolution, and the war against ID and creationism was so important to people's idealistic view of reality, and their beliefs about what is sceince and what it should be, then you would have people going around admittedly defending Darwin as a great thing. They would be calling up on the radio and defending it- talking about how "wonderful" it is to science, and how sad they are that people are questioning it... ... This is not reality. The reason why is because the value of Darwinism claimed by the institions and intelligensia is not reality. Period. Basically you can make all kinds of convoluted philsophical arguments about anything being of great value but they do not make it so. People are in general smart enough to know what is good and what it not. People know the benefits of money, of new technologies, of good food, of big beautiful homes, of free vacations, of new medicines, the list is endless regardng the truth telling of the free market. I think Cicero said, "There are some things so absurd only a philosopher could have said them." You might change that to "there are some positions so absurd only a philosopher could defend them." This is why only at the intellectual level do you really see a pretend love for the materialist philosophy that's associated with and advocated by Nazism. The proximate mechanism explaining why we see Darwin glorified primarily at the educational and elitist level is because the Darwinian philosophy is seen by the individuals in these sectors as good for their business. Here you have the market working but just as compition between the state and it's regulations (law, legislation) and the private sector. Public schools dont like to compete with private schools and would rather have a total monolopy on education. Then they have have bigger classrooms and bigger budgets without criticism by comparison to competition. That is in reality, if the government subsidized private education the public schools would be struggling massively. This produces a secualr government vs religious private school compition over resources. Similar situation exists with government and the sceince/government complex- which has to do with grant money for research programs. And Statists, or leftists want to the state to be the highest power so then superceed people's individual feedoms - and one way of progressing that agenda is to remove the argument from God that we see underpinning the constitution's explicit defineiton of inalienable rights edowed by the creator. Freedom is not good business for governments. This ideal of God and freedom is what the intelligent mainstream people of the market want and understand. That is those who are not entrenched in the web of government careers and politics. BTW the bit about inalienable rights from our Creator obviously totally DEVASTATES the notion of "separation of Church and State" which does not appear anywhere in the constitute at all. The US is by it's own definition a theistic nation. It is merely the greed of the power hungry who want to change that. Freud was right in this case though about projection - as the left claim it is greed which seeks to protect human freedom and uphold the constitution. They choose not to see their own greed and motivations. It is ok to criticism Darwinism and call it the beliefs system that it is but only as long as their wallets are not effected. Unfortunately you apparently need a government mandate to make movies like these profitable.Frost122585
November 2, 2009
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