Everyone is bugging us to do something for Darwin Day (today)

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 12, 2020

Culture, Darwinism}

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But what? We can’t contribute to the ridiculous veneration of the ol’ Brit toff and we decline to spend a lot of time dissing that stuff. There’s lots of real evolution-related news out there now.

Fortunately, others, more thoughtful, have attempted the question:

So why do we celebrate Darwin Day? Because Darwin has done the world so much good? No. Because he’s given us such a great scientific explanation of life? Only if “scientific” means you cut off a whole range of potential answers, including God. And even on naturalistic terms, Darwin’s theory is faring less and less well every day.
The same thing happened to Freud. We don’t celebrate Freud Day. Karl Marx doesn’t get a day of his own, even though his discredited theory still lives in the minds of people who find it politically useful. So why do we celebrate Darwin’s Day?
It should be clear that it has little to do with real science.
Tom Gilson, “How I’m Planning to Celebrate Darwin Day” at The Stream

Darwin is the village atheist’s answer to serious thinking about origins.

But don’t forget how good Darwin Day also is for an educrat who plods in to work and has lots of boilerplate handy to churn out masses of Darwin-in-the-schools for the students. And, in many places, the ability to censor dissent.

So how are you celebrating Darwin Day?

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

Comments

I'd recommend celebrating Darwin's real science, not his Big Idea. There wasn't anything original about his Big Idea, and it has been corrupted by his followers. Darwin's direct observations, and his experiments with plant intelligence, were proper science. Abandon all theories. Just observe and experiment.polistra_{February 12, 2020
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Here's a good present to celebrate Darwin's day big time: https://evolutionnews.org/2020/02/darwin-day-is-here-discover-the-cells-secrets-with-michael-behe/jawa_{February 12, 2020
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Excellent Tom Gilson's piece.
"Many staunch Darwinists will grant there’s no meaning behind human existence, but still insist, “I create meaning for myself.” But that hardly makes sense. More likely, it’s meaninglessness creating the illusion of meaning". https://stream.org/how-planning-celebrate-darwin-day/
And again, there it is, materialism's perennial word: illusion.Truthfreedom_{February 12, 2020
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The following is a gift from Jerry Coyne- he still uses the discredited recapitulation argument: Recapitulation desperation. The fun part is near the bottom of that article. Coyne has a picture of a dolphin with hind FLIPPERs. Yet Coyne calls the flippers "legs". So I give you Jerry Coyne, a sad excuse for a human, as a Darwin's Day gift.ET_{February 12, 2020
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The argument in favor of Darwin's theory is the same as it has been for his committed followers for the past 100 years or so: “Darwin said it that settles it.” Never mind, the continuing problems brought up by his critics, such as: (1) Darwin’s theory has no explanation for the origin of life. (2) Darwin’s theory predicted that evolution would be gradualistic. The Cambrian explosion, apparent gaps in the fossil record with a pattern of “punctuated equilibrium,” however, strongly suggests otherwise. (3) Mutations appear to be overwhelmingly deleterious. It’s very difficult to see how natural selection, acting randomly on mutations alone, can bring about any kind of significant evolutionary change, especially if the changes required need to be multiple coordinated changes. Nevertheless, modern Darwinians are going to continue to argue, “Darwin said it that settles it.”john_a_designer_{February 12, 2020
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Oh, we are going to do something very intellectually fulfilling this darw's day. We are going to bury naturalism/ materialism. Not that we have killed it, the creature has committed suicide it-self. This is the naturalist/ materialist tragedy in all its glory: Philosophical naturalism/ materialism is trapped into an Epistemological Nightmare. Its starting point: 1. “There is an external world.” And its ending point: 2. “All I know are changes (neural patterns) inside myself”. Logically contradict each other. https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/ Materialism is a failed philosophy. Catastrophic epistemological failure. All naturalists/ materialists have now left is faith. The same faith they despise so much, since according to them, they are "creatures who base their worldview in logic". But logic is a very demanding mistress that can not be dismissed. Enter the mourners. :)Truthfreedom_{February 12, 2020
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Honor Abraham Lincoln- a man that actually did something good.ET_{February 12, 2020
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More good reading for Darwin Day: https://crev.info/2020/02/can-science-trust-itself/ excerpt: "Stephen L. Talbott’s book-in-progress Evolution As It Was Meant to Be has severely critical passages about Darwinian “science” the way it is practiced by the consensus – even though he is an evolutionist himself. He’s a member of the “Third Way of Evolution,” a group of prominent scientists dissatisfied with traditional neo-Darwinism. Talbott uses the word “Blindsighted” to describe today’s evolutionists who miss the big picture. He explains what he means in Chapter 1, “The Keys to This Book.” Is it really possible for so many scientists to be blind to the very thing they need to explain? Talk about missing the elephant in the room! Read the chapter and decide. Chapter 21, “Evolution Writ Small,” is also worth reading to rethink whether evolutionists deserve the trust uncritically granted them by their peers and the media. His statements about natural selection are particularly damaging. Read more about Talbott in our 14 Nov 2019 and 15 Nov 2019 entries."tjguy_{February 12, 2020
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Folks, if it's Darwin Day then let us note the 22nd anniversary of provine's inadvertent warning:
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . . The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them. Human free will, however, is another matter. Even evolutionists have trouble swallowing that implication. I will argue that humans are locally determined systems that make choices. They have, however, no free will [--> without responsible freedom, mind, reason and morality alike disintegrate into grand delusion, hence self-referential incoherence and self-refutation. But that does not make such fallacies any less effective in the hands of clever manipulators] . . . [1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address, U of Tenn -- and yes, that is significant i/l/o the Scopes Trial, 1925]
That is what we are dealing with. KFkairosfocus_{February 12, 2020
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