David Berlinski, the bad boy philosopher who doubts Darwinism, is back

9 Replies to “David Berlinski, the bad boy philosopher who doubts Darwinism, is back”

1. 1
   Blastus says:

   March 19, 2022 at 9:56 am

   Berlinski is thoroughly enjoyable. I look forward to listening to the referenced podcast.

   My favorite Berlinski quote I found here in the UD comments a year or two ago where Berlinski describes an imaginary meeting with author Jorge Luis Borges. In this meeting, Borges outlines a belief that all great literature is the result of copyist errors. It is an entertaining reduction of evolution to it’s absurd conclusions.
2. 2
   chuckdarwin says:

   March 19, 2022 at 10:58 am

   It’s a fascinating conversation with Berlinski, who is rightly considered one of the great minds of our time.

   Pah-leeze……
3. 3
   vividbleau says:

   March 19, 2022 at 1:53 pm

   Blastus

   I have posted this in the past, just hilarious

   On the Derivation of Ulysses from Don Quixote

   I imagine this story being told to me by Jorge Luis Borges one evening in a Buenos Aires cafe.

   His voice dry and infinitely ironic, the aging, nearly blind literary master observes that “the Ulysses,” mistakenly attributed to the Irishman James Joyce, is in fact derived from “the Quixote.”

   I raise my eyebrows.

   Borges pauses to sip discreetly at the bitter coffee our waiter has placed in front of him, guiding his hands to the saucer.

   “The details of the remarkable series of events in question may be found at the University of Leiden,” he says. “They were conveyed to me by the Freemason Alejandro Ferri in Montevideo.”

   Borges wipes his thin lips with a linen handkerchief that he has withdrawn from his breast pocket.

   “As you know,” he continues, “the original handwritten text of the Quixote was given to an order of French Cistercians in the autumn of 1576.”

   I hold up my hand to signify to our waiter that no further service is needed.

   “Curiously enough, for none of the brothers could read Spanish, the Order was charged by the Papal Nuncio, Hoyo dos Monterrey (a man of great refinement and implacable will), with the responsibility for copying the Quixote, the printing press having then gained no currency in the wilderness of what is now known as the department of Auvergne. Unable to speak or read Spanish, a language they not unreasonably detested, the brothers copied the Quixote over and over again, re-creating the text but, of course, compromising it as well, and so inadvertently discovering the true nature of authorship. Thus they created Fernando Lor’s Los Hombres d’Estado in 1585 by means of a singular series of copying errors, and then in 1654 Juan Luis Samorza’s remarkable epistolary novel Por Favor by the same means, and then in 1685, the errors having accumulated sufficiently to change Spanish into French, Moliere’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, their copying continuous and indefatigable, the work handed down from generation to generation as a sacred but secret trust, so that in time the brothers of the monastery, known only to members of the Bourbon house and, rumor has it, the Englishman and psychic Conan Doyle, copied into creation Stendhal’s The Red and the Black and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and then as a result of a particularly significant series of errors, in which French changed into Russian, Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina. Late in the last decade of the 19th century there suddenly emerged, in English, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and then the brothers, their numbers reduced by an infectious disease of mysterious origin, finally copied the Ulysses into creation in 1902, the manuscript lying neglected for almost thirteen years and then mysteriously making its way to Paris in 1915, just months before the British attack on the Somme, a circumstance whose significance remains to be determined.”

   I sit there, amazed at what Borges has recounted. “Is it your understanding, then,” I ask, “that every novel in the West was created in this way?”

   “Of course,” replies Borges imperturbably. Then he adds: “Although every novel is derived directly from another novel, there is really only one novel, the Quixote.”

   Vivid
4. 4
   bornagain77 says:

   March 19, 2022 at 5:18 pm

   Chuckdarwin at 2, as someone who takes Charles Darwin name as a handle, a man who’s ‘theory’ led to the deaths of a few hundred million people in the 20th century, I don’t think I would be commenting on anyone else’s mental prowess if I were you.

   Just a suggestion.

   How Has Darwinism Negatively Impacted Society?
   John G. West – January 11, 2022
   Excerpt: Death as the Creator,,
   As Darwin wrote at the end of his most famous work (Origin): “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”
   https://evolutionnews.org/2022/01/how-has-darwinism-negatively-impacted-society/

   “One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.”
   – Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species – 1861, page 266

   A stronger race will oust that which has grown weak; for the vital urge, in its ultimate form, will burst asunder all the absurd chains of this so-called humane consideration for the individual and will replace it with the humanity of Nature, which wipes out what is weak in order to give place to the strong.”
   – Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf – Chapter 4

   Darwin on Marx – by Richard William Nelson | Apr 18, 2010
   Excerpt: Marx and Engels immediately recognized the significance of Darwin’s theory. Within weeks of the publication of The Origin of Species in November 1859, Engels wrote to Marx –
   “Darwin, by the way, whom I’m reading just now, is absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done…. One does, of course, have to put up with the crude English method.”
   Marx wrote back to Engels on December 19, 1860 –
   “This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.”
   The Origin of Species became the natural cause basis for Marx’s emerging class struggle movement. In a letter to comrade Ferdinand Lassalle, on January 16, 1861, Marx wrote –
   “Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history.”
   Marx inscribed “sincere admirer” in Darwin’s copy of Marx’s first volume of Das Kapital in 1867. The importance of the theory of evolution for Communism was critical. In Das Kapital, Marx wrote –
   “Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature’s Technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention?”
   To acknowledge Darwin’s influence, Marx asked to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin.
   https://www.darwinthenandnow.com/2010/04/darwin-on-marx/

   “V.I. Lenin, creator of the Soviet totalitarian state, kept a little statue on his desk—an ape sitting on a pile of books including mine [The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle of Life], gazing at a human skull. And Mao Zedong, butcher of the tens of millions of his own countrymen, who regarded the German ‘Darwinismus’ writings as the foundation of Chinese ‘scientific socialism.’ This disciple mandated my works as reading material for the indoctrination phase of his lethal Great Leap Forward.”
   – Nickell John Romjue, I, Charles Darwin, p. 45

   Stalin’s Brutal Faith
   Excerpt: At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began to read Darwin and became an atheist.
   G. Glurdjidze, a boyhood friend of Stalin’s, relates:
   “I began to speak of God, Joseph heard me out, and after a moment’s silence, said:
   “‘You know, they are fooling us, there is no God. . . .’
   “I was astonished at these words, I had never heard anything like it before.
   “‘How can you say such things, Soso?’ I exclaimed.
   “‘I’ll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,’ Joseph said.
   “‘What book is that?’ I enquired.
   “‘Darwin. You must read it,’ Joseph impressed on me” 1
   1 E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing house, 1940), pp. 8-12. ,,,
   http://www.icr.org/article/stalins-brutal-faith/

   Darwin and Mao: The Influence of Evolutionary Thought on Modern China – 2/13/2013
   Excerpt: Mao and his fellow Communists, “found in Marxism what seemed to them the fittest faith on Earth to help China to survive.” He concludes his article thus:
   “This was not, of course, all Darwin’s doing, but Darwin was involved in it all. To believe in Marxism, one had to believe in inexorable forces pushing mankind, or at least the elect, to inevitable progress, through set stages (which could, however, be skipped). One had to believe that history was a violent, hereditary class struggle (almost a ‘racial’ struggle); that the individual must be severely subordinated to the group; that an enlightened group must lead the people for their own good; that the people must not be humane to their enemies; that the forces of history assured victory to those who were right and who struggled.”
   Who taught Chinese these things? Marx? Mao? No. Darwin.
   https://nonnobis.weebly.com/blog/darwin-and-mao-the-influence-of-evolutionary-thought-on-modern-china

   Chairman MAO: Genocide Master (Black Book of Communism)
   “…Many scholars and commentators have referenced my total of 174,000,000 for the democide (genocide and mass murder) of the last century. I’m now trying to get word out that I’ve had to make a major revision in my total due to two books. I’m now convinced that Stalin exceeded Hitler in monstrous evil, and Mao beat out Stalin….”
   http://wadias.in/site/arzan/bl.....de-master/

   Atheism’s Body Count *
   It is obvious that Atheism cannot be true; for if it were, it would produce a more humane world, since it values only this life and is not swayed by the foolish beliefs of primitive superstitions and religions. However, the opposite proves to be true. Rather than providing the utopia of idealism, it has produced a body count second to none. With recent documents uncovered for the Maoist and Stalinist regimes, it now seems the high end of estimates of 250 million dead (between 1900-1987) are closer to the mark. The Stalinist Purges produced 61 million dead and Mao’s Cultural Revolution produced 70 million casualties. These murders are all upon their own people! This number does not include the countless dead in their wars of outward aggression waged in the name of the purity of atheism’s world view. China invades its peaceful, but religious neighbor, Tibet; supports N. Korea in its war against its southern neighbor and in its merciless oppression of its own people; and Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge kill up to 6 million with Chinese support. All of these actions done “in the name of the people” to create a better world.
   https://www.scholarscorner.com/atheisms-body-count-ideology-and-human-suffering/

   And that is not even counting the untold millions, upon millions, of abortions worldwide.

   How Darwin’s Theory Changed the World
   Rejection of Judeo-Christian values
   Excerpt: Only in the late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth century did significant debate erupt over issues relating to the sanctity of human life, especially infanticide, euthanasia, abortion, and suicide. It was no mere coincidence that these contentious issues emerged at the same time that Darwinism was gaining in influence. Darwinism played an important role in this debate, for it altered many people’s conceptions of the importance and value of human life, as well as the significance of death” (ibid.).
   http://www.gnmagazine.org/issu.....-world.htm

   Abortion is, by far, the leading cause of deaths each year in the USA – graph
   http://skepchick.org/wp-conten.....704889.jpg

   Verse and quote

   Matthew 7:15-20
   “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

   “Of all signs there is none more certain or worthy than that of the fruits produced: for the fruits and effects are the sureties and vouchers, as it were, for the truth of philosophy.”
   – Francis Bacon – Popularized the inductive reasoning behind the scientific method
5. 5
   jerry says:

   March 20, 2022 at 5:08 am

   Pah-leeze

   A magnificent endorsement.

   What better than to have the person who is 100% wrong to suggest something is wrong. This has made me want to listen.

   Is this an example where two wrongs make a right?

   Human nature? Where was he when a thousand comments were spent discussing it a year ago? Could he have prevented 990 of them?1
6. 6
   KRock says:

   March 20, 2022 at 6:11 am

   David Berlinski is truly a brilliant, and fair minded thinker. Thus, it is hardly surprising to see Chuckdarwin and his ilk take exception to such verity.
7. 7
   ram says:

   March 20, 2022 at 7:54 am

   Well I hope so. He and I are fellow travelers. But for all of you literalist Christians Bible thumpers out there, he’s not in your camp when it comes to religion. So don’t get all hot and sweaty about him.

   –Ram – Very Pro-ID.

   P.S. Pro-ID does not mean Pro-Bible-Or-Any-Other-Religion
8. 8
   KRock says:

   March 21, 2022 at 7:23 am

   @Ram #7

   I could care less if Berlinski doesn’t identify as someone who’s religious. I’m a fan of Berlinski because he doesn’t blindly accept the status-quo of science. Simply stated, he’s a voice of reason in what’s become a very nonsensical world.

   KRock — Pro ID and a work-in-progress Christian
9. 9
   jerry says:

   March 21, 2022 at 8:36 am

   could care less if Berlinski doesn’t identify as someone who’s religious

   See comment I just posted about this on another thread

   https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/william-lane-craig-defends-theistic-evolution-at-peaceful-science/#comment-749866