"In 1916, a survey of biologists found a mere 17 percent still believed in God, according to West, and in 2016, he and colleagues at the Discovery Institute conducted a public opinion survey that confirmed both the continued dominance of the evolutionary scientific materialism and the corrosive impact on Americans’ understanding of the nation’s fundamental founding principles and the relevance of those principles to contemporary governance."
Two things I have noticed 1. In high level (PHD) debates (on a level playing field) our Neo-Darwinist/Materialist friend do not come off looking good. 2. With layman I have found they are not so much Stupid as they are Ignorant. They don't know What we believe and Why we believe it. What IMO is worse no interest in finding out.
They tend to trust experts to know things they don't see as directly affecting their daily life. Which is efficient, until and unless they misjudge the category into which something (like this) falls.
Born and raised in an agnostic/atheistic milieu in NYC in the ‘50s I was taught evolution as scientific fact and never questioned it, until medical school in Belgium in the ‘70s. Studying the basic sciences led me to the concept of irreducible complexity, long before the Intelligent Design movement, and the complete rejection of Darwinian dogma, which is unfalsifiable, and therefore pseudoscientific at best.
Of course, natural selection (or animal husbandry) acting on genetic variability can lead to a large variety of different breeds of birds, dogs, horses, etc. But the spontaneous generation of living cells (never addressed by Darwin) is beyond implausible—it’s impossible. The same is true of vertical evolution with simple forms evolving into more complex organisms.
The acceptance of evolutionary theory as replacement for divine creation led to the collapse of Judeo-Christian morality, eugenics, and the proliferation of “isms;” materialism, scientism, Naziism, communism, and more recently transhumanism.
Darwinism is The Big Lie; I urge readers to examine it closely. The Discovery Institute is an excellent resource.
Great paper. I like the optimism at the end of the paper. I struggle with optimism in regards to mankind's future. Obviously, we do keep moving forward from a science and technology perspective, but less so from a man aligning with "God's rules" perspective. There is a great deal of misalignment. Huge segments, maybe majorities, of our world have utterly wicked beliefs and aligned actions (large and small). Crazy beliefs! Then, they gain power and implement those beliefs. Over and over. It is discouraging and a bit maddening. It often makes me advocate for the same anti-liberty techniques to be used to restore order. Basically because the way we do it is too slow and doesn't seem to work in a single presidential term, against rule/law breakers. By design. Fine. Move on. Ugh.
So, I find myself thinking and thinking about justification of "special circumstances" that allows for us to turn things around much faster, yet not break our rules. When the country's internal and external enemies break the rules over and over with near impunity, it is difficult to convict this sort of thinking. But, I understand we must follow the rules to enforce the rules. Again, UGH.
I come to this excellent piece by Mark Tapscott from a unique vantage point. I’m a theological liberal and a believer in Evolution. I also have great respect for Charles Darwin. All that being said, I don’t swallow whole the claims Darwin made. I still believe the world was made by a divine creator that of course being God. I think evolution came after. I would use this analogy. God the master baker made the cake and then evolution is when he stood back and let nature take its course, like an oven bringing the baker’s creation into being. Evolution simply took the pie God made and baked it to golden brown perfection and made it ready to eat. But without the master baker, there would’ve been no tasty pastry for natural selection to cook. I also recognize that evolution has its dark side.
The founding fathers believed ALL human beings women and people of color included, were equal. Not let me be clear, they did NOT mean the word equality the way we would use that word today. They didn’t believe that all people are equal in the sense that everyone deserved the same rights and opportunities. They believed all people were equal in the sense that all people had the same God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We may not be equal in all ways, but we are in the sense that we are all created in the image of God therefore all deserving equally of the blessings of the natural rights God gives all human beings when they come into the world. Again, when the founders said all men they meant not just men, but men meaning all human beings and in a gender neutral sense including women as well. Free black men voted in several states following the Revolution and women free and enslaved, voted in New Jersey until 1807. The founding fathers may not have seen blacks and women as fully equal with white men, but they did recognize their humanity and that they have the same God-given natural rights as the rest of us did.
Christianity produced the American Revolution, but Darwinism rejected the three main tenets of the Revolution and that the founding fathers believed in, those being creation, equality, and God-given rights. Charles Darwin it’s also important to remember, was a man of his times. He was an avowed sexist and racist. He believed in a racial hierarchy and that the “civilized” white race would eventually drive the “savage” races: Asians, Africans, Arabs, and Indigenous peoples, to extinction in the competition between the races. In his famous book The Origin of the Species, Darwin spoke of the “preservation of the favored races in the struggle.” Though in this case he was referring only to animals, in his later work he would also apply this idea to races of men. He called non-white people “savages” and “lowly.” Racist scientists would take both Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and his less admirable ideas even further. The Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens explicitly rejected the Christian principles and the core principles of the American Revolution in his infamous Cornerstone Speech. He said the founding fathers were wrong when they said all men were created equal. The cornerstone of the Confederacy was the great truth that the black man was inferior to the white man.
Stephens substituted the inequality of the races for Jesus Christ as the source of salvation for Southerners and second, he attributes this change to newfound knowledge from the departments of science. But the latter he refers to ideas either that came directly from Darwin or those racial theorists who took after him. For decades, prominent thinkers like physician Samuel Morton, biologist Louis Agassiz and ethnologists Josiah Clark and George Glidden built on the work Darwin had done and claimed there were multiple sources for the differences between whites and blacks. These ideas were catching on like wildfire with the American elites. In 1906, a Congolese pygmy named Ota Benga was displayed in a cage at the Bronx Zoo and few protested this. The New York Times defended the exhibition, saying that it was just a way to study the origins of the pygmys which were either related to apes as closely as other black Africans or were the degenerate descendants of American blacks. In a 1913 address to the University of South Carolina, John Adams’ great-grandson Charles Francis Adams Jr. as he recounted his service in the Union Army. He stated that it was contrary to scientific facts to say Anglo-Saxons and Africans were of the same species or that the latter were made in the image of God. In 1916, a survey found that along with believing in biological racism, most biologist did NOT regard themselves as religious and that remains true today.
Though they’ve now dropped the racism, the dominance of the theory of evolutionary scientific materialism to the field has led to a greatly diminished understanding of our nation’s founding principles and their relevance to contemporary governance. The Theory of Evolution gave us a framework from which to better understand our world. It addition, it laid the foundations for the field of biology, helps scientists track disease evolution, combat antibiotic resistance, develop crop varieties, and understand biodiversity. But at the same time, it opened the door for the birth of the evils of race science and biological white supremacy championed by Darwin and his predecessors, ideas the Eugenics Movement and the Nazis would later take to new, terrifying heights. It also caused many people to doubt the existence of a God and become disconnected from the very principles our republic was founded on and why they are important today. I look forward to one day reading Endowed by Their Creator by John G. West!
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
Something that rarely gets mentioned is the complete title.
You could also connect the dots between This book and the rise of Eugenics
It is a straight line. Darwin's thought was its foundation.
"In 1916, a survey of biologists found a mere 17 percent still believed in God, according to West, and in 2016, he and colleagues at the Discovery Institute conducted a public opinion survey that confirmed both the continued dominance of the evolutionary scientific materialism and the corrosive impact on Americans’ understanding of the nation’s fundamental founding principles and the relevance of those principles to contemporary governance."
Two things I have noticed 1. In high level (PHD) debates (on a level playing field) our Neo-Darwinist/Materialist friend do not come off looking good. 2. With layman I have found they are not so much Stupid as they are Ignorant. They don't know What we believe and Why we believe it. What IMO is worse no interest in finding out.
They tend to trust experts to know things they don't see as directly affecting their daily life. Which is efficient, until and unless they misjudge the category into which something (like this) falls.
Gettysburg movie
Confederate Evolution Debate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFc3DDTPXXo
Born and raised in an agnostic/atheistic milieu in NYC in the ‘50s I was taught evolution as scientific fact and never questioned it, until medical school in Belgium in the ‘70s. Studying the basic sciences led me to the concept of irreducible complexity, long before the Intelligent Design movement, and the complete rejection of Darwinian dogma, which is unfalsifiable, and therefore pseudoscientific at best.
Of course, natural selection (or animal husbandry) acting on genetic variability can lead to a large variety of different breeds of birds, dogs, horses, etc. But the spontaneous generation of living cells (never addressed by Darwin) is beyond implausible—it’s impossible. The same is true of vertical evolution with simple forms evolving into more complex organisms.
The acceptance of evolutionary theory as replacement for divine creation led to the collapse of Judeo-Christian morality, eugenics, and the proliferation of “isms;” materialism, scientism, Naziism, communism, and more recently transhumanism.
Darwinism is The Big Lie; I urge readers to examine it closely. The Discovery Institute is an excellent resource.
Completely agree.
Great paper. I like the optimism at the end of the paper. I struggle with optimism in regards to mankind's future. Obviously, we do keep moving forward from a science and technology perspective, but less so from a man aligning with "God's rules" perspective. There is a great deal of misalignment. Huge segments, maybe majorities, of our world have utterly wicked beliefs and aligned actions (large and small). Crazy beliefs! Then, they gain power and implement those beliefs. Over and over. It is discouraging and a bit maddening. It often makes me advocate for the same anti-liberty techniques to be used to restore order. Basically because the way we do it is too slow and doesn't seem to work in a single presidential term, against rule/law breakers. By design. Fine. Move on. Ugh.
So, I find myself thinking and thinking about justification of "special circumstances" that allows for us to turn things around much faster, yet not break our rules. When the country's internal and external enemies break the rules over and over with near impunity, it is difficult to convict this sort of thinking. But, I understand we must follow the rules to enforce the rules. Again, UGH.
Praise the Lord God Almighty, amen. 🖐
I come to this excellent piece by Mark Tapscott from a unique vantage point. I’m a theological liberal and a believer in Evolution. I also have great respect for Charles Darwin. All that being said, I don’t swallow whole the claims Darwin made. I still believe the world was made by a divine creator that of course being God. I think evolution came after. I would use this analogy. God the master baker made the cake and then evolution is when he stood back and let nature take its course, like an oven bringing the baker’s creation into being. Evolution simply took the pie God made and baked it to golden brown perfection and made it ready to eat. But without the master baker, there would’ve been no tasty pastry for natural selection to cook. I also recognize that evolution has its dark side.
The founding fathers believed ALL human beings women and people of color included, were equal. Not let me be clear, they did NOT mean the word equality the way we would use that word today. They didn’t believe that all people are equal in the sense that everyone deserved the same rights and opportunities. They believed all people were equal in the sense that all people had the same God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We may not be equal in all ways, but we are in the sense that we are all created in the image of God therefore all deserving equally of the blessings of the natural rights God gives all human beings when they come into the world. Again, when the founders said all men they meant not just men, but men meaning all human beings and in a gender neutral sense including women as well. Free black men voted in several states following the Revolution and women free and enslaved, voted in New Jersey until 1807. The founding fathers may not have seen blacks and women as fully equal with white men, but they did recognize their humanity and that they have the same God-given natural rights as the rest of us did.
Christianity produced the American Revolution, but Darwinism rejected the three main tenets of the Revolution and that the founding fathers believed in, those being creation, equality, and God-given rights. Charles Darwin it’s also important to remember, was a man of his times. He was an avowed sexist and racist. He believed in a racial hierarchy and that the “civilized” white race would eventually drive the “savage” races: Asians, Africans, Arabs, and Indigenous peoples, to extinction in the competition between the races. In his famous book The Origin of the Species, Darwin spoke of the “preservation of the favored races in the struggle.” Though in this case he was referring only to animals, in his later work he would also apply this idea to races of men. He called non-white people “savages” and “lowly.” Racist scientists would take both Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and his less admirable ideas even further. The Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens explicitly rejected the Christian principles and the core principles of the American Revolution in his infamous Cornerstone Speech. He said the founding fathers were wrong when they said all men were created equal. The cornerstone of the Confederacy was the great truth that the black man was inferior to the white man.
Stephens substituted the inequality of the races for Jesus Christ as the source of salvation for Southerners and second, he attributes this change to newfound knowledge from the departments of science. But the latter he refers to ideas either that came directly from Darwin or those racial theorists who took after him. For decades, prominent thinkers like physician Samuel Morton, biologist Louis Agassiz and ethnologists Josiah Clark and George Glidden built on the work Darwin had done and claimed there were multiple sources for the differences between whites and blacks. These ideas were catching on like wildfire with the American elites. In 1906, a Congolese pygmy named Ota Benga was displayed in a cage at the Bronx Zoo and few protested this. The New York Times defended the exhibition, saying that it was just a way to study the origins of the pygmys which were either related to apes as closely as other black Africans or were the degenerate descendants of American blacks. In a 1913 address to the University of South Carolina, John Adams’ great-grandson Charles Francis Adams Jr. as he recounted his service in the Union Army. He stated that it was contrary to scientific facts to say Anglo-Saxons and Africans were of the same species or that the latter were made in the image of God. In 1916, a survey found that along with believing in biological racism, most biologist did NOT regard themselves as religious and that remains true today.
Though they’ve now dropped the racism, the dominance of the theory of evolutionary scientific materialism to the field has led to a greatly diminished understanding of our nation’s founding principles and their relevance to contemporary governance. The Theory of Evolution gave us a framework from which to better understand our world. It addition, it laid the foundations for the field of biology, helps scientists track disease evolution, combat antibiotic resistance, develop crop varieties, and understand biodiversity. But at the same time, it opened the door for the birth of the evils of race science and biological white supremacy championed by Darwin and his predecessors, ideas the Eugenics Movement and the Nazis would later take to new, terrifying heights. It also caused many people to doubt the existence of a God and become disconnected from the very principles our republic was founded on and why they are important today. I look forward to one day reading Endowed by Their Creator by John G. West!
Amen. And sadly, they have re-embraced the racism by way of Critical Race Theory. New labels, same substance.
Darwin was a 🐒