Darwin and Racism

[AFJ]

Mr. Astus,

There are places in the lives of many believers where supernatural power has intersected the natural. This is known as a miracle. My son when he was 7 years old (we were missionaries to Africa) contracted something that had all the symptoms of meningitis, which is common where we were. Fever of nearly 105, stiff and achy neck, deep chills. It was in the middle of the night, and no doctor was near. One of the African pastors and another missionary came over and prayed for him in the name of Jesus and the fever was gone within an hour! I was amzed, because this doesn't always happen, Mr. Astus. Not only that, my little son said to me after they left--"Dad I felt heat go through my body."

There was another man in church one Sunday that I was sitting by who told me (he was in amazement) of heat going through his body when he allowed the elders of the church to pray for him. He was 62 and said he never experienced this before. The book of James in the NT instructs us if we are sick to request the elders to pray for us. James 5:14,15 Psalm 103:1-3

I will not go into a detailed story of when I know that divine intervention saved me from two large dogs, bent on tearing me apart. They saw something behind me that scared them simultaneously and they ran. It was me and them alone with nothing but open space behind me. I neither heard nor saw anything, but it was obvious they saw something--because they both yelped.

These things happened outside of my body or bodily sensations. Unless I and the other people (dogs) involved were having a mass hallucination, this happened.

These things happen to give us evidence, Mr. Astus. Maybe it isn't under a microscope, but it is evidence. It is called confirmation of God's word.

[AstusAleator]

I understand the conclusion you reached, because you are a person of faith. Of course, when something good happens that you can't explain, it's a miracle. When something bad happens that you can't explain it's god's "mysterious ways." Who are you to question the motives or methods of God, right?

When something happens that has no explanation: that is the beginning of the scientific process. The process then goes on to question why, research, form hypotheses, perform tests, and have the results scrutinized by the scientific community. From this point, the results are added to a larger body of work so that eventually enough evidence may accumulate that we can come to an answer which we have a high enough level of confidence in.

Faith skips all of these steps, and lands neatly at a conclusion with 100% certainty. Furthermore, there is no scientific way to test supernatural events (thus the word supernatural).

Science is clearly not the answer to all of life's questions. This is why I said that someone who uses evolution to determine their morality is a fool. My point is merely that faith/superstition has no place in science, and science has no place in personal morality.

People will use anything they percieve as a credible source of truth to justify their actions. Slavery was justified by many through the Bible (black people bore the "mark of Cain"). Hitler justified killing off the Jews not only by evolutionary semantics, but also by biblical anti-semitism (Jews killed Jesus, etc).

If someone took those quoted lines from the Origin of Species and started trying to do away with all "primitive races." Would Darwin be at fault, or would the person be at fault for misunderstanding the theory of evolution, and taking Darwin's thoughts out of historical context? Has anything like that ever happened in Christianity...? Hmmmm Crusades, David Karesh, Jim Brown, witch-hunts, gay-bashing... How about Islam? Hmmm suicide bombers, genital mutilation, oppressive sexism...

[AFJ]

Your point was that the sensations of faith could be biological. The old suggestion that it's all in the mind. I was simply testifying of something outside my body and inner subjective person.

No one says that the scientific method is required in an eyewitness report. This would technically enter into law and testimony.

In a lab or in the scientific method the medium is controlled, the experiment is planned and anticipated. These events were not controlled experiments.

As for the evil that comes from religion--that is no surprise to God or Christians--as you stated--"religious" people brought Jesus to Pilate out of envy. They are wolves in sheep's clothing as Christ said ( i do not speak of Jews in general). He said that many false prophets would arise and deceive many.

We are Christian--that means we follow Christ --not man, not Allah, not Karesh, not Manson or Hitler, nor Darwin. We follow with men who follow Him.

I pray one day you'll find Him relevant, because He found us relevant enough to die for us.

[MrMistery]

Ok guys, this is getting out of hand

Now, it is my opinion that whenever you study things like evolution you will inevitably reach some sorts of ethical dilemmas, which is why i don't mind having this type of discussion on the forum even though they are not science talk per se. However, saying stuff like
"We are Christian--that means we follow Christ --not man, not Allah, not Karesh, not Manson or Hitler, nor Darwin. We follow with men who follow Him.

I pray one day you'll find Him relevant, because He found us relevant enough to die for us."

proves to me that you have a philosophy that is pretty much incompatible with this forum's science philosophy, which is clearly stated in our rules. In cases like this, I must intrude in your talk and remind you where you are. You are on biology-online.org, not on letstalkgod.com or something similar.

[AstusAleator]

Your point was that the sensations of faith could be biological. The old suggestion that it's all in the mind. I was simply testifying of something outside my body and inner subjective person.

I understand that - but those sadly are not proof of anything. They are only meaningful to you, and are not relevant in a scientific context.

Heat-rushes can be explained by capillary dilation due to emotion or hormones (or a fever)
Someone that has a 24-hour flu could psychosomatically add symptoms if they thought they had something else.
Dogs behave weirdly sometimes...
(I'm not saying this is what happened, but only demonstrating to you that there are other possible explanations than the one you leaped to)

The original point was that regardless of the source of our beliefs, convictions, morals, etc; they exist. To say that a scientific explanation of our origin negates our morality is not a valid conclusion.

[futurezoologist]

I find that quite interesting that he was racist, even though it was more than common in his time - you would think that such a great mind would have pondered the notions of his society a little more...

[biohazard]

I find that quite interesting that he was racist, even though it was more than common in his time - you would think that such a great mind would have pondered the notions of his society a little more...

How is this surprising? If you think about it, at that time the black people were way behind the Europeans and Americans whent it came to technological advancement. Many of Darwin's contemporaries thought it as a certainity that the black people were inferior to the whites - the evidence seemed overwhelming. It was only much later, when the black people got their freedom and integrated into the more advanced society, that they managed to prove they are on the same intellectual level as the whites and other people as long as they have access to the same level of education and welfare (their physical prowess had been proven many times before that, often in very unfortunate ways, such as working in the cotton fields...)

I think Darwin did a great deal of pondering about the notions of his society, but sometimes even that doesn't guarantee the right conclusion. At that time, it must have really seemed like the blacks were never going to reach the same level the whites had achieved.

[AFJ]

Mr. Astus,

I don't feel that I should go any further as far as the morality issue on this thread. I will say this and be done. To say that believing a theory that finds accountability to a creator irrelevant is going to have an affect to those who receive it. But that is my opinion.

As for the events that I told you about--I have no problem with capillary dilation or even chemical reaction, as my son is biological. There was a catalyst though and it was not medicine. If I have a fever and I take aspirin--and then my fever goes down--I attribute the fact that the medicine has done it's work. In my son's case, a fever of 105 without medicine does not just break like that over there--people die from situations like that all the time. If it would have been during the day we would have taken him to a doctor, but things are different in Africa. To say that the fever just happened to break defies all patterns of sickness there. It did not lower--it was gone.

As well, I suppose the dogs were hallucinating, or had a hormone rush into their bloodstream. Or I made a an incidental movement which scared two large snarling dogs. At any rate, they were occurrences.

Evolutionistic and agnostic trains of thought are locked in naturalism, and deny all evidence that would suggest anything but the natural.