tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post607335866301749401..comments2023-10-24T04:29:23.693-06:00Comments on Atheist Ethicist: Seeing Ben Stein's "Expelled" as PropagandaAlonzo Fyfehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-1902457189037046372008-05-03T11:33:00.000-06:002008-05-03T11:33:00.000-06:00Evolutionism was a revolution, and revolutions are...<I>Evolutionism was a revolution, and revolutions are violent.</I><BR/><BR/>To this day we still mourn the thousands of scientists lost in the great Darwinian Civil War of the early 1900s. Such a tragedy.<BR/><BR/>Sorry, just having some fun. ;) Seriously though, why the fear-mongering? The worst that I'm aware of is a heated debate. I wouldn't call that terribly violent.<BR/><BR/>I read through a fair bit of your site, and it seems to be an excellent archive of Haekel's dishonesty and manipulation. However that is not science. Your site even has the quote <I>"Darwin himself was not a social Darwinist and thought it a biter joke that his scientific theories were being used, as he put it, to 'prove Napoleon was right and every cheating tradesman is also right'."</I><BR/><BR/>From what I've read, it looks like Haekel was a regular racist with fears of "race contamination" and so he twisted and misrepresented the budding field of evolution to the public so he could gain support for his racist views. Again, this has nothing to do with actual evolution, and everything to do with racism.<BR/><BR/>Your condemnation of Haekel and exposing his frauds is a praise-worthy thing. However you seem to be a few decades too late, no one still holds to his twisted ideas. Keeping a historical archive is certainly a good idea, but trying to use that to attack actual evolution is a mistake. You are picking innocent targets in your attempt to find an enemy.<BR/><BR/><I><BR/>fertilizing human embryos for research purposes? Pipetting chimera embryos of humans and monkeys?!? Go, U Kingdom, go! <BR/></I><BR/>I have not heard of this "fertilizing human embryos for research" before, could you provide a link please? However I am familiar with the human-animal chimeras. What exactly are your objections to this, aside from "It's yucky"? There are attempts to create sheep with human livers, and pigs with human arteries, and if successful the increase in transplant-available organs would save many thousands of lives. Are your feelings of "ickiness" worth thousands of lives every year?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-87651890601557506352008-05-03T09:41:00.000-06:002008-05-03T09:41:00.000-06:00Evolutionism was politically and religiously drive...Evolutionism was politically and religiously driven. (By religion, I mean the old worship of nature akin naturalism.) Evolutionism was a revolution, and revolutions are violent. It is anachronism to mehasize the idea of selection since evolutionism was sold by much harder claims, especially constant spontaneous generation of life from mud (moneras), inheritance of acquired characteristics, mutationism in leaps (hopeful monsters), linear model of human races - and especially recapitulation.<BR/><BR/>I mean, fertilizing human embryos for research purposes? Pipetting chimera embryos of humans and monkeys?!? Go, U Kingdom, go! Also the last round of eugenics started by cheapening the embryos.<BR/><BR/>pauli.ojala@gmail.com<BR/>Biochemist, drop-out (M.Sci. Master of Sciing)<BR/>PS.<BR/>I have collected and scanned about 200 quotes and figures on the importance of Haeckel's frauds and recapitulation here:<BR/>http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Sitaatit.htmJaakonpoikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05473422011143619917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-75063857661870617412008-04-30T15:34:00.000-06:002008-04-30T15:34:00.000-06:00Jaakonpoika -So what you're saying is.... people u...Jaakonpoika -<BR/><BR/>So what you're saying is.... people used to be really racist. And they'd use any excuse they could (even psuedo-scientific ones) to justify their racism. Is this news?<BR/><BR/>Everything under the sun including religion (especially religion, perhaps?) has been used to justify racism. The twisting and mis-understanding of a science in it's infancy was just one more tool the racist used.<BR/><BR/>Interestingly, the more that science advances, the less supportable racism becomes and the more likely a society is to be tolerant of those who are different. It's hard to say the same of religion.<BR/><BR/><I><BR/>It is the the opposite view in a 180 degree angle to the Judaeo-Christian ideal of agapee, that I personally cheriss. The latter sees free giving, altruism, benevolence and self sacrificing love as the beginning, motivation, and sustainer of the reality.<BR/></I><BR/>Some versions of christianity, sure. Some versions of every religion contain those things. Many atheists hold by those same principles. But don't try to claim that all christians are like this - don't forget that all those god-fearing germans that so willingly carried out the holocaust were christians too.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-11055756807622778962008-04-30T14:49:00.000-06:002008-04-30T14:49:00.000-06:00The whole title was: On the Origin of Species by M...The whole title was: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). KAMPF was a direct translation from that 'Struggle'. There was, supposedly, not enough Lebenstraume. That's why in the industrial revolution in England 12 year old proletariat girls had to work over 100 hours a week. Malthus set the paradigm that is today very relevant even to Islamist terrorists. They believe that unconscious myth that there is not just enough space for us all.<BR/><BR/>Stein is under heavy attack for 'exaggerating' or 'going easy' on the influence of evolutionism behind Nazism and Stalinism (super evolution of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Russia). But the monstrous Haeckelian type of vulgar evolutionism drove not only the 'Politics-is-applied-biology' Nazi takeover in the continental Europe, but even the nationalistic collision at the World War I.<BR/><BR/>Catch 22: Haeckel's 140 years old fake embryo drawings have been mindlessly recycled for the 'public understanding of science' (PUS) in most biology text books until this millennium, although Haeckel's crackpot raging Recapitulation/Biogenetic Law and functioning gill slits of human embryos have been at the ethical tangent race hygiene/eugenics/genocide, infanticide, and Freudian psychoanalysis (subconscious atavisms). Dawkins is the Oxford professor for PUS - and should gather the courage of Stephen Jay Gould who could feel ashamed about it.<BR/><BR/>The marriage laws were once erected not only in the Nazi Germany but also in the multicultural states of America upon the speculation that the mulatto was a relatively sterile and shortlived hybrid. The absence of blood transfusion between "white" and "colored races" was self evident (Hailer 1963, p. 52).<BR/><BR/>The first law on sterilization in US had been established in 1907 in Indiana, and 23 similar laws had been passed in 15 States and sterilization was practiced in 124 institutions in 1921 (Mattila 1996; Hietala 1985 p. 133; these were the times of IQ-tests under Gould's scrutiny in his Mismeasure of Man 1981). By 1931 thirty states had passed sterization laws in the US (Reilly 1991, p. 87).<BR/><BR/>So the American laws were pioneering endeavours. In Europe Denmark passed the first sterilization legislation in Europe (1929). Denmark was followed by Switzerland, Germany that had felt to the hands of Hitler and Gobineu, and other Nordic countries: Norway (1934), Sweden (1935), Finland (1935), and Iceland (1938) (Haller 1963, pp 21-57; 135-9; Proctor 1988, p. 97; Reilly 1991, p. 109). Seldom is it mentioned in the popular media, that the first outright race biological institution in the world was not established in Germany but in 1921 in Uppsala, Sweden (Hietala 1985, pp. 109). (I am not aware of the ethymology of the 'Up' of the ancient city from Plinius' Ultima Thule, however.) In 1907 the Society for Racial Hygiene in Germany had changed its name to the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, and in 1910 Swedish Society for Eugenics (Sällskap för Rashygien) had become its first foreign affiliate (Proctor 1988, p. 17). Today, Swedish state church is definitely the most liberal in the face of the world.<BR/><BR/>Hitler's formulation of the differences between the human races was affected by the brilliant sky-blue eyed Ernst Haeckel (Gasman 1971, p. xxii), praised and raised by Darwin. At the top of the unilinear progression were usually the "Nordics", a tall race of blue-eyed blonds. Haeckel's position on the 'Judenfrage' was assimilation and Expelled-command from their university chairs, not yet an open elimination. But was it different only in degree, rather than kind?<BR/><BR/>In 1917 the immigration of "defective" groups was forbidden even in the United States by a law. In 1921 the European immigration was diminished to 3% based on the 1910 census.<BR/>Eventually, in the strategical year of 1924 the finest hour of eugenics had come and the fatal law was passed by Congress. It diminished immigration to 2% of the foreign-born from each country based on the 1890 census in order to preserve the "nordic" balance in population, and was hold through World War II until 1965 (Hietala 1985, p. 132).<BR/><BR/>Richard Lewontin writes:“The leading American idealogue of the innate mental inferiority of the working class was, however, H.H. Goddard, a pioneer of the mental testing movement, the discoverer of the Kallikak family,<BR/>and the administrant of IQ-tests to immigrants that found 83 % of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 79% of the Italians, and 87% of the the Russians to be feebleminded.” (1977, p. 13.) Finnish emmigrants put the cross on the box reserved for the "yellow" group (Kemiläinen 1993, p. 1930), until 1965.<BR/><BR/>Germany was the most scientifically and culturally advanced nation of the world upon opening the riddles at the close of the nineteenth century. And she went Full Monty.<BR/><BR/>Today, developmental biologists are anticipating legislation of laws that would define the do’s and dont’s. In England, they are fertilizing human embryos for research purposes and pipetting chimera embryos of humans and monkeys, 'legally'. The legislation should not distract individual researchers from their personal awareness of responsibility. A permissive law merely defines the ethical minimum. The lesson is that a law is no substitute for morals and that dissidents should not be intimidated.<BR/><BR/>I am suspicious over the burial of the Kampf (Struggle). The idea of competition is innate in the modern society. It is the the opposite view in a 180 degree angle to the Judaeo-Christian ideal of agapee, that I personally cheriss. The latter sees free giving, altruism, benevolence and self sacrificing love as the beginning, motivation, and sustainer of the reality.<BR/><BR/>You may read more on the matter from my conference posters and articles defended and published in the field of bioethics and history of biology (and underline/edit them a 'bit'):<BR/>http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Asian_Bioethics.pdf <BR/>http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Haeckelianlegacy_ABC5.pdf<BR/><BR/>pauli.ojala@gmail.com<BR/>Biochemist, drop-out (Master of Sciing)<BR/>http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-ID.htmJaakonpoikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05473422011143619917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-34723284492651775922008-04-13T01:12:00.000-06:002008-04-13T01:12:00.000-06:00Of course the movie is propaganda. But it's just ...Of course the movie is propaganda. But it's just one more step in the "my beliefs trump the job requirements" movement that began with pharmacists refusing to fill birth-control prescriptions. Don't believe in evolution yet want to teach science? So what! You can sue claiming "religious discrimination".<BR/><BR/>Aye.Buffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09328034026300036704noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-72336526368795200402008-03-25T23:10:00.000-06:002008-03-25T23:10:00.000-06:00How much longer will we let people wear mustaches?...How much longer will we let people wear mustaches? Look at the clear connection between mustaches and evil. Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Geraldo, old movie villains with top hats tying innocent women to railroad tracks. Mustaches are a clear sign of evil.<BR/><BR/>Sure, some may tell you that most people with mustaches never commit heinous evil, or that there are people without mustaches who have committed just as much evil, but let us not let such facts get in the way of the clear link between mustaches and evil. Obviously, they're part of a pro-mustache conspiracy to keep the truth hidden. That's just how evil the mustachioed are.Kevinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17626857285330229082noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-87656171287770206712008-03-25T19:03:00.000-06:002008-03-25T19:03:00.000-06:00AnonymousI forgot to mention. While you are waitin...<B>Anonymous</B><BR/><BR/>I forgot to mention. While you are waiting for tomorrow's post, please see:<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2007/03/atheist-terrorist.html" REL="nofollow">The Atheist Terrorist</A><BR/><BR/>You might find it illuminating.Alonzo Fyfehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-36870768437057870762008-03-25T19:01:00.000-06:002008-03-25T19:01:00.000-06:00AnonymousYou are going to get a lot more than 4 pa...<B>Anonymous</B><BR/><BR/>You are going to get a lot more than 4 paragraphs. Come back tomorrow.<BR/><BR/>In the mean time - the fact that you are aware of the fact that you are guilty of making a bigoted overgeneralization, and dare others to accuse you of that which you are guilty, does not absolve you of guilt. It only proves that, in addition to being a bigot, you lack a conscience.<BR/><BR/>Like I said. Come back tomorrow, and I will fill in the details.Alonzo Fyfehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-52802760391756940022008-03-25T18:20:00.000-06:002008-03-25T18:20:00.000-06:00The "images of gas chambers and concentration camp...The "images of gas chambers and concentration camps" connected to Atheism is not arbitrary. Unless of course, you are one of those revisionist historians.<BR/><BR/> Oh gee, now I get a 4 paragraph regurgitation about how "not all Atheists support genocide." and how evil stereotypes are.<BR/><BR/>Here it comes... wait for it...<BR/>go Fonzi, GoAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-16996731405052923102008-03-25T10:38:00.000-06:002008-03-25T10:38:00.000-06:00I agree that "Expelled" is a propaganda film, but ...I agree that "Expelled" is a propaganda film, but it presents itself as a fair-minded documentary, and so it was appropriate for Dawkins to review it based on the producer's stated intention. As for the "goon" reference which exercises you so much, neither of us was there, but Dawkins was, and I put it to you that he has an impeccable reputation for honesty and fairness. If he called the guy a goon, I suspect that his behavious warranted the description. I also put it to you that a police officer is never under any circumstances justified in threatening to arrest someone under false pretenses, in this case for the "crime" of standing outside the screening room in a public theatre, not even if his off-duty employer so instructs him. This behaviour alone justifies the use of the word "goon". -orioleAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09819491455892210762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-35128347625521362892008-03-25T05:02:00.000-06:002008-03-25T05:02:00.000-06:00I'm so glad to see that you recognized this film f...I'm so glad to see that you recognized this film for what it is. I hope you post to some of the other blogs that have been running the "controversy," in order to sound a wake-up to the reality-based community.<BR/>Thanks for your good work.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12707802587583985374noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-9705072878621541392008-03-25T02:50:00.000-06:002008-03-25T02:50:00.000-06:00I think Dawkins' error is that we unconsciously te...I think Dawkins' error is that we unconsciously tend to think people have mostly the same values as us. As a scientist, he values truth, and, therefore, his first instinct is that the Expelled people are misguided, are honestly mistaken. When in fact they are dishonest, and their intention with this film is quite sinister -- as you say, to get people to associate "evolution" with "gas chambers". Dawkins simply doesn't grasp (yet?) the extent of these creationists' evil.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com