One interesting thing about evolution as a theory is that it seems adept at taking old ideas (racism, eugenics, atheism) and giving them the patina of 'science'.
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Hmm, I didn't know that the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next had anything to do with racism, eugenics, atheism or religion either. Then again I'm not an ignorant brainwashed fundie.
You know, some day I want to bait a fundie into saying two things:
1. That the theory of evolution is racist.
2. That The Land Before Time promotes the theory of evolution.
I would then proceed to tear apart that contradiction.
Yeah, I have random thoughts.
Actually eugenics is part of evolution...
We have something called laissez faire evolution.
For instance, a family who suddenly have a case of Huntingdon's chorea. We can test the offspring and tell them which carry the gene (I.e Sorry you will die.) so that they do not have any children thus sparing more people from a horrible death.
As a consolation we can use our "genetic science" to select egg and sperm from the individuals to perform in vitro fertilisation to allow them to have healthy children, eliminating a deleterious gene from the pool.
This we call Laissez faire eugenics. Its the elimination of disease.
Unlike the bible which tells you to wipe out anyone who disagrees with you and burn their city to the ground.
The ToE doesn't say anything about racism, eugenics, or atheism. It's a scientific theory that explains how animals evolve. The only old ideas that gets included basically involve animal husbandry.
Racism and eugenics did that on their own, but we corrected them.
Natural selection is a biological theory that should not be applied to moral or political arenas.
Evolution has nothing to do with any of those things, and they were being justified just fine with traditional might makes right philosophy and the idea of God favoring the strong. Evolution was just a ripe target to make acts that were justified previously by religious interpretation alone also ostensibly supported by interpretations of science.
"Evolution is a religion!"
"Evolution is atheistic!"
Sheesh, can't you people make up your minds?
No, only people who fundamentally misunderstand the theory believe it brings about racism, eugenics, atheism, etc. That isn't to say people don't actually try to use such theories to justify immoral choices. Case and point, the Social Darwainists. However, even if the theory did blantantly promote any of those things, that would not invalidate it whatsoever.
Go take a course in logic. Please.
hm.
i think this is because the fundies are used to have the bible both to explain the world AND to provide morality.
So they are basically replacing "bible" with "science", when they try to understand the latter, automatically try to derive morals from it, and are upset because of the garbage they get.
What have one thing got to do with the others? Atheism is an old idea and a current idea too. But I can't see anyone using atheism as science or that it has anything to do with evolution. Racism and eugenics are bigoted idea´s, based on the assumption that some are better than others. You know all about that, don't you, fundies? But they have nothing to do with either science or evolution.
“One interesting thing about evolution as a theory is that it seems adept at taking old ideas (racism,”
Evolution isn’t racist. Creationists see ‘race’ in the title of his book and SAY it’s racist. They’re wrong.
Racists say that some races are more, or less evolved. Evolution doesn’t work that way, though, so they’re also wrong.
“eugenics,”
Racists being wrong, attempting to use science to prop it up.
“atheism"
A creationist strawman. Science just says what we think happened, and how we know. Without a single word on whether or not any gods were involved.
The creationists are the ones saying ‘literal Genesis or nihilism!’
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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