Jeffrey Schloss, and Now Richard Weikart’s Reply to Him

Perfect.
Logical, historical, factual, measured, comprehensive ….

Perfect.
Logical, historical, factual, measured, comprehensive

Who?
Dembksi or Schloss?

Weikart.

It’s pretty hard to deny the influence Darwinism had on the 20th Century.

And that it was a very bad influence.

Wonderful piece by Weikart!

In the insanity of the Sixties it was perceived that history was an enemy (it didn’t support the “agenda”), and now the trivializing of history has resulted in a couple of generations of naive innocents utterly ignorant of how we got to where we are. It is important we know both the good and the bad that has made our world.

In school I loved science and math and found history difficult, but I can see that history is more important.

History is Hebrew—it’s proper telling will preserve us, it’s dismissal will doom us—long live the Hebrew side of our civilization!

I didn’t read all of the Weikart piece, but while I was reading it something stuck in my mind. Darwinism does lead to eugenics, not by purity of derivation but by association.

The complaint often comes in the form that Eugenics and racism weren’t necessary fallout from Darwinism. To some degree this would be fine, were Science kept restrained to what it directly evidences.

But it doesn’t.

Today we are told that Global Warming is Science. Why? Do we have undeniable proof–flawless computer models, even? No, just that a lot of scientists believe that it is.
We’re told that Science is only materialistic. Why? Has Science ever reduce all things to pure working parts? No, because, to some, it seems to be the way that technology works. (It’s not.)
We’re told that theism is un-scientific. Why? Is it because we’ve come up with experiments that disprove God? No. It’s because higher education corresponds to a lower level of belief in masses. And some really snide scientific sounding guys don’t like it.

If the moderns can everywhere argue that there is a mindset, though not purely derived from the evidence of scientific studies–more fitting to Science, then they are only engaged in special pleading: “Those trappings of Science were unnecessary–ours haven’t been proven wrong yet!”

And because we don’t even know exactly what evolution is, it’s hard to say what’s a proper extensions and what we’ve used to fill in the blanks. But if we are now trying to push a culture of Science–a vogue of Science, then it is ridiculous to say that all evils must be a direct result of the Science.

It’s ironic to think that none of this discussion matters to Science, doesn’t help clear up the questions on evolution with all the filler is what determines how “scientific” you are and whether or not your a waste of space in Larry Moran’s classroom or in any academic department somewhere. For the most part it’s even about teaching bored kids who anyone could doubt are 1) going to get just the facts, or 2) care more about the strict facts than achieving status by adopting popular behaviors.

Eventually, it is this mixing of Science and politics that has us all here.

Also, don’t we have this new principle that Science is whatever scientists do? So if scientists are racist eugenicists, that’s Science.

It’s hard to imagine all that Darwinism would be under the same model, except it’s what Darwinists do. If Darwinist practice racist eugenics, then I guess that’s what Darwinism is.

Or is it only recently that Science is what scientists do? In that case it doesn’t have very long coattails. While they argue that methodological materialism goes back to Newton, they can’t possibly argue the same thing for the self-definition idea, because it doesn’t extend to past the 1920s. Accepting both makes for a baroque rationale.

I think that in the end the safest thing to say is that if Darwinism does not lead to racism, it at least provides an excuse for it. Religion may have been used to justify ethnocentrism as well, but the essential lesson is that Darwinists are every bit as fallible as anyone else- a reality people like Dawkins seem to reject.

You have Christianity which tells you to love your neighbor and pray for your enemies and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And still people have used this rather clear-cut system of values to justify oppression and cruelty.

And then you have Darwinism that teaches we are not intrinsically different than animals (and plants) and that it is proper for the strong to survive at the expense of the weak.

And when slaughter not seen since the end of the pagan era occurs after the widespread adoption of Darwinism, why do some insist that Darwinism has nothing to do with it?

tribune7 wrote:

And when slaughter not seen since the end of the pagan era occurs after the widespread adoption of Darwinism

I’m with you that Darwinism is no good in what it does to ethics, but I think my slaughtered West Indian ancestors might feel differently about your last point…

Unless you want to consider the Conquistador Spanish kingdoms pagan, which I’m fine with.

but I think my slaughtered West Indian ancestors might feel differently about your last point…

I dunno. If your slaughtered West Indian ancestors were Arawaks they’d probably hold a bigger grudge against the Caribs. Or smallpox if they understood what it was.

If Caribs, well take comfort in that their legacy lives with the word “cannibal”.

Try Taino…nearly annihilated every last one of them from my island.

Not to mention the West Africans that were thrown in the ocean or murdered in the plantations who were brought in to replace the Taino once they had been killed off (for the most part.)

I do agree that disease was the main killer of the Amerindians (the studies on the epidemics that followed European contact are saddening and incredible), but the hacienda/plantation/encomienda systems of the Spanish took a toll that is every bit as disgusting as the Holocaust. Again, ask the Taino…or the Carib…or the Arawak…or the Mexica…or the Maya…or take your pick.

And by the way, the Caribs didn’t destroy the Arawak peoples or the Taino group…they made war with them, yes, but didn’t annihilate them or their culture.

So I doubt you are the person to judge who they’d hold a bigger grudge against.

Try Taino

They’d hold a bigger grudge against the Caribs too.

And by the way, the Caribs didn’t destroy the Arawak peoples or the Taino group…

They didn’t have smallpox

I do agree that disease was the main killer of the Amerindians (the studies on the epidemics that followed European contact are saddening and incredible), but the hacienda/plantation/encomienda systems of the Spanish took a toll that is every bit as disgusting as the Holocaust.

If the Spanish wanted the Indians as slaves, and if it was not their desire to wipe them out via disease or other means, how could you compare what happened to them to the Holocaust or the Ukraine famine which were premeditated attempts to wipe out whole peoples as in seem them all die?

BTW, this is not a defense of the Spaniards. It’s just pointing out that as bad as they were they did not come close to what occurred post-Darwin, or even among contemporaneous pagans such as the Caribs & the Aztecs.

tribune7,

Please don’t just guess at who you think they’d have a bigger grudge against…while you may think you’re being cute, you’re talking about my ancestors and it is actually very offensive. It would be like me telling a person who had family murdered in the Holocaust: “I bet they held a bigger grudge against the Castilians…” These aren’t characters in some history book, this is my family.

Your comment that the Carib didn’t have smallpox only holds relevance on one end (population reduction)…smallpox doesn’t destory culture and language, so it doesn’t affect my point that the Carib never eliminated the Taino as a whole or their way of life.

The Spanish wanted the wealth, the slaves were only a means to getting the wealth of the Americas. They cared nothing about the slaves or the indians. Do a quick wikipedia search on spanish colonization or the conquest of the americas. I’m not making this stuff up. They would mutilate or murder those who couldn’t produce enough gold to ransom themselves, as they expected each Native to produce a set amount of gold.

According to eyewitness accounts of the time, hundreds of thousands (low estimate) to millions were killed in the mines, plantations and haciendas. Those who weren’t killed were raped and tortured. (See Friar Bartholomew De Las Casas’ firsthand accounts, for example. Again, this isn’t just my opinion, it is doecumented history.)

You should read some books on the topic: “1491″, “The Open Veins of Latin America”, etc. You’ll learn about what you’re so glibly dicussing.

The First Nations peoples will tell you themselves who they hold the bigger grudge against. And I’ll give you a hint, it ain’t other Amerindian groups.

tribune7 wrote:

It’s just pointing out that as bad as they were they did not come close to what occurred post-Darwin

So 500 years of Holocaust isn’t as bad as 50 years?

So what are Schloss’ views now on evolution? Is he a theistic evolutionist? I ask this because I noticed that he taught (or now teaches?) at Westmont College, which is a very conservative Christian College in Santa Barbara California. Or has he reverted back to Creationism?

JJCassidy stated: “The complaint often comes in the form that Eugenics and racism weren’t necessary fallout from Darwinism. To some degree this would be fine, were Science kept restrained to what it directly evidences.”

It seems to me that science (as it is generally practiced today) doesn’t start with science, and neither does it end with it. It begins with the human (frailty?) of either wanting to know something more precisely, or from wanting to seem as though one wants to know something more precisely. It may be different from person to person.

But the point is that methodological naturalism seems to be more philosophy than science, and yet, this is what most scientists today seem to believe is the basic foundation of doing science.

I’ve heard it said that scientists make poor philosophers. It appears that many scientists see themselves as practicing something that comes purely from the scientific method. Yet if that is true, and they are still founded upon methodological naturalism, then apparently they either don’t know how to separate the science from the philosophy, or they willfully ignore their own philosophical assumptions when doing “science.”

It’s no wonder then, that when they apply “science” to make a more perfect world (such as in eugenics), any moral implication is seen as not a part of what they do as scientists.

Someone mentioned Global Warming (now more popularly known as Climate Change, and formerly known as global cooling - and on and on we go). Well isn’t the issue of climate change a moral one for even the scientist? What then gives the scientist the “moral” grounds to dismiss philosophical questions when doing science, if the reasons for doing science in the first place is to know something more precisely in order to more perfect conditions in the world?

It is no surprise to me then, that we have philosophers who know a lot about science, becoming believers in a God - seeing the limits of methodological naturalism, and going where the evidence leads (as in Antony Flew).

The theist understands that not only does belief in God hold a moral key to who we are and what our purpose is, but it also apparently holds the key for the intricacies we see in the natural universe. Dismiss it if you will on “scientific” grounds, but understand that such dismissal comes from misguided philosophical assumptions.

Anyone, therefore, is capable of misusing science to further philosophical agendas, and deny that they are doing so.

(See Friar Bartholomew De Las Casas’ firsthand accounts, for example. Again, this isn’t just my opinion, it is doecumented history.)

Researchers today doubt Las Casas’s figures for the pre-contact levels of the Taíno population, considering them an exaggeration. . .Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.

To get to the point, there are those who claim Christianity not just fails to mitigate evil but encourages it. Do you agree with them?

If you ever get a chance see the movie The End of the Spear

I suspect that pre-Columbian life was pretty much like that.

History can be considered science and is no less politics than Global Warming; a UD non-ID favourite.

“Why can’t a good philosophical argument count against the alleged deliverances of “science”?”

Because science is based on evidence. You may be able to come up with a good philosophical argument to say how many teeth a horse has, but a biologist can actually go out and count the teeth. The biologist will have evidence and you won’t, and I’m afraid that’s why your good philosophical arguments don’t count against the actual deliverances of science.

Lol!
The Yoko Ono of philosophy -
Well said, Frank Beckwith.

For the most part, Schloss’s commentary is less of a movie review and more of an apologia for theistic evolution. In his judgment, the movie wasn’t fair because evolution doesn’t necessarily lead to atheism. To make that point, one gathers, the producers should have included those “evolutionists” who also believe in God, meaning, of course, the theistic evolutionists.

But how would that have helped? Aren’t theistic evolutionists simply Christian Darwinists? Do they not agree with the Darwinist agenda that ID scientists should be expelled from the academy? Do they not participate with Darwinists in the enforcement of methodological naturalism, which is the academy’s way of justifying the expulsion? Of what significance is their lip service to theism when their Darwinist ideology calls all the shots? What good is personal piety if it translates into professional atheism?

Also, Schloss insists that the Movie doesn’t define ID sufficiently. Well, no, it doesn’t. It is trying to dramatize the fact of persecution, and there is no reason to deviate from that theme. You don’t move people or mobilize a group effort by making fine shades of distinction. Anyone who sees the machine-like bits in a DNA molecule gets it; nothing else is needed. In any case, ID has already defined itself very well. Unlike Darwinists, who go around using weasel words like “evolution,” which can mean anything to anybody, ID puts it on the line by offering precise terms and logical arguments. William Dembski and Michael Behe have not been persecuted for being ambiguous; they have been persecuted for being exact.

To me, Shloss is at his most comical when he criticizes Ben Stein for saying, “either we were designed or we were an accident.” Like the typical TE, he wants to have it both ways and characterize us as a “designed accident.” But no, a thing cannot be and not be at the same time and under the same formal circumstances. Of course, it is possible that God designed evolution, but then that would be design now, wouldn’t it? Of course, that is the very thing that the TE’s sensibilities will not allow—design. So, to fool the public (and themselves) they use the rhetoric of design even as they argue for non-design.

Finally, Schloss resorts to the well-tested, “why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along” ploy. If ID is to tear down walls, he insists, it must stop polarizing the two sides. Oh, I get it. The victims of exclusion and slander should learn to be more inclusive and magnanimous. Well, sorry, but Ghandi-like passivity has not been known to work well under Nazi—like oppression. But the irony doesn’t end there. On the one hand Schloss admits that that “it is suicide” to posit intelligent design in an academic setting, on the other hand, he questions the testimony of those who did committed suicide and are now dead in their careers. Oh, well, the man does write well.

William Dembski: “CannuckianYankee: To see where Schloss stands now, go to

http://www.issr.org.uk/id-statement.asp”

Thanks for the link. I appreciated the fact that the statement separates Biblical Creationism from Intelligent Design. I sensed, though, that theistic evolutionists do just as their atheistic Darwinist counterparts do, and that is to elevate a philosophy of methodological naturalism as science, and as such, leave out any place in science for Intelligent Design, which leaves open philosophical assumptions, while looking at the evidence.

Dr. Dembski, I am not a scientist, so it really is not my place to determine what is and what is not science based on current scientific thinking. I am, however, well read, and can think logically, and I cannot fathom how naturalists come to equate a philosophical assumption with science. I know the history of how this happened from Hume and beyond, but it appalls me that many naturalists do not grasp the philosophical history behind their thinking.

I think that it behooves ID theorists to continue to recognize that the enemy is methodological naturalism, the basis for Darwinistic thinking in the first place. Phillip Johnson I believe argued this very well in “Darwin On Trial.”

The idea that ideas don’t have consequences has consequences.

And it seems to me that “the idea that ID will gain wider acceptance by arguing that Darwinian theory was a necessary factor in the holocaust” is not Ben Stein’s and not Richard Weikart’s idea. Right or wrong it’s the truth they’re after!

If what we want is acceptance we should all be TEs.

Which scientifically understood processes are these?

Probably this powerful example from the University of Delaware, which conclusively shows that the mousetrap evolved via RM+NS.

tribune7 wrote:

Researchers today doubt Las Casas’s figures for the pre-contact levels of the Taíno population, considering them an exaggeration. . .Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.

Scholars have estimated low numbers for decades, even though all first hand accounts recorded high numbers. The scholars thought that it was impossible that so many people could have died in so short a period of time, even though the Americas are literally littered with cities and all first hand accounts record how populated the land masses were. In North America, it was said that prior to Invasion boats had trouble finding spots on the coast to land, since the entire coastline was inhabited with indigenous peoples.

That scholarship has recently undergone revision and discoveries have shed light on the true numbers of people living in the Americas. For example, pottery mounds (basically old school trash heaps) found in obscure cities have been found to be larger than those of ancient Rome. Meaning the population size was probably as big, if not bigger.

Tenochitlan (Mexico City) was actually the biggest city on the planet when the Spanish arrived, more populated than London or Paris.

So anyway, your “scholarship” is a couple decades outdated. “1491″ by Charles Mann gives a good overwiew of the current state of the scholarship, including going over Bartholomew de las Casas’ accounts and the controversy surrounding them. It is one thing to say the eyewitnesses probably “exaggerated”, but you have to back that up with evidence. Scholars say eyewitness accounts of the Resurrection were exaggerated as well. I’ll stick with the people who were actually there.

Speaking of which, have you ever been to Tenochitlan? Cuzco? Chincha (the black capital of Peru, home of the El Carmen plantation)? Aguadilla (where the last of the Taino sought refuge from the Spanish and were hunted down…my family hometown)? To the Taino center at Tibes? La Paz in Bolivia? To Argentina, where the indigenous population was wiped out to a degree not seen in the surrounding countries (lowest indigenous and meztizo population in the Americas)? Oaxaca? Chipas? Merida?

Have to seen Ollantaytambo, the city the Inca were building when the Spanish arrived? Have you talked with the remnant of these Amerindian groups and found out how colonization affected them and their ancestors?

Which books have you read on pre-colombian civilization and the Amerindian Holocaust?

End of the Spear? Come on, the majority of Amerindians (by population) lived in cities. Cities like Chan Chan, Cahokia, Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, etc. The hunter gatherer image of pre-colombian indian life is an outdated hollywood idea based on contact with some of the tribes that did not live in cities. This would be like a traveller visiting hillbilly mountain folk and concluding that North Americans as a whole were really backwards people without running water or basic math skills.

Until you’ve done even some of these things, you’re really not in a place to debate me on these issues. You are free to debate, but I know that you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been to these places and seen the effects of Colonization. I’ve talked with these people and I can tell you who they hold grudges against. It changed my way of thinking real quick. (I was a right-wing Republican at the time, and thought what happened wasn’t that bad, the people were cannibals and probably deserved it, etc.) Seeing the reality (being confronted with it actually, it was not something I went out looking for) set me straight real quick. Needless to say, it does tick me off when I see people denying the suffering that took place and still continues to this day in places like Peru and the Mexico.

Mods,

sorry for discussing politics here, but the comment was made to imply that the whole 500 year period of death and slavery for blacks and Native Americans never happened or somehow wasn’t as bad as the 50 years or so of Holocaust that happened to the Jews in Europe. My people dying in forced labor camps, plantations and mines, are every bit as horrible as Jews dying in German forced labor camps. More Natives died, the time period was an order of magnitude longer, and the different groups affected were more in number…any way you look at it, the tragedy was as bad if not worse. Anyway, Darwinism does lead to a dire view of human worth, but so did (pre-Darwinist) racism.

But I’m willing to drop it. I would just like tribune7 to stop guessing at who my slaughtered ancestors would dislike more.

Dave, I don’t think you’re appreciating the sheer weight of my argument. It’s not about Darwinism -> NAZI-ism necessarily.

That’s just one of the possible outcomes when combined with modern materialistic propaganda. One of the ideas central to this conflict is that Darwinism–or learning Darwinism–promotes the social good, the Council of Europe argued as much.

Is this a direct implication of the scientific implications Darwin’s theory or an interpretation? If you are arguing for a auxiliary effect as an affect of Darwinism, then you cannot simultaneously use the fig leaf that racism wasn’t a central result as well.

The entire argument of the opposition is rendered inconsistent or invalid. (Including all the chiding about “Dark Age” thinking, or getting with the times…)

I’m trusting that you know enough about math and logic to know invalidating something does not imply anything else has been validated, unless that alternative makes up the entire complement of the possibilities.

I’ve shown the methodological problem of the progressive position.

Denyse,

You’re terrific. I just slogged through the first half of Schloss—somebody should deal with the way he disses Crocker, Sternberg, and Gonzalez. Did the movie misrepresent their cases? If Schloss is as bad here as he is with Weikart, then Crocker, Sternberg, and Gonzalez deserve to have their reputations defended.

Atom — So anyway, your “scholarship” is a couple decades

It’s not “my” scholarship. It’s a link to Wiki and there is no reason to think that it doesn’t reflect the best and most up to date understanding of events.

Granted, consensus doesn’t mean “truth” but neither does an appeal to a favored authority that perhaps reflects what you want to believe.

Note– the Wiki version would follow the logic of plantation imperialism. It was clearly understood by the conquerors that it was undesirable to see their labor force die off. This should be obvious to you since the importation of black slaves began after the Indians died.

Um, with regard to your appeal to the mods, why do you distort my arguments? In what post did I “imply” that the whole 500 year period of death and slavery for blacks and Native Americans never happened?

And the second clause in your sentence indicates a grave ignorance of history. The Holocaust was not “50 years or so”. The mass murder of Jews did not start until 1939 and the Final Solution did not begin until 1942. The end in either case came in 1945 with the defeat of Hitler.

You seem to be unable to comprehend the uniqueness of what happened in 20th century Europe.

tribune7 wrote:

And the second clause in your sentence indicates a grave ignorance of history. The Holocaust was not “50 years or so”. The mass murder of Jews did not start until 1939 and the Final Solution did not begin until 1942. The end in either case came in 1945 with the defeat of Hitler.

For my “grave ignorance of history”, I was approximating not just the time of the German Holocaust, but of the “Darwinist atrocities” you mentioned…I was tyring to be generous and estimate 50 years of the 20th century were spent in genocide, the Jews being the primary example.

I was going to say 10 years, but I didn’t want you to think I was underplaying the extent of carnage that took place, so 50 years sounded like a good estimate to me. Sorry if I didn’t make my reasoning clear.

I’m not speaking from authority (though the current scholarship agrees with me), I’m speaking from firsthand observations I’ve made in Latin America and the Caribbean (13 different countries, hundreds of cities and regions.) Have you done the same?

As you’ve ducked all my questions and are clinging to the hope that Wikipedia is the state of the art scholoarship at the moment (on a politically contentious topic such as the Conquista, nonetheless), I’ll let you off the hook. Obviously you didn’t mean to get in over your head and I don’t want to cause ill will on the board. But do take some time to read up on the subject before you ever argue it with another person.

The implication was from the following statement of yours:

And when slaughter not seen since the end of the pagan era occurs after the widespread adoption of Darwinism

You missed out on the entire Black and Indigenous Holocaust by the statement, implying either it didn’t take place or that it somehow it wasn’t as bad as what happened in the *10* years you informed me you were speaking of.

Atom –I would just like tribune7 to stop guessing at who my slaughtered ancestors would dislike more.

And why would your guess as to whom your slaughtered ancestors would dislike more have greater merit than mine?

You are just as far away from this culturally as me.

I’m speaking from firsthand observations I’ve made in Latin America and the Caribbean (13 different countries, hundreds of cities and regions.)

And you found persons who were Indians. Now, go to Poland and find someone who is Jewish.

tribune7 wrote:

And why would your guess as to whom your slaughtered ancestors would dislike more have greater merit than mine

I was talking about my family (Taino descendants maternally, African descendents paternally) and who WE hold a grudge against for what happened. I’m also speaking of the passed down stories, recorded histories and current indigenous and black attitudes about the 500 year holocaust. So yeah, I think I may have a little bit more insight than you think into the situation.

Culturally, we are not looking at it from the same place. Unless you’re really a Native with strong Native identity who has traveled extensively throughout the Americas investigating what occurred and following this up with historical research on the topic.

tribune7 wrote:

And you found persons who were Indians. Now, go to Poland and find someone who is Jewish.

And ask them what? Who they hold a bigger grudge against, the Germans or the Spaniards that expelled them in 1492?

I have no problem admitting the atrocity that took place in Europe against the Jews. I’m only arguing that their 10 years of misery and death and forced labor and genocide happened in the Americas for 500 years, to more people and in more places. I’m willing to call them equal atrocities, being generous to the European Jews.

And when slaughter not seen since the end of the pagan era occurs after the widespread adoption of Darwinism . . .You missed out on the entire Black and Indigenous Holocaust by the statement, implying either it didn’t take place or that it somehow it wasn’t as bad as what happened in the *10* years you informed me you were speaking of.

You have it backwards. The death toll of (all) Amerindians is estimated at between 13.7 and 20 million (per Wiki, feel free to find another source) over 500 years. That’s 40,000 per year (high estimate) due to contact with Europeans (and leaving out that the vast majority of those deaths were due to inadvertent exposure to disease).

The toll from Hitler’s democides ranged from 15.4 to 21 million most of which occurred between 1939 and 1945 or about 2.5 million deaths per year (low estimate) almost all of which were deliberate.

So yes. I stand by my claim that what Hitler did was worse.

Now, go to Poland and find someone who is Jewish. . . And ask them what?

You REALLY missed that point too.

tribune7, for your estimates of Native populations:

from 1491 (p. 104):
(Discussing the outdated original inhabitant estimates, which could be the source of some of the Wikipedia estimates):

Alfred L. Kroeber, the renowned Berke;ey anthropologist, built upon Mooney’s work in the 1930’s. Kroeber cut back the tally still further, to 900,000 - a population density of less than one person for every six square miles. Just 8.4 million Indians, Kroeber suggested, had lived in the entire hemisphere.

Later studies, however, would show that those “low numbers” (the ones I alluded to in earlier posts) were dramatically wrong:

When Columbus landed, Cook and Borah concluded, the Central Mexican plateau alone had a population of 25.2 million. By contrast, Spain and Portugal together had fewer than ten million inhabitants. Central Mexico, they said, was the most densley populated place on earth, with more than twice as many people per square mile than China or India.

from 1491 (p. 109):

Between the visits of De Soto and La Salle, according to Timothy K. Perttula, an archeologist consultant in Austin, Texas, the Cadoan population fell from about 200,000 to about 8,500 - a drop of nearly 96 percent. In the eighteenth century, the tally shrank further, to 1,400 And equivalent loss today would reduce the population of New York City to 56,000, not enough to fill Yankee Stadium. “That’s one reason whites think of Indians as nomadic hunters, ” Russell Thornton, an anthropologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, said to me. “Everything else - all the heavily populated urbanized societies - was wiped out.”

Disease was the main killer of Amerindians, I never argued otherwise, and together with the slavery and outright murder the populations dropped by 95%. Imagine, 95 out of every 100 people dead in the end. Either way, the Americas were way more populated than wikipedia suggests and the death toll much higher than 20 million. If you take the 25 million people living around Mexico City alone and kill of 90% of them, you have a death toll of 22 million.

So the Wikipedia numbers are outdated and wrong.

Let me lay out my points very clearly:

1) The Americas were extremely populated, with most people living in cities.

2) Greater than 90% of the population was killed by disease and murder.

3) The remnant were put into labor camps, raped, and had their possessions and lands confiscated.

4) The cultures of these people were largely wiped out in some areas and some distinct groupd so peopels (such as West Indian groups) were basically wiped out (not counting ine intermarriage or few who escaped. The people as a distinct unit, however, were gone.)

5) This pattern of death, forced labor and robbery continued for 500 years.

6) This is a Holocaust of proportions dwarfing that of the European Holocaust, with tortures rivaling or surpassing that of the Nazis.

7) I don’t think it matters that more Indians or balck were killed, an atrocity is an atrocity. Just because 5 or 500 more people were killed doesn’t make it any less (or more) horrific. Both were large scale slaughters.

So yeah, read some books on the subject, don’t just go by wikipedia. (You should know this dealing with ID.) I suggest “1491″ and “The Open Veins of Latin America” by Eduardo Galleano to start with. Also consider taking a trip to South America, Chiapas/Oaxaca or the Caribbean, so you can do your own research into what occurred. Again, let’s not overlook what happened here.

groupd so peopels = *groups of peoples

ine = *the (don’t ask me how that happened!)

tribune7 wrote:

Now, go to Poland and find someone who is Jewish.

I see, so you’re implying there aren’t any Jews living in Poland? Could be true, I haven’t been to Poland. But I can reply (if we’re playing the Country game) go to Argentina and find someone who is Indian. Or Puerto Rico, and find a full-blooded Taino.

I did miss your point, but it wasn’t much to miss.

I guess there are some Jews in Poland:

Most of the country’s Jews live in Warsaw, the capital, but there are also communities in Krakow, Lodz, Szczecin, Gdansk, and in several cities in Upper and Lower Silesia, notably in Katowice and Wroclaw. In the last few years, there has been a reawakening of Jewish consciousness. Young people of Jewish origin who had no Jewish knowledge are joining the community.

http://info-poland.buffalo.edu...../jer.shtml

It says 85% of Polish Jewery were wiped out. This is horrific and saddening. It’s also why we must never forget or overlook what happened. (Either there or in the Americas)

I Googled Galleano and it looks like he’s a hardcore leftist, maybe even a communist.

Most of those I have known in academia (going back to high school) who took dogmatically took the position “Europeans always bad/Natives always good” were less interested in the truth than in advancing a political agenda.

I don’t think you would be in that category but if Galleano writes for The Nation, he would certainly fall into it and so I would not trust him as an authority.

“1491″ looks like an interesting book and I will make plans to read it.

Something you might find of interest would be European history. Before Christ, human sacrifice and cannibalism were not uncommon in northern Europe. After Rome fell, the land was basically ruled by warlords, very tough, shrewd illiterate men, the most successful of which begat Europe’s royal houses.

We would not approve of their jurisprudence nor their respect for civil rights, nor their treatment of the conquered who were often slaughtered (see Harrying of the North) or became the quasi-slave peasants & serfs.

Nonetheless, Christianity was a powerful moderating influence and, after the fighting, it did manage to make things better for the losers.

And the same thing happened in the Caribbean (and other parts of the Western Hemisphere).

And I’m not saying there wasn’t abuse and oppression and acts of unpunished murder by powerful persons, but there still was a basic respect for the humanity of the conquered i.e. nobody ever wiped out (or tried to) all the blacks and Indians in the Caribbean off the face of the Earth.

The difference is that in the 20th Century murder became an instrument of state fully justified by a system of ethics.

Atom– I guess there are some Jews in Poland:

There were about 3.3 million Jews in Poland in 1939.

In 1989, only 5,000–10,000 Jews remained in the country.

Atom:

groupd so peopels = *groups of peoples

Or you could just call them “grouples”.

Guys, racism is a distraction. Pre-Darwinian racism is about racial purity, racial isolation. Occasionally, it’s about war or the balance of power and thinning the odds–especially if the Spaniards did any of the genocide with intention.

Gobineau, mentioned in Schloss and Weikart’s conversation actually wanted Arayans to stay away from empire-building (i.e. putting the beat down on other nations) because empire-building brought you into inevitable contact with other stocks of people, because you then had to manage them.

Only with Darwin did extermination become advancement of the species and death improvement of the race. And death-as-a-value is a direct result of the theory. The arrival of better genes is a crap shoot, but it’s only when the inferior start dying off does it become a standard in the gene pool.

Only with Darwin did extermination become advancement of the species and death improvement of the race. And death-as-a-value is a direct result of the theory.

I’ll go with that.

Good point, Dave.

But nobody is saying that Dawkins can’t do zoology simply because he can’t handle subjects outside of science too well.

Meanwhile, Denyse seemed to be talking about Schloss’ role in the Weikart discussion.

I have to agree with DaveScot on this last point.

A truthful investigation of history does not validate unwarranted speculations about the future.

DaveScot, at the risk of making your list, I recommend you apply the logic of your comment at #55 to your continually questioning your blog host’s judgment.

Maybe once per thread is enough?

Maybe once per thread is enough?

It’s indeed not Dave who brings up the chain Materialism –> Darwinism –> Atheism –> Nazism –> Holocaust in every second thread.

Dave:

It doesn’t matter. You simply don’t go around calling former executives at your firm incompetents

I did say “Good point.” It was not sarcastic. I was just pointing out the context of Denyse’s comment.

As for the other point, explain to me how ID becomes theocracy. The theoretical “ID could cause theocracy” should never trump actual occurrence “Darwinism inspired Third Reich genocide” (which you granted for the sake of argument). No doubt that a number of ID opponents believe the former without as much evidence as the latter.

We’ve had theocracies to learn from. The awesome thing about the secular Darwinian states is that humanity has never seen such efficiency of liquidating humans as in the 20th century materialist regimes. In spans of as little as 20 years, they put up numbers that put them in the all time top 10.

Thats why they are a point of contention.

One thing that might get overstated–and perhaps by me–is the the suggestion that Darwinism introduced a devaluation of life. But we need to identify that human life has always been of debatable value throughout its history. “Debatable” in the form that various people have held various ideas about the value of various lives.

Wars and empires devalue human life, no doubt. They also have several millennia of years of establishment.

Additionally, I probably overstated my case that only with Darwin does death gain value. Not true. Death always had value. The death of Carthaginian warriors trying to stop Roman soldiers was rather valuable to the Roman soldiers and the Roman empire. If I’m a mobster and you’re going to rat on me, your death is very valuable.

But then again we’re talking about the cultural context that Darwinism takes place within. It was a Christian world under the idea that human life–all human life had value under God. And even if all monarchs did not uphold this ideal, during the age of Church, they at least felt the pressure to answer to it–to try to make some answer for their behavior. The cultural context also contained animal husbandry and eating meat and beasts of burden, and all were bred for qualities.

They were considered neutral aspects of the culture as God granted that humans were universally valuable, but animals were put here for our use.

The only way to transfer the commodity of animals caused by the “evil” of animal husbandry was to remove the theoretical barrier between man and animal.

You put yourself in a precarious position to argue that animal husbandry did such damage to the human psyche that it causes downstream effects, when killing humans is far from explicit in the idea of animal husbandry. And you can’t argue this while arguing that only explicit ties are valid, or explicit countering statements are sufficient restraint.

Removing the explicit relationship between man and animal enables the techniques of animal husbandry to be thought of in human terms.

Now, in most of what I have said before, death has a subjective value. We’ve always known this. It’s how we identify motive: who gains by the removal of a person. We can objectively determine that it has a subjective value.

Empires have subjective value, mob hits have subjective value. Animal husbandry has a practical value, but it is mainly subjective. The person who wants to win races or outfit scouts breeds a faster horse. The rancher who wants more meat breeds larger cattle. If that’s what you want to do, then here’s how to do it.

Darwinism gives death an objective value. Even if we use the idea Schloss takes from Dawkins: only we can protest the cycle of selfish genes. But only the death of countless ancestors who couldn’t can bring us this advancement.

It wasn’t to win a race or gain incrementally more meat, or weed out sickness. The death of subsets of species that don’t share the enhancement is the way to a new feature, more empowerment, more capability.

It’s also hard to say that Darwinism doesn’t abstract all beings into bags of capabilities–as the total of the scientific model. Although people have thought of human beings as a means to an end, whole societies convinced themselves of a functional identity–and no higher analysis (because Science is the summit of analysis)–of every individual human beings.

Darwinism hardly created every human vice that went into 20th century Marxism or naziism. But it removed barriers and gave a scientific, objective value to death.

In addition, Darwin’s stipulation that we would lose the noblest part of ourselves is not explicit in his research. This is not something he observed in the finch beaks on Galapagos. I doubt that any of his research was the “nobleness” of any creature.

But advancement through death is inescapable, in the central part of the theory, if we really believe that creatures as capable as ourselves came up from fish by only the fittest surviving.

If we want to stress only what is central to the theory than Darwin’s beliefs about “nobleness” also have no effect. But regardless of frame, they don’t have any of he weight of the stuff he actually documented, and not only posited.

And even though I’ve already written more than the anyone wants to read, there are points that I have left unstressed.

My main argument is still the methodical incoherency of arguing for worldviews that elaborate on science, arguing for its superiority, while distancing themselves from other sciency vogues because they weren’t inevitable from the scientific theories.

What? Was Hitler supposed to say “Whose Wagner? I recognize only Darwin.” Was he not supposed to know who Nietzsche or Faust were? Was he never supposed to have agreed with or be inspired by another author?

It is the conceit of the hyperrationalists that the human being can rationally compose himself of only conscious principles. The human mind is really a mixture of uncontested tensions and outright inconsistencies.

National pride is not directly implied from Darwin, but if you learn about Volkism, it is more clear how it relates. The Volkisch movement was a particular application of materialistic Darwinian concepts.

For example, no Darwinian concepts–that I know of–make a raccoon inevitable. Thus, though raccoons are applications of Darwinian forces, they are in no way central or explicit in Darwin. Yet, everything we can consider efficient or neat about a raccoon we are to believe owes entirely to Darwinian processes.

Now obviously Volkism is an application of Darwinian theory and raccoons are applications of Darwinian processes. So don’t get the idea that I’m equating the two. Instead what I’m doing is showing that the matter in dispute recognizes the idea of a divergent, non-inevitable result.

What does the Darwinian Animal look like? If you pick any one species, that helps us focus, you’re picking another non-necessary consequence of the processes.

Thus NAZI-ism is expressly not Darwinism because it has features unlike Darwinism. What does the Darwinistic society look like? Does it look like a society with any non-Darwinian attributes?

Also how can such an idea without any previous social effect (because it wasn’t pure) be advisable because of the overall social advantage it’s supposed to give us? Will that be pure? There are no houses in Darwinism, how will we live in houses–or are houses strictly inevitable from Darwinism?

This is the argument that the argument from purity really has no validity.

Finally, I just want to touch on Dave’s contention that Animal Husbandry provides the same value for death as Darwinism. We’ll use Darwin’s innocent words: “Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”

He doesn’t say “Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to not slay his worst animals.” Schloss, who Dave suggests as my rebutter, gives no evidence that animals were wantonly killed for being inferior, instead both Darwin and Schloss witness effects not of death but restriction from breeding. All horses die. The value is the elimination from the stock.

It’s a subtle difference, no doubt. But there definitely is no value in extinction as improvement. And neither does Schloss touch on this (so he can’t rebut me on this). Nature does not pen a creature and restrict its contact in the way that vigilant humans can. Instead nature must rely on features that make animal undesirable to other members of the species, defects that create sterility, or removal by death. Death is probably the most common and universal factor.

Of course again, 1) the methodological critique is primary. 2) The NAZI argument is properly an “if anything” provisional argument. And the analysis on purity is only a strong argument against the non-pure argument. In addition, the bit about animal husbandry only addresses the disconnect I see, and makes animal husbandry an insufficient parallel to Darwinism in promoting a rational, objective, scientific value for death and dying out of inferior strains.

Dave –Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Darwinian evolution was a neccessary factor in the holocaust and it’s right for us to point this out. Our opponents often argue that ID is a neccessary factor in the establishment of a theocracy and it’s right of them to point this out.

And that wouldn’t be unfair. Of course, it wouldn’t be unfair to then point out that a theocracy would be almost invariably superior to the Holocaust.

I guess we ought to put in the caveat that it would demand upon the values upon which the theocracy was based. If the society worshiped a god that demanded human sacrifice and warred on its neighbors to obtain such sacrifice, as per say the Aztecs, then they might match the Nazis and communists as undesirable rulers/neighbors.

Now, you could come back with the claim that a non-theistic society with the proper values wouldn’t be a bad place to live but:

–Every atheistic society that has existed has been a nightmare

–The values implied in Darwinism don’t lend itself to happy, altruistic place.