Racism and Evolutionary Thought

“The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.”

“No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man…It is simply incredible {to think} that…he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.”

“The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and the Mongolian, as may be proved by an examination not only of the brain, of the hair, of the bodily characters, such as teeth, the genitalia, the sense organs, but of the instincts, the intelligence. The standard of intelligence of the average Negro is similar to that of the eleven-year-old youth of the species Homo sapiens.”

“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law [natural selection] did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all…. If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.” (Mein Kampf)

“If the unfit survived indefinitely, they would continue to ‘infect’ the fit with their less fit genes. The result is that the more fit genes would be diluted and compromised by the less fit genes, and evolution could not take place. The concept of evolution demands death. Death is thus as natural to evolution as it is foreign to biblical creation. The Bible teaches that death is a ‘foreigner,’ a condition superimposed upon humans and nature after creation.”

“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can women – whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands…We may also infer…[that] the average of mental power in man must be above that of women.”

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

~ Now mind you, not all naturalists are racists or killers of the less fortunate… however, this is a logical outworking of philosophical (metaphysical) naturalism;

~ It is significant to note that some of the Crusaders and others who used force to further their creeds in the name of God were acting in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ.

http://www.creationresearch.net/secure/prodrace.htm

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

Article: http://www.blacksforlife.net/abortion_industry_and_planned.htm
Home: http://www.blacksforlife.net/

Article: http://grundmann4congress.com/Stop_Government_Funded_Racism.htm

Article: http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/1333/absanger.htm

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

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It is fascinating that until the late 1800s most Christian theologians used the Bible to sanction slavery and that, in America, many Southern clergy took up arms against the "infidel" Northern clergy because they believed the Yankee Christians were rejecting the clear truth of the Bible! In this case the sourthern Christians were the Biblical conservatives and their northern counterparts were the liberals.

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“We need historical perspective. Yes, slavery is America’s horror and shame. But slavery, unfortunately, appears throughout the whole of human history. Europeans enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved Asians. Those we refer to as Native-Americans enslaved other Native-Americans. Black Africans enslaved other black Africans. Slave traders brought more African slaves to the Middle-East and to South America than to Colonial America. Yet this country fought a civil war that resulted in the eradication of slavery, no other nation can say that.” Larry Elder, Ten Things You Can’t Say In America, (St. Martins Press; New York: NY [2000], p. 9.)

“Slaves developed a communal life too, much of it built around the two central institutions of the black church and black family. For a people oppressed, a deep religious faith helped to create autonomous spiritual space that even the master had to respect, and it offered hope that the travails of the slaves would someday end….” D’Souza continues, “The slaves embraced the white man’s Christianity…. Identif[ying] with Christ as the suffering victim who would rise again” Dinesh D’ Souza, The End of Racism, (The Free Press; New York: N.Y. [1995], p. 96.)

Roots has a white man leading a slave raid in West Africa, where the hero Kunta Kinte was captured, looking bewildered at the chains put on him as he was led away in bondage. The village elders were likewise bewildered as to what these white men were doing, carrying their people away. In reality, West Africa was a center of slave trading before the first white man arrived there -- and slavery continues in parts of it to this very moment. Africans sold vast numbers of other Africans to Europeans. But they hardly let Europeans go running around in their territory, catching people willy-nilly. Because of the false picture of history presented by Roots and by other sources, last year we had the farce of the president of Nigeria making demands on the United States because of the enslavement of people whom his own countrymen had enslaved, and on behalf of a country where slavery still persists, more than a century after emancipation has occurred throughout the Western world. Roots also feeds the gross misconception that slavery was about white people enslaving black people. The tragedy of slavery was of a far greater magnitude than that. People of every race and color were both slaves and enslavers, for thousands of years, all around the world. Europeans enslaved other Europeans for centuries before the first African was brought across the Atlantic. Asians enslaved other Asians, as well as whatever Europeans they could get hold of. Slavery existed in the Western Hemisphere before Columbus ever got here.” ( http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell013002.asp )

“But it was the southern democrats who formed the line to defend Jim Crow. Georgia governor Lester Maddox famously brandished ax handles to prevent blacks from patronizing his restaurant. He was a democrat. Alabama governor George Wallace stood in front of the Alabama schoolhouse in 1963 and thundered, ‘Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.’ He was a democrat. Birmingham Public Safety commissioner Eugene ‘Bull’ Conner sicced dogs and turned fire hoses on black civil rights demonstrations [that were manned primarily by Christians]. He was a democrat. In 1954, Arkansas governor Orville Faubus tried to prevent the desegregation of a Little Rock public high school. He was Democrat. President Eisenhower, a Republican, sent in federal troops to prevent violence and enforce a court order desegregating the school. As a percentage of their respective parties, more republicans voted for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Democrats! A Republican president, Richard Nixon, not John F. Kennedy or Lyndon B. Johnson, instituted the first affirmative action program with goals and timetables…. And it was during the Kennedy administration that FBI head J. Edgar Hoover sought and received permission to wiretap Martin Luther King. The person granting him permission? Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.” (Larry Elder, Ten Things You Can’t Say In America, (St. Martins Press; New York: NY [2000], pp. 14-16)

“President Kennedy avoided engagement with the civil rights movement for as long as possible…. Tellingly, it had been Vice President Richard Nixon who fought for the 1957 Civil Rights Act in the Senate, not Kennedy.” (Kenneth J. Heinman, God Is a Conservative: Religion, Politics, and Morality in Contemporary America, New York Univ; New York: NY [1998], pp. 34-35)

“…can a nation rise above the injustices of its origins and, by its moral purpose and performance, atone for them? All nations are born in war, conquest, and crime, usually concealed by the obscurity of a distant past. The United States, from its earliest colonial times, won its title-deeds in the full blaze of recorded history, and the stains on them are there for all to see and censure: the dispossession of a indigenous people, and the securing of self-sufficiency through the sweat and pain of an enslaved race. In the judgmental scales of history, such grievous wrongs must be balanced by the erection of a society dedicated to justice and fairness.” (Harper-Collins; New York: NY [1997], p. 3.)

“One night, after I had spoken to a church group about the liberal contradiction, a young woman approached me with fire in her eyes. ‘Are you saying,’ she demanded, ‘that you cannot be a liberal and be a Christian?’ ‘On the contrary,’ I replied, ‘I don’t think you can be a Christian and not be a liberal, if by liberal you mean being compassionate for the underprivileged, treating everyone equally because they are equal in the eyes of God, and being a good steward of Gods earth. But if you mean by liberal that there are no absolutes, or that we may take away people’s rights in order to ensure progress, then I’m afraid you’re caught in the liberal contradiction.’

The Judeo-Christian world view has plenty of room for compassion, tolerance, and individual rights, but it has no place for either relativism or progressivism. Judeo-Christian theology offers a distinct alternative to the progressive vision. According to Genesis, man was created in the image of God – so he will always strive to do better – but he also has a fallen, sinful nature. History tells us that this sinful nature is not improving as man grows in knowledge and technical capability [or monetarily]…. the greatest flaw in contemporary liberalism is its failure to take this aspect of human experience into account. The progressive vision requires a belief in the inherent goodness of man…. This flawed vision leaves the liberal perplexed over the continuing ‘rebirth’ of racism, corruption, and other human ills. The progressive sees racism and other evils as stages to move beyond; they are ‘national problems’ to be solved, not human problems to be guarded against and punished. In fact, these evils are often made possible by the odd progressive belief that man will stop being bad if he is no longer restricted from being bad.” (The Assualt: Liberalism’s Attack on Religion, Freedom, and Democracy, Huntington House; Lafayette: LA [1995], pp. 30-31)

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition…. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity…. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”

“We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction. Ethics stems from human need and interest.”

“There is no God and no soul. Hence, there are no needs for props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable [i.e. unchangeable] truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or permanent moral absolutes.”

“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner.” (Not making any reference to the Clinton administration whatsoever)

“I have spent well-nigh fifty tears working on the history of our Revolution. In the process, I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own towards the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were to be asked today the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that has swallowed up some sixty-million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’”

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

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the difference being that evolution is a religious belief

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Are we talking Biological Evolution? If so, I can't see how one would treat it as a religion.

Blessings,
Paul


"The Creator's power (by which I mean the capacity to influence the world) is made manifest paradoxically in the vulnerable defenselessness of crucified man."
-John F. Haught

First, Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations. .....Darwin provided a scientific foundation for ethics. To borrow Darwin's phrase, there is grandeur in this view of life. New modes of thinking have been, and are being, evolved. Almost every component in modern man's belief system is somehow affected by Darwinian principles.

"Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion -- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint -- and Mr. Gish [a proponent of Creation Science] is but one of many to make it -- the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today." (emphasis added) – This quote is used again below… FYI

“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion — a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint — and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it — the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today…. Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.” (Michael Ruse, professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph, Canada [recently moved to Florida], “How Evolution Became a Religion: Creationists Correct?” National Post, pp. B1, B3, B7 May 13, 2000.)
What Can It Explain?
To summarize what I have already written, the modern position of the synthetic theory is: the struggle for existence plays no part in evolution (from a previous debate years ago on the www.). The direction of evolution is determined solely by the characteristics of those animals and plants that are successful breeders. We are unable to say anything about why a particular characteristic might favor, or prejudice, the survival of any particular animal or plant. (If you wish, I can post this paper as well.)

Natural Selection
Perhaps an even more damaging criticism of the concept of natural selection is that – limited though its content may be – it is so nebulous that it can be made to fit a whole range of mutually contradictory outcomes of the evolutionary process. Natural selection is entirely compatible with the notion that all organisms in stable environments have reached a fitness peak on which they will remain forever. At the same time natural selection is entirely compatible with the idea that all organisms should regress to the safest common denominator, a single-celled organism, and thus become optimally adapted to every habitat.

In precisely the same way, because of its infinitely elastic (explained more later) definition, natural selection can be made to explain opposed and even mutually contradictory individual adaptations. For example, Darwinists claim that camouflage coloring and mimicry (as in leaf insects) is adaptive and will be selected for, yet they also claim that warning coloration (the wasp’s stripes) is adaptive and will be selected for. Yet if both propositions are true, any kind of coloration will have some adaptive value, whether it is partly camouflaged or partly warning, and will be selected for. As a theory, then, natural selection makes no unique predictions but instead is used retrospectively to explain every outcome: And a theory that explains everything in this way, explains nothing. Natural selection is not a mechanism: it is a rationalization after the fact.

Natural selection is the process by which the most successful populate the world, and the less successful breeders die out – regardless of their respective characteristics.[lsit]“The giraffe has a long neck because…?”

“A mutation doesn’t produce major new raw material. You don’t make a new species by mutating the species…. That’s a common idea people have; that evolution is due to random mutations. A mutation is NOT the cause of evolutionary change. Something else than natural selection brings about species at new levels, trends and directions.”

“I think it was Medawar who said that one thing about the theory of evolution [and he quoted Popper] that it is not falsifiable, that whatever happens you can explain it. I think you have an example here.”

“It would seem to me that there have been endless statements made and the only thing I have clearly agreed with through the whole day [referring to the Wistar Symposium] has been the statement made by Karl Popper, namely, that the real inadequacy of evolution, esthetically and scientifically, is that you can explain anything you want by changing your variable around.”

“This cannot be done in evolution, taking it in its broad sense, and this is really all I meant when I called it tautologous in the first place. It can, indeed, explain anything. You may be ingenious or not in proposing a mechanism which looks plausible to human beings… but it is still unfalsifiable theory.”

“We believe that is not conceivable. In fact if we try to stimulate such a situation by making changes randomly at the typographic level (by letters or blocks, the size of the unit does not matter) on computer programs we find that we have no chance (i.e., less than one in ten to the thousandth power) even to see what the modified program would compute: it just jams. Thus… we believe that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology.”

“In consequence, the theory has been modified to the point that virtually every formulation of the principles of evolution is a tautology…. It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws – physical, physicochemical, and biological…. In summary, it is our contention that the principle task of the evolutionist is to discover and examine mechanisms which constrain the variation of phenotypes to a very small class and to relegate the notion of randomness to a minor non-crucial role.”

“It follows that any controversy over the question whether events which are in principle unrepeatable and unique ever do occur cannot be decided by science; it would be a metaphysical controversy.”

“The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory – is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation – both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.”

“The great body of work derived from Charles Darwin’s revolutionary 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, is under increasing attack – and not just from creationists…. So heated is the debate that one Darwinian says there are times when he thinks about going into a field with more intellectual honesty: the used car business.”

“If most evolutionary changes occur during speciation events and if speciation events are largely random, natural selection, long viewed as a process guiding evolutionary change, cannot play a significant role in determining the overall course of evolution.” (at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 72:640-660, [1975], p.648)

“Adaptation leads to natural selection, natural selection does not necessarily lead to greater adaptation ... Natural Selection operates essentially to enable the organisms to maintain their state of adaptation rather than improve it ... Natural selection over the long run does not seem to improve a species’ chances of survival, but simply enables it to ‘track,’ or keep up with, the constantly changing environment” (Sept. 1978)

“Mutations, in time, occur incoherently. They are not complementary to one another, nor are they cumulative in successive generations toward a given direction. They modify what pre-exists, but they do so in disorder.” (Academic Press, New York [1977], pp. 97, 98)

“In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutation plus natural selection — quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology.” (Janus: A Summing Up, Random House, New York [1978], pp. 184-185)

One asks: “who survives?”
The answer: “the fittest.”
So one asks: “who is the fittest?”
The answer: “those who survive.”

“One of the most frequent objections against the theory of natural selection is that it is a sophisticated tautology… What is most unsettling is that some evolutionary biologists have no qualms about proposing tautologies as explanations. One would immediately reject any lexicographer who tried to define a word by the same word, or a thinker who merely restated his proposition, or any other instance of gross redundancy; yet no one seems scandalized that men of science should be satisfied with a major principle which is no more than a tautology.”

“There, you do come to what is, in effect, a vacuous statement: ‘Natural selection is that some things leave more offspring than others;’ and you ask, ‘which leaves more offspring than others;’ and it is ‘those who leave more offspring;’ and there is nothing more to it than that,”

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. [take note that it says especially, but not mandatory] when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. (emphasis added)

“I am convinced that the battleground for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith; a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preacher, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subjects they teach regardless of the educational level – preschool daycare or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new – the rotting corpse of Christianity together with all its adjacent evils and misery…”

“It is abundantly clear that the petitioner’s real objective is to drive every concept of religion out of the public school system. If God were removed from the classroom, there would remain only atheism [secular humanism: a religion]. The word is derived from the Greek atheos, meaning ‘without a God.’ Thus the beliefs of virtually all pupils would be subordinated to those of Madalyn Murray.”

UNKNOWN CHEMICALS
in the primordial past… through…

UNKNOWN PROCESSES
That no longer exist… produced…

UNKNOWN LIFE FORMS
That are not to be found… but could, through…

UNKNOWN REPRODUCTION METHODS
Spawn new life… in an…

UNKNOWN OCEANIC SOUP COMPLEX
… at an…

UNSPECIFIED TIME and PLACE

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

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But, for my part, I didn't see Chuck3371 as denying that Christians have often fought for civil rights etc. Ithink he was merely making sure that you weren't doing a "guilt by association" sort of thing -- which you quickly clarified. In other words, you may have over-answered Chuck. Still, I'm glad you did because it was informative.

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And as I had pointed out from personal experience, the South had segregated churches in the 60s. Why, if it is anti-Christian? Were they simply mistaken, or was a new Biblical verse discovered? If the USA was founded as a "Christian" nation, how could slavery and racism ever have been a part of its founding? There were no Darwinists during the revolutionary war. Why has racism persevered so long in the South, allegedly the center of true Biblical Christianity?”

The statement that slave ownership was accepted as moral? And religions, (Christianity?), used texts to justify atrocities and were accepted as moral, are false statements. Yes, there have been people in power who have done these things, but, for instance, Fox’s Book of Martyrs shows how many true Christians died trying to defend, show the proper use – and misuse – of scripture. These are counted as moral heroes! The Founding Fathers hated slavery, but if there is no moral basis outside cultural morals (i.e. the majority decides), then slavery could be allowed as legal, and no moral outrage against slavery could be justified! It could be justified that the ownership of a less evolved (evolution) species could benefit mankind in its existence and survival. This could then said to be more humane than what Margaret Sanger wanted to do, eradicate them altogether (Miss Sanger is the founder of Planned Parenthood).

All the names above, in the first post, that are in bold type, are Christians. The people running the Underground Railroad, for instance, were almost all Christians. Almost all moral reformers throughout history have either been guided by the Judeo-Christian religion or have been influenced by it. Why? Because our (Judeo-Christian) moral code will never change, and the founder of it (that is, the moral code) lived it.

This passage appeared in Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence: “He [the king of Britain] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere…. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.” Jefferson had blacks in mind when he was penning the Declaration!

Some more quotes on the matter of slavery:

George Washington: “There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery].”

John Adams: “Every measure of prudence, therefor, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States…. I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in… abhorrence.”

Benjamin Franklin: “Slavery is… an atrocious debasement of human nature.”

Alexander Hamilton: “The laws of certain states… give an ownership in the service of Negroes as personal property…. But being men, by the laws of God and nature [states were voting as a majority, but the moral code of God – unchanging code – says the states were wrong! This is the difference between a democracy and a republic.], they were capable of acquiring liberty – and when the captor in war… thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable.”

James Madison: “We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”

“When you see a sundial or a water-clock [Paley’s early “watchmaker”], you see that it tells time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers? Our friend Posidonius as you know has recently made a globe which in its revolution shows the movements of the sun and stars and planets, by day and night, just as they appear in the sky. Now if someone were to take this globe and show it to the people of Britain or Scythia [barbarians at this time] would a single one of those barbarians fail to see that it was the product of a conscious intelligence.” (Cicero, 106 B.C.–43 B.C.)

Cicero (106–43 BC), used this concept in his book De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) to challenge the evolutionary ideas of the philosophers of his day.

The two main schools of philosophy then were Epicureanism and Stoicism. The Epicureans sought happiness through bodily pleasures and freedom from pain and anxiety. The two chief causes of anxiety were fear of the gods and fear of death, so Epicurus sought to nullify both of these by teaching an evolutionary atomic theory.

He denied that there was any purpose in nature, because everything was composed of particles (atoma: atoms), all falling downwards. He said that these sometimes spontaneously “swerved” to coalesce and form bodies — non-living, living, human, and divine. The gods were made of finer atoms than humankind. They did not create the world or have any control over it, so they were not concerned with human affairs, and there was therefore no need for man to fear them. At death, the soul disintegrated and became non-existent, so there was no need to fear death or the prospect of judgment after death.

Cicero used the Stoic character in his book to refute these ideas with arguments from design, aimed to show that the universe is governed by an intelligent designer. He argued that a conscious purpose was needed to express art (e.g. to make a picture or a statue) and so, because nature was more perfect than art, nature showed purpose also. He reasoned that the movement of a ship was guided by skilled intelligence, and a sundial or water clock told the time by design rather than by chance. He said that even the barbarians of Britain or Scythia could not fail to see that a model which showed the movements of the sun, stars and planets was the product of conscious intelligence.

Cicero continued his challenge to the evolutionism of Epicurus by marvelling that anyone could persuade himself that chance collisions of particles could form anything as beautiful as the world. He said that this was on a par with believing that if the letters of the alphabet were thrown on the ground often enough they would spell out the Annals of Ennius.

And he asked: if chance collisions of particles could make a world, why then cannot they build much less difficult objects, like a colonnade, a temple, a house, or a city?

“If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.”

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen." ~ An adaptation of Hebrews 11:1

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I partially agree with you Dr. Boyd, however, the Neo-Darwinists (which are shrinking, but still make up a large proportion of the academic field) and the Punctuationists are all behind the “African Eve” (Mitochondrial Eve) theory putting early man coming from the heart of Africa. And still today the drawings of the supposed missing links as dark in color as well as brutish, are all, to me at least, still a sign of the underlying current that the native-Africans are somehow less evolved than even the “Mongols.” Science text books may not overtly state as such now, but the idea that the black-African woman is the mother of the human race is – again, to me – very demeaning… in that it pre-supposes that the Caucasian race is further advanced in evolutionary terms.

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“Now mind you, not all naturalists are racists or killers of the less fortunate… however, this is a logical outworking of philosophical (metaphysical) naturalism;”

"Evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links not seen."

“The problem with creation is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult, and left untried.”