PIPE-DREAMS OF THE “REICH”: Romanticizing Nationalism in Germany
PIPE-DREAMS OF THE “REICH”: Romanticizing Nationalism in Germany
by Constantin von Hoffmeister
“This is the sort of modernity that made us ill, - we grew sick on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous filth of the modern Yes and No.”
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Antichrist”
After the defeat of the Napoleonic Empire, most Central European nations embarked on a quest for sovereignty and freedom (from foreign oppressors). This quest most often manifested itself in a pathological glorification of one’s own people, disregarding the fact that the propagators of this new kind of nationalism implied that it was merely a common language that constituted one’s nation – thereby completely disregarding or ignoring the ethnic bonds various nations shared with each other (for example, Germany and France – both once ruled by one emperor, Charlemagne or Karl). This kind of silliness certainly contributed a large amount of artificially created (stirred up by self-proclaimed elitists within the respective nations) hostility between once mutually tolerant European neighbors. One could argue that the fratricidal war of 1914-1918 was a direct result of the various European states’ unchaining themselves from Napoleon’s benevolent yoke.
As Michael Stuermer writes in “The German Empire,” “Altogether, the political and social revolutions of 1848 and the industrial revolution had challenged the old established order of state and society” (23). Obviously, this statement implies – quite correctly – that the so-called “revolutionary” (“reactionary” would be a more adequate term, meaning that the “new nationalists” tried to feed off the ideological chaos that was unleashed by the French Revolution with its guillotine-terror) nationalist movement in the German states was essentially nothing more than a destructive outbreak of jingoistic emotions – fuelled by the fires of perceived resentment against “stronger” and more unified neighbors (such as France or Austria-Hungary). Naturally, one has to keep in mind that “the shockwaves of the French Revolution and Napoleon” (Stuermer 23) were the initial trigger moments in that all-pervasive European rebellion against the established natural order of things (the term “natural” connoting “traditional”).
Matthew Levinger argues in “Enlightened Nationalism” that “numerous historians have observed that bourgeois popular nationalism in nineteenth-century Germany strongly emphasized the importance of collective solidarity within the nation” (100). This quote sums up the quite ludicrous notion that such an abstract concept as “collective solidarity” even existed in a group that defined its cohesiveness on a purely linguistic base. One has to keep in mind that language (as a concept) is flexible and far from concrete – some German dialects, such as “plattdeutsch” in the far north, could even be considered closer to Dutch than High German. Basing a feeling (intellectually concocted, no doubt) of mutual affection between members of the same “nation” on their linguistic affinities seems therefore a bit far-fetched.
Considering that most Germans were of the lower or middle classes of society, it is not surprising that the Prussian King decided to ignore the ignoble nationalist rants made at the Frankfurt Assembly in 1848. After all, how could society not suffer with the implementation of the revolutionaries’ demands? European life had already deteriorated enough through a series of bloody battles whose outcome was nothing less than a complete re-organization of the continent in favor of the petty (nationalist) forces that Napoleon (who triggered the martial campaigns in first place) tried to dismantle by becoming undisputed ruler of Central Europe. If the Prussian King had acquiesced and accepted the arrogant demands of the petty rabble in Frankfurt, he would have opened the door to all kinds of (essentially proto-Bolshevist) measures that would have been implemented to undermine the divine authority of the crown and the blessed rule of the various estates.
One of the measures that most (romantically inclined) nationalists in Germany wanted to see installed was the equalization of all people in the German-speaking realm under the autocratic rule of self-proclaimed “representatives” of the people (in a parliament where the will of the people was supposed to be represented). A prime example of this egalitarian madness is Friedrich Ludwig Jahn’s “Turner Gesellschaft.” Levinger argues that this movement “was intended to function as a public spectacle, as a festival that would constitute the nation as a fraternity of equals” (107). It goes without saying that Jahn’s pipe-dream was just that – a dream, or maybe even a vision of megalomaniacal proportions (reflecting Jahn’s own aspirations, meaning his inflated sense of self-identification with the ideal [both physically and mentally] “German,” onto an entire people – in this case, the German “Volk,” an organism that was supposed to be cohesive and like-minded).
Stuermer exposes the lyrics of Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s poem, “Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles” (“Germany, Germany above all”), for what they really were – namely, “pure German idealism: the idea that Germany, an open and just society lubricated by Riesling [a fine wine, really], full of song and beautiful German womanhood, should reign supreme over the 38 or so sovereignties loosely united in the German Confederation…” (16) What Stuermer forgets to mention is that this kind of “German idealism” was the ideal breeding ground for an inverted sense of nationhood – the notion that the people, allegedly “equal” and ecstatic in an alcohol-fuelled paradise, would happily cooperate in any task that was set before them. In contrast, the traditional notion of a nation was based on the ideal of a “universal hierarchy,” meaning that people essentially were NOT equal, and that they therefore deserved to be put in their naturally assigned place (by birth).
Levinger argues that the world view of the romantic nationalists was deeply entrenched in irrational religious fervor. He states that “rather than articulating secular ideals, they presented an expressly Christian – and specifically Protestant pietist – vision of the national community” (98). This, of course, coincides with the argument that the German nationalists were – in essence – nothing more than illusionists, obsessed with an imagined “grande” idea and encouraged by their own pre-conceived notions of Levantine spirituality. It is therefore quite obvious that the nationalists’ aspirations were diametrically opposed to the welfare of the people as a whole. One cannot blame the nationalists for this faux pas, however, since their belief system must have been rather deeply engrained. Hence, one could argue that their failings were unintentional ones since they were indoctrinated by society itself to believe that Christianity is ideologically compatible with the German (or European) character.
On the other hand, Stuermer states that throughout “Europe the reaction to Napoleon’s conquest was to be the rise of modern nationalism as a means to reconstitute society and to give expression to popular forces” (15). One must wonder what exactly was “modern” about the rise of nationalism in Germany when one reviews the backward nature of the revolutionaries’ outlook. The propagation of an alien religion (Christianity, essentially a desert religion) certainly does not seem to be an adequate asset of modernity. This kind of mentality breeds nothing but a reversal in the role that civilization is usually ascribed to (an arbiter of progress). If the romantic nationalists thought that the wholesale introduction of religious fervor would breed sentimental sentiments regarding one’s “Volk,” they might have been right, considering that the masses in Germany actually DID subscribe to the religion that worships a (probably fictitious) man nailed to a stick. It is only in hindsight that it becomes apparent that this kind of nationalism was paving a one-way path to spiritual (in the indigenous/European sense) annihilation, and therefore the soul of the “Volk” was lured into a limbo of passive acceptance (of the status quo).
According to Levinger, “popular nationalism was an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon” (100). This shows that the adherents of the nationalist ideology were hardly in the position to speak for the German people as a whole. After all, how could urban admonishers (as the nationalists undoubtedly were) be in the position to speak for the majority that dwelt in the countryside? The true/qualified propagandists of “blood and soil” could only have been the ones that were agriculturally involved, but this segment of society did not bother with the intellectual gymnastics that the “educated” town-dwelling nationalists were preoccupied with.
It is safe to assume that the nationalist movement in Germany was nothing more than an outbreak of the same kind of radical elements that the European powers had such problems in dealing with after Robespierre cut off all those heads (of the French elite). One does not need to take a huge leap in trying to imagine what the world would look like today if the nationalists would not have succeeded in implementing their mad desire for “home rule.” As Stuermer says, “Both the French Revolution and the ‘wars of liberation,’ as the uprising against Napoleon was called, gave a boost to revolutionary idealism” (15). It is certainly fitting that Stuermer puts the “wars of liberation” in quotation marks since the term itself exudes a significant amount of irony. The real liberator of Europe was Napoleon, in the sense that he tried to unite the continent and therefore make it indefinitely stronger and eventually more just (with the ruthless implementation of the Napoleonic Code). The “revolutionary idealists,” however, were nothing but a band of rascals that tried to cash in on the results of the failed experiment of the once glorious French Emperor.
Bibliography
Levinger, Matthew. “Enlightened Nationalism.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Stuermer, Michael. “The German Empire.” New York: Random House, 2000.
Posted by Constantin von Hoffmeister on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 10:35 AM in
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Comments:
Posted by Fred Scrooby on January 27, 2009, 01:07 PM | #
Blah-blah-blah, Constantin. Yawn ...............
CvH is as fervent a German anti-nationalist as Goebbels was a German nationalist. I support CvH because he’s a strong opponent of the current Eurospherewide governmental drive to genocide all people of European ancestry. But as for his equally strong German anti-nationalism: that is a defect.
The academic movement that claims nationalism only began with this or that political event in the 1800s (a largely Jewish and communist movement, for obvious reasons) is wrong: look back at every single war, uprising, and armed conflict in Europe’s history and you’ll see race-based (with religio-linguistic-cultural overlay) nationalistic forces at work whether at the town, local, regional, or multiregional = national, level.
This has been so ever since The 300 went to their deaths standing their ground before the Persian, nay since way before The 300: since Homer. And that’s only what’s written down — doubltess for ages theretofore as well.
Posted by Fred Scrooby on January 27, 2009, 02:32 PM | #
Also, Constantin cites the Revolution of 1848 but let’s get down to brass tacks: what exactly was the Jewish role in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848? There have been authoritative voices who’ve said or intimated it was significant, Benjamin Disraeli’s, for example, as regards the revolution of 1848, and if I remember right, Goethe’s as regards 1830. I’d be interested to know what Nesta Webster said about it.
Posted by Homelander on January 27, 2009, 03:14 PM | #
I dunno? Seems like it was the mildewed multi-ethnic empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary that were the real catalysts for the first war...plus the wannabe multi-ethnic Greater Serbia (even recently a problem). Bristly as their relations were, one can easliy imagine England, France and Germany keeping the peace amongst just themselves.
And one can scarce imagine the second war absent the Soviet Union...another failed multi-ethnic conglomeration.
Since 1945 the discrete nation-states of western Europe seem increasingly less likely to ever war with one another - and since 1989, joined by most nations in the east, since Russia became just a country. Pushed to the brink, Russia and Ukraine just don’t want to fight. Not so with Georgia and Chechnya...but then, are THEY white? Placed within borders that reasonably correspond to language-ethnic lines, white people don’t fight each other. Who needs all these multi-national empires to keep the peace?
Posted by Guessedworker on January 27, 2009, 06:42 PM | #
Homelander: Placed within borders that reasonably correspond to language-ethnic lines, white people don’t fight each other.
Peoples do not wish to fight one another. Wars are rarely - very rarely - of the peoples. They are of the elites.
Two points of interest to me arising from Constantin’s essay:-
1. The Europeanness of Christianity needs some thought given to it. The case for the essential alienness of the creed itself, with its one god, its division into in- and out-groups, its rewards for the former and punishment for the latter, and its promise of a Second Coming and the advent of heaven on earth, is strong. But, as Fr.John has argued here, Europeans took this Jewish model and imbued it with their own spiritual longing, built their great stone monuments to it, and wore out the flags on their floors. In other words, the practise has, through the agencies of time and devotion, deepened into something European.
Speaking as a person condemned to look upon faith from the outside, I find utterly arresting the intellect, the aesthetic and the handiwork of the cathedral builders (all but a tiny number of them unknown to us today, for they left no signature of their own on the divine, as they left none at Carnac or Stonehenge). But I am moved even more by the stillness in the air of a small country church ... the coldness, too, which is not a commendation to stay in winter, and yet one stays ... the gravestones outside, many with their inscription washed away by centuries of English rain ... the yew hedge at the gate ... All this is so unutterably English to me, I cannot say that Christianity has not been purchased by us in large part. It has, but at the cost to ourselves of our natural faith, and of a committment to universalism, and of an intellectual rebellion that eventually brought us here, to our present dilemma.
Since our dilemma is existential, that price was not worth paying. Christianity, along with every god and goddess that ever materialised inside the human skull, is worth less than the English people, and less than European Man.
2. Constantin seems much taken with the idea of the strong leader welding his forces into some vast and machine-like instrument of history. We had Stalin. Now we have Napoleon. It is the English way to suspect strong leaders and history. We tend to dislike grand visions and to distrust other peoples’ politics generally. We tend to go to war with them, if bidden. We tend to win.
What this means is that the Anglospheric preference is for the small of scale and the reflective of self, with all the historical stultification that implies. We are a conservative people. In a place very close to our hearts we simply don’t believe in massive programmes of human progress.
For my part, I am not convinced that nation as viewed through the Romantic lens, with all its connotations of an imagined German pastoral past, is really all that connected to the nationalism we should be building today. I agree with Constantin that there is a marked artificiality in the nationalist forms which grew out of the Romantic period. But then, as with the Christian problem, we are mightily self-estranged and it is difficult for us to know where to look for our truer selves.
Finding that, in essence, is the key to everything else. It is what we are looking for, even if we do not know it now.
Posted by Gudmund on January 27, 2009, 06:54 PM | #
Guessedworker says: For my part, I am not convinced that nation as viewed through the Romantic lens, with all its connotations of an imagined German pastoral past, is really all that connected to the nationalism we should be building today.
GW, I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t be obtuse. Please enlighten us as to what modern nationalism should mean, as you see it. Certainly, with the exception of Celts and Slavs, the history of the West is dominated by those of Germanic heritage! If we cannot build some sort of Romantic basis for our ideology, what can we do? You often drop tantalizing hints at what you mean, but your forthrightness is often found wanting…
No offense, I just wish we could be a tad more straightforward, here of all places…
Posted by Dasein on January 27, 2009, 07:15 PM | #
The Europeanness of Christianity needs some thought given to it. The case for the essential alienness of the creed itself, with its one god, its division into in- and out-groups, its rewards for the former and punishment for the latter, and its promise of a Second Coming and the advent of heaven on earth, is strong. But, as Fr.John has argued here, Europeans took this Jewish model and imbued it with their own spiritual longing, built their great stone monuments to it, and wore out the flags on their floors. In other words, the practise has, through the agencies of time and devotion, deepened into something European. (Guessedworker)
Perhaps others have read it (I imagine Fr. John likely has). James Russel (who is on editorial board of TOQ) wrote a book whose title explains the central thesis: The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity. I still haven’t read it; it’s on my shelf, and my plan is to read it next (the Bishop Williamson posts have inspired me). I am curious to what extent the Evangelical movement (which is perhaps the apotheosis of Judeophilia) has sought to rid Christianity of those early European additions that tuned the Faith to the Western soul. Perhaps this process began with the Reformation. Despite Luther’s animus to the Jews, it seems that the reformation was a prerequisite for Jewish ascendancy.
Posted by Dasein on January 27, 2009, 07:43 PM | #
If I understand Levinger’s view, Romantic Nationalism was, like communism, an attempt to secularize the Christian faith. To blame Christianity itself for the end result is perhaps disingenuous. He who drives his car underwater is to blame when the engine seizes. As a recent quote from Bishop Williamson makes clear, there is no basis in the Christian faith for annulling earthly hierarchy:
St Paul frames the equality of different human races, classes and sexes within Christ. In other words the equality is before God, and will only be fulfilled in Heaven.
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 27, 2009, 09:55 PM | #
German history consists of the five great revolts, according to Peter Viereck, “against the...universal legalism of the Roman Empire and the universal absolutes of Christianity.
1. AD 9, the Roman world empire pushed back to the Rhine
2. The defence of their god Wotan against “Charles the Saxon-Slaughterer”.
3. Luther and in particular Ulrich von Hutton’s tribal German patriotism
4. With the collapse of Renaissance Italy, France more than any other nation embodied Christian and Roman universalism. Thus the 19th century German resistance.
5.Nazism
Posted by Guessedworker on January 27, 2009, 09:59 PM | #
Dasein,
My experience of faith-geners is that they will try at every opportunity to spiritualise everything. They are unwilling to let anything pass without giving it a teleological spin. Indeed, it is possible to argue that not only liberalism and its counter - nationalism - have been subjected to this treatment and operate as variations on a religious theme, but the whole of the Idealist continental tradition.
On this reading, the fissure between the Ideal and the Analytical is the same as that between faith and secularism, religion and science, beauty and truth, etc. It all reflects that first genetic variation that introduced the sense of the divine to the battle for human survival.
Such a reading would imply that the most avowed secularist philosopher who nonetheless attests to Idealism in some form thinks and writes in service to a teleological aesthetic, be it progressive or palingenetic.
It’s an interesting idea.
Posted by Guessedworker on January 27, 2009, 10:22 PM | #
Gudmund,
Obtuse, never. Opaque, possibly.
The imagined German pastoral past was the instrument of the 19th Century Völkisch movement. The palingenetic tendencies in Völkischness were rather limited, as befits a movement in search of racial being. It passes the obvious to say that the movement never located its lodestar. It may never have asked, as we do today, whether the nature of modernity and the psychological damage it wrought was just too much for the generations of that age to emerge with sufficient self-knowledge in tact. It may be that it was never possible, even in the late 19th Century, for the sons and daughters of an industrialised urban society to contact the rude realities of the natural German psyche. The effort to do so, though, was surely a fine thing.
We should not follow that path today. There are some doing so - one thinks of the Runists. But we can accept the Völkischers “results”, it seems to me, avoid that kind of dangerous self-indulgence, and find another way forward.
Posted by Homelander on January 27, 2009, 10:43 PM | #
Guessedworker
Surely it makes a difference what kind of society an elite is invested in? The relatively unitary states of England, France and Imperial Germany probably wouldn’t - left to themselves - have fallen into a general war in August 1914. But the clap-trap empires of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Serbia necessarily had existential interests in Balkan supremacy. However heart-sick they may have felt in Vienna, the ruling elites believed (probably correctly) that the continued existence of their empire required that the provocation of the Arch-Duke’s assasination be answered.
The previous war in the West occured when a Buonapartist relic interfered in an early stage of German unification. One unfortunate byproduct was the sovereignity of Alsace-Lorraine - the only real tinder for war in the West, and a deviation from reasonable ethnic frontiers. Add in Britain’s pretext for war - the ethnically artificial state of Belgium.
The study of history requires more than cartoonish notions about the Ruling Class (still less, the Enemy).
Posted by Filius Sancti Bonifacii on January 27, 2009, 11:02 PM | #
Dear GW,
too many wordy abstractions.
You claim not to like teleology: but you talk of something we “should” be building.
You claim not to like elites, but “peoples” don’t originate terms like ‘palingenetic’. What a shame that a great deal of your technical vocabulary has to come from a Graeco-Roman elitist culture that you may not really approve of*).
“European Man” reminds me of some pretentious pseudo-classical statue, perhaps like one of Breker’s mythical “Aryans” or like Rodin’s “Thinker”. the thinkers I know, sometimes witty and profound fellows, discourse animatedly in bars, or sitting-rooms, and don’t need to strike daft attitudes. European men don’t naturally think about “European Man”.
You call Christianity ‘alien’ with its One God teaching: are we to assume that you think polytheism is more natural for the European, and that even if it’s a ludicrous fantasy, it will save his soul?
I take it that you agree with me - and Keats - that there’s no real dichotomy between truth and beauty, and again with me and plenty of others, that there’s no real opposition between science and religion or with Idealism and Analysis. (Oooh, those CAPITALS!)
That between faith and secularism is a different matter.
Perhaps faith is to do with things outside time and space, knowledge of which has been revealed to us; secularism which really can’t see beyond its own nose (and is even then unreliable) has merely to do with the here and now.
Christians will of course be inspired at Chartres, Canterbury, Cologne, and in your little rural parish church: they will also be inspired in Goa, or in Mexico, or in a tin church in Vietnam, or in a Russian labour-camp.
Quite a lot - countless millions, in fact - of genetic variations would have been needed to introduce a “sense of the divine”. You obviously believe in evolution, but in that case you should admit that as our eyesight evolved to help us see what’s actually there in order to survive (more teleology!), by analogy our sense of the divine probably evolved for exactly the same reasons! (Personally, I expect the organs that detect the numinous were there, perfectly formed and operational, ab initio)
*) never mind: wasn’t there some Saxon fantasist in the UK - early years of the 17th. cent, when proto-Republicans were appealing to what they supposed to be Anglo-Saxon legal codes and theological texts, all ignorant that some of these had been hocussed by Matthew Parker to bolster up the claims of the new C-of-E - who undertook to translate the Bible into pure Saxon English with NO latin and papistical influence, so that ‘Resurrectio’ became ‘ayen-uprising’?. He didn’t get very far. But Barnes (’Linden Lea’) shows how it can be done - wisely and as befits a true artist he left the politics out.
Posted by Guessedworker on January 27, 2009, 11:07 PM | #
Homelander,
Whether you will consider it cartoonish or not I dont know, but the question for me is whether the European elites, or ruling class, were acting in their peoples’ interests or their own. In the end, all politics reduces to interests, and it is the opinion among most here that of all interests, it is genetic interests which are the highest.
I would argue that the political and religious leadership has been divorced from the genetic interests of Europe’s peoples for many centuries, and latterly the cultural leadership has joined it. With few exceptions, wars fought for these people do not further our EGI.
This isn’t a sophisticated argument. It’s a simple statement of fact.
Posted by Homelander on January 27, 2009, 11:28 PM | #
the political and religious leadership has been divorced from the genetic interests of Europe’s peoples for many centuries
Indeed, they have by trying to create a New Rome ever since the Old one failed. And logical products of that effort were the Holy Roman Empire (Austria-Hungary) and the Second Byzantium (Tsarist Russia)...and lots of war.
And they are still trying - first with a trans-Atlantic NATO, and latterly with the EU.
What I don’t understand is why Nouvelle-Droit types buy into this?
Posted by Guessedworker on January 27, 2009, 11:34 PM | #
FSB,
As far as I am aware, there are no arguments for intelligent design that can survive Desmond Jones’ withering assault, and any moment now he will arrive here and deliver you to your god, intellectually of course. My guess is it’s the teleological eye that he will dissect first. He’s done it before.
For myself, I find very little satisfaction in arguing with the possessors of the faith-gene. In number if not in comprehensibility, they are like the seas of the Third Word, fathomless. But, anyway ...
1. It is a little disingenuous of you to equate a desire to escape from one’s shackles with a faith in racial mastery or personal life after death. I hope you realise that a survivalist-centred nationalism need not be teleological.
2. If there is no real opposition between science and religion or with Idealism and Analysis then quite the majority of thinkers owe you a great favour for telling them so. Kant, apparently, was wasting his time.
3. I also hope that you recognise the desire some of us have to avoid the Nord-Med trap. “European Man” will do for me, for the present. If you can suggest a more fitting appelation, please do so.
4. I do think that the chances that a derivative of a desert religion designed to advance the ethnic genetic interests of a very aggressive semitic tribe would prove fitting to our needs are slight. I think the assumption of a Jewish faith has had profound costs for us, culminating in the fruits of the secular theology of liberalism, as I sought to explain.
Posted by Filius Sancti Bonifacii on January 27, 2009, 11:59 PM | #
Dear GW,
genetics is still largely theory, though: but on your theory, what different genetic structures do our political, religious and cultural elites possess that force them to act counter to our true interests, and what has happened to our own genetic make-up that we should accept these elites as truly our elected ones, and obey them?
I suppose you can always talk about ‘aliens’ but what kink induced us to accept ‘aliens’ as our masters? If genetics explains everything, then we must bow to a greater evolutionary necessity.
Thus the permanent occupation of Europe by African and Asian hordes must. on your showing, underline the genetic superiority of these folks.
Or perhaps Wotan is angry, and permits our humiliation: but as he’s just a materialisation from inside our collective skulls (and that reminds me, GW, you make him into a mere fantasy, or some sort of ectoplasmic phenomenon at a seance in Balham), that explanation won’t work either.
In a world-view where genetics is a sufficient reason for everything you just have to shut up and lump it. The fact that your one little particle of being objects to the great cosmic reality just indicates that you are a chance mutation, and as you know, all observed mutations turn out to have low survival value.
Perhaps our genes are telling us, time to leave the stage, white European man. In which case, goodnight all: BUT there’s always the possibility that all this genetic stuff is nonsense.
You can write me down as a scientific ignoramus: I believe in DNA, and (despite certain disquieting problems about primacy and authenticity that surround the matter), I consider its discovery as a work of genius, and its intricacies and modus operandi a proof of God’s power.
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 28, 2009, 12:13 AM | #
...what different genetic structures do our political, religious and cultural elites possess that force them to act counter to our true interests, and what has happened to our own genetic make-up that we should accept these elites as truly our elected ones, and obey them? [?quote]Interests differ. Evolutionary competition works at many levels, not just on the group level.
Posted by Filius Sancti Bonifacii on January 28, 2009, 01:24 AM | #
You seem to wish to abdicate the field in favour of a champion, Desmond Jones. Bring him on.
Tan-tara!
Did you select the arguments which he demolished, or did he carefully select the ones he felt he could deal with?
I’d rather deal with him and his arguments in person than let you silence me by appealing to his great status and authority. Is he your big brother, the mere mention of whom will make me quail?
Conjure him to appear!
You can look up the eye argument for yourself.in Darwin. VERY sloppily put, and the entire question begged. It begins with the assumption that light-sensitive tissue, covered with a transparent membrane, just arises ... just like that! ... and THAT’s the start of the evolution of the eye.
To accept such a claim without requiring any demonstration is Scientism at its most supine and feeble.
I will give you chapter and verse for Darwin’s Optical Disaster if you like.
It’s nearly as funny as the bit about the bear transmogrifying itself into a whale by eating plankton: mirabile dictu, the old boy actually SAID IT!
So what IS the faith-gene? Is it good or bad for us?
Who’s the mutation, I in possessing it, you in lacking it? Perhaps you have one, but it’s adapted itself to have faith in Kant.
And yes, I am not such a respecter of persons that I daren’t say that Kant might have largely wasting his time. I won’t say it, at least not here because my time a and probably yours) is limited and because I’m basically quite a polite person: but (speaking as a Christian), his influence on subsequent philosophers mightn’t have been the soundest.
And talking of Christianity, what’s with all this ‘desert’ stuff? Why shouldn’t a faith be revealed in a desert? Should I give more respect to one that comes out of a university library or a suburban Rationalist Hall? Why shouldn’t God speak out of a cloud, a whirlwind or a burning bush?
What should he speak through to compel Modern Man’s belief? An IPOD? Wasn’t there a story a few years ago about someone who saw transcendental messages in the jumbled mass of letters that used to appear on primitive computer screen during boot-up? (Philip Pulman uses a similar fantasy in the second volume of his God-hating trilogy for Hampstead kids, I remember.)
Well, what IS the nature of the opposiition between science and religion? Science is a method of enquiry, not a body of doctrine. Lately some ‘scientists’ have taken it upon themselves to form a church complete with catechism, heresy-hunters, witch-smellers, poursuivants and an aggressive Inquisition. I’ve always supposed that good scientists only taught as fact matters of common observation - which evolution is NOT - or matters that can be experimentally verified- which, do., do.,
Check the chronology of the ridiculous Piltdown hoax, and then refer to the Jesuit periodical ‘The Month’ for Nov. 1913 where Lewis Watt S.J. correctly analyses the relics and puts them in the proper relationship with each other, viz, that they are physiologically and chronologically UNrelated to each other.
This poor simple priest seems to have found the aggressive ideology of a Semitic tribe useful
in sorting out quite weighty scientific problems although you might like to know that he approved the action of “a congress of German scientists” who’d supported Prof. Keith in his contention that the fideistic interpretation placed by Woodward and the Natural History Museum upon the relics was “unsatisfactory and unscientific”.
Here we have religion and TRUE science working harmoniously, as they always must.
Unfortunately, the silly illustrations that the official “scientific” version inspired - knuckle-dragging naked simian type lurching along, giving way to a flat browed limping brute and so on to a nice upright Arno Breker type striding clearsightedly forward with determinedly-clenched fists and wearing nothing but a nice Brylcreme’d hairstyle - have never gone away.
If the scientific world had looked a little at what the desert tribe had to offer, it wouldn’t have made quite such a laughing-stock of itself. (Of course I’m very well aware that Watt was by no means the only opponent to the conventional view: and,interestingly, he puts Teilhard de Chardin in the mise-en-scene.)
Posted by Salmona on January 28, 2009, 02:04 AM | #
When CvH writes, he does so as it were an ablution in a sea of abstaractions. Highly convoluted and mesmerizingly dissonant. Clearly what comes out from his rambling tour de force is his antigermanism, his philo judaism, his pro communist leanings, and his jewish prism at viewing the cosmos. Someone who eulogizes and idolizes a dog like Stalin and a despicable murderer like Ilia Ehrenburg should be confined to a mental sanatorium. A perfect jewish tool in the service of the race.
Posted by Filius Sancti Bonifacii on January 28, 2009, 02:04 AM | #
Diamed, you can’t have it both ways.
If we LOOK like an evolutionarily unfit bunch, then our PROSPECTS are actually a component of that picture!
I’m not sure what dimensions you’re talking about.
Yes, the Universe has length, breadth and height and exists in time, but it seems to me that you’re calling scientific terminology in to illustrate a metaphysical/philosophical/historical matter.
That sort of thing is fine for Lacan and Baudrillard and the other folks pilloried in Sokal and Bricmont’s book “Intellectual Impostures”. I can’t see that it helps here.
But that doesn’t bother me, as I don’t believe in evolution.
I certainly believe that our civilisation is in grave danger: but one of the things threatening it is the spirit of modern scientism, which you folks who believe in racial and cultural superiority, destiny, tradition and all that, call to your aid at your peril!
Desmond Jones has arrived, I see - missed you at first - but your 12.13 contribution doesn’t answer my question. I may agree with what you says, but my problem is, how is our group-loyalty overturned by the opposing interests of a minority - our rulers?
Of course interests differ, but what gives the genetic make-up of the destructive minority greater value and power than our own self-interest, sense of preservation, whatever? What gives them the competitive edge?
I’m tempted to quote Pope, in your spirit of course - WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 28, 2009, 06:42 AM | #
What gives them the competitive edge?
Probably many things, but IQ suggests a strong correlation.
In 1945, an army psychologist named G.M. Gilbert, was allowed to examine the Nazi leaders who were tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. Among other tests, a German version of the Wechsler-Bellevue was administered. Here are the results:
1 Hjalmar Schacht 143
2 Arthur Seyss-Inquart 141
3 Hermann Goering 138
4 Karl Doenitz 138
5 Franz von Papen 134
6 Eric Raeder 134
7 Dr. Hans Frank 130
8 Hans Fritsche 130
9 Baldur von Schirach 130
10 Joachim von Ribbentrop 129
11 Wilhelm Keitel 129
12 Albert Speer 128
13 Alfred Jodl 127
14 Alfred Rosenberg 127
15 Constantin von Neurath 125
16 Walther Funk 124
17 Wilhelm Frick 124
18 Rudolf Hess 120
19 Fritz Sauckel 118
20 Ernst Kaltenbrunner 113
21 Julius Streicher 106The Nuremberg Mind: The Psychology of the Nazi Leaders by Florence R. Miale and Michael Selzer, as well as in The Reich Marshal: A Biography of Hermann Goering by Leonard Mosley.
IQ and social status appear to correlate if in fact the results are valid.
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 28, 2009, 07:16 AM | #
You can look up the eye argument for yourself.in Darwin. VERY sloppily put, and the entire question begged.
How so? It’s rather brilliant, actually. Begging the question? How?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter6.html#eye
However, the gist of the pejorative Scientism, is to suggest that the the theory of evolution is faith based. However, it is a tiresome and oft used canard of the Creationists. The theory of evolution is not a religious cosmology because it is falsifiable.
Richard Dawkins said that “If there were a single hippo or rabbit in the Precambrian, that would completely blow evolution out of the water. ...”
There is no test to falsify the existence of God.
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 28, 2009, 07:38 AM | #
An explanation not presenting these problems has recently been proposed in several papers by two scholars long associated with IQ studies: Linda Gottfredson, a sociologist based at the University of Delaware, and psychologist Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh. Their solution to the age-old mystery of health and status is at once utterly original and supremely obvious. The rich live longer, they write, mainly because the rich are smarter. The argument rests on several different propositions, all well documented. The crucial points are that (a) social status correlates strongly and positively with IQ and other measures of intelligence;(b) intelligence correlates strongly with “health literacy,” the ability to understand and follow a prescription for disease prevention and treatment; and (c) intelligence is also correlated with forward planning--which means avoidance of health risks (including smoking) as they are identified.
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 28, 2009, 07:45 AM | #
Fichte from GW’s entry:-
Freedom to them meant just this: remaining Germans and continuing to settle their own affairs, independently and in accordance with the original spirit of their race, going on with their development in accordance with the same spirit, and propagating this independence in their posterity. All those blessings which the Romans offered them meant slavery to them because then they would have to become something that was not German, they would have to become half-Roman. They assumed as a matter of course that every man would rather die than become half a Roman, and that a true German could only want to live in order to be, and to remain, just a German and to bring up his children as Germans.
Posted by the Narrator... on January 28, 2009, 01:42 PM | #
PIPE-DREAMS OF THE “REICH”: Romanticizing Nationalism in Germany
Idealizing anything can always lead to charges of Romanticizing it. It’s a cheap easy way to target the most targeted subject of the past century, Germany.
The real liberator of Europe was Napoleon, in the sense that he tried to unite the continent and therefore make it indefinitely stronger and eventually more just (with the ruthless implementation of the Napoleonic Code). The “revolutionary idealists,” however, were nothing but a band of rascals that tried to cash in on the results of the failed experiment of the once glorious French Emperor.
Yes and I’m sure Napoleon would have stopped at the Caucuses and the Mediterranean. Just like Alexander stopped at the Aegean Sea.
Napoleon was “Dubbya” and Gordon Brown rolled into one.
And talking of Christianity, what’s with all this ‘desert’ stuff? Why shouldn’t a faith be revealed in a desert?
Posted by Filius Sancti Bonifacii
24 For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible.
25 See, I have told you ahead of time.
26"So if anyone tells you, ’There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.
-Jesus in Matthew 24As with every other subject, the Bible is all over the place…
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Posted by apollonian2nd on January 28, 2009, 04:47 PM | #
“The propagation of an alien religion (Christianity, essentially a desert religion) certainly does not seem to be an adequate asset of modernity.” -CvH, above expo
* * * * *
Proper Expo Depends Upon Sound Definitions, Solidly Founded--"Romanticism" Is Mere Neo-Pelagianism
(Apollonian, 28 Jan 09)
Comrades, surely white men can stand to be honest and speak truth about things--like dear old Christianity which is simply commemoration of TRUTH against Jew lies--as in Gosp. JOHN 8:32, 14:6, and 18:37. There can be no real doubt regarding this magnificent Christian purpose and thesis.
“Romanticism” then, foundation of German Transcendental Idealism (GTI) and neo Pelagian Pharisaism is simply another wave/cycle of subjectivism founded in hubris, hereticalism, and lies, now manipulated by Jews and cohorts.
Thus Christianity affirms objective (hence Aristotelian/Greek/Western) reality of what Christians are taught to regard as “God-created.” For note Christianity is aesthetic, hence a dramatization--NOT a professorial dissertation/lecture (which was already given by Aristotle over 300 yrs earlier).
For note the Jew had arrived most definitively, having decisively taken over the Roman Empire and already begun to perfect its infernal technique in the proto-Talmud (see RevisionistHistory.org, TruthTellers.org, and Come-and-hear.com for best Talmudic expo) at the time which was DEFINITIVELY cited and explicitly repudiated by Christ at Gosp. MARK 7:1-13.
Hence truly Christianity is undoubtedly affirmation of reason over mysticism--though note mysticism has to be treated carefully so as to insure reason doesn’t pretend to hubristic answer for everything in too facile manner. Life sucks (Greek Tragedy).
Regarding the buzz-word “faith,” note it properly only means LOYALTY--not an alternative method to reason. And Christianity is properly then most about HONESTY--not “love” any more than hate. “Think not I came to bring peace; rather, I come to bring a sword” (Gosp. MATT 10:34).
Observe confirmation to my above-exposition as Talmud pretends to “interpret” Torah, first in Mishnah, then Mishnah “interpretation” to be distilled through additional Gemarah “interpretation"--Judaism then is simply an most insidious collectivistic subjectivism which methodically dominates and commandeers any other (gentile) subjectivism or mysticism, gentiles always hampered by their own far less organized individualism, typically encouraged by Jew mysticism to that effect.
Thus Jews, for example dominate organized crime (see Mike Collins Piper’s “The New Jerusalem"), their COUNTERFEIT scam/operation (US Federal Reserve Bank [Fed] fraud--see RealityZone.com for expo/ref.) ever-consolidating.
For what is a lie?--merely an alternative subjectivist assertion not in accord with facts (deliberately). What’s a liar?--a subjectivist who’s also devious. What is lying?--subjectivism mis-represented. What then is the vehicle of this subjectivism which culminates as in present US Fed conspiracy?--ALWAYS moralism-Pharisaism, the desperate obsession to being “good” (Pharisaism). False premise is hubris of a pretended PERFECTLY “free” human will, mere specific form of subjectivism.
And observe the present Jew-irruption stems directly fm neo-Pelagian hereticalism ("good-evil" fallacy/delusion, at least the third wave, after that of St. Augustine and Martin Luther), the very “romanticism” of Rousseau, Eng. Utilitarianism, and especially Immanuel Kant and GTI.
Socialism, most decisive counter to American ideal individual liberty, of French Rev. and Bismarck was direct result, leading then to Bolshevism, and now world gov. of United Nations (UN) conspiracy, replete with Israeli “bad-cop,” attempting its latest consolidation.
CONCLUSION: Hoffmeister’s error--as always for him--is Platonic-style abstraction (hence gross subjectivism) devoid of any connection/foundation in objective perception. Never doubt basic conflict remains same old Jew subjectivism and lies vs. Western objectivity and Truth. Honest elections and death to the Fed. Apollonian
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 05:53 PM | #
The theory of evolution is not a religious cosmology because it is falsifiable.
No it isn’t.
Richard Dawkins said that “If there were a single hippo or rabbit in the Precambrian, that would completely blow evolution out of the water.
How old are the rocks?
Well, it depends on what animals they have in them of course! Just step through the looking glass…
As with every other subject, the Bible is all over the place…
The Scripture you quote doesn’t support your assertion. In fact, it seems like faith gene baiting 
Posted by the Narrator... on January 28, 2009, 06:20 PM | #
the Scripture you quote doesn’t support your assertion. In fact, it seems like faith gene baiting
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 05:53 PM
Filius Sancti Bonifacii asked, “Why shouldn’t a faith be revealed in a desert?”
I simply posted the scripture where Jesus warns about false Christs being revealed “out in the desert”.
Both Jesus and Paul went out into the desert as part of their “revelations”. Jesus was tempted by the Devil there.
All the really big religious Leaders go to the deserts. Moses, Abraham, Muhammad etc.... not Noah though. He was eaten by a big fish (or mammal) and then upchucked on the beach fully intact, having survived stomach acids and a waterless three days without dehydrating.
Also.....we can’t forget Lawrence of Arabia. He got the idea for attacking Aqaba from land by strolling around a few hours barefoot in the sand while Omar Sharif looked on in confusion.
Then there’s Conan, but I digress.
Let me ask you this Danielj, where did water come from? Who created it? Go back and read Genesis 1 and see if you can find when this critical element to life was created by God.
...
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Posted by Dasein on January 28, 2009, 06:23 PM | #
Well, it depends on what animals they have in them of course! Just step through the looking glass…
While I am sympathetic to those who seek to avoid the trap of reductionistic materialism, Desmond’s point (via Dawkins) is valid. If you find fossils of animals that are proposed to be separated by many millions of years’ evolution side by side in the deposit, it would invalidate the theory of evolution. If we were to find remains of Homo sapiens sapiens older than Homo habilis, it would also invalidate the theory. Perhaps the evolutionists would try to weasel out of it by arguing a different line of descent, but I think for now they are being honest in stating what they would accept as a claim sufficient to invalidate the theory.
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 06:40 PM | #
Both Jesus and Paul went out into the desert as part of their “revelations”. Jesus was tempted by the Devil there.
I wouldn’t call Jesus’ temptation in the desert “revelation.”
The desert symbolizes trial and testing in the Scripture, like the number 40. Hence the 40 days of fasting and the 40 years of wandering in the desert.
All the really big religious Leaders go to the deserts. Moses, Abraham, Muhammad etc....
Yeah?
not Noah though. He was eaten by a big fish (or mammal) and then upchucked on the beach fully intact, having survived stomach acids and a waterless three days without dehydrating.
Jonah.
Noah was the guy with the ark and the pitch.
It doesn’t relate to alleged contradictions in the Bible at all.
Let me ask you this Danielj, where did water come from? Who created it? Go back and read Genesis 1 and see if you can find when this critical element to life was created by God.
Genesis 1 (Young’s Literal Translation)
1In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth --
2the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters
I’m too stupid for leading lines of questioning. What are you getting at? That the Bible doesn’t imply God created water?
Posted by Dasein on January 28, 2009, 06:43 PM | #
Narrator, you are confusing Noah and Jonah (easy to do since water plays a central role in the story of both).
My personal view on Genesis is that it was what people were able to understand at the time. If He had sent them lists of equations and huge tracts on particle physics, no one would have understood (and probably would still not today). Most importantly, no one would have listened. Inspiration (of which Genesis is an example) is God speaking. It cannot be reduced to chemical reactions in the brain. The message is separate from the medium. This is true whether for the bits in a computer program, or the nucleic acids that make up the human genome.
Posted by q on January 28, 2009, 06:45 PM | #
“not Noah though. He was eaten by a big fish (or mammal) and then upchucked on the beach fully intact, having survived stomach acids and a waterless three days without dehydrating.”
Some have theorised the “big fish” was acually, what we commonly know as, a mechanical submarine. Of course, in that period of time, they had no way of knowing what they were actually seeing. So they described what was in fact a submarine as a “big fish”.
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 07:09 PM | #
While I am sympathetic to those who seek to avoid the trap of reductionistic materialism,
What other kind of materialism is there?
Desmond’s point (via Dawkins) is valid. If you find fossils of animals that are proposed to be separated by many millions of years’ evolution side by side in the deposit, it would invalidate the theory of evolution.
Who and how did they decide what animals were supposed to be separated by millions of years? Did they decide by the rocks they were in?
The fossil record is worthless anyway. Things don’t usually fossilize, the rocks don’t match across continents and all it tells you is that something died.
If we were to find remains of Homo sapiens sapiens older than Homo habilis, it would also invalidate the theory. Perhaps the evolutionists would try to weasel out of it by arguing a different line of descent, but I think for now they are being honest in stating what they would accept as a claim sufficient to invalidate the theory.
Firstly, I don’t think they were anything but humans. There are extreme morphological differences amongst humans today and I’m willing to accept that was the norm in the past as well. That and some of those shoddily plastered together skeletons are just ancient apes.
Of course they are being honest about what evidence they would accept as a sufficient claim. They also state that if God would just reveal Himself in a certain manner, they would find theism credible. I’m being honest when I state that my Presuppositionalism (as best as I can figure, I’m no expert though) demolishes Empiricism. So, my fight isn’t really with the “evolutionists” but with Inductivism and inductivists in general.
Scientists have proven they can’t accept any evidence that refutes the theory and they never will. That’ll put them outta their jobs. It is the same reason right-leaning Reverends wouldn’t accept any evidence that refutes Christs’ Resurrection - they’re hungry
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 07:12 PM | #
This is true whether for the bits in a computer program, or the nucleic acids that make up the human genome.
Are you saying that information is immaterial? As are the laws of logic and mathematical truths.
This alone disproves evolution since DNA is a language and presupposes intelligence. Random material processes can’t “increase” information.
Posted by the Narrator... on January 28, 2009, 07:14 PM | #
Narrator, you are confusing Noah and Jonah (easy to do since water plays a central role in the story of both).
Posted by Dasein on January 28, 2009, 06:43 PM
Yeah, my bad.
And aside from the water similarity there is whole within the ark/whale -surviving in the ocean- theme...I guess.
I’m too stupid for leading lines of questioning. What are you getting at? That the Bible doesn’t imply God created water?
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 06:40 PM
It wasn’t intended to be leading just straight up. And yes what I was getting at is that God doesn’t create water in Genesis. It’s just there.
Using a concordance for the hebrew meaning of words you can see that “heaven” in Genesis 1 means the sky, “earth” means the land or dirt and “the deep” means waters.
So, to translate the verses, it reads,
Genesis 1 (Young’s Literal Translation)
1 In the beginning of God’s preparing the sky and the land --
2 the land hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the waters, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters
So God didn’t create the “waters”. They are simply there, pre-existing his creation of land and sky.
.
.
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And I apologize to Constantin von Hoffmeister for this being a tad off subject.
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 07:28 PM | #
And I apologize to Constantin von Hoffmeister for this being a tad off subject.
Me too.
Last post off the subject.
And aside from the water similarity there is whole within the ark/whale -surviving in the ocean- theme...I guess.
That is because the ocean and deep waters symbolize Hell and and the ark and the fish are pictures of Salvation.
See? Internal consistency
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 07:35 PM | #
Ok. One more.
So God didn’t create the “waters”. They are simply there, pre-existing his creation of land and sky.
John 1:3 (Young’s Literal Translation)
all things through him did happen, and without him happened not even one thing that hath happened.
Romans 1:19-25 (Young’s Literal Translation)
Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God did manifest [it] to them,
for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world, by the things made being understood, are plainly seen, both His eternal power and Godhead—to their being inexcusable;
because, having known God they did not glorify [Him] as God, nor gave thanks, but were made vain in their reasonings, and their unintelligent heart was darkened,
professing to be wise, they were made fools,
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of fowls, and of quadrupeds, and of reptiles.
Wherefore also God did give them up, in the desires of their hearts, to uncleanness, to dishonour their bodies among themselves;
who did change the truth of God into a falsehood, and did honour and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed to the ages. Amen.
I think the base is covered by this verse and others but see it as you wish.
Posted by Dasein on January 28, 2009, 07:42 PM | #
Are you saying that information is immaterial? As are the laws of logic and mathematical truths.
This alone disproves evolution since DNA is a language and presupposes intelligence. Random material processes can’t “increase” information.
I would say it is part of the natural world, but it is not physical material. Force, energy, I don’t know, call it what you will. I don’t see why evolution has to be at odds with the existence of God. God created order out of chaos, he has set a game in motion. A game whose rules we know partially (via scripture) and whose purpose we can only abstract as eternal life in Heaven. The choices we make in this world, inspired by God, are what determine whether we learn more of the rules and whether we better understand the end goal. This striving, which should guide our earthly activities, including the choice of a mate, is our acceptance of God’s Love. If we are true to Him, we will get closer. Each race has already made millions and millions of decisions as to how they want to do this. We should be left alone to continue as we see fit.
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 07:48 PM | #
I don’t see why evolution has to be at odds with the existence of God.
It doesn’t have to be. It is my version (and the version of Reformed Protestants) of God that makes it that way.
Enough on the subject. Back to German Nationalism!
Posted by the Narrator... on January 28, 2009, 07:48 PM | #
So God didn’t create the “waters”. They are simply there, pre-existing his creation of land and sky.
John 1:3 (Young’s Literal Translation)
all things through him did happen, and without him happened not even one thing that hath happened.Romans 1:19-25 (Young’s Literal Translation)
Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God did manifest [it] to them,
for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world, by the things made being understood, are plainly seen, both His eternal power and Godhead—to their being inexcusable;
because, having known God they did not glorify [Him] as God, nor gave thanks, but were made vain in their reasonings, and their unintelligent heart was darkened,
professing to be wise, they were made fools,
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of fowls, and of quadrupeds, and of reptiles.
Wherefore also God did give them up, in the desires of their hearts, to uncleanness, to dishonour their bodies among themselves;
who did change the truth of God into a falsehood, and did honour and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed to the ages. Amen.I think the base is covered by this verse
Posted by danielj on January 28, 2009, 07:35 PM
Yeah, that answers where water came from
Why didn’t God just say what it says in Romans to begin with and skip over the whole creation account?
...
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 28, 2009, 11:33 PM | #
I don’t see why evolution has to be at odds with the existence of God.
Auster explains it well. Ignore the contemptuous final line of the paragraph.
The core idea of Darwinian evolution is that accidental, chance, random mutations occur which turn out to be advantageous to the survival of the organism in which the mutation occurred and therefore are naturally selected. But if evolution is guided by God toward some end, say, toward amphibians or winged flight, then the mutations that occur and are selected are not random, but are directed toward an end. Many highly intelligent people continue to fail to understand this stunningly self-evident point.
“Can’t life be a stochastic model that God wrote where he knows the general outcome (the highest creation is man) ? I have worked with folks who authored monte carlo models that produced an answer that could be arrived at deterministically. Couldn’t God have done the same thing with the stochastic input and residual randomness in the output appearing random to man (from his limited perspective) ?”
Auster replies:
I dealt with this as far as I was able in a recent blog entry. This stochastic idea is apparently that God could plant all the apparently random mutations in the mix which would still lead to fish and spiders and birds and chimpanzees. And I repeat, if the randomness was created by an intelligence to have certain results, then the process is not random, even if it appears random to us.
This idea is exceptionally hard for people to get, for two reasons: one, because it is so simple; and two, because they want so strongly to believe both in God and in Darwinism, and this idea precludes that. If the mutations occur randomly, then there’s no intelligent purpose behind them. If there is an intelligent purpose behind the mutations, then they are not random. Any definition of randomness that is used to get around this fundamental logical contradiction is not honest in my opinion.
It does raise the question, is evolution truly random?
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 29, 2009, 12:36 AM | #
It can’t be both ways. Either evolution is random or it is repeatable. If everything is determined then it can’t evolve randomly. There must be a prime mover. The environment must also be planned if in fact there is an objective value assigned to survival.
Posted by Guessedworker on January 29, 2009, 12:56 AM | #
Diamed,
“Determination” is a word which rather seals you off from Desmond’s view, and creates an unnecessary dispute. My preference is for “mechanistic” - slightly different focus, of course. The reason this is a better term is because it melds your view into Desmond’s.
Mechanicity is what you have in the absence of consciousness. We are not conscious of the workings of evolution through us, nor is evolution a process installed by a higher consciousness. It came into being by accident. That is, we live in a mechanical universe under the Law of Accident, among others.*
One can argue about the nature, degree and purpose of the consciousness of living things, and how both consciousness and mechanicity apply to the same organism. But one need not separate from Desmond’s strict interpretation, with which I concurr.
* This is not, incidentally, a view which excludes the possibility of a conscious creative force. It merely limits Him to the creation of laws, the working of which He himself cannot interfere with. Not great news for Creationists or for believers in the power of prayer and the listening, very Personal God.
Posted by q on January 29, 2009, 01:38 AM | #
Anton LeVay and Madeline Murray O’Hare’s philosophies have a strange resemblance to the discussions that take place here at MR.
No disrespect intended, of course.
BTW, when Dawkins was asked how life began on earth, his answer was: (paraphrashing) “Maybe extraterrestrials seeded the planet with life.”
Make of that what you will ....
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 29, 2009, 02:00 AM | #
Dawkins replies:
Creationists, by contrast, never miss a trick. When I have raised the science-fiction olive branch to try to argue against them, they have twisted it—most recently in a movie scheduled to open this week—in order to proclaim loudly, “Dawkins believes in intelligent design after all.” Or “Dawkins believes in little green men in flying saucers.” Or “Dawkins is a Raelian.” It’s called “lying for Jesus,” and they are completely shameless.
Gods, if they are complex enough to be capable of designing anything, are, by virtue of their very complexity, not in a position to design themselves.
Theologians attempt two (mutually incompatible and pathetically inadequate) answers to this unanswerable point. Some say their God is not complex but simple. This obviously won’t wash. No simple god could design bacterial flagellar motors or universes, let alone forgive sins or impregnate virgins. Presumably recognizing the justice of that, other theologians go to the opposite extreme. They admit that their god is complex but assert that he had no beginning: He was always there and always complex. But if you are going to resort to that facile cop-out, you might as well say flagellar motors were always there. You cannot have it both ways. Visitations from distant star systems are improbable enough to attract ridicule, not least from the advocates of intelligent design themselves. A creator god who had always existed would be far more improbable still.
Randomness has been demonstrated in the lab.
Mutations are supposed to be random changes of the genetic code which happen when a DNA strand is replicated. When we don a white coat and test how accurately DNA is replicated, we’ll see that on average, every 100,000 base pairs or so, there’s some sort of error. Base pairs are missing, doubled up or the wrong base pairs are copied. We can take any organism with DNA, study its genome before and after replication, note all the errors and do it again and again. As it continues to replicate, we’ll see that the mutations change from replication to replication and there doesn’t seem to be an order in which the mutations take place. Hence, random mutations are repeatable under laboratory condition…
Posted by Dasein on January 29, 2009, 09:02 AM | #
BTW, when Dawkins was asked how life began on earth, his answer was: (paraphrashing) “Maybe extraterrestrials seeded the planet with life.”
Francis Crick thought the same thing (’Panspermia’).
Desmond, I don’t find Auster’s argument to be convincing as regards the mutual exclusion of God and evolution. Let’s grant that mutation and sexual recombination are completely random events. The mating choices of humans are not. And I don’t think they can be reduced, for example, to the chemical makeup of the brain at those moments in time. Information is above and beyond the medium used to convey it.
Posted by danielj on January 29, 2009, 09:18 PM | #
Mutations are supposed to be random changes of the genetic code which happen when a DNA strand is replicated. When we don a white coat and test how accurately DNA is replicated, we’ll see that on average, every 100,000 base pairs or so, there’s some sort of error.
Ok.
Base pairs are missing, doubled up or the wrong base pairs are copied.
So no new information is added. Preexisting information is copied incorrectly. Evolution requires novel information.
We can take any organism with DNA, study its genome before and after replication, note all the errors and do it again and again. As it continues to replicate, we’ll see that the mutations change from replication to replication and there doesn’t seem to be an order in which the mutations take place.
Information Entropy in action.
That being said, the process of mutations and sexual gene-mixing that lead to evolution are entirely random--they are processes that life has picked up on as good tools for fashioning the good results, ie evolving, which gives them greater survivability. These random processes are thus tools life use to further their goal, a goal that has randomly been set upon because all those life forms who had the goal to survive and multiply did so, while those that didn’t, did not survive and no longer exist.
Sexual gene-mixing isn’t random in that it requires “choosing” by mates. Asexual reproduction might be considered random.
The bold text is dripping with teleological language.
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 29, 2009, 10:29 PM | #
Evolution requires novel information.
It’s not a demonstration of evolution. It demonstrates that randomness is repeatable.
Sexual gene-mixing isn’t random in that it requires “choosing” by mates.
Are you suggesting design in the choice?
Posted by danielj on January 29, 2009, 11:19 PM | #
It’s not a demonstration of evolution. It demonstrates that randomness is repeatable.
Sorry. I wasn’t trying to imply that the experiment attempted to demonstrate that. I just meant that evolving to “higher” forms of life required new information and that a deformation, loss, or repetition of existing information did not qualify as new.
Are you suggesting design in the choice?
Not sure what I was getting at there. Sexual reproduction requires agency which renders it unpasive and unrandom in my mind. Whereas, in the case of asexual reproduction, I feel like we can accurately apply GW’s term, “mechanistic.”
However, the obvious rebuttal to this line of reasoning is that the mutations arising from sexual reproduction are still random (as far as we know) according to our definition and I’m sure we could (or already have?) demonstrated this in the laboratory.
My main concern with sexual reproduction is the utter incompatibility of it arising from a Darwinian standpoint. What survival advantage is conferred upon adding an additional step in the reproduction process?
Taken from the Science Against Evolution website: Birds and Bees
In fact, the journal Science devoted a 29 page special section of their September 25, 1998, issue to the problem. Here is how they summarized the problems.
Birds do it, bees do it, people do it--in fact the vast majority of organisms do it--but sexual reproduction often seems more trouble than it’s worth. For organisms, sex often means spending huge amounts of energy finding and wooing desirable partners. Within the cell, male and female genomes must recombine without major mistakes. Gametes must promote compatible fusions while upholding barriers between species. And at each step, the conflicting interests of each sex must be delicately negotiated in order to benefit the species as a whole.
Asexual reproduction--a simple “copy and divide” strategy--at first glance seems both less messy and more efficient. Yet sexual reproduction is by far the dominant mode, which leads researchers to conclude that sex offers some evolutionary advantage. Biologists have been spinning theories about just what that advantage might be for quite some time, but so far there is no single clear answer.
The debate continues energetically …. The topic falls into two parts. First, why did sex evolve in the first place and why is it so pervasive in the natural world? And secondly, how do these amazingly complex sexual systems evolve?
… most theories suggest that sex and recombination remove harmful mutations and allow new combinations of genes to come together, providing more opportunities for improved fitness and offering the flexibility to adapt to new environments. Biologists are finding new ways to test these theories, Wuethrich reports, but proving that they are actually operating in the natural world remains a challenge. 1
Today, across the tree of life, sex reigns--many unicellular and just about all multicellular organisms do it. Yet how sex began and why it thrived remain a mystery. After all, asexual organisms were here first, and new asexual species continue to arise, if only to go extinct in fairly short order. Why did sex overtake asexual reproduction some billion or more years ago, and why does it continue to upstage asexuals? What gives sex its edge?
Biologists have come up with a profusion of theories since first posing these questions a century ago. … But the devil is in the data--or lack thereof. “I emphasize experimental problems, because we have tons of theories, and some are completely crazy,” says Alexey Kondrashov, an evolutionary geneticist at Cornell University. 2
The Cost of Sex
They say that the difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money costs less. smiley face There is a certain amount of truth in that joke. There really is no such thing as “sex for free”. There is always a cost associated with it. A bird hatching her eggs literally is a “sitting duck.” All creatures have to expend some effort creating their offspring. Many creatures have to expend effort raising them. It is hard to see, from a Darwinian viewpoint, why sex is worth the price.
If asked why sex is such a widespread phenomenon, most biologists would say that it promotes genetic variability, and hence allows evolution to proceed faster than in its absence. This explanation suffers from several difficulties. First, it is not clear a priori that the heritable variance in fitness (the material for adaptation by natural selection) is significantly increased by sex. Second, the most obvious effect of recombination is to break up favorable sets of genes that have accumulated through selection, leading to a recombination load. Similarly, segregation of genes at a single locus eliminates heterozygotes that may be favored by selection. These forces should cause sex and genetic recombination to be eliminated from a population at equilibrium under selection alone. Third, in organisms with anisogamy (male and female gametes), there is a built-in cost to sex. If there are separate males and females, for example, a mutation that causes females to produce only daughters, but has no other effect, will initially double in frequency in each generation (this is often termed the cost of sex). 3 [emphasis supplied]
Fertilization, in which genes from different parents fuse, creates yet more genetic combinations. All this shuffling is more likely to break up combinations of good genes than to create them--yet nature keeps reshuffling the deck.
This paradox is compounded by the cost of sex--which is primarily the cost of producing a male. Imagine 1 million sexually reproducing snails and a single asexual female mutant. Say that she has two daughters, who (on average) have another two daughters, and so on. Meanwhile, the sexually reproducing females would be diligently producing a female and a male--who would not directly produce any progeny. Soon, the few sexual organisms would be lost in a sea of asexuals and find it all but impossible to locate a mate. All else being equal, the asexual clone would entirely replace its sexual counterparts in only about 52 generations, says evolutionary biologist Curtis Lively of Indiana University in Bloomington. Yet this happens rarely, if ever. Despite the cost, sexual species persist, while most asexuals quickly go extinct. 4
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 29, 2009, 11:55 PM | #
Soon, the few sexual organisms would be lost in a sea of asexuals and find it all but impossible to locate a mate. All else being equal, the asexual clone would entirely replace its sexual counterparts in only about 52 generations,…
The success of an organism is not only measured by the number of offspring left behind, but by the quality or probable success of the offspring: reproductive fitness.
Posted by danielj on January 30, 2009, 12:11 AM | #
Soon, the few sexual organisms would be lost in a sea of asexuals and find it all but impossible to locate a mate. All else being equal, the asexual clone would entirely replace its sexual counterparts in only about 52 generations,…
The success of an organism is not only measured by the number of offspring left behind, but by the quality or probable success of the offspring: reproductive fitness.
Maybe we could just test it out in the lab?
Posted by Guessedworker on January 30, 2009, 12:42 AM | #
Daniel,
I know I will only be accused of opacity again. But here we go.
Consciousness is not only absent from our general or ordinary experience of living, but it is also a great deceiver, finding itself lagging a few milliseconds behind the cart, never mind the horse, and then convincing us that it is leading the whole shooting match in a direction it has thoughtfully ordained.
These two truths, the first well understood in esoteric faith, the second in neurology, cannot be batted back and forth across the breakfast table and argued at work with the girl in accounts. They are too rarified and difficult, and too at odds with the certainty we have in our lived experience. But consciousness, or sentience if you prefer, is just another faculty selected over the last few hundreds of millions of years to serve adaptiveness among its possessors. It is not godlike.
As such, and to the extent that consciousness is only affirmative of what is, rather than creative of it as we unfailingly suppose, Man is mechanical. We share our mechanicity with all Life and with the universe around us, all of it law-conforming, all of it undiminished one iota by this fact - so inconvenient to our egos.
As for Mr Lively, he has not noticed that sperm and egg are two parts of a tripartite whole. They are completed by the irrepressible, driving, tidal energy which Nature invests in the reproductive process.
Posted by danielj on January 30, 2009, 12:54 AM | #
I know I will only be accused of opacity again. But here we go.
Not by me. But sometimes I have to read you twice and I don’t always have the patience for that
These two truths, the first well understood in esoteric faith, the second in neurology,
There are some “mystic” neurologists doing research into the field that might disagree.
Though I don’t accuse you of opacity, I will accuse of trying to burglarize my metaphysical temple and plunder my ultimacy with your undiminished proximate! Despite your unfailing attempts at spoilsporting, I’ll buy you a beer when I get to England. I have a friend who has graciously offered me a position at a law firm if I agree to attend Uni and I think I might take her up on the offer. The wife is vehemently opposed to moving back to the homeland however, so who knows what will eventually occur.
Posted by danielj on January 30, 2009, 01:00 AM | #
That should obviously read: defile my metaphysical temple
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 30, 2009, 02:23 AM | #
Maybe we could just test it out in the lab?
It appears, according to the article, it already has been tested.
Despite the cost, sexual species persist, while most asexuals quickly go extinct.
Posted by Dasein on January 30, 2009, 09:36 AM | #
They are completed by the irrepressible, driving, tidal energy which Nature invests in the reproductive process.
So this Nature is your God?
GW, I’m not sure I understand how your position differs from determinism.
If Crick’s theory of Panspermia is correct, perhaps we are wasting our time arguing about how the eye could have evolved under physical conditions we understand. Daniel, is it fair to say that you reject evolution only as it relates to speciation events? Would consider sexual selection (e.g. for blue eyes) to fall under the rubric of evolution?
Posted by Dasein on January 30, 2009, 09:54 AM | #
BTW, I do agree with your observation that consciousness is a video recorder of ourselves running on automatic (sort of like the Zoe (sp?) implant in that film The Final Cut- well worth watching), but don’t accept that this condition holds all of the time. Our consciousness is there to tell us to switch off autopilot, i.e. to exert our will.
Posted by danielj on January 30, 2009, 10:47 AM | #
Maybe we could just test it out in the lab?
It appears, according to the article, it already has been tested.
Huh? Where? The experiment tested “reproductive fitness” in nature?
Daniel, is it fair to say that you reject evolution only as it relates to speciation events?
I suppose, defining species as populations in relative isolation and capable of interbreeding, it might be fair. Obviously, there are exceptions in nature any way one decides to define species but I’m comfortable with this as a working definition.
Would consider sexual selection (e.g. for blue eyes) to fall under the rubric of evolution?
I’m not exactly sure what you mean. The information for blue eyes, if I had to hazard a guess, has probably existed since the first human being (read: Adam) was created. That information is still here and will, God willing, always be here being reshuffled in the gene pool.
Posted by Guessedworker on January 30, 2009, 11:36 AM | #
Dasein,
So this Nature is your God?
Well, it was plainly an important aspect of the sacred in our ancestor’s time. I suppose they saw it as the return of light and fertility which undergirded their physical existence. In so much as they could carry it over ideationally into the energising of their sexual activity and familial love, it also claimed them as part of the drama of the gods. But I think we can say that they were better informed in this respect than the desert tribalists who gave us Genesis.
As children of the Age of Knowledge, we have the luxury of de-sacralising it and seeing it simply as Nature’s perpetual drive to transmit information through time.
I’m not sure I understand how your position differs from determinism.
Mechanicity is subject to Accident, like everything. There are no straight lines in Nature. Chance enters at certain points and change occurs.
[I] don’t accept that this condition holds all of the time. Our consciousness is there to tell us to switch off autopilot, i.e. to exert our will.
It holds all the time in our waking lives. Something less holds while we are asleep. If there is something more the gateway to it is attention, which is an act of will. But that is well outside the remit of this blog ... except in one respect. If more complete (and complete) forms of consciousness are (fleetingly and only through the utmost devotion) available to us as individuals, what is their fitness gain?
Answers on a post-card to the Vatican.
Posted by Guessedworker on January 30, 2009, 12:39 PM | #
Daniel,
I will accuse of trying to burglarize my metaphysical temple and plunder my ultimacy with your undiminished proximate!
Trying?
Despite your unfailing attempts at spoilsporting, I’ll buy you a beer when I get to England.
Likewise.
Posted by Desmond Jones on January 30, 2009, 06:33 PM | #
If more complete (and complete) forms of consciousness are (fleetingly and only through the utmost devotion) available to us as individuals, what is their fitness gain?
Fred’s story of Poincaré is apropos here. It illustrates the case quite well.
Ronald de Sousa has a two-part response.
“On the evolutionary scale, mathematics is part of our present rather than of our evolutionary past. It is therefore out of the question for mathematical talent as such to have been a factor in evolution by natural selection.” Then he goes on to say:
“Once mathematics had emerged into the light of day, there was still nothing to guarantee that it could prove useful outside the domains in which our practical skills had already been operating for millennia. And yet, pure mathematics notoriously finds all kinds of startling applications in the solution of technological and scientific problems that our ancestors could not possibly have conceived of, and it does so by generating theories that would have remained wholly unintelligible to them. That strongly supports the idea that mathematics can uncover aspects of the universe of which neither the usefulness nor even the existence could possibly have been manifested in the environment of our evolutionary adaptations (EEA) in which the basic functions of the brain were being shaped by natural selection. As [Eugene] Wigner has argued, this constitutes at least prima facie evidence for the conclusion that the truths of mathematics do not merely reflect projective constructions of our brains, but probably correspond to an objective reality.”
Pure mathematics (or mathematical consciousness?) developed incidental to consciousness with no apparent fitness gain, and yet…
GW’s original reply...De Sousa is wrong about mathematics. Even fish count.
Posted by Guessedworker on January 30, 2009, 08:06 PM | #
Desmond,
Far be it from me to question your knowledge of anything - generally an unwise course since I know for a fact that you maintain the entire Bodleian Library on your mobile phone hard drive. But, mathematics has been around for a long, long time - 20,000 years at least. A capacity to calculate was plainly a fitness gain. The mental gymnastics of the present age surely demonstrates not new genetic development but the capacity for specialism that the human brain possesses - something else with a fitness gain attached to it. Look at the this painting by Ingres - the great master of the fold, and an artist standing at the high-point of French Neoclassicism:-
http://www.navigo.com/wm/paint/auth/ingres/ingres.broglie.jpg
Likewise, consider the Dutch school, or the extraordinary development of the German romantic symphonic tradition.
For sure, these specialisms were reflective of a certain plasticity, but they are grounded in selection like anything.
Now, they are NOT what I mean when I talk about a consciousness other than ordinary waking consciousness. It is the difference between absence and presence, and between presence and oneness. Such elevated consciousness (if, of course, it is real) seems to offer little or no fitness gain. Indeed, Man has, generally speaking, lived out his existence in ordinary waking consciousness, tilling the soil, loving his children and so on, without any more experience of it than hearsay. Still, he has got himself to this point. So elevated consciousness is not a precondition for such progress as we have made.
How, then, does it come to be?
Posted by Henkipatto on January 30, 2009, 08:25 PM | #
The information for blue eyes, if I had to hazard a guess, has probably existed since the first human being (read: Adam) was created. That information is still here and will, God willing, always be here being reshuffled in the gene pool.
Actually, the information for general pigment formation in the iris has existed always, while the appearance of blue eyes has been due to a rather recent mutation in that information:
People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research.
A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Before then, there were no blue eyes.
The genetic switch is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 and rather than completely turning off the gene, the switch limits its action, which reduces the production of melanin in the iris. In effect, the turned-down switch diluted brown eyes to blue.
If the OCA2 gene had been completely shut down, our hair, eyes and skin would be melanin-less, a condition known as albinism.
http://www.livescience.com/health/080131-blue-eyes.html
The proliferation of the trait, I’d wager, is mostly due to the fact that the gene responsible also affects skin pigmentation - lower levels of melanin equals more efficient vitamin D synthesis, which (depending on diet) improved reproductive fitness in northern latitudes.
Posted by danielj on January 30, 2009, 09:23 PM | #
The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Before then, there were no blue eyes.
Yeah, they must know that from the fossils
Posted by danielj on January 30, 2009, 09:26 PM | #
I will accuse of trying to burglarize my metaphysical temple and plunder my ultimacy with your undiminished proximate!
Trying?
Empiricism and materialism are a non-starter for me so there isn’t evidence I’ll accept of that nature. I think I stand with the Bad Faun in this regard. You will only convince me with philosophy and the only person that comes close to doing that is the objectivist at the Bahnsen Burner blog.
Posted by Dasein on January 30, 2009, 09:42 PM | #
GW,
As children of the Age of Knowledge, we have the luxury of de-sacralising it and seeing it simply as Nature’s perpetual drive to transmit information through time.
This luxury always existed. We considered those who exercised it to be less human (at least we used to). If I understand your position properly, then we should be trying to maximize our fitness. If so, then on what basis would you object to getting rid of all non-Whites, or even those Whites who are less closely related to you (based on some calculation as to risk to your reproductive health of doing this vs your estimated long-term increase in reproductive fitness)? If it doesn’t have to be maximized, then what should be our priority(ies)? An equation from Hamilton or Salter isn’t going to answer this. The Will to Power, or whatever we are going to call this striving and however we want to define the goal, is different from the desire to reproduce. Why can’t we do two things at once?
BTW, this is a great blog that you run, so happy to have found it.
Posted by Dasein on January 30, 2009, 10:10 PM | #
I’m not exactly sure what you mean. The information for blue eyes, if I had to hazard a guess, has probably existed since the first human being (read: Adam) was created. That information is still here and will, God willing, always be here being reshuffled in the gene pool.
Not sure if I’ve got this right, but are you suggesting that the mutations that Henkipatto referred to were there in Adam’s DNA?
Posted by Henkipatto on January 30, 2009, 10:14 PM | #
Yeah, they must know that from the fossils
From studying genetic sequences and mutation rates in them by molecular methods, rather.
Posted by Guessedworker on January 31, 2009, 12:06 AM | #
Dasein: on what basis would you object to getting rid of all non-Whites
On the basis of the dysgenesis of war, for one, and on moral grounds for another.
Why moral? As has been pointed out here a number of times, European Man is Ethical Man, and ethics, which extend far beyond mere altruism, of course, may not only commend to us adaptive life choices and behaviours, they may also bind us together or they may tear us apart. A European people which turns its back on its collective ethos, and plumps for a psychopathic killing spree, is running a severe risk that it will not survive its own licence. Look at the voices in diaspore Jewry - not even European, and the most ethnocentric group anywhere outside of Israel itself - that were raised against the violence in Gaza.
In this regard, and bearing in mind how little evolutionary theorisation has been conducted into the origins of religion, it does seem striking that all the tribes of Mankind have outsourced their collective ethic to a nominally independent religious structure drawing its authority not from the genetic interests of the tribe but elsewhere.
This submission to external authority must itself be highly adaptive to compensate for the seeming loss of direct “interest-control”. The outlines of a theory of religion as a very powerful binding mechanism, as well as the usual super-advocate for adaptive behaviour, must be there somewhere, in the mist.
But there is another practical reason why a mass genocide of all non-whites is not a shoe-in with the EGI conscious.
EGI does have to be maximised, yes. But, as you know, Man is familial, then tribal, then racial, then “human”. His normal inclination is to protect and advance the genetic interests of each circle from the smallest outward ... from himself, his family members and his tribe. This Salterian imperative is one with Nature’s drive to transmit information through time.
Nothing new in that.
So, Man’s natural inclination ... his default position ... is not to compete at the level of race. As far as I am aware, no people has decided to act on a scale at which only racial considerations apply, and only racial benefits could accrue. Life is most immediate and life-energies most concentrated when it is local.
Right, let’s move on and quickly deal with the Will to Power. In the main it is something different from that big, impersonal, tidal push for Life I was talking about. It is just men being status-oriented because the achievement of high status enhances our mate competitiveness. So in this interpretation, the Will to Power is not separate from the desire to reproduce.
Nothing new in that, either.
At the same time, though, northern populations are powerfully conflicted with Nature and, to survive, must cheat or manipulate Her in some way. Our racial intelligence flows from this need, of course, and our technological progress is wholly predicated upon it. There is a certain racial Will to Power in us, then, and it causes us to remake the landscape, go under the Arctic ice in submarines, and dream of a life among the stars. In the non-religious context, it is the finest expression of the Promethian European spirit.
So, you are right. There is an unusually marked bifurcation in the European male mind between simple reproductive striving and tribal protection and advancement, and it is very interesting. Where you are wrong, I would say, is in thinking that either are in conflict with our EGI.
Posted by danielj on January 31, 2009, 01:43 AM | #
Not sure if I’ve got this right, but are you suggesting that the mutations that Henkipatto referred to were there in Adam’s DNA?
I’m not even saying it is or it isn’t a mutation. I’m just saying I believe that the information was probably there at the beginning. Nothing novel or fantastic happened. The article doesn’t really go into depth about the genes involved.
From studying genetic sequences and mutation rates in them by molecular methods, rather.
From assuming uniformity, projecting into an almost entirely unknown past, etc.
Posted by Captainchaos on January 31, 2009, 02:49 AM | #
GW: “A European people which turns its back on its collective ethos, and plumps for a psychopathic killing spree, is running a severe risk that it will not survive its own licence.”
If our path of choice to victory is extermination of non-Whites then it is rational for non-Whites to work towards the genocide of our people. For them it would be self-defense.
Posted by the Narrator... on January 31, 2009, 09:41 AM | #
A European people which turns its back on its collective ethos, and plumps for a psychopathic killing spree, is running a severe risk that it will not survive its own licence.
Posted by Guessedworker on January 31, 2009, 12:06 AM |
I agree to a point, but remember we’re all still (at the present time) afforded the luxury of watching these things as though we were spectators at a friendly sporting event between two competing sides, with each of which agreeing to a mutual understanding of set rules.
In truth we have been, are presently, and will continue to be, participants, not spectators, in Thunderdome, where the only rule is, “Two races enter, one race leaves.”
Crude analogy, I know. But to the point none-the-less.
At the same time, though, northern populations are powerfully conflicted with Nature and, to survive, must cheat or manipulate Her in some way. Our racial intelligence flows from this need, of course, and our technological progress is wholly predicated upon it. There is a certain racial Will to Power in us, then, and it causes us to remake the landscape, go under the Arctic ice in submarines, and dream of a life among the stars. In the non-religious context, it is the finest expression of the Promethian European spirit.
Posted by Guessedworker on January 31, 2009, 12:06 AM
The other races are a part of the Nature against which we struggle.
Just as we’ve removed mountains to make way for better roads and damned up rivers to create hydroelectric power plants, we have also removed some natives to make way for civilization and partitioned off others to create stable, productive, areas.
As a race we have, historically, viewed the other races much like we would wolves, superstition (religion) or cold weather; as things to be overcome and defeated to make way for a better, more stable, environment.
We, as a race, do not have to be overly impolite at this point in history but neither do we need to be (or should we be) overly considerate....
.
Posted by Homelander on January 31, 2009, 09:43 AM | #
re: Blue Eyes
I can recall reading somewhere that blue eyes are a Neo-Natal characteristic. That blue (really, non-pigmented) eyes are common in infants in ALL races, although eyes may most often take on darker pigment with maturation. When this FAILS to happen, the characteristic is Neo-Natal - the assumption of an infantile characteristic by adults.
Same with light hair and light skin - common in infants and children of all races.
The advantage for adults may lie in the possibility that human beings generally are “hard-wired” to respond with kindness and concern toward infants...and thus to some extent toward adults who possess the same signals. Makes for a good secondary sex characteristic. Also appears in elderly people (light hair, lightening complexion, and often lightening eyes) who may need care.
Other infantile and juvenile characteristics are a high forehead, and large eyes compared to the skull. Much sought after in fashion models.
Very common - as we all know - in European caucasians. It may be that populations living in Northern extremes were selecting for life-long loyalties, among mates and near-kin. In one study, English women of several races selected pictures of brunette men as better suited for a “fling” and blonde men as better-suited for life partners.
Similar with guys, I’d guess: “THOSE are the ones you marry!”
Posted by Homelander on January 31, 2009, 03:34 PM | #
rre: Believe that might be “neotanal”, rather than “neonatal”...oh well - same point.
Posted by Henkipatto on January 31, 2009, 08:19 PM | #
From assuming uniformity, projecting into an almost entirely unknown past, etc.
All humans share a common ancestry, and intergenomic variance reflects our phylogenetic history. How’s this for uniformity:
Since brown eye colour preceded blue, and since (all) blue-eyed individuals seem to share a common haplotype (ie. relatively recent ancestry), it would not be unfounded to suggest that this is a novel mutation. It is possible that a similar mutation arose independently some time before, but it would follow that it has been wiped out in some point in history. The chances of a mutation, producing the same phenotypic effect, independently appearing multiple times in the right region of a genetic sequence controlling the right function of the right tissue...is miniscule.
I took a look at the full paper, and it seems they haven’t bothered explaining how they arrived to their estimate of ‘6000-10000 years ago’. The times of emergence/divergence for some sequences can be worked out (with varying accuracy). They seem to link the emergence of the trait to the geographical expansion of Indo-European tribes further into Europe:
The mutations responsible for the blue eye color most likely originate from the neareast area or northwest part of the Black Sea region, where the great agriculture migration to the northern part of Europe took place in the Neolithic periods about 6–10,000 years ago (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994).
The full paper: http://www.springerlink.com/content/2045q6234h66p744/fulltext.html#CR13
Posted by Dasein on February 11, 2009, 08:47 AM | #
GW, thanks for this thoughtful reply. My short answer is that there is a large gulf between maximizing EGI and pursuing what one considers one’s own (or one’s ethny’s) enlightened cause(s). And maximized EGI has some subjective component. We may use different internal equations to calculate this. Perhaps my Scotch-Irish background makes me more clannish and the drop-off between my ethny and the rest of the world is more severe for me than for others who may have a more universalist bent. You are right that this Will to Power is an evolved characteristic (elements of which have become pathological under the influence of alien groups), but I believe it has evolved in response to something beyond its utility in our survival. I believe in Free Will and The Good. A philosophy prof told me a funny story about Zeno. He comes home to find one of his slaves stealing from his house. As he gets his whip out, the slave cries ‘Oh master, please have mercy- it was pre-determined that I would steal your things; I had no choice’. To which Zeno replies: ‘Yes, but it was also pre-determined that I shall whip you for it!’. And appeals to equations alone (not that I suggest you are doing this) are not enough. Some (perhaps Jobling and Homelander) would argue that Jewish influence can actually boost our EGI.
Posted by Dasein on February 11, 2009, 09:00 AM | #
If our path of choice to victory is extermination of non-Whites then it is rational for non-Whites to work towards the genocide of our people. For them it would be self-defense. -CC
The fear of such a choice drives many Jews to favour our pre-emptive genocide. If people could swallow the evidence for WMDs, we should not wonder that Jews (with few exceptions) will not back their support of race replacement. Trying to make them see the light (as Jobling and Taylor hope to do), is a fool’s errand.
Posted by Dasein on February 11, 2009, 10:53 PM | #
Sorry, that should read ‘back off their support of race replacement’.
Posted by Fred Scrooby on February 11, 2009, 11:25 PM | #
“The fear of such a choice drives many Jews to favour our pre-emptive genocide.” (—Dasein)
I would say this is basically correct: part of what drives Jews to favor the genocide of Euros must be a fear deep down (or right on the surface for many of them) that Euros might exterminate them. This fear on their part pre-dated their being targeted in Hitlerian Germany, so their horrific experience in National Socialist Germany wasn’t what first caused this fear of theirs. They already had it, which was in part what caused them to behave in ways that elicited German dislike in the first place. They say no, German dislike came first. It’s one of these “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” situations, the XXth-Century Jews saying appalling behavior by Euros came first, the XXth-Century Euros saying appallling behavior by Jews came first, neither side ever coming close to convincing the other, so it’s an impasse.
“[...] we should not wonder that Jews (with few exceptions) will not back off their support of race replacement. Trying to make them see the light [...], is a fool’s errand.” (—Dasein)
This is also correct. Jews will not back off their support for race-replacement no matter what. I’d say race-replacement of Euros is what the Jews desire most in this life, after survival of Jewry itself and the well-being of Israel. They want race-replacement more than they wanted communism, and the whole world knows how much they worshipped communism. Race-replacement was the reason they worshipped communism, as under communism they sensed there’d be a greater chance they could get Euros race-replaced. So, what the majority of Jews of the last few generations worshipped most, communism, was an object of worship for them precisely because it held out the hope they’d be able to get Euros race-replaced. Their love of race-replacement, therefore, was stronger than even their love of communism. They’ve now discovered they don’t need communism to bring about race-replacement, so the urgency with which they used to work for the success of communism was abated quite a bit, and they’re getting right down to what they most wanted in the first place but didn’t think they could get: straight-up race-replacement without needing to go through the intermediate step of communism. A world cleansed of Euros would seem to the Jews to be heaven on Earth. “No Euros, just mystery meat!” That’s what they’re all striving for, right now as we speak, virtually all Jews right across the political spectrum. Jews differ from one another on Israel, on lots of things, but NOT on race-replacement, which the ALL of them want with something approaching religious fervor.
Posted by Fred Scrooby on February 11, 2009, 11:31 PM | #
“so the sense of urgency with which they used to work for the success of communism has abated quite a bit,”
Posted by Fred Scrooby on February 12, 2009, 12:12 AM | #
What the Jew can’t stand and wants extinguished is the Eurochristian, not the Euro per se, but I use “Euro” for short in my comment above and elsewhere. The object of the race-replacing Jews’ loathing is the Eurochristian. If all Euros converted to Judaïsm the Jews’ desire to genocide them would evaporate overnight.
Posted by Armor on February 12, 2009, 12:40 AM | #
“If all Euros converted to Judaïsm the Jews’ desire to genocide them would evaporate overnight.”
Do the Jews really believe in Judaïsm? I thought most of them were atheists.
“Trying to make them see the light (as Jobling and Taylor hope to do), is a fool’s errand.”
I wonder if the Blacks could be made to see the light. In fact, I have read about it on Taylor’s website. In the USA, anti-immigration activists would like to find Black allies. Mexican immigration tends to dispossess Black Americans of their jobs, but they keep voting for the wrong politicians!
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