A new study connects disbelief in evolution with greater prejudice.
quote:A disbelief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes and support of discriminatory behavior against Blacks, immigrants and the LGBTQ community in the U.S., according to University of Massachusetts Amherst research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Stylianos Syropoulos, Uri Lifshin, Jeff Greenberg, Dylan E. Horner, Bernhard Leidner. Bigotry and the human–animal divide: (Dis)belief in human evolution and bigoted attitudes across different cultures.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2022
quote: Abstract The current investigation tested if people’s basic belief in the notion that human beings have developed from other animals (i.e., belief in evolution) can predict human-to-human prejudice and intergroup hostility. Using data from the American General Social Survey and Pew Research Center (Studies 1–4), and from three online samples (Studies 5, 7, 8) we tested this hypothesis across 45 countries, in diverse populations and religious settings, across time, in nationally representative data (N = 60,703), and with more comprehensive measures in online crowdsourced data (N = 2,846). Supporting the hypothesis, low belief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes, and support for discriminatory behaviors against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ), Blacks, and immigrants in the United States (Study 1), with higher ingroup biases, prejudicial attitudes toward outgroups, and less support for conflict resolution in samples collected from 19 Eastern European countries (Study 2), 25 Muslim countries (Study 3), and Israel (Study 4). Further, among Americans, lower belief in evolution was associated with greater prejudice and militaristic attitudes toward political outgroups (Study 5). Finally, perceived similarity to animals (a construct distinct from belief in evolution, Study 6) partially mediated the link between belief in evolution and prejudice (Studies 7 and 8), even when controlling for religious beliefs, political views, and other demographic variables, and were also observed for nondominant groups (i.e., religious and racial minorities). Overall, these findings highlight the importance of belief in human evolution as a potentially key individual-difference variable predicting racism and prejudice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
It's probably because a lot of creationists in the US tend to be Religious Right types who vote Republican. That said, the correlation is rather ironic considering how creationists bring up Darwin's of-his-time racist attitudes in order to discredit evolutionary theory.
Posted by Fity7 (Member # 23572) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: A new study connects disbelief in evolution with greater prejudice.
quote:A disbelief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes and support of discriminatory behavior against Blacks, immigrants and the LGBTQ community in the U.S., according to University of Massachusetts Amherst research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Stylianos Syropoulos, Uri Lifshin, Jeff Greenberg, Dylan E. Horner, Bernhard Leidner. Bigotry and the human–animal divide: (Dis)belief in human evolution and bigoted attitudes across different cultures.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2022
quote: Abstract The current investigation tested if people’s basic belief in the notion that human beings have developed from other animals (i.e., belief in evolution) can predict human-to-human prejudice and intergroup hostility. Using data from the American General Social Survey and Pew Research Center (Studies 1–4), and from three online samples (Studies 5, 7, 8) we tested this hypothesis across 45 countries, in diverse populations and religious settings, across time, in nationally representative data (N = 60,703), and with more comprehensive measures in online crowdsourced data (N = 2,846). Supporting the hypothesis, low belief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes, and support for discriminatory behaviors against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ), Blacks, and immigrants in the United States (Study 1), with higher ingroup biases, prejudicial attitudes toward outgroups, and less support for conflict resolution in samples collected from 19 Eastern European countries (Study 2), 25 Muslim countries (Study 3), and Israel (Study 4). Further, among Americans, lower belief in evolution was associated with greater prejudice and militaristic attitudes toward political outgroups (Study 5). Finally, perceived similarity to animals (a construct distinct from belief in evolution, Study 6) partially mediated the link between belief in evolution and prejudice (Studies 7 and 8), even when controlling for religious beliefs, political views, and other demographic variables, and were also observed for nondominant groups (i.e., religious and racial minorities). Overall, these findings highlight the importance of belief in human evolution as a potentially key individual-difference variable predicting racism and prejudice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Are you a Jew? If so, as a Jew you should realize all the Miraculous victories and signs going on with Israel to this day, and Bible Prophecy most of all, Fulfilled in CHRIST, that will make you Realize how Real and Supernatural The Bible Is.
You can't tell me after the Holocaust and 2,000 years of exile, Israel being revived and defeated Multiple different enemies with no aircraft or experience, in 1948 is somehow a "coincidence" and the list goes even more on.
As a Hebrew you should realize that your/our ancestors had success versus many enemies because of their belief in GOD.
Posted by Fity7 (Member # 23572) on :
It’s actually the opposite. When Saved by CHRIST, then you will Love all as people and honestly wish Well and Salvation for their soul.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: It's probably because a lot of creationists in the US tend to be Religious Right types who vote Republican. That said, the correlation is rather ironic considering how creationists bring up Darwin's of-his-time racist attitudes in order to discredit evolutionary theory.
When it comes to evolution 31% of Americans believe in Young Earth creationism, 22% believe in evolution guided by a supreme being and 32% in evolution due to natural processes. Among American scientists the numbers are 2%, 8% and 87%.
According to Wiki USA are among the nations in the West where acceptance among the general public for evolution are lowest
quote:A study published in Science compared attitudes about evolution in the United States, 32 European countries, and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the United States was Turkey (25%). Public acceptance of evolution was most widespread (at over 80% of the population) in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden.
One can also see differences between different religions and denominations within USA:
Religious Differences on the Question of Evolution (United States) Percentage who agree that evolution is the best explanation for the origin of human life on earth Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
I for one am very skeptical of this study. For one thing, most, though not all, sociology studies conducted nowadays are heavily left-wing biased. In fact most scientific studies in general whether in soft sciences or hard studies are heavily funded and promoted by untrustworthy sources whose agenda is overtly that of humanist scientism. In fact I find this study to be funny considering how evolution as promoted by Charles Darwin was in fact very racist in origin with the belief in superior vs. inferior races while Christian doctrine taught that all humans share common descent from Adam and Eve who were created in God's image and thus all humans share the same dignity. Thus Christian doctrine is against the notion of 'race' which originates from Darwins concept of evolutionary "breeds" and "races".
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: It's probably because a lot of creationists in the US tend to be Religious Right types who vote Republican. That said, the correlation is rather ironic considering how creationists bring up Darwin's of-his-time racist attitudes in order to discredit evolutionary theory.
Actually this is a common over-generalization. There are a good number of Democrat voters who are also creationists especially minority groups like African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Modern racism and its parent racialism was based on Darwinian notions. This is why for example during slavery, many slave owners used Darwin's book to justify slavery.
Many people are unware of the entire title of Darwin's book:
Who are the "favored" races?? LOL According to Darwin and his cousin Francis Galton who are both members of Scottish Rite Freemasonry (the British Illuminati) they are the most dominant imperialist races in particular the white race. This goes against the Christian doctrine that ALL humans are the race of man/Adam and that those nations favored by God are those that do his will.
This is why modern scientism which controls academia is itself rooted in religion a non-Christian rather sinister religion.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Indeed evolutionary arguments have been used to justify things like slavery and racism, but also arguments based on certain readings of the Bible, so when people are looking for ways to excuse oppression and bad behavior they are prepared to corrupt both science and religion.
Polls like the one in the OP, will not be better than the kind of questions asked in it, and how representative and statistically significant the selection of respondents is. It also matters in which countries such polls are made.
What I find interesting is also the questions one can ask regarding the fifth post in this thread about the difference among adherents of different religions and denominations in their view of evolution. It would be interesting to follow-up those differences and see if there are correlations between these different religions acceptance of evolution and their followers tolerance of people with different skin color, ethnicity and similar. Are for example Buddhists more tolerant than Christians?
Another interesting question is also how does acceptance or rejection of evolution correspond with different levels of education? And how will that in turn affect peoples tolerance?
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ When you say arguments based on certain readings of the bible, a more accurate assessment would be arguments based on certain perversions of the bible. For example the bible is actually against chattel slavery as in the capture and forced bondage of other people (except in war) and most of the rules for bondage was that of debt bondage which prisoners of war was included. The biblical argument that slave owners tried to use to justify African slaves was the Hamitic myth which claimed the children of Ham were cursed to servitude when actually Noah cursed Canaan which was fulfilled when the Canaanites were conquered by Israel.
So yes people in power will use anything including lies to justify their supremacy which unfortunately is the case with science. Science is a tool for humans to understand the universe but there are limits based on technology and our perceptions of the universe hence empirical knowledge. The problem is not science but scientism which is the belief that the tool of science is the end all be all. Even worse than that is the perversion or falsification of science that we saw with so-called COVID pandemic of 2020 and the so-called vaccines of 2021 which many are suffering from today. This is why science should always be scrutinized due to the propagation of pseudo-science. Bio-anthropology as a science was once dominated by the pseudo-science of racialism which still survives today. Pseudo-science is the not just the misappropriation of science but a tool in itself to pervert science for whatever agenda of the elites.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Yes, all religions, political ideologies and science can be corrupted or used to justify things like war, opression or murder. In old times here where I live certain Bible passages (together with popular superstition) were used to justify the murder and torture of women accused of witchcraft. And the priests from the church often were rather active in the persecution of these witches, and also of the Sami people whose original religion and culture were supressed.
Christian (and muslim) ideas have been used to justify "holy" wars which only purpose were to promote the interests of the elites. Often these wars did not favor the ordinary people.
Still today we see different groups using religious arguments for violence.
Today here in Western Europe religion has become harder to use as an effective means to excert power. Instead different corruptions of science have become more common as tools of control.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
When it comes to the correlation between acceptance of evolution and tolerance I think an important factor is also education. Well educated people, especially in the field of science tend to accept evolution. Same well educated people seldom show overt racism. So one can wonder if the tolerance maybe are more related to educational level than religion.
In USA Buddhists and Hindus are open to the idea of evolution. Many Asian immigrants are also relatively well educated. On top of that Buddhism and Hinduism have another view of time, and also about afterlife than many Christians and Muslims, and evolution are maybe easier to fit into their world view.
Belief in evolution seems also relative high among Jews (in USA and Western Europe) who also are relatively well educated. If they are more tolerant is maybe another matter.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Yes, all religions, political ideologies and science can be corrupted or used to justify things like war, oppression or murder. In old times here where I live certain Bible passages (together with popular superstition) were used to justify the murder and torture of women accused of witchcraft. And the priests from the church often were rather active in the persecution of these witches, and also of the Sami people whose original religion and culture were suppressed.
Actually witch-hunts in Europe began before Christian times starting in Rome and other Italian provinces of the Roman Empire. Many of these witches were folk healers and shamans that had the allegiance of plebes (common people) and against the Roman Patricians (elites). In fact while the bible is clear that the penalty of witchcraft was the same as adultery-- stoning, the Roman penalty for maleficarum (harmful magic) was burning at the stake. The same trend occurred in Christian times with most of the persecutions being instigated by lords and nobles and not the church initially. Ironically, the churches and clergy who were most involved in witch-hunts were the Protestant churches like Lutherans and Anglicans post Protestant reformation.
There's an excellent book by Max Dashu on the topic:
quote:Christian (and Muslim) ideas have been used to justify "holy" wars which only purpose were to promote the interests of the elites. Often these wars did not favor the ordinary people.
Christianity did not teach warfare at least not offensive warfare like Islam, hence the Islamic expansions of conquest known as al-Fatiha while the Crusades were a defensive reaction to the former.
quote:Still today we see different groups using religious arguments for violence.
Really? I only see one group, maybe two in the case of Israel. Most Christians around the world are persecuted because they do not have the means to fight back.
quote:Today here in Western Europe religion has become harder to use as an effective means to exert power. Instead different corruptions of science have become more common as tools of control.
Indeed, if you mean Christian religion then yes in Western Europe it has been impotent enough to where Islam has taken root but of course this was all by design of the powers who control Western countries. Even here in the U.S. where Christianity is still strong you never hear of any churches or Christian groups using violence or the threat there of yet even they are being persecuted by government forces. Have you heard of the U.S. State department monitoring traditional Catholics as a "terror threat"?! It is happening.
quote: When it comes to the correlation between acceptance of evolution and tolerance I think an important factor is also education. Well educated people, especially in the field of science tend to accept evolution. Same well educated people seldom show overt racism. So one can wonder if the tolerance maybe are more related to educational level than religion.
I disagree. I think there is little correlation since most (though not all) of the white supremacists that I have encountered in real life but especially in the internet were humanist secularist types who used evolutionary arguments for their reason while most whites who are against racism are traditional Christians who believe in equal human dignity. Really it depends on the values that person is being taught whether at home or elsewhere by other sources.
quote:In USA Buddhists and Hindus are open to the idea of evolution. Many Asian immigrants are also relatively well educated. On top of that Buddhism and Hinduism have another view of time, and also about afterlife than many Christians and Muslims, and evolution are maybe easier to fit into their world view.
Yes but people from such Asian cultures did not have traditions of racism like Western Europe had. Ironically most of the racism I see in Asia comes from countries that had the most Western influence especially Japan who racial ideas were shaped by their Nazi German allies, but even Korea and China who were influenced by communist-Soviet ideas of biological humanism.
quote:Belief in evolution seems also relative high among Jews (in USA and Western Europe) who also are relatively well educated. If they are more tolerant is maybe another matter.
Well the majority of those Jews are secular (like the communist Jews who founded the modern state of Israel) and attitudes may vary depending on the community. Most Jews I've encountered are not racist at least that I know of while you have others that are even in the state of Israel where Ashkenazi Jews would call darker Sephardim and Mizrahim "African monkeys" even though ironically they are closer to the original Judeans.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote: orginally posted by Djehuti Actually witch-hunts in Europe began before Christian times starting in Rome and other Italian provinces of the Roman Empire. Many of these witches were folk healers and shamans that had the allegiance of plebes (common people) and against the Roman Patricians (elites). In fact while the bible is clear that the penalty of witchcraft was the same as adultery-- stoning, the Roman penalty for maleficarum (harmful magic) was burning at the stake. The same trend occurred in Christian times with most of the persecutions being instigated by lords and nobles and not the church initially. Ironically, the churches and clergy who were most involved in witch-hunts were the Protestant churches like Lutherans and Anglicans post Protestant reformation.
In my country the church was rather active in the witch hunt. But also other people participated with enthusiasm, everything from neighbors of the accused, to children who were tricked into accuse even their own relatives. So the processes had to some extent a popular anchoring in older beliefs that came to be clothed in a more Christian garb. Folk superstition was mixed with ecclesiastical arguments about the accused consorting with the Devil.
The commissions that investigated alleged cases of witchcraft included priests from the Swedish Lutheran Church, but also lay people. At the time, the king was head of the church, but the two kings who ruled when the witch trials were at their worst, were mostly too busy waging war on neighboring countries to get involved in any witch business.
Over time, both priests and other authorities came to think that the witch hunts were going too far and began to work to abolish them. The last "witch" in my country was executed in 1704. The witch hunts were worst between 1668 and about 1676.
In other countries, witch hunts continued well into the 18th century, and the last known case of someone being executed for witchcraft in Europe took place in Switzerland in 1782.
A good book about the subject is also Satans raseri (The Wrath of Satan) by history professor Bengt Ankarloo. Ankarloo also wrote his doctoral dissertation about the witch trials.
One can also read Witchcraft and Magic in Europe edited by Bengt Ankarloo, Stuart Clark and William Monter. It is a book series in six parts. Rather comprehensive.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti Really? I only see one group, maybe two in the case of Israel. Most Christians around the world are persecuted because they do not have the means to fight back.
Christians are rather lenient today not so often using religious arguments for violence. There are some exceptions though like The Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. And there are of course muslim groups which use their religion as justification for acts of terror. Pure religious wars between countries are rare these days, even if some politicians throw in some words about God in their speeches now and then.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti
I disagree. I think there is little correlation since most (though not all) of the white supremacists that I have encountered in real life but especially in the internet were humanist secularist types who used evolutionary arguments for their reason while most whites who are against racism are traditional Christians who believe in equal human dignity. Really it depends on the values that person is being taught whether at home or elsewhere by other sources.
It also depends on country. Most anti racists I met here in Sweden are people leaning more to the left or to the middle. Most are secular. Among the racists and people who are anti immigration there are both people who justify their opinions with evolutionary arguments but also those who use conservative and Christian arguments. They see Christianity as an important part of the Swedish culture and that it is threatened by foreigners. Often they do not openly use pure racist arguments but more in line with a fear that Sweden will be overtaken by foreign elements and foreign religions (mostly Islam since many refugees and immigrants come from muslim countries). If one talks with them privately though, many of them reveal pure racist opinions using all kinds of slurs.
Many are also anti LBTQ and sometimes use Biblical arguments to why homosexuality and similar is wrong.
Those who openly and publicly express pure racist opinions and propaganda are rather few since there are laws here that forbid such expressions.
Both the racists and the anti immigrants are rather selective, they are mostly against non European immigration and especially against muslim immigration but also against African immigration. Many of them have no problem though with immigrants from East Asia or Southeast Asia. There are example where known racists have been married to Asian women. I seen example of that online too in other countries like in USA where some people had their homes decorated with confederate flags and who sympathized with the Clan still were married to Southeast Asian women.
Otherwise at least here in Sweden people are overall suspicious to muslims but also other religious people. Here to be very religious is seen a bit like a flaw, and very religious people can be seen as a bit irrational. So when secular people come in contact with immigrants who value religion as very important in their lives, cultural collisions can arise.
Many older Swedes also remember, or at least have heard of, older times when the Church was a part of an oppressive system that controlled ordinary peoples lives. Most people here do not want such times back. They accept and value some Christian traditions but they are unwilling to let Christianity, Islam or any other religion govern their lives.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
When it comes to correlations between religiosity, acceptance of evolution, tolerance against minorities and views of violence it can be difficult to draw any certain conclusions. Many polls probably give an oversimplified picture of peoples opinions based on questions that can not cover the whole spectrum of peoples opinions and motivations.
To understand these kind of relations one must look at deeper cultural and historical contexts.
What I can say about my own place though, is that it is a quite secular country with high or at least moderate tolerance against minorities.
It is also a country that managed to stay out of war for 200 years. But admittedly the beginning of the peaceful period started already when the country was much more religious than today. The period with most wars (the 1600s) was the period when the king and his church ruled with absolute authority, at that time Sweden was a sort of mix between absolute monarchy and theocracy.
About evolution: The acceptance for evolution among ordinary people here is about 80 - 90% and nearly total among scientists. And it dominates our educational system especially in subjects like biology, anthropology, paleontology and similar. Biology is thought of making no real sense without understanding evolution as an important explanatory tool for understanding life on earth.
One can also mention that many Christians here accept evolution. And in England I think the Anglican church does so too. And the Catholic church supports evolution aided by a higher power.
Posted by -Just Call Me Jari- (Member # 14451) on :
Actually there has been a huge debate scene on Biblical slavery, and as far as I can tell no Creationist/Biblical Apologist has put forward a concrete argument disproving the biblical endorsement of slavery.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ When you say arguments based on certain readings of the bible, a more accurate assessment would be arguments based on certain perversions of the bible. For example the bible is actually against chattel slavery as in the capture and forced bondage of other people (except in war) and most of the rules for bondage was that of debt bondage which prisoners of war was included. The biblical argument that slave owners tried to use to justify African slaves was the Hamitic myth which claimed the children of Ham were cursed to servitude when actually Noah cursed Canaan which was fulfilled when the Canaanites were conquered by Israel.
So yes people in power will use anything including lies to justify their supremacy which unfortunately is the case with science. Science is a tool for humans to understand the universe but there are limits based on technology and our perceptions of the universe hence empirical knowledge. The problem is not science but scientism which is the belief that the tool of science is the end all be all. Even worse than that is the perversion or falsification of science that we saw with so-called COVID pandemic of 2020 and the so-called vaccines of 2021 which many are suffering from today. This is why science should always be scrutinized due to the propagation of pseudo-science. Bio-anthropology as a science was once dominated by the pseudo-science of racialism which still survives today. Pseudo-science is the not just the misappropriation of science but a tool in itself to pervert science for whatever agenda of the elites.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ The problem is due to two reasons:
First, is a confusion of translation where the Hebrew words abdut and abed respectively meaning servitude and servant tend to get translated as slavery and slave. Slavery of course is a type of servitude wherein the servant is a property and his service is unpaid. The Israelite traditions of servitude is based on debt bondage which is why Israelites can hold enemies in bondage as reparations for war (which was the tradition in all cultures) or why Israelites in debt can sell themselves or their children to repay it. It was common practice for Israelites to sell their daughters to wealthy families not because of debt but to bring income to the family as well as chance for those daughters to marry the sons of those families. If abdut is slavery, then Israelites would be selling themselves and their children into slavery left and right.
The second problem is Mishnah or traditional explanation of the Torah and other parts of the Old Testament. These traditional Jewish commentaries used to be used in the early church and by church fathers but was largely forgotten after the Renaissance and definitely by the Protestant Reformation. So without the Mishnah it became easier for persons to misinterpret or even pervert biblical practices to their own ends. Christians were not the only ones guilty of this even Jews who followed the Babylonian Talmud found ways to circumvent or pervert the old Mishnaic rules. So for example while Jews were forbidden from practicing chattel slavery by outright capturing people and forcing them into labor, the Babylonian Talmud says they are not prohibited from buying already captured people and selling them to others. Which is why the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was started and predominantly controlled by Sephardic Jews from Portugal and Spain. The Muslim religion was originally based on Arabic Christianity but later changed into a totalitarian practice based on servitude including slavery of unbelievers, and even Christian rulers during the Medieval period to later times began to adopt this practice of apology to conquer and enslave others who were not Christian despite no Christian docrine saying this.
Posted by -Just Call Me Jari- (Member # 14451) on :
^^Yeah but why not just come outright and say slavery is immoral? If the biblical god is the god who created the universe and where all of morality is supposed to come from why is he silent on saying slavery is immoral? Also, many scholars lke Joshua Bowen etc. who actually read the language and study the culture say that the biblical slavery is infact slavery
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ Unfortunately the bible, and particularly the Torah, does not explain a lot of its commandments. The Mishnah does explain them as well as the early church fathers.
But basically the reason why it does not come out and say that slavery is immoral is because it depends on the situation. According to the Torah slavery is only immoral if imposed on innocent people while it can be used as punishment on nations who commit sins against people and ultimately against God. This is why for example the Israelites were justified in enslaving (some) of their Canaanite neighbors for crimes like child sacrifice and perverted sexual rites. Slavery was a form of punishment and is far more economically feasible than the systems of imprisonment we have today, where a criminal simply just gets clothed and fed by tax payers.
Posted by -Just Call Me Jari- (Member # 14451) on :
^^^I mean I feel like at this point you're just trying to justify/apologize for Judeo-Christian endorsement of slavery. Like I said there are scholars who actually read the language(s)(of the Middle East) and study the culture, and as far as I can tell the biblical slavery is slavery. I mean I could be wrong I don't study the culture and language, but the apologetic defense of the biblical lack of condemnation of slavery is very telling.
I mean Occams Razor says the simplist explanation is the Biblical Hebrews(Who were infact Cannanites themselves btw,) were no different than almost every culture on earth and saw nothing immoral about slavery....
Which again begs the question of the biblical god being the basis for morality.
Is slavery Moral? Even most people back in those days knew there was an aspect of immorality to enslaving someone, hence the prohibition of not enslaving your tribe or ethnic group that some cultures developed....really odd that the supposed creator of the universe is silent on such an issue.
Posted by -Just Call Me Jari- (Member # 14451) on :
Don't get me wrong the issue is pretty complicated, again the bible seems to be pretty ....How can I say it...contradictory or maybe "up in the air" about it...
The thing is Christianity did in fact play a large role in abolitionism, something I think most Atheist/Secular apologists either don't mention or give credit where its due.
So can I really with a straight face claim the biblical god, while not outright condemning slavery, did not at least inspire a movement to end it....at least from the Christians in the West..
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: ^^^I mean I feel like at this point you're just trying to justify/apologize for Judeo-Christian endorsement of slavery. Like I said there are scholars who actually read the language(s)(of the Middle East) and study the culture, and as far as I can tell the biblical slavery is slavery. I mean I could be wrong I don't study the culture and language, but the apologetic defense of the biblical lack of condemnation of slavery is very telling.
I agree with this, but keep in mind that systems of slavery have varied across the world. In some West African cultures for example, slavery worked more like indentured servitude then the system of slavery we saw in the colonial New World. Conservative Christian apologists may err in making the biblical Hebrews out to have been more palatable to modern morality than they actually were, but neither were they likely any worse than other Iron Age cultures of southwestern Asia.
Posted by -Just Call Me Jari- (Member # 14451) on :
While I do agree with the general argument, and like I said Im not saying the issue is 100% against the morality of the bible, my position is that any and all forms of slavery is immoral and tbh. I find the apologizing for African slavery by Liberal historians to be just as morally lacking that Xtian defense of biblical slavery.
Thats just me and my opinion though...the way I see it slavery was just not seen as immoral by most people, like it is today
and if Im honest this is due in large part to Christian morality...so yeah...lol sorry if I sound contradictory...
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: ^^^I mean I feel like at this point you're just trying to justify/apologize for Judeo-Christian endorsement of slavery. Like I said there are scholars who actually read the language(s)(of the Middle East) and study the culture, and as far as I can tell the biblical slavery is slavery. I mean I could be wrong I don't study the culture and language, but the apologetic defense of the biblical lack of condemnation of slavery is very telling.
I agree with this, but keep in mind that systems of slavery have varied across the world. In some West African cultures for example, slavery worked more like indentured servitude then the system of slavery we saw in the colonial New World. Conservative Christian apologists may err in making the biblical Hebrews out to have been more palatable to modern morality than they actually were, but neither were they likely any worse than other Iron Age cultures of southwestern Asia.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Jari says: Thats just me and my opinion though...the way I see it slavery was just not seen as immoral by most people, like it is today and if Im honest this is due in large part to Christian morality...so yeah...lol sorry if I sound contradictory... . True & not really contradictory. Slavery was generally seen as acceptable by most players in the slave trade/pre abolition era, and those who profited from the institution, except for maybe the victims themselves and a few objectors who few paid attention to. The local "establishments" of the day, whether in Europe, Africa, or the Arab World all accepted and profited from slavery. And it stood to reason. WHile slavery was not profitable EVERYWHERE at ALL times, in general it was profitable for the purposes it was used for. If you want mass production of certain crops cheaply, then bludgeoned, brutalized slave labor was the profitable way to get them, with all kind of profitable spillovers, from manufacturing to to shipping across the board. Elsewhere if you wanted cheap labor for your projects, and warm bodies to sexually exploit for pleasure, slavery fit the bill too. Slavery was actually EXPANDING at the time Britain began its abolition campaign and Britain lost almost 2% of its GDP when it gave up slavery. It was the abolition campaign that primarily was responsible for slavery's demise. Note I said primarily, not solely or only, and that actually slavery was EXPANDING when the curtain came down on it. See Seymour Hersh's book Econocide for plenty of data.
One of the key things that made the campaign successful was that peoples consciences finally began to actually apply Christian teachings, either directly or by following through on the implications of such teaching. The Quakers were early pioneers, but eventually there was enough awakening of conscience when slavery's evils were exposed, exposure of the contradictions between the teachings of Christianity and the actual reality of slavery.
Eventually, in a back and forth, convoluted process that took decades, and that involved various parties and agendas and motives, the foundational awakening, rooted in awakened Christianity, succeeded in getting rid of slavery. Where they other factors? Sure, as already noted above, but the foundational campaign was rooted in that faith. Were there assorted Christians that opposed abolition? Sure, but the abolitionist movement fundamentally was a mass movement. The elites and establishments of the day, in the West and elsewhere, generally opposed abolition. This is why it took decades of lobbying and arm twisting in the British Parliament for example, and a Civil War in the US. Abolitionism was eventually successful enough that that it could leverage power to apply real world force- Union armies or British Anti-Slavery Squadron ships. Messy yes. Ultimately successful- yes also. See detailed scholarship such as Adam Hochschild's book Bury the Chains.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: ^^^I mean I feel like at this point you're just trying to justify/apologize for Judeo-Christian endorsement of slavery. Like I said there are scholars who actually read the language(s)(of the Middle East) and study the culture, and as far as I can tell the biblical slavery is slavery. I mean I could be wrong I don't study the culture and language, but the apologetic defense of the biblical lack of condemnation of slavery is very telling.
I mean Occams Razor says the simplist explanation is the Biblical Hebrews(Who were infact Cannanites themselves btw,) were no different than almost every culture on earth and saw nothing immoral about slavery....
Which again begs the question of the biblical god being the basis for morality.
Is slavery Moral? Even most people back in those days knew there was an aspect of immorality to enslaving someone, hence the prohibition of not enslaving your tribe or ethnic group that some cultures developed....really odd that the supposed creator of the universe is silent on such an issue.
Keep in mind a coupla things:
1- -First it was not God that created slavery but man. Slavery (as opposed to temporary types of voluntary labor) is a fundamental product of human corruption, greed etc. God did not “endorse” such at all, Man did, in defiance of God.
2- - If God’s laws were actually followed- American slavery as such would not have amounted to much. For example, one of the first verses pointed to by abolitionists were commandments against man-stealing. Man-stealing is done by small scale kidnapping or raids, or large scale warfare specifically aimed at the same or as a byproduct of wars to enhance the power, prestige and riches of the victors. The exact process mattered little to the actual black victims in chains at the end of the line. Bottom line was the same. The Ashanti Empire for example conducted some large scale wars to seize captives, as did numerous (not all) of the Muslim jihad operations in Western Africa. Even when slaves were not the primary objective, the victors, Muslim or non-Muslim, were only too happy to sell captives to the white man, or to Arabi masters within or outside of Africa.
Likewise most Jewish traders whether in America or North Africa didn’t really care how “the product” was obtained, nor did most European or Arab, or Black Muslim or “pagan” traders. African elites also didn’t really care about slavery as such- as long as they were profiting in some way. As black nationalist scholar Walter Rodney shows that some West African elites first put African captives to work on their agricultural holdings then later on sold them to Europeans (African Slavery and other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast- Walter Rodney 1966), locking in a double-profit. Quick sale or extended exploitation, the bottom line of the stolen humanity was the same.
3- - Third ancient Hebrew slavery was not the chattel slavery of the Americas, or (some) parts of the Muslim Middle East, and actually was an improvement in numerous aspects. Slaves then were more akin to America's indentured servants. Hebrew bond servants were actually to be freed after 6 years, and there were various protection against abuse, such as the maimed bondman gaining freedom. The 25 year jubilee also allowed for debt bondman and other release as well, and the runaway slave or bondman was not to be returned to his master. Ancient Hebrew laws, while certainly not perfect, would actually have undermined American slavery or Arab slavery such as the brutal chattel endured by the Zanj, in the brutal salt marshes of Muslim Iraq- site of one of the largest black slave rebellion in history. So when you say the Hebrews were no different than almost every culture on earth as regards slavery, you are not quite accurate.
4- - Fourth the Creator was not silent on slavery. From the beginning the dignity conferred on man by said Creator set a standard. Man violated that standard, and continues to do so. The Creator allowed slavery to continue, just as he allowed theft and murder to continue while he brought home such sin to the conscience of men. If the Creator had wanted to quickly eliminate slavery he would have had to liquidate man. When the conscience of man was exercised enough about the sin of slavery then effective action happened. The era of the laws against man-stealing and the 10 commandments etc (thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not bear false witness, etc etc) would also have eliminated slavery as such if said moral laws had been actually followed. Just the commandments: "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not bear false witness" or "Thou shalt not kill" would eliminate most slavery. But men have not paid heed. The entity really "silent" or slavery is man, who has been repeatedly "silent" as regards stopping its sin and exploitation of their fellow men by slavery.
5- -Fifth atheists by the way have no shining testimony on "morality" as far as slave labor. The atheist record is even worse, as the massive misery of Stalin's gulags and Mao's "reeducation" camps attest. Just the gulag system's body count of dead slave laborers begins to approach the numbers of black slaves dying in the Middle Passage. And that's not even beginning to count the slave legions of smiling Chairman Mao, or other atheist regimes. Atheist dictator Pol Pol invoked his own brand of "morality" as he liquidated some 1-2 million of Cambodia's population, in building the "new" socialist man.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: ^^^I mean I feel like at this point you're just trying to justify/apologize for Judeo-Christian endorsement of slavery. Like I said there are scholars who actually read the language(s)(of the Middle East) and study the culture, and as far as I can tell the biblical slavery is slavery. I mean I could be wrong I don't study the culture and language, but the apologetic defense of the biblical lack of condemnation of slavery is very telling.
I don't know what you mean by "endorsement". Yes, there are some Christians who try to deny the biblical doctrine of actual slavery and instead point to debt bondage or indentured servitude, but slavery as in forced servitude due to loss of freedom and ownership by another was indeed practiced as a form of punishment imposed on certain people or individuals. That's not the same as what was practiced later by imperial nations let alone the Trans-Atlantic slavery.
quote:I mean Occams Razor says the simplest explanation is the Biblical Hebrews(Who were in fact Canaanites themselves btw,) were no different than almost every culture on earth and saw nothing immoral about slavery....
There is still debate as to the ethnic origins of the Hebrews whose own tradition says they came from Mesopotamia. But ironically the common morality in Mesopotamia and elsewhere is that a stronger state who wants to conquer another may enslave its inhabitants. That was NOT the morality of the bible whose Godly instructions says slavery was a punishment imposed on people who violate certain code of ethics that were considered abominable.
quote:Which again begs the question of the biblical god being the basis for morality.
I just stated what the morality of the biblical God was. It was not to enslave innocent people but only those guilty of certain violations.
quote:Is slavery Moral? Even most people back in those days knew there was an aspect of immorality to enslaving someone, hence the prohibition of not enslaving your tribe or ethnic group that some cultures developed....really odd that the supposed creator of the universe is silent on such an issue.
One may argue that the abolition of slavery completely even as a form of punishment and instead long term incarceration paid for by law abiding tax payers including victims of the criminal to be some how more "progressive" while others may agree that it is senseless. Indeed there are those who now argue to get abolish the death penalty even though that too is biblical no matter how heinous the criminals' acts are only for those criminals to be given comfortable living support by tax payers including the families of the victims.
So whose morality is superior? That of the god described in the bible or what so-called enlightened humans think to be "progressive"??
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: A new study connects disbelief in evolution with greater prejudice.
quote:A disbelief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes and support of discriminatory behavior against Blacks, immigrants and the LGBTQ community in the U.S., according to University of Massachusetts Amherst research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Stylianos Syropoulos, Uri Lifshin, Jeff Greenberg, Dylan E. Horner, Bernhard Leidner. Bigotry and the human–animal divide: (Dis)belief in human evolution and bigoted attitudes across different cultures.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2022
Belief in evolution is pretty much a standard thin among racists- you can see it online plenty. And of course leading racist scholars such as JP Rushton, are all strong "evo" followers. Darwin also was mentioned below, and his "racial" ranking of the human species. Followers and users of Darwin pioneered scientific racism, and of course the racist Thurd Reich relied heavily on various 'scientific' approaches, to demonstrate the evolution of inferior stocks. It should be noted however that Darwin has been misused in some cases, and he himself opposed slavery.
Nevertheless, if anything, you could say that a belief in evolution and its application based on race is a cornerstone of racism in the modern era, not religion so much. And the "scientific" approach as far as racism has not abated as in religion, but if anything, continues to grow.
^^from back in the "Matilda" era... lol
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Some claim today's era is based on a kinder gentler, pro evolution progressivism that is moving away from race. However this is not the case at all. If anything there is a great deal of research on "race" - it just is not as open as the good old days.. if the book below is to be believed. Note the high irrelevance of religion in this arena. Various substantial debates are between pro-evolutionists..
Review Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini – review This article is more than 4 years old This timely book looks at the toxic origins of racism, which science continues to embrace
This is an urgent, important book. It contains a warning: you thought racism might be on its way out of science? That the arc of society, bending towards more progressive, tolerant values, had long banished the scientific search for ways in which one grouping of people is inherently more talented, clever or physically able than another? You thought wrong.
Race is a relatively recent concept, says science journalist Angela Saini, in Superior. One of the first uses was in the 16th century as a way to refer to a group of people from a family or tribe, it did not have the connotations it carries today. It largely did not refer to physical appearance or colour, for example. She explains that, even until the 18th century during the European Enlightenment, skin colour was thought to be a shifting quality based on geography: people living in hot places had darker skins, but if those people moved to colder climes it was thought their skin would get lighter in response.
The beginnings of race science seem to emerge with the Victorian frenzy for categorising life. Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the now familiar binomial nomenclature to classify living things (Homo sapiens, for example) , was among the first to start categorising humans in a way that we might call “racial”. Linnaeus laid out four categories in 1758 that corresponded to the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, recognisable by their supposed characteristic colours: red, white, yellow and black. A generous person might argue that Linnaeus was just trying to do what taxonomists do, but Saini explains that his classifications went further than just appearance: Linnaeus described indigenous Americans not only as having straight black hair and wide nostrils, but also being of a subjugated nature, as if that were their natural state. He further included human sub-categories for monster-like and feral people.
'Men were above women and white races above others' Charles Darwin In an eye-opening section, Saini outlines just how many of the greatest lights of biology are implicated in the gradual accretion of ideas that we would now find unpalatable and unscientific. Even Charles Darwin fell for human categorisation, seeing “gradations between the ‘highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages’... Men were above women and white races above others.” Thomas Henry Huxley – Darwin’s bulldog and famed pugilistic defender of the theory of natural selection – was an out-and-out racist. Not all humans were created equal, he argued, and in an essay on the emancipation of black slaves, he wrote that the average white person had a bigger brain: “The highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins.”This all came hot on the heels of rampant European colonialism, one of the effects of which was a proliferation of gentleman scholars who also turned their hands to classification of what, for many of the conquering explorers, must have been a bewildering array of “different” humans. At the dawn of the 20th century, some of this rich diversity of people ended up in human zoos, such as those at the grand Colonial Exposition in Paris. Walking through the remains of one of these zoos a century later, Saini describes what once stood there as an “Edwardian Disneyland, not with little dolls, but actual people”. There were five replica villages representing colonies in north Africa and beyond. Millions of visitors came to gawp at this array of “different” people over the six months of the exposition while scientists recorded measurements of these exotic people – skin and eye colour, sizes of heads, height, what they ate – and, says Saini, “set the parameters for modern race science”.
That white people were at the top of the human hierarchy seemed axiomatic in the early 20th century, permeating plenty of the thinking biologists and anthropologists were doing, particularly in fields such as eugenics. That there was no robust evidence to support such sweeping claims hardly put a brake on their efforts. The nadir in the desperate search to find scientific reasons to justify dislike of the “other” came in the second world war, as researchers associated with the Nazis did their damnedest to prove the supposed superiority of their Aryan race.
After the war, things appeared to shift. Aghast at the horror in which race science and eugenics had been complicit, biologists and anthropologists in the west did their best to do what winners do: rewrite the narrative. Any research associated with these prejudicial ideas in the US and Britain was brushed under the carpet, university departments were renamed, scientists shifted into new fields. In 1950, Unesco even convened 100 scientists, policymakers and diplomats who put out a statement aimed at dismantling the idea of race, to put an end to racism and racist research: “Scientists have reached general agreement in recognising that mankind is one: that all men belong to the same species, Homo sapiens.” Good had won over evil.
In fact, argues Saini, race science never went away. Instead it festered in the shadows, funded by murky foundations and individuals with barely disguised links to white supremacists. This area of work even has its own peer-reviewed journal, which supposedly seeks to publish studies on the apparent differences between people. All in the name of academic freedom to conduct dispassionate inquiry into the human condition.
But for Saini, the motives are clear: they may hide behind academic titles and affiliations, but these researchers and their supporters are reaching for something, anything to reinforce the hierarchies they already believe exist and to establish what they see as the superiority of one group of people over another. Every new biological discipline is quickly co-opted to the task. Take genetics. In the 1994 book The Bell Curve, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein argued that African Americans were less intelligent than white Americans and that genetic differences between ethnicities were a big factor in that difference.
‘White supremacy’ is really about white degeneracy Keith Kahn-Harris Read more Scientists agree there is an important genetic component to intelligence. And research from the US in the 1980s – quoted in The Bell Curve – shows that if you ask people to self-identify their ethnicity and then measure, for example, educational attainment or IQ, you get different average levels between different ethnicities. However, this does not show that one ethnicity is genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than another. This is largely because the most up-to-date genetic sequencing work shows that African Americans have a substantial amount of European genetic ancestry – they could even be called African European Americans according to some geneticists. In Afro-Caribbeans, that European ancestry is even stronger. The upshot is that ethnicities are far more mixed than we can tell by appearances alone. Also, that the commonplace use of the word “ethnicity” simply does not map on to how geneticists think about ancestry.
Saini’s book asks its readers to face uncomfortable realities. She has form here. Her previous book, Inferior, was a powerful account of how the scientific establishment has misunderstood and mischaracterised women (and continues to). In Superior, she explains why we cannot afford complacency on race. Her spirited argument is meticulously researched and flecked with righteous anger.
There is hardly a better time for this book. Recent history has brought many of the so-called intellectual racists – Richard Spencer among a rogues’ gallery of others – and their shaky ideas to wider prominence. Authoritarian leaders around the world look to people like this and to their underlying race “scientists” to add intellectual ballast to their prejudice on issues ranging from equality to immigration. Whether or not research is sound seems to make little difference to white supremacists on the march for power. “Intellectual racism has always existed,” says Saini. “It is a toxic little seed at the heart of academia. However dead you might think it is, it needs only
<<SNIP excerpt>> ---------------------
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ The problem is the ideology of scientism which is itself a kind of religion (and really based on another religion--occult Gnosticism but that's a whole other topic). Science is a tool or methodology used to understand the universe. It is not the be all end all like God almighty, but of course that is what atheists make it out to be. Unfortunately as I've already stated, because science is a tool, it can be and has often been as is now abused by authorities. In fact, I believe the study itself can be counted as an abuse since biased or flawed studies have become a dime a dozen in academia. Especially considering as you pointed out the racist history of Darwinian evolution.
It's funny because the demonic troll plaguing this forum accused me of being an 'evolutionist' just because I disagreed with his idiotic hyper-literal interpretation of the bible. It's idiots like him that make the bible look stupid and thus make scientism look sensible. Scientism is rooted in materialism because all science is based on empirical evidence constituted by experimental procedure and sense experience. All experimental procedures are limited by technology and all sense experience is limited to human perception, thus science itself is limited.
Now for Brandon and others I myself am not "against" evolution per say but I am skeptical. We know micro-evolution exists in the sense of minute genetic changes being made to populations and in the case of simple celled organisms like bacteria which whose populations die and propagate quickly to develop new strains, or that within species of animals like humans for example our morphology over time has changed to become more gracile. The issue of course is macro-evolution of the development of one species from another. Again, while I am not denying the possibility of such, I just haven't seen any hard evidence considering that we have not seen truly transitionary fossil evidence not to mention, the fossil hoaxes that have been perpetrated. This is the reason why I'm skeptical.
Also, as I've stated before the idea of evolution did not begin with Darwin but was postulated back in ancient times by thinkers from several cultures but the oldest recorded one comes from the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander. In fact not just evolution, but even the eugenics practices associated with Darwin's cousin Francis Galton is rooted in ancient Greco-Roman notions of human selective breeding and infanticide of weak babies. So really these are all pagan beliefs at the source including the belief in superior and inferior ethne (peoples) which is the root of racism. Christianity including creationists do not subscribe to such beliefs that are against Christian doctrines of humans being made in God's image and thus human sanctity.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
When it comes to evolution it is so far the theory with the best explanatory power when regarding the variety of life we see here on Earth. Most other explanations postulate the presense of some kind of supernatural creator or creators. That in it´s turn awakens questions about the nature of such creator since the creative force (or forces) are described somewhat differently in different religious systems. In the end it even awakes the question of if the creator him/herself is created and in that case by whom?
When it comes to the question of observing evolutionary processes, the problem is that, especially when it comes to more advanced life forms like ourselves, our generation spans are so long that direct observations are difficult. In the case of organisms with a shorter generation length, it is easier. A long-running experiment with E-coli bacteria has observed approximately 60,000 generations of development. During that time, such a radical development has taken place in terms of their metabolism that some of the researchers are in the process of defining some of the newly developed bacteria as a new species, or at least on the way to becoming a new species since E-coli are defined, among other things, by the ability to feed on certain substances.
If we recalculate 60,000 generations to human generations, we end up more than a million years back in time when the species Homo erectus was the dominant hominid.
Evolution is not the only theory that deals with long time spans. For example the theory of plate tectonics also deals with processes which takes millions, and even billions of years.
The issue of transitional fossils is also tricky because we are all sort of intermediate forms between our parents and children. Even if you had a complete fossil series of a species, it would be difficult to delineate where one species begins and another ends (something one can see in for example so called ring species). Unfortunately, the fossil record is quite patchy, especially when it comes to vertebrates (especially land animals) because most dead organisms are not preserved as fossils. Among microfossils, such as for example foraminifera, the record is somewhat more complete because they can sometimes be preserved over long periods in large quantities. And they also have short life spans producing many generations in shorter time.
Otherwise, we have fossils which show forms that combine the characteristics of different animal groups, such as the classical case of Archaeopteryx, which had both reptile-like features and bird features.
Paleontology is a rather complex science today and more and more interesting discoveries are made as new fossil-bearing layers are found all over the world.
I don't think it's even a coincidence that even in a religious country like the USA, about 95% of scientists believe that the theory of evolution provides the best explanation when it comes to our existence and when it comes to the variation of life we see around us, and of the variation and tendencies we see in the fossil record.
Then, of course, there is a middle ground where some believe that evolution is to some extent controlled by God (or an equivalent higher being).
There is a rather interesting and entertaining series of videos on YouTube where a biologist (at least according to him) explains some of the misunderstandings about the theory of evolution. He also reacts on different anti evolutionary videos
The theory of Evolution as a science holds a rather good explanatory power to many biological phenomena. But as all science (and religion) it can be used for political purposes, which has been done. Just as religion once were used to justify war, conquest, oppression, forced conversions, forced labor and similar varieties, biology, in the form of racial science and certain kind of social evolutionism, have been used to practice and defend various types of oppression and genocide (the Holocaust is a very well known example).
Sometimes it has also not been possible to separate the motives, for example, colonialism contained elements of both scientific racism and the desire to Christianize and colonize. There were economical (often defended with racial arguments) and religious motifs. Even today, there are some pastors (although hopefully they are not common) who, for example, think that slavery was good for black Americans because it gave them the chance to receive the gospel. They were rescued from African paganism.
Some Christians also think that, for example, it was good for the native population of California to be forced into mission stations where they were subjected to forced labor, unsanitary conditions and sexual abuse (at least according to the book Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide by Rupert Costo and Jeanette H. Costo). One of the founders and leading culprits of the mission system has even been declared a saint.
In many cases, certain peoples were subjected to both economic exploitation and religious oppression, which was then followed by exploitation based on, among other things, racial biological principles. It happened, for example, in the northern parts of my own country where the Sami population was first taxed for fur and other items, then they were forced into forced labor in silver mines. This was followed by the Church outlawing their original religious traditions. Some Noaidi (shamans) were even burned for not wanting to abandon their "pagan" ways. Later the state, backed by racial science tried in different ways to assimilate the Sami people, at the same time as it wanted to benefit from their land and industries such as hunting, fishing and reindeer husbandry.
So many times different ideologies have collaborated in terms of oppression and exploitation.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I have to agree with Archaeopteryx in that racists will use any pretext to justify their bigotry, even if a lot of the ones we encounter in the online anthro fandom present themselves as scientific. As for Christianity, it predates racialism by centuries as do the other Abrahamic religions, but you absolutely do have a lot of overlap between modern Christian nationalists on the one hand and White supremacists on the other (e.g. guys like Nick Fuentes and the KKK). Though, again, they'll appeal to anything to justify their horrible views.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ The problem is the ideology of scientism which is itself a kind of religion (and really based on another religion--occult Gnosticism but that's a whole other topic). Science is a tool or methodology used to understand the universe. It is not the be all end all like God almighty, but of course that is what atheists make it out to be. Unfortunately as I've already stated, because science is a tool, it can be and has often been as is now abused by authorities. In fact, I believe the study itself can be counted as an abuse since biased or flawed studies have become a dime a dozen in academia. Especially considering as you pointed out the racist history of Darwinian evolution.
It's funny because the demonic troll plaguing this forum accused me of being an 'evolutionist' just because I disagreed with his idiotic hyper-literal interpretation of the bible. It's idiots like him that make the bible look stupid and thus make scientism look sensible. Scientism is rooted in materialism because all science is based on empirical evidence constituted by experimental procedure and sense experience. All experimental procedures are limited by technology and all sense experience is limited to human perception, thus science itself is limited.
Now for Brandon and others I myself am not "against" evolution per say but I am skeptical. We know micro-evolution exists in the sense of minute genetic changes being made to populations and in the case of simple celled organisms like bacteria which whose populations die and propagate quickly to develop new strains, or that within species of animals like humans for example our morphology over time has changed to become more gracile. The issue of course is macro-evolution of the development of one species from another. Again, while I am not denying the possibility of such, I just haven't seen any hard evidence considering that we have not seen truly transitionary fossil evidence not to mention, the fossil hoaxes that have been perpetrated. This is the reason why I'm skeptical.
Also, as I've stated before the idea of evolution did not begin with Darwin but was postulated back in ancient times by thinkers from several cultures but the oldest recorded one comes from the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander. In fact not just evolution, but even the eugenics practices associated with Darwin's cousin Francis Galton is rooted in ancient Greco-Roman notions of human selective breeding and infanticide of weak babies. So really these are all pagan beliefs at the source including the belief in superior and inferior ethne (peoples) which is the root of racism. Christianity including creationists do not subscribe to such beliefs that are against Christian doctrines of humans being made in God's image and thus human sanctity.
Yes, too often scientism makes out as if it has all the answers. But does it? For example as we have oft pointed out on ES, the science shows that animals and people that live in warmer tropical climes, tend to have elongated limb proportions relatively speaking. Vice versa for the cold side of the house with various other intermediate patterns in between. Likewise plants in a salt water environment will over time, develop a higher tolerance for salt.
This is reasonable and good science. Most educated people of faith in the West have no problem with such, save for more extreme blinkered types. And various faith variants such as Old Earth models have long reconciled the matter of lengthy periods/eons needed for the earth's age or various processes to play out.
However, a key question is when you get beyond the routine workaday processes of biological adaptation into the realm of design and ultimate purposes. Sure salt-water plants may evolve/change, but what is the ultimate cause that set forward the plants, salt and water and their interaction, along with the planet they are on? What is the ultimate cause or intelligence that produced that complexity or outcome?
Below that are various intermediate phenomena science cannot satisfactorily explain, or where there are massive evidential gaps like the speciation issues mentioned above, or the complexity issue as to how random processes produce something as complex as the human brain or the universe. Science has not "resolved" such things despite bold claims in various quarters that are just as messianic in tone as the stereotypical cross waving medieval crusader. But entire libraries already groan with debate on such matters. They ain't gonna be solved in this thread or any other. lol
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: The theory of Evolution as a science holds a rather good explanatory power to many biological phenomena. But as all science (and religion) it can be used for political purposes, which has been done. Just as religion once were used to justify war, conquest, oppression, forced conversions, forced labor and similar varieties, biology, in the form of racial science and certain kind of social evolutionism, have been used to practice and defend various types of oppression and genocide (the Holocaust is a very well known example).
Sometimes it has also not been possible to separate the motives, for example, colonialism contained elements of both scientific racism and the desire to Christianize and colonize. There were economical (often defended with racial arguments) and religious motifs. Even today, there are some pastors (although hopefully they are not common) who, for example, think that slavery was good for black Americans because it gave them the chance to receive the gospel. They were rescued from African paganism.
Some Christians also think that, for example, it was good for the native population of California to be forced into mission stations where they were subjected to forced labor, unsanitary conditions and sexual abuse (at least according to the book Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide by Rupert Costo and Jeanette H. Costo). One of the founders and leading culprits of the mission system has even been declared a saint.
In many cases, certain peoples were subjected to both economic exploitation and religious oppression, which was then followed by exploitation based on, among other things, racial biological principles. It happened, for example, in the northern parts of my own country where the Sami population was first taxed for fur and other items, then they were forced into forced labor in silver mines. This was followed by the Church outlawing their original religious traditions. Some Noaidi (shamans) were even burned for not wanting to abandon their "pagan" ways. Later the state, backed by racial science tried in different ways to assimilate the Sami people, at the same time as it wanted to benefit from their land and industries such as hunting, fishing and reindeer husbandry.
So many times different ideologies have collaborated in terms of oppression and exploitation.
To this I would add that atheists and atheistic philosophies are just as bad or worse. Atheist Stalin for example murdered millions in his quest to seize the resources of ordinary people to build his particular atheist project. Ditto for "Chairman" Mao and smiling comrade Pol Pot in the killing fields of Cambodia. Most members of the Communist Parties under these regimes had to be atheists to qualify for party membership. Some may be "under the table" Taoists etc but all must accept and publicly affirm the tenets of atheism.
For example In addition to regulating its members’ religious beliefs and activities, the Chinese CCP is officially atheist and promotes atheism in schools and other spheres of public life. In speeches, President X i Jinping and other officials stress that CCP members must be “unyielding Marxist atheists.”
Stalin created a "League of Militant Godless" some 5.5 million strong, including 2.2 million party members. The Militant Godless, per Stalin were to "storm the heavens," ridicule and humiliate clergymen, and transform "superstitious" citizens into atheists.."
Thus one of the main qualifications of those carrying out various slave labor or forced migration atrocities was not simply that they followed a particular leader or party, but that they profess or support atheism.
Indeed atheists in modern time (especially during the 20th century) have also done immense harm with millions of casualties. But one must also remember that the death toll during the 20th century became higher because the populations were bigger, and the technical development also contributed to that wars and persecution got worse and the dictators had more resources.
If one see old times warfare in relation to the technology and population density of its time a war like the 30 years war was as devastating as any modern war. The total death toll is estimated to between 4 and twelve million. As many as 20% of Europe´s population can have perished due to the war itself and adjacent starvation and sickness. That is a higher loss in percent than even World War Two. And that war was justified among other things by religious reasons (it actually came as a culmination of a longer time of religious conflict in Europe), even if the reality was much more complex, which for example is shown by protestant countries like Sweden and Denmark sometimes fighting each other, and that after 1635 Denmark-Norway actually fought on the side of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain.
Economy, power and other motivations was clad in a religious outfit in order to justify the war, and other kinds of oppression in Europe during that time.
Organised Atheism in a larger scale is a rather new phenomena while religion (and unfortunately also religious conflicts) have existed a very long time. Sometimes it seems that both Jews, Christians and Muslims often forgot, or ignored, the 5th commandment.
Oppression and war is equally bad whether conducted by religious leaders or atheist leaders.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova: Below that are various intermediate phenomena science cannot satisfactorily explain, or where there are massive evidential gaps like the speciation issues mentioned above, or the complexity issue as to how random processes produce something as complex as the human brain or the universe. Science has not "resolved" such things despite bold claims in various quarters that are just as messianic in tone as the stereotypical cross waving medieval crusader. But entire libraries already groan with debate on such matters. They ain't gonna be solved in this thread or any other. lol
Indeed there is gaps in many sciences including evolutionary biology. That is one of the reasons that science can be so exciting, being able to fill the gaps with knowledge (even if all gaps probably never will be filled). Some questions science can not resolve at all since it is beyond all scientific methods, questions like does any God(s) exist, what is the meaning of our existence and similar. Such questions most scientists often leave to philosophers and religious thinkers.
But questions like speciation and the different varieties of it, how complex behaviors arise and similar is the subject of intensive research. We'll see what future research comes up with. After all, research is constantly getting new tools (such as, for example, the new genetics) which hopefully will be able to provide more detailed answers to certain questions.
But the modern variant of Science is still only in it´s infancy. Still we have not even an answer to the fundamental question of whether there is life on other worlds or not.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: The theory of Evolution as a science holds a rather good explanatory power to many biological phenomena. But as all science (and religion) it can be used for political purposes, which has been done. Just as religion once were used to justify war, conquest, oppression, forced conversions, forced labor and similar varieties, biology, in the form of racial science and certain kind of social evolutionism, have been used to practice and defend various types of oppression and genocide (the Holocaust is a very well known example).
Sometimes it has also not been possible to separate the motives, for example, colonialism contained elements of both scientific racism and the desire to Christianize and colonize. There were economical (often defended with racial arguments) and religious motifs. Even today, there are some pastors (although hopefully they are not common) who, for example, think that slavery was good for black Americans because it gave them the chance to receive the gospel. They were rescued from African paganism.
Some Christians also think that, for example, it was good for the native population of California to be forced into mission stations where they were subjected to forced labor, unsanitary conditions and sexual abuse (at least according to the book Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide by Rupert Costo and Jeanette H. Costo). One of the founders and leading culprits of the mission system has even been declared a saint.
In many cases, certain peoples were subjected to both economic exploitation and religious oppression, which was then followed by exploitation based on, among other things, racial biological principles. It happened, for example, in the northern parts of my own country where the Sami population was first taxed for fur and other items, then they were forced into forced labor in silver mines. This was followed by the Church outlawing their original religious traditions. Some Noaidi (shamans) were even burned for not wanting to abandon their "pagan" ways. Later the state, backed by racial science tried in different ways to assimilate the Sami people, at the same time as it wanted to benefit from their land and industries such as hunting, fishing and reindeer husbandry.
So many times different ideologies have collaborated in terms of oppression and exploitation.
A difference should be made between a scientific thesis or religious doctrine and ideology of domination. I understand that there is a difference between the theory of evolution or biological change through time and Darwininan or rather Galtonian ideology of genetic domination and supremacy from which racial supremacy arises. Similarly there is a difference between spreading the gospel through preaching to those that would listen and banning witchcraft from Christian communities and nations to forcing non-Christian native children into Christian indoctrination schools and burning shamans from non-Christian communities (burning again is a Roman penalty NOT a biblical one)!! Obviously these acts are NOT Christian and do NOT reflect Christian doctrines but are acts of state imperialism weaponizing religion. Such has been the case ever since Rome adopted Christianity as a state religion and has been used as such ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, and then the rise of Germanic and Anglo states post Protestant Reformation, which again was WORSE than what the actual Catholic Church did. Ironically, the Byzantium Empire in eastern Europe never had those issues, although they had other political issues. This is why Eastern Europe never had witch-hunts or at least any violent ones and pagans were not persecuted in their own lands but were invited to Christianity with incentives.
Thus there is always a difference between doxy (knowledge) and praxis (practice) whether in religion or science. As long as you have corrupt elites whose power is not kept in check, they will abuse their power by wicked praxis that differs from the actual doxy that they then give a distorted perverted view of.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: When it comes to the correlation between acceptance of evolution and tolerance I think an important factor is also education. Well educated people, especially in the field of science tend to accept evolution. Same well educated people seldom show overt racism. So one can wonder if the tolerance maybe are more related to educational level than religion.
In USA Buddhists and Hindus are open to the idea of evolution. Many Asian immigrants are also relatively well educated. On top of that Buddhism and Hinduism have another view of time, and also about afterlife than many Christians and Muslims, and evolution are maybe easier to fit into their world view.
Belief in evolution seems also relative high among Jews (in USA and Western Europe) who also are relatively well educated. If they are more tolerant is maybe another matter.
IMO these types of studies are misleading as scientists themselves are heavily involved in dictating socially accepted thought and socially accepted areas of inquiry, using language they themselves have cultivated and employed in their interactions with the Asian people you're mentioning (e.g. 'crackpot', 'superstitious', 'primitive', 'creationist', 'pseudoscience'). So these studies are not really measuring what people think with their own free choice and free will, as much as willingness of people to conform to western ideas and willingness to abandon beliefs that western intellectuals have historically been hostile to, and which western intellectuals refuse to co-exist with, as if to say, only western science is acceptable.
Just look at the so-called 'pseudo-science' section of wikipedia, which is a good example of how western intellectuals and their parrots online systematically disparage and sideline the beliefs and sciences practiced by non-Euro peoples, even though some of these have now accumulated enough scientific support to be treated as a valid areas of research. One example of this is acupoints of TCM (traditional Chinese medicine), which can be detected on the body with certain devices. Aside from these acupoints, there are also some works in the last couple of decades that have identified myofacial tissues running along the lengths of the human body, as correlating with (though not necessarily equating to) acupuncture meridians. The fact that such subjects are still in the pseudoscience section and disparaged in 'scientific' books as entirely arbitrary, betrays the fact that you cannot win against this establishment that actively seeks to police and protect the status quo, even where it's been proved wrong.
So, we see a large gap between science on the frontiers of the unknown, which often provides support for these things, and opinionated so-called intellectuals speaking and writing from their desks and offices, miles away from the frontiers of science where people are doing most of the hard work. It is the latter type (historians, professors, textbooks writers, science educators, museums. wiki editors) that acts as gatekeepers, by filtering what it gets from the former, and then it gives the public what it thinks is acceptable, while discarding things of interest that it considers unacceptable or threatening to the status quo.
So, when these types of questionnaires are published, it's not exactly convincing that they measure what they're claiming to measure, because people have never been given a free choice to choose between competing ideas, and because you can't make a free choice even if you've done your homework and sorted out this mess. Not if you want to have a career and if you want to fit in with certain groups.
It's funny that this is understood well in politics, where there is recognized a need for free and fair elections. There is no such thing as free and fair dissemination and discussion of the full spectrum of scientific knowledge. Given the history of how westerners have interacted with the religions and cultures of colonized people, scientists policing acceptable thought and then running their own evolution questionnaires on individuals with unknown credentials (as opposed to religious leaders more qualified to speak on behalf of their religion) is not all that different from the farce of movie studies running their own internal investigations on accused people, like Joss Whedon, etc as opposed to calling the cops. You can't be both a protector of the status quo and a neutral investigator.
Having said that, it's true that Buddhism and Hinduism include thought that can be interpreted as compatible with aspects of evolution through 'natural' means. This is presumably where some of these questionnaire results are coming from, when it comes to the Asian participants. But it's a mistake to interpret this as a compatibility between these religions and the larger ideology of Darwinian evolution, in the same way that people who run with superficial similarities elsewhere in religion (e.g. between Buddha and Jesus, Horus and Jesus, Krishna and Jesus, Odin and Hermes, etc) are generally mistaken.
There is also the question of the credibility of scientists to speak on matters of religion. Let's not forget it was scientists not too long ago who claimed there is a 'God' gene that explains susceptibility to religious ideas. This shows how clueless and patronizing publications on religion can be, that they would reduce religious experiences to the possession of a gene. And I bring this up specifically because I don't recognize their authority to determine who is a Christian. American Christians include evangelicals who see Trump as a savior sent by God, as well as megachurch preachers, and prosperity preachers, all whom are about the furthest you can get from being a follower of Jesus.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Once a Christian world view and explanations derived from the Bible was considered common knowledge also among scientists here in the West. In the early 1800s for example many geological features in Northern and Central Europe were interpreted as effects of the great flood. But gradually a reinterpretation of these features led first amateur scientists, and later professional scientists to realize that such features were most probably created by ice, big glaciers that once covered much larger areas than today. But it still took nearly 50 years before theories about one or many ice ages were accepted.
In the early 1900s geologists still had no good explanations on how mountains were formed, or why certain fossils were distributed in a certain way. There were some who noticed that the shape of continents fit into each other but one did not make so much of it. It was first when Alfred Wegener presented his ideas about continental drift and how all the continents once sat together, but then drifted apart that several geological phenomena seemed understandable. But it took until the 1960s and even later before geologists had accepted that the continents were moving and, moreover, began to understand how it happened. This led to the theories of plate tectonics that are prevalent today.
The theory of evolution also faced fierce resistance at the beginning both among biologists and among laymen. Gradually, the scientific community in the relevant sciences has accepted it, but there is still resistance among laymen and within some religious organizations. Other religious organisations have accepted evolution as an idea even if some say that it is governed by a deity.
It is interesting that the theory of evolution has met more resistance and become more debated also outside the guilds of professional sciencists than many other scientific theories. For example not many question the theories of gravitation or relativity. One does not hear so many complaints today about the teachings of plate tectonics (except among some young Earth creationists) or about Big bang theory or more fuzzy theories about quantum mechanics, or string theory and similar. These theories seem not to engage people in the same way as the theory of evolution does.
Probably is it because we feel that evolution concerns us on a deeper personal plan. After all it deals with our whole identity, where we came from and who our ancestors were. And it also collides with some peoples religious beliefs in a more direct way than many other scientific theories. On top of that it (or rather corruptions of it) has been used for political purposes, and different moralic aspects have been read into it.
One can also mention (as been touched upon already) that evolutionary thoughts had existed already in ancient Greece, in ancient India and among medieval Muslim thinkers so the idea was not totally new when people like Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin and later Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin put forward their evolutionary ideas.
Today there are in many cases a rift between religion and science. But not too long ago many scientists were religious, and some were even monks and priests like Gregor Mendel, William Buckland or Armand David just to mention a couple. Even Charles Darwin himself was a Christian even if some events made him loose his faith in later days. -------- Polls like the one in the OP can never give a complete picture of people's beliefs or worldview. It is difficult to know how representative it is, i.e. who has been asked. And how are the questions asked? Are the questions leading? If they were asked in a different way, would the result give a different picture of people's perception? How much do the respondents really know about the subject they are asked about, i.e. in this case about the theory of evolution?
Polls like this can just give a rough estimate of people's thoughts on a certain topic.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
I did not mean to discuss the validity of evolution. I only meant to give context as far as how we got here, with the Asians sample giving those results and that it doesn't mean what they're portraying it to mean.
But if you want to discuss evolution, I will say this.
We will soon have more genomes of so-called archaics and thanks to the aDNA revolution in genetics, laypeople like you and me will be able to test the role of admixture with AMH in the emergence Neanderthals especially, but also in the emergence of other archaics.
Let's think about the gravity of what I've just said, for a second. We will be in a position to test directly if natural selection was more or less important than processes like admixture, in the emergence of Neanderthals. And thanks to the aDNA revolution, we will be able to do so without interference from the scientific establishment (see my previous post, to see what I mean with interference).
Let's see if Darwinian evolution makes it past this test.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
The theory of evolution has developed since the age of Darwin. In those days not much was known about genetics (Mendel worked in parallell with Darwin but at that time his genetics and Darwinian evolution was not combined). Today the concept of evolution has been expanded compared to Darwin's time and knowledge of several processes that control change and species formation has been added. Different types of hybridization and admixture have, for example, changed the view on speciation (both in animals and plants). We know more about different selection mechanisms today than what Darwin knew of.
We also know about more organisms in the fossil record than Darwin and his contemporaries did.
Just like several other theories, the theory of evolution has become more complex over time. We don't know everything about these mechanisms yet, but at the moment there is no really good alternative, unless you accept more or less supernatural explanations for the variety of organisms we see around us, or for the changes we see in the fossil record.
There are of course development paths that we have difficulty studying in detail because they have left no traces in the fossil record. What did the earliest organisms look like, for example? How exactly did the endosymbiotic processes happen which created the eukaryotic cell, and so on. The modern theory of evolution is only about 165 years old, it is a fairly young science that will of course be revised over time, like all science. Other sciences also change and develop. Thus, for example, today's plate tectonics does not look the same as Wegener's continental drift, it has evolved.
And if laymen can contribute with knowledge that furthers the knowledge about evolutionary processes it is of course a good thing. Remember that it was laymen that came with the first observations that gave rise to the theories about the ice age(s), and it was a non geologist who proposed the theory of continental drift which preceded plate tectonics.
Many other laymen have also contributed a lot in the fields of biology, paleontology and geology. It will probably be so in genetics too.
So one can of course discuss the validity of certain evolutionary processes, and overall about the changes we see over time regarding life on Earth. Just as we can discuss details and mechanisms regarding other sciences. What I find interesting though is that the theory of evolution seems to awake more feelings, especially among lay people, than other scientific theories. One have not heard so many hot discussions, and even legal proceedings about if other scientific theories shall be taught in school or not. Most people seem to accept that their kids learn about gravitation, or relativity theory and similar, but when it comes to evolution things seems more sensitive.
Even the poll in the OP tells about the sensitivity of the matter. How often do we see polls about if people accept theories about electromagnetism, or quarks or black holes?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Reasonable points. But if Darwin's gradualism fails these tests in the area of human origins, I bet it won't end up in the garbage bin that is wiki's pseudo science section, where they will not hesitate to make unscrupulous entries for reasonable, if not valid ideas belonging to other cultures, that they don't know the first thing about. I bet people pointing out such failures of gradualism will simply get ignored, if they'll even be able to get their work published.
This is what I meant with 'protecting the status quo'. And that's where the aDNA revolution comes in.
But let's wait and see the aDNA results from different hominins. I'm especially looking forward to naledi and Sima de Los Huesus autosomal aDNA, for settling this. Naledi because they already show unusual physical signs possibly due to hybridization, and Sima de los Huesos to force out the AMH ancestry in Neanderthals, in the same way that Basal Eurasian was forced out of Stuttgart, and announced back in 2014, or how Population Y was forced out with the help of better quality native American genomes, especially Amazonian populations.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
When it comes to science evidence in the end will win, even if it can take time. It took about 50 years for continental drift / plate tectonics to be accepted, it took as long time for scientists to accept that there have been ice ages, and also evolutionary theory took time before it was accepted in the scientific community. If evidence for other evolutionary mechanisms and agents of change is put forward in a convincing way they will be accepted, even if it will take time.
Especially when it comes to archaic humans like Denisovans and Neanderthal one can ask if they at all were different species. I guess it depends on how one define species. Some define organisms who can get fertile offspring with each other as belonging to the same species. And it seems that AMH could get offspring with Neanderthals and Denisovans. They seem not have been so very different in several aspects. In that case we maybe must draw the line between modern humans and other species further back in time. So genetics can most probably help with that since humans can vary morphologically, also within what we call AHM. Maybe genetics can be a better indicator of who is related to whom, and in which way.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Otherwise as you say the new genetics have already given a lot of information. Up here in Scandinavia we have been able to identify different waves of immigrants who came after the ice age. We have also seen that farming was introduced by people who immigrated here. Also that these farmers got more or less replaced by steppe peoples who came more than 1000 years later. Such information would have been harder to obtain without genetics, even if it was hinted at already in the archaeological record.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Archeopteryx Just want to give you this excellent example of what I meant with some of my comments, above.
But I do want to draw attention to something in it. Notice that this is just one more example of how they're trying to avoid the obvious hints of the role of hybridization in the formation of archaics. Notice I said the role of hybridization in the formation of archaics (I'm not just talking about admixture between homo subspecies, which few serious people would deny today).
This is exactly why I spoke of the value of the aDNA revolution in my posts above, and why I blame them for hindering the progress of science and for trying to protect the status quo. It seems these people can't be trusted to do their jobs.
The researchers end their paper with a radical idea: They propose that the fossils, with their mix of archaic and Neanderthal-like traits, could have been late survivors of a group that was a source population in the Middle East for both late and early Neanderthals in Europe and Asia, they write today in Science.
That suggestion, however, has quickly drawn fire. Paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology says the fossils were too recent to represent the source population for Neanderthals, whose earliest known ancestors lived more than 400,000 years ago at Sima de los Huesos in Spain. "That's an overinterpretation of the fossil evidence," he says. Instead, he thinks the mix of archaic and Neanderthal traits may reflect regional variation, with Neanderthals living in the Middle East being different from the classic Neanderthals of Europe, or at least a hybrid mix of different groups. He adds that in his view, teeth are the most important body part for classifying a fossil, and "that tooth is like a Neanderthal tooth." New fossils reveal a strange-looking Neanderthal in Israel - Science 2021 https://www.science.org/content/article/new-fossils-reveal-strange-looking-neanderthal-israel
Looks like even Hublin noticed how unwarranted this reach is. Although Hublin himself also seems to only consider hybridization as an alternative explanation.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Intriguing. One can wonder over the exact line of descent for European Neanderthals, Asian Denisovans and older Archaic species. Some kind of humans have existed outside of Africa for nearly two million years, as the findings in for example Dmanisi in Georgia show. So do we know yet how all the varieties of Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans and other species outside of Africa relate to each other, and to African species?
And even a hybrid species have ancestors which in their turn must descend from some older species.
There are still discussions going on between adherents to some kind of revised multi regional theories and those who propose a more pure OOA theory.
We might just see how far back we can find ancient DNA, and how we can connect that DNA with some of the fossils we find.
Someone once called paleoanthropology the soap opera of science, and one can somewhat agree, considering all the heated discussions, sensational statements, lost fossils and the like that we have seen over the years. One can only mention, for example, the discussions that have been held about Homo floresiensis and its eventual species affiliation.
Just one of many (often rather simplified) family trees of human species one can find online. New species are added now and then, like for example Homo luzonensis which is not shown here Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
One thing that is going to have to change about all those human lineage trees is that signs of AMH presence have to be pushed back to at least 500ky.
For one, AMH mtDNAs are preserved in the mtDNA pools of Neanderthals, and when those mtDNAs are put together like a puzzle, the date they get is 413ky, which means AMH cannot be younger than 413ky. This means that AMH are, in fact, older than fully formed Neanderthals, which date to ~130ky.
If you're interested you can read the paper below. Before you read the paper, I will give you the key to unlock the proper interpretation of the information it contains.
Here it begins. This is the correct interpretation that will help you understand everything I've said:
Since the earliest classifications and sub-divisions of the Palaeolithic (Lubbock 1865; de Mortillet 1867; Brueil 1912), prismatic (volumetric laminar) blade technology has been seen as a recent and sophisticated technological strategy. Originally seen as a hallmark of “modern behaviour” (see Mellars 1989; Mithen 1996), (...) Revisiting the ‘Big Deal about Blades’ a full contextualisation of prismatic (volumetri claminar) technology before Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MOIS) 5 https://www.theposthole.org/sites/theposthole.org/files/downloads/posthole_35_255.pdf
The last sentence above, the one that is cut off, is especially important. After the first phrase of the last sentence, the abstract goes downhill, quickly:
Originally seen as a hallmark of “modern behaviour” (see Mellars 1989; Mithen 1996), laminar technology has now been refuted as a technological strategy solely used by anatomically and behaviourally modern Homo sapiens (Bar-Yosef & Kuhn 1999; Henshilwood & Marean 2003). It is now evidenced throughout Neanderthal populations in Western Asia, and Europe, and their contemporaries in Africa. Revisiting the ‘Big Deal about Blades’ a full contextualisation of prismatic (volumetri claminar) technology before Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MOIS) 5 https://www.theposthole.org/sites/theposthole.org/files/downloads/posthole_35_255.pdf
So just be aware that from that point onward, the paper's usefulness is compromised. if you're interested in considering what I think, you should put the most weight on the first part of the abstract, which I have quoted above (not the second part, also quoted above), and after that, again, if you're interested in considering what I have said, you should go to fig 2, and fig 3, and you will understand the gist of my position.
You can then, if you're still interested, continue reading other articles on this subject, but know that you are not going to be helped by palaeontologists or geneticists on this subject (other than the clues they will give you unintentionally), and they are only going to confuse things if you don't keep what I've just said, in the forefront of your mind.
These three papers will get you started on this subject. There is no name for this subject, but we'll call it, 'sporadic hints of the Upper Palaeolithic, before the full blown and highly visible and materially rich Upper Palaeolithic known to science'.
Just some food for thought, as I gotta go again.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Thanks, seems interesting. If one has to push the AMH presence to at least 500ky it would perhaps not be totally surprising since their presence have already been pushed back several times.
Or one will discover that the archaic humans had a more complex behavior and technology than earlier believed, and that behaviors that was thought to be exclusive for AMH can be found also in for example Neanderthals, Denisovans and other archaics.
Different technologies and modern behaviors like bone tools, arts and others are all the time gradually pushed back in time.
I saw recently an article claiming that they maybe found the oldest Neanderthal engravings in a cave in France.
quote:Here we report on Neanderthal engravings on a cave wall at La Roche-Cotard (LRC) in central France, made more than 57±3 thousand years ago. Following human occupation, the cave was completely sealed by cold-period sediments, which prevented access until its discovery in the 19th century and first excavation in the early 20th century. The timing of the closure of the cave is based on 50 optically stimulated luminescence ages derived from sediment collected inside and from around the cave. The anthropogenic origin of the spatially-structured, non-figurative marks found within the cave is confirmed using taphonomic, traceological and experimental evidence. Cave closure occurred significantly before the regional arrival of H. sapiens, and all artefacts from within the cave are typical Mousterian lithics; in Western Europe these are uniquely attributed to H. neanderthalensis. We conclude that the LRC engravings are unambiguous examples of Neanderthal abstract design.
Since obviously AHM, Neanderthals and Denisovans could hybridize or mix with each other it is maybe a bit misleading to call them separate species. Maybe they are more to be looked at as local varietes, or subspecies, of one species. One can wonder though about species like Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis if they would have been able to produce fertile offspring with AHM, Neanderthals or Denisovans? And the older Homo erectus variants, how closely related were they?
As of now we have a lot of fossil humans but we do not always know exactly how they were related. Who was a direct ancestor to whom?
To sort out the concepts of how different groups were related, we need both genetics and paleoanthropology. We also need archeology to find out which technologies and which material cultures all these early hominids created. Geology and paleontology will further contribute to our knowledge about what kind of environment(s) they lived in and how that environment affected them. Which environmental factors contributed to physical/anatomical changes and which contributed to technological change?
What local adaptations do we see among different populations of hominins? Was for example the small sizes of Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis typical examples of island dwarfism such as we have seen in the fossil record concerning animals like elephants and hippos?
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
To link back to the topic in the OP. It is interesting that some people accept evolution among bacteria and other microbes, and maybe also concerning some plants and animals. But when it concerns humans they find it harder to believe. But that of course raises the question of whether we humans have changed the rules of evolution. Can we with our intelligence steer our development in the desired direction? After all, we have controlled the evolution of our pets. How much do we control ourselves today? We have created our own environments where the external factors which influenced our early evolution are put out of play, for example predation by carnivores. In cold climates we can create warm environments, and we can filter water and cleanse our food from parasites, which also once might have heavily affected the evolution of our immune system.
Will we in the future create new types of humans whereof some are adapted to artificial environments?
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
I am not sure aDNA studies will have much of an effect on various bigots. They will simply tweak the same "evolutionary" framework to update the same bogus racist and other theories. aDNA show various migrations out of Africa? Sure, cuz you see homes, more "evolved" groups left at such and such a time compared to lesser cognitively evolved "backward" groups, and so on.
Back to the OP: One huge flaw in the study is that it is inconsistent with both current and historical data showing significant levels of prejudice in pro-evolutionists, continuing down today to the many racists that use evolutionary theory to justify their ideologies. Racism in the modern era depends heavily on “evolutionary” claims or theories, not so much religion. It is no accident that the book “he Bell Curve” is so beloved of various bigots. They are not going around waving bibles, but statistical charts.
Then there is “soft” racism which deems certain groups less worthy, less intelligent, less virtuous etc, but believers generally present a nicer front as opposed to the snarling bigot. Anti-racists have oft noted “soft” or “quieter” racism. It is not as visible or vocal as in the old days of legal segregation, and presents in seemingly “race-neutral” ways, now and historically. New highway being built? Route it through the black neighborhoods – bulldozing or chopping up once stable minority communities. Let them deal with the disruption while the new highways, lead to whiter suburbs, with better housing and job prospects. And a nice bonus is that “negro” areas can be walled off and partitioned off using street barriers, roads, dead end cul-de-sacs etc etc. Its all appears to be just “neutral” but happy result! Less negroes in certain places! Sweet! Who needs go around waving Confederate flags?
Like all-white or mostly all-white neighborhoods and schools? Avoid burning crosses or snarling epithets. Just quietly rig your zoning laws to eliminate or discourage moderate and affordable housing in your mostly white neighborhood. This rigging would of course tend to exclude minorities who have more moderate income levels and credit resources on the average. The zoning barriers mean they cannot afford to surmount the barriers to certain housing options. Presto, without burning a single cross, the careful behind the scenes rigging tends to produce a “purer” neighborhood, “cleansed” of pesky minorities seeking housing or attending those nice suburban schools. Or, a smiling real estate agent can “steer” said minorities away from the “purer” neighborhood, or the smiling banker can make it harder for blacks who just as credit-worthy as whites to get a mortgage. Or smiling white housing appraisers, can “mark down” their assessments if black people are living in a house as a recent case shows. Its all good.. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/09/1162103286/home-appraisal-racial-bias-black-homeowners-lawsuit
Various books give the details as to the deep levels of “polite” or “soft” racism. Some of it may not be explicit- but the bottom line is the same. See Edward Bonilla-Silva for example “Racism without Racists” or book- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America- by Richard Rothstein.
If you are testing for levels of racism, bias etc then much work needs to be done on the “quiet” racism out there, and much of it might well be from pro-evolutionists. They may be just more polite about things.
Another more straightforward way of exploring the link (once more neutral descriptions of “evolution” were applied) would have been to narrow down the categories “evolution” and “prejudice.” For example it is more straightforward to ask thing like:
--Do you believe evolution created different races?
--Does evolution produce different traits in different races?
--Does evolution explain the intelligence of races?
--D you believe some races are more evolved to have higher intelligence of other races?
--Do you believe evolution explains the negative behavioral traits of some races?
--Does evolution make some people homosexuals?
--Does evolution make some people transgenders?
--Did groups like Jews evolve to have certain characteristics?
More focused questions like these can help pin down the link between “belief in evolution” and racism or prejudice, as much modern racism depends on "evolutionary" notions.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Indeed some racists do use different kinds of pseudo evolutionary arguments. One can now and then read arguments claiming that humans got more intelligent on northern latitudes due to the challenges of a cold climate which demanded better planning of resources and invention of different technologies to fight cold climates, for example sturdier houses, better clothes and so on. Some even involve Neanderthals in their arguments, claiming that people in Europe got more intelligent due to mixing with Neanderthals.
In some groups one can see a sort of mix between religious and evolutionary arguments since bigots use whatever ammunition they can find to defend a racist world view. So some combine the curse of Ham with Darwin.
One could also ask some religious people questions like if they think that God created races differently. One sneaky form of racism has been used by one or another pastor who claimed that Black Americans where lucky when they got enslaved since it meant that they learned to know Jesus and the gospels.
So in polls one have to ask more pointed and detailed questions about how both evolutionary and religious thinking affect peoples view regarding issues of race and similar.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
One can now and then read arguments claiming that humans got more intelligent on northern latitudes due to the challenges of a cold climate which demanded better planning of resources and invention of different technologies to fight cold climates, for example sturdier houses, better clothes and so on. Some even involve Neanderthals in their arguments, claiming that people in Europe got more intelligent due to mixing with Neanderthals.
True & its not now and then. Its been over a century of such racist writings using "evolution" to buttress the various racist arguments, or memes. Darwin, while not as extreme as some others who used his work is just one of the better known proponents. As far as "cold climate" theories that's another BS variant and that too ties into various usages of "evolution." Hence belief in evolution is a primary cornerstone of modern racism.
The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought Richard Weikart, German Studies Review Vol. 36, No. 3 (October 2013), pp. 537-556 (20 pages)
By examining Hitler's ideology, the official biology curriculum, the writings of Nazi anthropologists, and Nazi periodicals, we find that Nazi racial theorists did indeed embrace human and racial evolution. They not only taught that humans had evolved from primates, but they believed the Aryan or Nordic race had evolved to a higher level than other races because of the harsh climatic conditions that influenced natural selection. They also claimed that Darwinism underpinned specific elements of Nazi racial ideology, including racial inequality, the necessity of the racial struggle for existence, and collectivism. Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Belief in evolution is also a primary cornerstone of anti0Semitism. Rightist professor Kevin Macdonald is oft quoted- and he sees Jews and Judaism as a product of "evolution" - a parasitical, self-serving group feeding off a larger host body, per the Southern Poverty Law Center writeup below. Thus again, "belief in evolution" is integral to significant bias and prejudice.
A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy.. by Kevin B. MacDonald
"His inaugural effort, the first book in his trilogy on the Jews, was the 1994 publication of A People that Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, which was published by Praeger Press and came out just after MacDonald was awarded his full professorship. Today, most of MacDonald's publishing is about Jews and the evils of the liberal immigration policies that he says they support.
Through the late 1990s, MacDonald dedicated himself to his anti-Semitic intellectual odyssey. He produced two more volumes on the Jews, Separation and its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (1998), and The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (1998). Taken together, the trilogy provides a whole new justification for anti-Semitism that has little to do with Nazi race theories, which blamed Jews for introducing evil social vices and other perversions into Nordic society and portrayed them as degenerates preying on unsuspecting, wholesome Aryans. MacDonald's basic premise is that Jews engage in a "group evolutionary strategy" that serves to enhance their ability to out-compete non-Jews for resources. Although normally a tiny minority in their host countries, Jews, like viruses, destabilize their host societies to their own benefit, MacDonald argues. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/kevin-macdonald Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Belief in evolution is also a primary cornerstone of anti0Semitism. Rightist professor Kevin Macdonald is oft quoted- and he sees Jews and Judaism as a product of "evolution" - a parasitical, self-serving group feeding off a larger host body, per the Southern Poverty Law Center writeup below. Thus again, "belief in evolution" is integral to significant bias and prejudice.
All kind of scientific theories (especially if they deal with humans) can be twisted and used as instruments of power or oppression. Also religion can be used in similar ways. Once, for example, Christianity too dwelled in antisemitism, and some Christians even accused the Jews for murdering Jesus.
Antisemitism in a medieval setting long before Darwin:
quote:Investigations of 17 individuals found in a medieval well suggests they were likely the victims of an antisemitic hate crime.
The twelfth century skeletons have provided an unprecedented look at the genetic history of Ashkenazi Jews.
Seems the "evolutionists" (and the Nazis) just inherited old anti semitic feelings which existed in Europe for centuries.
When it comes to LGBTQ+ matters one can still hear religious arguments against it. Even in such secular society as Sweden, such arguments can be heard from various independent churches (not so much from the formerly state owned Church of Sweden).
And the pope also have debated these questions recently, even if he no longer proposes persecution of these people.
One can see that new scientific theories and ideologies got rid of some of the old problems (whereof some were created by, or at least augmented by religion), but instead these theories and new political ideologies came to create new problems for humanity.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
In some groups one can see a sort of mix between religious and evolutionary arguments since bigots use whatever ammunition they can find to defend a racist world view. So some combine the curse of Ham with Darwin.
During the civil rights struggle over desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s various religious arguments took a backseat to those based on evolution. The charge was focused on "science" and defenders of Jim Crow spent little time on "Curse of Ham" spiels but drew heavily on naturalistic "evolutionary" notions in a variety of ways- such as arguing that (a) The large IQ gaps derived from innate differences making skool segregation reasonable and natural, and (b) evolution proved that "birds of a feather flocked together." Thus the negroes locked down in ghetto slums or areas chock full of noisy industrial plants, sewerless floodplains, toxic dumps etc actually PREFERRED these places, "to be with dey own people." Its all a "natural" pattern- each race preferring to be "with their own kind." This is the basic argument still used today by racist author Jared Taylor and his acolytes, and some libertarian types who just can't get over the fact of a black man eating his hamburger in peace or owning a house next to some white people.
Court cases making similar arguments were duly filed to overturn Brown vs Board. Some believers in evolution however, such as segregationist leader Carleton Putnam were upset that the evolutionary or naturalistic arguments filed in court did not mention the dreaded topic of miscegenation, which was scientifically unsound due to differences between negro and white brains.. Also weighing in ion the segregationist scales were arguments by scientist Carleton Coons in his book "Origin of the Races" which held that whites evolved some 200,000 years before the negro, giving them a massive head start on "civilization." Depending on the venue, various angles were emphasized or deemphasized but such "evolutionary" or associated naturalistic arguments were primary. Assorted "curse of Ham" arguments seldom (if at all) appear in court filings in defense of segregation. Here again, belief in evolution or some closely related phenomena is a primary driver in modern racial systems like Jim Crow, or in apologist defences.
Science for Segregation Race, Law, and the Case against Brown v. Board of Education by John P. Jackson, Jr. 2005
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
The poll in the OP seems to have covered several countries, and different cultures may use different arguments when it comes to discrimination or oppression. We in the west are fairly secular while in for example in some muslim countries religious arguments are more often seen. Here in the west the religious arguments do not hold the same power as they once did. No one burns witches anymore, or stones women who has broken one of the commandments. Science and modern political ideology have in many aspects replaced religious faith, both for better and worse. Both reforms, but also persecution have taken place in the name of new political ideologies which are more or less based in science.
But still one can hear arguments from Clan members and other bigots that God did not create different races to be mixed with each other. These arguments are of course not corroborated by academics in the same way as some arguments based on (pseudo) scientific ideas are.
Here in Sweden we once had a race biological institute and some policies here were grounded in semi evolutionary race theory. But the latest decades most of that kind of thinking have disappeared. When I took some classes in biology at he university I never heard any of the biologists trying to connect social theories, or racial thoughts, with evolutionary theory.
Overall racial debates are not so intense here as they perhaps are in USA, since we have different history. In old times black people were so few that they seldom were targets of any racist campaigns and policies. Such policies were more directed against Samis and Romanis. Jews were also discussed. Once they were not even allowed to live in Sweden since they were not members of the Lutheran faith. Later though with more liberal and secular policies they were allowed in.
It is interesting to notice that Sweden once were one of the most religious countries in Europe, but gradually turned into one of the least religious. At the same time the country became more free and not as tyrannical as it had once been. It is also one of the countries in the world that have had peace for the longest time.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
The poll in the OP seems most have included ordinary people, not necessarily experts in evolutionary theory, or clergymen. It perhaps mirrors more what ordinary people think, not authors like Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Many laymen have no deeper understanding of either theology or evolutionary theory. The poll sees some correlation between conservative ideology and religious thinking, or liberal ideology and evolutionary thinking. One can wonder if it is not conservatism contra liberalism which are mirrored in the poll, and not necessarily religion contra (evolutionary) science. Maybe the latter is more a side effect of how the poll was made.
One just have to go through the details in the poll more closely.
One can also notice that some people through the years have conflated the theories of biological evolution with social theories clad in evolutionary costume, which often can lead in the wrong direction.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova: [QB] Belief in evolution is also a primary cornerstone of anti0Semitism. Rightist professor Kevin Macdonald is oft quoted- and he sees Jews and Judaism as a product of "evolution" - a parasitical, self-serving group feeding off a larger host body,
Seems like pure pseudoscience which does not reflect serious evolutionary biology
quote:Scholars characterize MacDonald's theory as a tendentious form of circular reasoning, which assumes its conclusion to be true regardless of empirical evidence. The theory fails the basic test of any scientific theory, the criterion of falsifiability, because MacDonald refuses to provide or acknowledge any factual pattern of Jewish behavior that would tend to disprove his idea that Jews have evolved to be ethnocentric and anti-white.[14][15] Other scholars in his field dismiss the theory as pseudoscience analogous to older conspiracy theories about a Jewish plot to undermine European civilization
Kevin MacDonald Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
You are right about the OP dealing more with the "man on the street" but if designers had constructed their questions in a more direct way to link belief in evolution with prejudice, I would not be surprised to see the opposite results. Moreover their way of determining an "anti-evolutionist" position- asking people if they believe "humans came from different species of animals" is a relatively weak one- given that "different species" can mean anything from reptiles to rodents, and the fact that evolution is a complex subject giving pollsters distinct difficulties. Their questions possibly might tend to elicit a more knee-jerk responses and once that more extreme group is isolated, then more prejudice can be latter adduced. By contrast, more careful pollsters use a 2-step series of questionings to better pin down opinion on such a complex topic, and indeed this more careful approach brings out more context and nuance, finding for example that belief in evolution is not a black-white, all-or-none choice but that the levels of people comfortable with evolution actually increased when additional nuances as to whether there was a divine hand in evolution- whether by initial guidance or a "divine seeding and let develop" approach, or both, was included in poll measures. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/02/06/the-evolution-of-pew-research-centers-survey-questions-about-the-origins-and-development-of-life-on-earth/
Laymen have a diversity of opinion on evolution that cannot be reduced to a stereotypical: pro-evolutionists= less prejudiced, anti-evolutionists =bigots formula, but of course, that's probably what some ideologues will use the study for.
Scholars characterize MacDonald's theory as a tendentious form of circular reasoning, which assumes its conclusion to be true regardless of empirical evidence.
The evolutionary arguments of people like Macdonald are popular among rightists, and the "alt-right" and might gain more traction in the right circumstances. Economic depression and distress, instability, etc, observations on Jewish wealth and prosperity amid the distress, etc etc, desire for a "strong man" to set things right- its a scenario that has played out before, culminating in the "evolutionary" theories and murderous practice of the Fuherer. But there is no reason those on the left cannot use evolutionary arguments and the Bolsheviks had their own version of evolutionary progress and vicious strongmen to make it happen.
Why Liberalism Failed -Deneen, Patrick J.
It is interesting to notice that Sweden once were one of the most religious countries in Europe, but gradually turned into one of the least religious. At the same time the country became more free and not as tyrannical as it had once been. It is also one of the countries in the world that have had peace for the longest time.
Sweden is one of the main exhibits say proponents of the evolutionary theories- a naive altruistic European society, geared towards individualism and self-indulgence, neglecting at its peril ruthless, tightly organized, highly evolved parasitical groups destroying it from within.
Another angle is those who lament a liberalism producing fragmented, overly individualistic atomized individuals, shorn free of traditional social controls and obligations, and thus allowing for the expansion of state power and surveillance and control at ever increasing levels- the stereotypical "sheeple"..
Are there various academics in Sweden critiquing such things, including liberalism? What do they see as the end state of continued liberalism? What about various laymen disturbed at current trends in Swedish society? What dangers are they warning about?
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Here in Sweden we once had a race biological institute and some policies here were grounded in semi evolutionary race theory. But the latest decades most of that kind of thinking have disappeared. When I took some classes in biology at he university I never heard any of the biologists trying to connect social theories, or racial thoughts, with evolutionary theory.
Plenty of such theorizing here in the US historically, though current universities don't cater to it much. But on the laymen side, no shortage on the Internet.
Then there are those, particularly white Europeans, who look towards an evolving future, where transgenderism and related will erase old outmoded binaries such as male and female. Others hold for a next "transhuman" evolutionary leap, where bio- technological enhancements to humanity strips away old limitations. Naturally some will be more equal than others in securing the biotech enhancements necessary to this next evolutionary step.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
We didn't spend a lot of time discussing race in my bio anthro classes, as the focus was on human evolution. However, I can vouch that both our professors and our textbooks disavowed racialism. The professor in our osteology class even pointed out that populations overlap enough in skeletal traits that "race" isn't as easy to assign to a given skeleton as some non-experts might think. That doesn't mean everyone working in biological anthropology is perfectly based on that topic, but it's been my experience that anti-racialism is the current consensus.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Yes for now on campuses. But as already shown, belief in evolution is a primary driver in modern racism.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Just looking at a link and it gets bizarre. SOme scientists of the atheist Bolshevik regime actually tried creating ape-human hybrids in Africa to test evolution. This included attempts to artificially inseminate African women with ape semen without their knowledge. Per the book "Red Dynamite": https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/255/oa_monograph/chapter/3006912
"Despite the wild exaggerations of later anticommunist conspiracy theorists, Bolshevik support for evolution and opposition to the organized power of religion were very real.
That support also inspired one truly bizarre venture that later produced fodder for creationists. The Bolshevik commitment to evolutionary science became international news in 1926 because of a controversial research project in Kindia, Guinea (then part of French West Africa), at a facility of the Louis Pasteur Institute of Paris. The lead researcher was Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov (1870-1932), an evolutionary zoologist who had pioneered the practice of large-scale artificial insemination with purebred horses. His project was to artificially hybridize humans and apes.59 As strange as the scheme sounds today, the idea had been taken seriously by leading European scientists in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Russia. Recent discoveries of hominid fossils, as well as living gorillas, fired a popular and scholarly interest in humanity’s origins.60 While Ivanov and the Bolsheviks did not motivate the project using racist terms, the colonization of West Africa and prevailing racist conceptions of a lower “African” race made the scheme sound reasonable to Europeans. Moreover, the preceding decades had seen a European vogue in the science of rejuvenation. The supposed virilizing powers of ape sexual glands fueled an interest in collecting specimens of live orangutans, gibbons, and chimpanzees.61 Successfully appealing to the Bolshevik government for initial funding, Ivanov stressed the project’s ability to aid the ideological campaign against organized religion and for Darwinism. In later discussions with the Academy of Sciences—which refused to support Ivanov’s work—he stressed the scientific value of his research for human evolutionary studies.62
Once in Guinea, Ivanov did carry out at least part of the experiment—artificially inseminating several captive chimpanzees with the sperm of a local Guinean man. When the animals failed to become pregnant, the researchers sought to try their luck inseminating local African women with chimpanzee sperm (hoping to do so without the knowledge of the women, who were patients at a French colonial hospital). But the French authorities denied permission. When Ivanov complained about this to his Soviet sponsors, they ordered him not to attempt to impregnate women without their consent. One important legacy of the entire venture, however, was a primatological nursery in Sukhumi, in the Soviet Republic of Abkhazia (later Georgia), where Ivanov continued his work in the late 1920s, soliciting Soviet women volunteers for artificial insemination. Hybridization failed, but the population of chimpanzees gathered at Sukhumi would later produce the animals that rode Sputnik flights into outer space. Those voyages spurred Americans to strengthen scientific education, unintentionally inciting a backlash of creationist activism in the 1960s.63
Many Americans became aware of Ivanov’s work because of prominent coverage in the US press. In June 1926, a Time magazine titled “Men and Apes” reported that “Ivanoff,” supported by Moscow, was headed to Africa to “‘support’ Evolution by breeding apes with humans.” Readers also learned that the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism (AAAA), led by Charles Lee Smith, was publicizing the project and actively raising funds for it, though Ivanov’s staff in Moscow disclaimed any connection with the group. That may well have been because leaders of the AAAA had absorbed the “scientific” racist ideas of British anthropologist F. G. Cruikshank. His artificial breeding scheme recommended the following pairings: orangutans with the “yellow race,” gorillas with the “black race,” and chimpanzees with the “white race.”64 But the basic story, as expressed in two June 1926 New York Times headlines, was true: “Russian Admits Ape Experiments” and “Soviet Backs Plan to Test Evolution.”65
Red Dynamite- Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism in America -Carl R. Weinberg 2021, pp 22-53
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan aka Enrique
Sweden is one of the main exhibits say proponents of the evolutionary theories- a naive altruistic European society, geared towards individualism and self-indulgence, neglecting at its peril ruthless, tightly organized, highly evolved parasitical groups destroying it from within.
Another angle is those who lament a liberalism producing fragmented, overly individualistic atomized individuals, shorn free of traditional social controls and obligations, and thus allowing for the expansion of state power and surveillance and control at ever increasing levels- the stereotypical "sheeple"..
Are there various academics in Sweden critiquing such things, including liberalism? What do they see as the end state of continued liberalism? What about various laymen disturbed at current trends in Swedish society? What dangers are they warning about?
There is of course an ongoing debate here and the opinion is shifting in both directions. As an answer to the ultra liberal narratives which often are forwarded by our media and parties to the left, about immigration as a positive factor and freedom for LBTQ, and so on there is also an opposite opinion forwarded by Swedens third largest party, a right wing party called the sweden democrats who now and then are blamed for having a fascistic or even nazi inspired world view. But others see them as a counterbalance against the left.
Most Swedes will end up somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum, not really right wing, and not really left wing. Our largest party since early 1900s is the social democratic party who proposes a democratic form of socialism, based on agreements between the capital and the people, and with a social welfare politics based on taxes which cover things like health care, schools and other basic needs in society. According to many Swedes American politics are a bit strange with mostly only two parties in the parliament, both rather right wing compared with many European political parties.
As mentioned Sweden has changed from a very religious country to one of the most secular in Europe. Most people today see too strong religious beliefs as irrational, and maybe even dangerous.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
According to Robert P. Jones, a doctor in religion, White Christianity is at the foundation of white racism in USA
quote:Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious. That's no coincidence. For most of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by white congregations demanded the preservation of inequality as part of the divine order.
He created a sort of racism index
quote:Even at a glance, the Racism Index reveals a clear distinction. Compared to nonreligious whites, white Christians register higher median scores on the Racism Index, and the differences among white Christian subgroups are largely differences of degree rather than kind.
Not surprisingly, given their concentration in the South, white evangelical Protestants have the highest median score (0.78) on the Racism Index. But it is a mistake to see this as merely a Southern or an evangelical problem. The median scores of white Catholics (0.72) and white mainline Protestants (0.69) — groups that are more culturally dominant in the Northeast and the Midwest — are not far behind. Notably, the median score for each white Christian subgroup is significantly above the median scores of the general population (0.57), white religiously unaffiliated Americans (0.42) and Black Protestants (0.24).
quote:This disparity in attitudes about systemic racism between white Christians and whites who claim no religious affiliation is important evidence that the common — and catalyzing — denominator here is religious identity. This consistent perception gap was the central research finding that launched the work on my new book, "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," out on Tuesday.
When confronted with unsettling results such as these, many of my fellow white Christians tend to explain them away with two objections. First, they assert that it is not white Christian identity itself but other intervening variables that account for such correlations. Second, they argue that even if white Christian identity is implicated, the results are muddied by the inclusion of people who have no real connection to actual churches, folks who are "Christian in name only."
quote:But even when controls are introduced in a statistical model for a range of demographic characteristics, such as partisanship, education levels and region, the connection between holding racist attitudes and white Christian identity remains stubbornly robust.
The results point to a stark conclusion: While most white Christians think of themselves as people who hold warm feelings toward African Americans, holding racist views is nonetheless positively and independently associated with white Christian identity. Again, this troubling relationship holds not just for white evangelical Protestants, but also for white mainline Protestants and white Catholics.
Now he does not talk directly about evolution, but it seems there is a correlation between rejection of evolution and higher religiosity. It of course vary some between denominations and there are also differences between those who reject all kind of evolution and those who accept evolution guided by a higher being.
Robert P. Jones also wrote a book about his findings:
quote:Drawing on history, public opinion surveys, and personal experience, Robert P. Jones delivers a provocative examination of the unholy relationship between American Christianity and white supremacy, and issues an urgent call for white Christians to reckon with this legacy for the sake of themselves and the nation.
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: We didn't spend a lot of time discussing race in my bio anthro classes, as the focus was on human evolution. However, I can vouch that both our professors and our textbooks disavowed racialism. The professor in our osteology class even pointed out that populations overlap enough in skeletal traits that "race" isn't as easy to assign to a given skeleton as some non-experts might think. That doesn't mean everyone working in biological anthropology is perfectly based on that topic, but it's been my experience that anti-racialism is the current consensus.
In my classes race was not very much discussed, but we had some lessons about the racist past in both biology and archaeology. There were also a couple of graduate students in archaeology who worked on dissertation about the old racism in the field.
The teachers I had also held clearly anti racist views.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Now he does not talk directly about evolution, but it seems there is a correlation between rejection of evolution and higher religiosity. It of course vary some between denominations and there are also differences between those who reject all kind of evolution and those who accept evolution guided by a higher being.
Jones' book has solid examples, and he is right about how whites claiming Christianity were engaged in slavery, supremacy, etc etc. But many of those whites claiming the Christian angle are themselves believers in evolution. The Pew Research cited above for example shows that belief in God is not incompatible with belief in evolution. When given a one question test almost 40% of respondents (mostly white) believe human evolution to be solely by natural selection. But when combined with those who hold a religious divinity had a hand in guiding evolution- the combined total of those who believe in evolution is 81 percent, with only about 19% rejecting evolution altogether. If a more elaborate 2-step question procedure the combined total is still a big majority of Americans- almost 70 percent have a belief in evolution. Whichever procedure is used, a majority of those who believe in evolution can very likely still be racist. White supremacy is quite flexible - its supremacy first above all, before religion.
And as far as religion other non-Christian groups have been successful in cashing in and exploiting blacks. Muslims of course are huge profiteers, and even Jews, according to careful Jewish scholars. See for example the work of Jonathan Schorsch, "Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World", where the "Curse of Ham" was invoked against the negro slaves owned by some Jewish owners (pg 145-160).
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
As I said before, racism is defended and promoted with all kind of arguments. Slavery and other kinds of oppression (like antisemitism) existed here in the west before Darwin and evolution. Distortions of evolutionary theory just gave the bigots just another tool in their toolbox.
Here are results from polls from both Pew and Gallup. They are a bit old so one may have to consult more recent material
Here is also a tabell showing belief in evolution in different countries
According to Jones racism among White Christian evangelists are higher among those who attend church more often.
Among regular churchgoers the acceptance of evolution is also lesser according to the 2014 Gallup poll in the table above. Now, one can not really know if all the churchgoers in the Gallup poll were white, so that can skew the results regarding correlation between church attendance, racism and rejection of evolution.
quote:Moreover, these statistical models refute the assertion that attending church makes white Christians less racist. Among white evangelicals, in fact, the opposite is true: The relationship between holding racist views and white Christian identity is actually stronger among more frequent church attenders than among less frequent church attenders.
It would of course also be interesting to see more details about how an eventual correlation between religiosity, rejection of evolution and racist views vary in different countries.
In the table above the acceptance for evolution is much higher in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden than in for example USA and Turkey. Could be interesting to try to measure the level of racism in these countries compared with each other. However, the different history and culture of the countries must also be taken into account.
The field seems open for further, more pointed research. ---------- The tables above I got from Wikipeda but they have references to the original publications
Pointed research as you say can also be made correlating strong atheist/antireligious influence with racism/bias. As already shown, one of the most vicious racist activities against black people was created and carried out by atheists- that of inseminating unsuspecting black women with ape semen to "test" evolution.
THe pattern of racism is also seen among some leading atheist nations. There is extensive documentation on Soviet Russian racism against black people. During the Cold War the atheist powerhouse sometimes presented masks of solidarity if black people could be used as propaganda tools to bash the West. Even in this era though, some Black visitors or migrants to the Soviet paradise were quickly disabused of the fulsome "brotherhood" preached by their Soviet hosts. Aside from various harassments, the Soviets often used the most stereotypical depictions of black people in their media and slurs and labels against blacks aka "monkeys" or "Sambo"/Blackface type imagery etc were common, including the prevalent juxtaposition of Black Africans with apes and monkeys in theaters. https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-racist-treatment-of-africans-and-african-americans-in-the-ussr/
Ordinary individual black workers or migrants also tell of the same pattern. Once propaganda value had been extracted, under the masks was plenty of racism. The biography or Robert Robinson a skilled black toolmaker in the 1940s/50s/60s offers a dismal tale or racism in the heyday of the Soviet Union.
The pattern of an atheist/anti-religious Background linking with significant manifestations of racism continues down to them present day. One recent study for example found that “Nearly 60% of black and African people living in Russia’s capital Moscow, have been physically assaulted in racially motivated attacks” (BBC News, 2009). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53055857
The pattern of significant prejudice, bias or oppression also shows up where non-white atheists/anti-religionists wield power and influence. The Chinese regime for example is conducting an intense racial campaign against minorities like the Uhyrghs, including forced sterilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
Then there is notorious anti-Semitism where there is strong anti-religious/ atheist influence.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
One must not forget that racism and enslavement of black people (and genocide against among others Native Americans) started in the West long before Darwin, and also antisemitism is an old phenomena that occurred before any secular ideologies became prominent in Europe. Communists, other atheists and (pseudo) evolutionists just continued old patterns of racism and oppression that already existed in the times when Europe was still dominated by Christianity. When secular ideologies came to power, the oppression continued in a new guise.
Also both Russia and China had oppressed different minorities for centuries during different Tsars and Emperors. And the Tsars mostly had the support of the Orthodox church.
In today Russia the Church is gradually taking back some of its position as an important factor in the Russian society, but still it seems not to lessen the racism against certain minorities (for example Black people).
So historically atheist or evolutionist ideologies are relatively new phenomena. One can just take a look at earlier events like for example the 30 years war in Europe in the 1600s which claimed more lives in percent than most secular wars or ideologies in the modern world. This war claimed around 20% of Europe's population, and in parts of Germany as many as 50 - 60% of the population died. Not even the second world war took as many lives (in percent of the population). The thirty years war was of course not only about religion, it was also a fight for power among different rulers. There were also economic motives. This war was preceded by a longer period of religious conflict in Europe.
It seems that both religious and secular ideologies can be used for war and oppression. Few religious or secular ideologies are free from abuse.
Perhaps it is a natural development in countries where religion has lost some of its old power, and where secularisation has increased, that non-religious ideologies and elites take hold and replace the older elites. Unfortunately, many of these new rulers have inherited their oppressive structures from the old society and to some extent invented new ones.
Maybe we up here in Scandinavia are lucky that we do not suffer under too oppressive religious or ideological systems. Our societies are rather secular but we are spared from the worst varieties of secularism that can be seen, for example, in the old Soviet and North Korea. Moreover, we are now spared from religious oppression of the kind we can see in Iran.
It is true that we also have racism, but also a strong anti-racist movement which is largely secular.
In USA some organisations who has been rather oppressive against black people, but also other groups have used religious arguments. Most well known is probably Ku Klux Klan who terrorised people for more than 100 years. During certain periods they infiltrated parts of the civil society in some states and had some power.
quote:Vehemently anti-Catholic, the 1915 Klan espoused an explicitly Protestant Christian terrorist ideology, partially basing its beliefs on a "religious foundation" in Protestant Christianity and targeting Jews, Catholics, and other social, ethnic and religious minorities, as well as people who engaged in "immoral" practices such as adulterers, bad debtors, gamblers, and alcohol abusers. From an early time onward, the goals of the KKK included an intent to "reestablish Protestant Christian values in America by any means possible", and it believed that "Jesus was the first Klansman". Although members of the KKK swear to uphold Christian morality, virtually every Christian denomination has officially denounced the KKK.
I do not know if anyone has examined the rejection of or acceptance of evolution specifically among members of the KKK.
Probably racism is deeper in many societies than the for the moment ruling secular or religious ideology.
It is hard to know exactly how well the poll in the OP reflects reality. One has to examine it in more detail and compare it with other polls and studies to do a complete evaluation.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
The study also goes into some theorizing about human behaviour which can explain some of its results.
The conclusion was:
quote:Conclusion
Despite these limitations, it is important to state that this research has several strengths. First, we used large representative samples from a highly diverse set of cultures, and even across time (within different years of the GSS), to test our hypothesis. This allows us to be more confident in the reliability and robustness of the effects found. Second, although our control over the specific measures that were used was limited, and despite the fact that Studies 2 and 3 included relatively few variables, many of the measures of racism and prejudice included in these analyses, particularly in the GSS (Study 1), have been utilized in several other examinations, and that these measures are in general face-valid (e.g., Rosenstein, 2008; Stults & Baumer, 2007). Furthermore, in both the GSS and the Pew data, we were able to statistically control for key demographic predictors of prejudice such as religion and conservative political beliefs, thus allowing us to examine the hypothesis that perceived similarity to animals is associated with increased positive attitudes towards outgroups in a more methodologically rigorous way. This set of studies has uncovered an important relationship and we are hopeful that future research, using longitudinal and experimental designs as well as surveys, will further enhance our understanding of the role of various beliefs regarding evolution in how people view and treat individuals and groups with social identities different from their own, an understanding that may suggest new ways to lead us toward more just and egalitarian societies.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: According to Robert P. Jones, a doctor in religion, White Christianity is at the foundation of white racism in USA
quote:Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious. That's no coincidence. For most of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by white congregations demanded the preservation of inequality as part of the divine order.
He created a sort of racism index
quote:Even at a glance, the Racism Index reveals a clear distinction. Compared to nonreligious whites, white Christians register higher median scores on the Racism Index, and the differences among white Christian subgroups are largely differences of degree rather than kind.
Not surprisingly, given their concentration in the South, white evangelical Protestants have the highest median score (0.78) on the Racism Index. But it is a mistake to see this as merely a Southern or an evangelical problem. The median scores of white Catholics (0.72) and white mainline Protestants (0.69) — groups that are more culturally dominant in the Northeast and the Midwest — are not far behind. Notably, the median score for each white Christian subgroup is significantly above the median scores of the general population (0.57), white religiously unaffiliated Americans (0.42) and Black Protestants (0.24).
quote:This disparity in attitudes about systemic racism between white Christians and whites who claim no religious affiliation is important evidence that the common — and catalyzing — denominator here is religious identity. This consistent perception gap was the central research finding that launched the work on my new book, "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," out on Tuesday.
When confronted with unsettling results such as these, many of my fellow white Christians tend to explain them away with two objections. First, they assert that it is not white Christian identity itself but other intervening variables that account for such correlations. Second, they argue that even if white Christian identity is implicated, the results are muddied by the inclusion of people who have no real connection to actual churches, folks who are "Christian in name only."
quote:But even when controls are introduced in a statistical model for a range of demographic characteristics, such as partisanship, education levels and region, the connection between holding racist attitudes and white Christian identity remains stubbornly robust.
The results point to a stark conclusion: While most white Christians think of themselves as people who hold warm feelings toward African Americans, holding racist views is nonetheless positively and independently associated with white Christian identity. Again, this troubling relationship holds not just for white evangelical Protestants, but also for white mainline Protestants and white Catholics.
Now he does not talk directly about evolution, but it seems there is a correlation between rejection of evolution and higher religiosity. It of course vary some between denominations and there are also differences between those who reject all kind of evolution and those who accept evolution guided by a higher being.
Robert P. Jones also wrote a book about his findings:
quote:Drawing on history, public opinion surveys, and personal experience, Robert P. Jones delivers a provocative examination of the unholy relationship between American Christianity and white supremacy, and issues an urgent call for white Christians to reckon with this legacy for the sake of themselves and the nation.
Unfortunately the primary reason why white racism was able to infiltrate Christianity in America is simply due to the fact that many Protestant churches in America strayed from original Christian doctrines to the point of heresy and even apostasy. And yes while one may argue that Protestantism itself is a type of heresy, it became worse in America since that region was first colonized by radical Protestant sects that were kicked out Europe and even later due to the fact that Protestant churches had not unity there many were susceptible to influence to so-called "enlightened" source of so-called scientific notions such as 'race' which was then applied to the Bible.
In Europe itself, the 'Father' of Modern Racial Science was the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach who first applied evolution to his Biblical views and believed that certain human populations who wandered away from Noah's ark degenerated or "devolved" into inferior races like the Ethiopian race (Negroes). This was the scientific view to the 'Hamitic Curse' theory even though Noah cursed Canaan. Apostolic churches like Catholics and Orthodox never accepted these theories. By the way, it was the same Protestant Churches via the masonic influences that also promoted and spread socialism and ideas of "liberation theology".
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
White racism in the Americas did not depend on Protestant churches. There has been plenty of Catholic racism in the Americas, and what became the US, before before Protestants showed up in significant numbers, though of course the USA after its formation, having more Protestants to begin with, would show a larger percentage. But whatever the numbers, the age old vices of human greed, lust for power etc. used religion as a cover.
Re heresies, from many Protestant viewpoints, Catholicism is itself a heresy, where the domineering Roman bureaucracy and hierarchy co-opted the purer, more earnest faith of earlier times, displacing the place of Christ as head of the Church in favor of proud pontiffs. Contrast with the simpler, less corrupt way of life of the early Christian disciples and early church.
Re liberation theology, Catholics have been heavily involved in that as well, particularly in Latin America, a Catholic stronghold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Re the bogus "curse of Ham," it is not Protestants that came up with this. It was first developed by Jewish Talmudic writers, and adopted by Muslims, Catholics, and then Protestants', as the careful work of Jewish scholar David Goldenberg shows. In fact the first known iconic representation of Ham as a Black African in Europe appears in the work of Catholic churchmen, who consulted Jewish translations, and partially echoes Arab slaving activity- "the moros". QUOTE:
----------------------------------------------------------------- "Don Luis de Guzmán, churchman and grand master of the Catholic Order of Calatrava, asked Rabbi Moses Arragel of Castile to compose a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Castilian together with Jewish interpretations. The work, illustrated by over 330 paintings, was completed in 1430. In his comment on Genesis 9:25 Arragel wrote:
"And Canaan was a slave of slaves. Some say that these are the black Moors (los moros negros) who are everywhere captives.311
An accompanying illustration depicting the biblical scene of Noah’s drunkenness is the first known iconographic representation of Ham as a black African.312"
See: Black and Slave. The Origins and History of the Curse of Ham-David M. Goldenberg - (2017) -----------------------------------------------------------------
What is interesting is that Goldenberg shows that it was Islamics that pioneered an early link between the "curse" and black slavery, rather than as only explanation of blackness. For many Muslims there was a DUAL curse of Ham. blackness AND slavery.
-------------------------------------------------------- A link between Canaan and blacks (independent of any connection to the story of Noah and contrary to the Bible's genealogy) is found commonly in Islamic literature attributed to authorities from the early 7th century onward, and has antecedents even earlier in ancient Near Eastern sources (Goldenberg, Black and Slave, 78-81) ---------------------------------------------------------
Muslim writers massaged various theories early, because since Ham himself was not "cursed" but his son Canaan, then it was Canaan himself who was black or had to become black so that the "curse" of slavery could be applied. Sez Goldenberg:
----------------------
"In these black-skin stories there is no mention of slavery. In other words, we do not yet see a Curse of Ham combining blackness and slavery. However, with the Muslim conquests in Africa and the consequent increase of black slaves in the Near East, the story of Noah takes a new turn. The one cursed with slavery is no longer merely said to be the ancestor of blacks, as in the Syriac Cave of Treasures. Black skin is now said to be part of Noah’s curse. This expansion of the biblical narrative is found across a range of Islamic literature, most commonly in histories, but also in the Tales of the Prophets (qisas al-anbiya) genre. In the Tales of the Prophets, it appears in al-Kisa?i’s version. Kisa?i, whose identity and dates are uncertain, records the tradition anonymously (“it is said”):[A] gust of wind uncovered Noah’s genitals; Ham laughed…. When Noah awoke he asked, “What was the laughter?… Do you laugh at your father’s genitals?... “May God change your complexion and may your face turn black!” And that very instant his face did turn black.... “May He make bondswomen and slaves of Ham’s progeny until the Day of Resurrection!” (Eisenberg, 1923, 99; (Thackston, 1978, 105).
The Muslim tradition of a dual curse of blackness and slavery was widespread over many centuries and continued even into modern times (Goldenberg, Black and Slave, 89-94). It is not difficult to imagine why the hermeneutic development of a dual curse occurred when and where it did. Exegetical manipulation does not happen in an historical vacuum. It is not coincidental that precisely at the time when the dual curse begins to make an appearance we can trace a dramatic increase in the enslavement of black Africans. Black slavery can be documented as far back as the third millenium BCE and well into the first several centuries of the Common Era. After the Muslim conquests in Africa in the mid-7th century, the appearance of black slaves and the black slave trade increased exponentially. Indicative is the exportation of the Zanj to Muslim lands.
The word ‘Zanj’ is apparently related to ‘Azania,’ the name given to the stretch of the East African coast from the horn of Africa in the north to the island of Zanzibar (whose first element is similarly related to ‘Zanj’) in the south. Thousands of Zanj inhabitants were enslaved by the Muslim rulers and shipped to Iraq to work in the salt marshes of the Tigris-Euphrates delta. In the 8th century the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid observed that the number of black slaves in Baghdad was countless. We hear about the Zanj when they arose in the first of three rebellions in 689, although we don’t know when they were initially shipped to Iraq. (Goldenberg, Black and Slave, 96)
The use of forced African labor for large-scale projects is reported for later periods as well, in agricultural projects and as laborers in quarries and the gold mines of the Sahara. Timothy Power mentions several cases documenting the Arab slave trade out of East Africa during the 7th-9th centuries, often to maintain slave armies, which “created a massive increase in the demand for African slaves” (Power, 92, 95, 135-138, 141-142, 146, 157-158).
There is no question that the Islamic conquest of parts of Africa, beginning with Egypt in 640/1, brought in its wake a continuous and large supply of slaves. In these early centuries of Islam, “al-Nuba became almost synonymous with ‘black slaves,’ because of the vast number of slaves bought from Bilad al-Sudan [i.e., the country of the blacks], which includes Bilad al-Nuba” (?asan, 8). Military conquest was followed by development of a black slave trade, thus instituting the commercialization of African slavery on a regular basis. A particular feature of Islamic law encouraged these developments, for Islam prohibited taking slaves from Muslim lands. As a result, as more and more African lands fell under the banner of Islam, holy wars were pushed further to the frontiers and slaves were taken from non-Muslim areas. Since there was a continual need to replenish the “incessant demand for slaves,” in the words of Claude Meillassoux, and since sub-Saharan Africa was not yet Muslim, “black Africa [became] an important source of slaves for the Islamic world” (Meillassoux, 349n21; Lovejoy, 15-16)."
It seems that both religious and secular ideologies can be used for war and oppression. Few religious or secular ideologies are free from abuse.
Fair enough. I do not dispute that given recency of evolutionism’s influence (just 1-2 centuries at most) and the numbers of religionists, the latter will post bigger numbers. And yet both sides were used for supremacist purposes- a dual combo. The Book “Science For Segregation” shows how various arguments were used to fight Civil Rights for blacks, with scienticism sometimes overshadowing religious arguments depending on the audience, and vice versa.. Segregationists argued that negro inferiority not only made equal opportunities undesirable, but that inferiority itself meant that negroes would be uncomfortable, unless they congregated “with their own kind” – hence no need for integrated schools, black people PREFERRED rundown ghetto institutions. Keeping the negroes in lockdown in the “colored” venues and areas was actually doing negroes a FAVOR, since their manifest inferiority would make them too uncomfortable among more white people in integrated skools . \ Segregationists spent almost no time putting forward religious justifications. Their main bodies of evidence were IQ test data, purporting black cultural and intellectual inferiority. Who needs “Curse of Ham” when you got statistics from Carleton Coon?
Perhaps it is a natural development in countries where religion has lost some of its old power, and where secularisation has increased, that non-religious ideologies and elites take hold and replace the older elites. Unfortunately, many of these new rulers have inherited their oppressive structures from the old society and to some extent invented new ones.
Agreed, and the age old factors of human greed and lust for power will manifest in any ideology. In this scenario, the racism of the evolutionists could be just cover for other things.
In the sixth chapter of his book The Descent of Man, Darwin predicted that eventually evolution would increase the gap between humans and the lower apes through the extinction of such “evolutionary intermediates” as gorillas and blacks! Darwin declared that- QUOTE:
“the break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or Australian and the Gorilla. (The Descent of Man, 1871, p. 201) --------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------
Darwin’s cousin and disciple, Francis Galton expanded these supremacist sentiments and founded the modern Eugenics movement, a movement that had profound implications for world history, and dire results for those races and peoples deemed to be of lesser or ”inferior stock.”
One of the main disciples of the new approach, Herbert Spencer who popularized the term “survival of the fittest” put forward the ominous view that evolution could do legitimate violence – rendering a useful service in eliminating those races that were not “fit.”
” Whilst the continuance of the old predatory instinct after the fulfillment of its original purpose, has retarded civilization by giving rise to conditions at variance with those of social life, it has subserved civilization by clearing the earth of inferior races of men. The force which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants. Be he human being, or be he brute, the hindrance must be got rid of. Jut as the savage has taken the place of lower creatures, so must he, if he have remained too long a savage, give place to his superior.56 -- Herbert Spencer, Social Statics; or the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of them Developed (1883 [1851]), pp. 454-5 --------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------
Evolution would in these views, bring about a “blackout” of those inferior and less “fit.” Oh! Happy day! When the bleks be washed away! (by evolutionary “selection” of course.)
So evolution would not just bring about black disappearance, but in the meantime the blacks could be profitably exploited and despised as of inferior stock. The theory works serviceably as cover for apartheid and Jim Crow, without the religious side needed.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: To link back to the topic in the OP. It is interesting that some people accept evolution among bacteria and other microbes, and maybe also concerning some plants and animals. But when it concerns humans they find it harder to believe. But that of course raises the question of whether we humans have changed the rules of evolution. Can we with our intelligence steer our development in the desired direction? After all, we have controlled the evolution of our pets. How much do we control ourselves today? We have created our own environments where the external factors which influenced our early evolution are put out of play, for example predation by carnivores. In cold climates we can create warm environments, and we can filter water and cleanse our food from parasites, which also once might have heavily affected the evolution of our immune system.
Will we in the future create new types of humans whereof some are adapted to artificial environments?
^Couldn't the evolutionary future then as some argue be focused towards greater breaking of bonds, as in transgenderism and transhumanism?
^Future directions in human evolution?
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Zarahan aka Enrique Cardova And yet others criticize this ethos as too submissive to a bland conformism where the blind mass will follow leftists or wokesters who hold the levers of power, or give in to an increasingly lawless self-indulgent spirit that increasingly casts off restraints, as in the controversial rapes at the We Are Sthlm music festival. The rapes of the teenagers are taken as a metaphor for how Nordic societies have allowed predatory elements to take root and hasten their destruction. Critics charge that the “woke” or liberal Swedish press or establishment downplayed the involvement in Muslim immigrants in the attacks for politically correct reasons.
There are a growing debate about the increasing rate of rapes and violent gang criminality. Both from the left and from the far right one blames the lack of "integration" of immigrants (especially immigrants from muslim countries in the Middle East and to some extent Africa). But the left (sometimes accompanied by the middle) and the far right draw different conclusions. According to the left the difficulties to integrate certain immigrant groups stems from racism and social inequality. The solution is to break up segregated residential areas (today many immigrants end up in low income areas in the outskirts of larger cities) and see to that the immigrants will be integrated in Swedish areas of living. Important is also an integration on the job market so that the immigrants will get jobs so they will achieve a better socio-economic position. If immigrant families were integrated when concerns schools and living areas also the risk for children and adolescents to end up in criminal gangs would decrease.
The far right blames the problems partly on the cultures and religion (especially islam) of the immigrants and considers those cultures to be incompatible with Swedish culture (and with Western culture overall). So their methods to solve the problems are more policing, harder punishments and more expulsions of troublesome immigrants. In the longer term, they also want to radically reduce refugee immigration, especially from Muslim countries.
The middle parties often ends up about half way between these two positions.
Other questions where "woke" stands against more conservative opinions are in questions of the LGTQ and similar, and if we for example shall allow transwomen (biological men who identify as women) to be let into traditional female spaces in sports, in dressing rooms, in toilets, in shelters for battered women, female prisons and similar. These debates are not as harsh as they are in for example UK or Canada yet, but who knows. In municipalities where the right wing "Sweden democrats" rule they have stopped different LBTQ projects as for example letting "drag queens" read stories for children in kindergarten.
The latest years the support for the "Sweden Democrats" has increased and they are now the second or third largest party here. Some people see them as an antidote to "wokeism" and political correctness. Others see them as a half fascistoid party.
quote:Originally posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova Couldn't the evolutionary future then as some argue be focused towards greater breaking of bonds, as in transgenderism and transhumanism?
Who knows, if technology could solve eventual problems with procreation, maybe there will be artificial wombs and similar in the future.
As to the psychological implications they are probably harder to solve. We humans are hardwired to certain behaviors whereof procreation and two sexes are common traits. These traits have been with us since we were worm-like organisms in the seas of the Cambrian (or even earlier).
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova So evolution would not just bring about black disappearance, but in the meantime the blacks could be profitably exploited and despised as of inferior stock. The theory works serviceably as cover for apartheid and Jim Crow, without the religious side needed.
A sort of shortcut to get rid of unwanted people and races, without directly killing them is of course the often used method of sterilisation, which obviously still is used in some countries.
Both in Hitlers Germany, in USA and also here in Sweden people have been sterilized for different reasons, poverty, social class, perceived mental inferiority and race. According to Wikipedia for example 40% of all Native American women (and 10 % of the men) were sterilized in the 1970s. It sounds terribly much.
quote: estimated 40% of Native American women (60,000–70,000 women) and 10% of Native American men in the United States underwent sterilization in the 1970s
Not long ago there was a lot of news from Israel about sterilisations of Black Jews.
Seems ideas of breeding people like dogs (and do away with unwanted specimens) still lives on in our modern world.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova: White racism in the Americas did not depend on Protestant churches. There has been plenty of Catholic racism in the Americas, and what became the US, before before Protestants showed up in significant numbers, though of course the USA after its formation, having more Protestants to begin with, would show a larger percentage. But whatever the numbers, the age old vices of human greed, lust for power etc. used religion as a cover.
Re heresies, from many Protestant viewpoints, Catholicism is itself a heresy, where the domineering Roman bureaucracy and hierarchy co-opted the purer, more earnest faith of earlier times, displacing the place of Christ as head of the Church in favor of proud pontiffs. Contrast with the simpler, less corrupt way of life of the early Christian disciples and early church.
Don't get me mistaken. I never said the Catholic Church was innocent either! And yes I know that Catholicism is also a heresy since you are correct that its very bureaucratic system and hierarchy was taken straight from the Roman pagan temple system including the Papacy which is derived from the Pontifex Maximus-- the high priest of Jupiter and all of Rome. In fact, it was discovered decades ago that the documents that allegedly proved the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome and successor to Peter to be a forgery made by Franks and their Roman allies and was the basis of the so-called 'Holy Roman Empire'. Here is an excellent web article on the topic-- Forgeries and the Papacy: The Historical Influence and Use of Forgeries in Promotion of the Doctrine of the Papacy
That said, my point was that due to the Protestants not having a centralized system like the synods of traditional Church fathers with ecumenical (in its original definition) councils, the various churches and splinter churches became susceptible to outside non-biblical ideas and innovations more so than the Catholics. This is why the majority of Christians who bought into so-called "enlightenment" thinking were Protestants. Hence not only the likes of Blumenbach but even pastors like the Anglican pastor Thomas Robert Malthus who came up with false idiotic theories like the zero-sum theory on which modern socialism is based and the related biological theory of Malthusian trap in which populations grow exponentially until they run out of resources, which is what modern human population reduction is based on. This is why scientific racism was more prevalent among Protestants than Catholics not to say Catholics were not racist either.
Catholic colonists for example did intermarry more easily with non-white natives, however they did still subscribe to a racial hierarchy with whites still in top. Protestants however were worse in that they tend to practice racial purity and were anti-miscegenation.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
If non-Biblical ideas are viewed broadly, it could be said that Catholics were more open, as the many pagan holidays, rituals and ideas incorporated into Catholicism attest, one of the key criticisms influencing the Protestant Reformation. But you are correct as new ideas of reason, rejection of absolutionism etc did find more fertile ground in Protestantism once the monopolism and domination of Catholic regimes was weakened. This had several positive aspects, from science to education.
As far as racism and oppression of course, Catholics were heavily involved in the same, and the brutal suppression and dispossession of indigenous peoples, not to mention various endorsements of slavery shows that Catholicism was an integral part of the white supremacy system. It is true that on some counts there was a more relaxed miscegnation atmosphere in Catholic areas, but when the whole picture is looked at a less rosy picture emerges. Slavery was just as or more brutal Catholic areas. It is no accident that one of the biggest black slave rebellion of all time, Haiti, took place under a Catholic run slave regime. Same for brutal Catholic Portuguese operations from Angola to Brazil.
It is true that Protestants often figure more prominently than Catholics in the Darwinist revolution, but the more traditional minded Catholics still were just as racist- they just didn't try to prettify it as much with "science." But the bottom line was the same. Hence some of the most vicious opponents of black progress, civil rights and even sometimes freedom from slavery were Catholic- namely the white Irish. When ML King led civil rights marches in Chicago he met mass violence he said was worse than he faced in Mississippi. The white mobs that attacked King were heavily Catholic, most notably in the "white ethnic" areas of Marquette Park.
Now as regards Malthus, why do you say his ideas were idiotic?
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ The problem with the Catholic Church (and some Eastern Orthodox) churches is their method of iconoclasm which is to literally to replace paganism with Christianity, which really is not a good method. In the case of Catholics, they just hide or disguise the pagan deity or his/her rites under a Christian façade. This is different from the majority of Orthodox and especially Oriental churches that try to educate the people about the Christian faith and abandon pagan cults and traditions for biblical ones. This is why a lot of the Virgin Mary shrines and sites in Western Europe used to be goddess shrines.
But getting back to the topic, scientism had more influence on some protestant churches than others so human evolution and racial evolution was something that was promoted by some protestant church members than others.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Zaharan has correctly pointed out that white exponents of different kinds have put the racism hot potato in someone else's basket and have pointed the finger at someone else..
Russians point to the west as more racist, even pointing to the government of Ukraine as being filled with nazis.
US democrats point the finger to republicans.
Some black ppl (e.g. I hear Islam is somewhat on the rise in South Africa) see Islam as a better choice than Christianity for different issues, including racism. (No whites here, but still the same dynamic of bait and switch with the advertised non-racism).
Sahel anti-French protestors think they're better off with Russian partners than with France. Some also think it's better to do business with China than with European countries.
The scientists in the study in the OP have Christians as standing out in terms of racism, implying that Christianity itself is at the basis of this. The irony.. (Given the history of scientific racism, maybe we should do a study quantifying the role of 20th century scientists in pushing racism to the monster it is today, fully decked out with elaborate specious 'scientific facts' and maybe we should document crimes in the name of science that went hand in hand with racism, e.g. the massive theft of antiquities for museums and personal collections).
------
Only ppl enlightened by history know what's up. Only certain sections of 'minorities' with a short memory, whose lifetime on earth is the extent of their understanding of dynamics, fall for this blame game. (Although we also see similar things among whites [ie not just among minorities], where they aren't taking notes from history as they should; just not so much with racism as it affects them less).
I applaud MENA Muslims for being among the best at knowing how longer history teaches you how to be better armed in daily interactions with different modern ideas and groups (while at the same time being able to function and do business/co-exist with groups they keep some distance from). Chinese have a good understanding of this balance, as well. Not to say they can't go overboard or they can't have their own problems with this. But they don't show signs of being confused/duped in this minefield of ongoing historical aggressions, is what I'm saying.
Posted by Askia_The_Great (Member # 22000) on :
Not to get off topic but that South Africa/Islam article is old, and as a person thats been to SA many times its mainly Cape Coloureds and immigrants that are mainly Muslim and they are a small percentage. South Africa still predominately Christian as fuck.
But overall I get where you are coming from.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Yes, I got that from different sources. Even if there is some growth at the local level, as the article describes, the number of black muslims in South Africa is still insignificant (in the 10s of thousands) when you look at the bigger demographic numbers (millions).
I was not so much concerned with the numbers as with high stakes decisions that are going to be costly when ppl show up to the table of international players uninformed of history, because their cultures do not value history the same way their rivals do.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Here is an interesting article about how misconceptions of evolutionary theory contributes to some people not accepting it. The article discusses among other things how evolutionary theory has come to be used in political and social settings, and also how the teachings of the theory in schools many times have failed to bring about a deeper understanding of it.
In this article the attitudes towards evolution among students from Zimbabwe was examined:
quote:Abstract The theory of evolution has often been misconceived and often associated with racist undertones and insinuations towards Black Africans, who are assumed to be less evolved and thus closer to “apes” genetically than other, presumably more advanced racial groups. In this research was thus tested the hypothesis that misconceptions surrounding Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, particularly racial ones, would predict a lack of acceptance of the theory in particular, and the entirety of the science enterprise in general among a sample of Black Zimbabweans. We also tested the impact of spirituality on both acceptance of evolution and science. The hypotheses received support from the findings and they are discussed in line with pedagogy surrounding evolution and science. The findings of the most central importance were that racial misconceptions, general misconceptions and spirituality predicted both acceptance of evolution and science. In turn, the effects of all these exogenous variables on acceptance of science were mediated by lack of acceptance of evolution.
The article also discusses how to correct misunderstandings and bring about a real understanding of the theory of biological evolution, without the racist undertones which have crept into some of the understanding (or rather into the misunderstandings) of it.
quote:Secondly, it is our belief that such erroneous misunderstandings of the theory of evolution steer away some individuals and certain social groups from even wanting or trying to understand the theory, believing that such misconceptions are in fact true and integral to the theory. This may be particularly true of members of social groups who are targets of derogatory beliefs epitomized by the racially related misconceptions, such as Black People and similar groups like Aboriginal Australians. On the contrary, some individuals who hold high racial prejudicial beliefs against outgroups they deem less evolved may in fact be particularly motivated to believe such misconceptions instead, out of a warped desire to spite and inflict harm on them, hence also inadvertently steering themselves away from a good understanding of the theory. Such misconceptions may in fact have more far-reaching effects, which may include steering members of the derogated groups like Africans and some Aboriginal groups from acceptance of the entirety of scientific knowledge. This assumption is core to the rationale of this study. Whereas it may be common and fashionable for Africans and similar social groups to be derogated for failure to keep at par with the rest of the world in modern scientific and related technological advancements, it is not at all obvious that they would immutably remain so if scientific theories about human origins, evolution and development were not so much used to propagate their so-called genetic inferiority.
Again, not to go down the conversation about the validity of evolution; this is just my attempt at nuancing the conversation, considering the implication in the abstract that it's skeptical Africans who need to get with the program or that it's skeptical Africans who have misconceptions to resolve. I know Archeopteryx may not mean it like this, but there are many in science who do see non-westerners as in need of corrections and in need of progress (translation: in need of saving not just by science, but specifically by western science, since, as I've already mentioned in this thread, western intellectuals have historically refused to co-exist with non-western scientific traditions).
If I'm reading the abstract correctly, it's saying that the students' spirituality and misconceptions about evolution are at odds with science.
First of all, let me say this. I do not think it's always clear that evolution is always divorced from racist undertones. We know that evolution has had racist undertones many times in the past. We know from things like the use of the pith helmet, that westerners have linked the African climate to mental degradation, to the point that long-term settlers apparently felt they needed protection to not end up like Africans:
Let's now address the notion of Africans supposedly rejecting the "scientific enterprise".
Right away, we can see that the authors are conflating western-style science, or mainstream science, with the noble and universal field of science, which transcends distinctions historically made by western intellectuals, like "hard science", "soft science", "pseudo-science", "proto-science", "border science", "subjective", "objective", because we know that all of the above are repeatedly encountered at the frontiers of universal science, even if mainstream science only chooses to pay attention to the championed laws of nature and their champions, like Newton and Einstein.
Yesterday I was reading this article on an African UN Ambassador, whose life mission has been to eradicate FGM. At one point in the article, she mentions a typical example of an IRL encounter between people schooled in mainstream western education (but maybe not so much in other areas of life) and people who hold and practice spiritual beliefs:
Quote: In Liberia, for instance, where I was recently under my role as UN Women Regional Goodwill Ambassador for Africa: In order for them to enact a ban on FGM, according to their traditions and practices, they must sacrifice animals to appease their ancestors.
Now, I don't know anything about animal sacrifice, or appeasing ancestors, but as someone who believes in proof of concept, and as someone who believes 200ky of human trial and error in metaphysics are a testimony in and of themselves, I appreciate the fact that these beliefs have been held and tested and vetted by numerous generations of humans as appropriate for them and as working for them and as being harmless on the environment, for much longer than the largely untested* (e.g. see climate change, marine life mass extinction, etc) 200 year blip on the geological time scale that is modern western thought/western cultural hegemony.
*I dare say that western cultural hegemony has mainly been tested and passed tests in areas of technology and measurement and all downstream applications (e.g. medicine, modern weapons, transportation), which is not a small achievement, but can we say based on this that westerners are necessarily better off than Africans or humans in the last >200ky years, in other areas of life (like religion, knowledge of self, metaphysics, common sense, and so on)? I don't think we can, given the many modern contradictions, where people have begun to fail at living, like highly modern workforce populations with weak physical bodies due to sedentary lifestyles, people who don't know how to kickstart their social life again after covid lockdowns, people with bogus and unnatural (e.g. smartphone) addictions, the irony of people who eat themselves sick (not just referring to the obesity epidemic, but also microplastics, etc).
So to bring this all back my reasons for posting this. I do not think Africans who hold those views are in bad company. Scholars with a 200 year tradition under their belt and who are effectively doing a social experiment called modern western civilization (an experiment that many end up failing and drag down all of us in man-made disasters), cannot go to people whose metaphysics rests on >200ky of human experience, and make it an insult to be in such company. From my perspective, it's the scholars who practice science from their desks/comfort zones, and who have no idea what is going on at the frontiers of science, who are in bad company/on the wrong side of history.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet
So to bring this all back my reasons for posting this. I do not think Africans who hold those views are in bad company. Scholars with a 200 year tradition under their belt and who are effectively doing a social experiment called modern western civilization (an experiment that many end up failing and drag down all of us in man-made disasters), cannot go to people whose metaphysics rests on >200ky of human experience, and make it an insult to be in such company. From my perspective, it's the scholars who practice science from their desks/comfort zones, and who have no idea what is going on at the frontiers of science, who are in bad company/on the wrong side of history
The West since the beginning of the transatlantic slavery, and absolutely in the days of colonialism have always had a "von oben" attitude towards Africans. They have always allegedly wanted to "save" Africa in one way or another (according to Western ideological standards). First Africa needed to be saved by Christianity, then they needed to be saved by science, and maybe the latest trend is that they need to be saved by LGBTq+, judging from the Wests pressure on countries like Ghana or Uganda to not implement laws against LBTQ+. But at the same time the West does not say no to the natural resources of Africa. It is understandable that African countries turn toward countries like China and Russia, even if they are not out in unselfish purpose either. But at least they avoid to try to overtly influence the Africans ideologically.
About the scholars who wrote the article above they are themselves Africans but seem to work in a western tradition.
About scholars and their knowledge about subjects like biology, I can not talk for all of them, but the teachers I had both in my archeology, geology and biology classes were rather practical people who often were out in the field doing fieldwork, or in the lab doing experimental work. Most of them had no self righteous attitudes towards others, even if some of them sometime could give a sneer against some creationists or others who without practical experience in their fields tried to dismiss them. But it could be added that I live in a secular country where the acceptance of biological evolution, old Earth and similar are rather high, so the debates are not as intense here as they might be in some other countries.
If Western life or the life in other cultures are best for the the individual will probably the future tell. Personally, I can agree that certain lifestyles, where people support themselves and are not dependent on a lot of complicated financial or technical systems, are probably more sustainable in the long run. We can look at people who were quite isolated but who still lived on millennium after millennium without disappearing. Some of them have first had their existence seriously threatened when they encountered the Western (or other technologically advanced and often aggressive) culture.
Do we need evolutionary theory to survive? Maybe our modern medical and biological science need it, and our technology and science based society. But all people do probably not need it. I once knew an old man living in the countryside. He was a deeply Christian man, and he was against all ideas of evolution, big bang, ice ages, old Earth, dinosaurs and similar. He believed literally in the Biblical narratives. But he did fine anyway. He was a small scale farmer and more or less self reliant. Some people made fun of him but he did not care. So all people do not need evolutionary theory, it depends on your way of living and what your profession is.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
One interesting aspect about the theory of evolution is that it in many places seem more difficult to digest than many other scientific theories. As mentioned before theories about electromagnetism, relativity, gravity or even plate tectonics seem more acceptable than the theory of evolution. It seems that evolutionary theory touches deeper on our identity and how we view ourselves and our place among other living organisms.
The article above have some commentary about this phenomena too
quote:Furthermore, the theory of evolution through natural selection is one of the very few scientific ideas that have historically spawned much more than academic interest to capture the interest of laypeople globally. First, this is possibly because the theory struck immediately and boldly right at the heart of the age-old and still ongoing epistemological debates surrounding the purpose and meaning of human existence [3]. By so doing, it squarely pitted the age-old, intuitively appealing creationist doctrines that lent human life a high, spiritual meaning on the one hand, with an intriguingly cold form of scientific rationalism that sees human life as essentially and biologically indistinct from all other forms of life on the other hand. Secondly, widespread interest in the theory might also reflect the fact that Darwin's theory is among a very small set of scientific theories which also include the big bang theory whose precepts, corollaries and implications are usually quite complex but are deceptively easy to grasp, leading people, for example, to a firm but misleading belief that ‘humans evolved from monkeys’.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
I also have heard of people who are fed up with modern lifestyles and have chosen to live off the grid. I know a young woman who's told me she's tired of modern life and that she wants to do something similar as what you've described in regards to that old man. I used to laugh at her then, but she was possibly way ahead of me back then in realizing certain things.
If nothing else, I applaud them for taking charge of their lives and for having a mind of their own. But I cannot see myself retreating from society all the way. I do like the idea of owning a ranch somewhere out in the boonies (I like animals), but to me there is too many places to travel and explore to just resign. So that same feeling of being turned off by aspects of modern life and where society is going (which i do feel at this point in my life), I would just channel through travel, rather than by becoming a hermit like that old man or like my friend.
When I talk about discoveries at the frontiers of science that desk-bound professors are ignorant of, I'm not just talking about scientists in the field, but I'm talking about all the semi-neglected areas of science that are of interest to someone like me who is interested in (ancient) metaphysics, but who only finds closed doors in mainstream science when its time to take them to their logical conclusion. Although I've now moved on to other sources of info, a couple of years ago I kept myself updated on such areas of science where ancient metaphysics seems to be coming full circle with science.
Here are some articles on findings that have obvious connections to common metaphysical ideas, to show what I mean. The last, or third, link only some ppl will recognize as related to ancient metaphysics, but there is a link, and it's quite ironic, because skeptics in science have been making fun of it, and now it's a causing a crisis in a number of scientific fields:
