How dangerous is 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea'?
553366
Here's the issue: Some worldviews are clearly out of step with reality. This includes, most notably, schizophrenia and fundamentalist faith. \n\nThe schizophrenic hears voices. He is unable to accept that he is mentally ill and searches for an explanation for what he hears. He lives near a radio tower. Obviously this is the source of the voices. The radio-station is broadcasting into his head. He has effectively kept his worldview, but he has required the world itself to change shape to conform with what he thinks. The other option, acceptance of his mental illness, is too much to bear.\n\nDitto fundamentalists. Rather than adapt their worldviews to fit our rapidly growing knowledge base and understanding of the universe, they need to deny, deny, deny what we know, so as to keep reality from creeping in and disturbing their tightly held beliefs.\n\nObviously not all of the faithful do this to the same degree. Even the Catholic church has accepted evolution, as per Pope John Paul II's statments that it is likely the truth and certainly the best theory we have yet heard. So, it is possible to bring certain segments of the faithful around to reason, but it will happen very, very slowly. The fact is (and I believe that the Catholics realize this) that if they do not start to accept reasonable explanations for things people will leave their churches in droves, searching for places that will combine faith and rationality in better ways.\n\nYou can only ignore the facts for so long.
748480
It's an urban myth, like most Creationist stories about evolution. In fact, from the biographies I've read, Darwin lent more and more towards agnosticism or atheism as he got older, starting out as a very strong believer in the Genesis story when he set sail on the Beagle, and disbelieving Christianity but still believing in God when he wrote the Origin of Species.
335431
There is only one - Darwin's.  Google it and you'll find more information than you could use in a year.  \n\nNo other idea regarding the origin of humankind and the process of evolution is viable - not "intelligent design", not "creation science", nor any other answer but Evolution.\n\nYou must remember that, in science, a theory is not just somebody's best guess.  A theory is an explanation based upon facts.  Evolutionary theory is the base upon which modern science is built.\n\nRight now the newspapers and t.v. are talking about "bird flu" as if it's something we need to be scared of.  Bird flu cannot be spread from person to person.  But the virus could, and is very likely to, change to the point that it can indeed be spread from person to person.  If that happens, it will happen because the virus evolved.  This sort of thing happens time and again - proving that not only has evolution happened in the past, but that it is still happening.\n\nOne more thing: Niether Darwin nor his theory ever said that humankind descended from monkeys!  Good luck on your school project - now get to work!
90876
i hope you know that this things are dangerous. a simple search using yahoo will ansewr your question. what do you want to do with it anyway?
273596
Well it depends. ******** can be safe only when ********* are ****. But it can be extremely harmful if ********* isn't ******. Hope this helps. :)
797853
Yes Marx was on to something but some of his ideas were a little far fetched.\n\nalso Darwin's views have been twisted to be racist. he did not write the origin of species to relate to people. the man is talking about animals.
963299
"Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design" by Michael Shermer is the best one I've seen yet. It will more than likely contain everything you need.\n\nMichael Shermer, btw, if you're unfamiliar with who I'm talking about, is the founder of the Skeptics Society, who publishes Skeptic Magazine.
797289
Hmm,...  better chance then a Comet,.. not as dangerous as a Comet,...\n\nAlthough I enjoy the Advertisement where the old guy is like "  Global Warming in 20 years *train honks in background and you figure out he is on train tracks with it heading towards him*  NOT MY PROBLEM"  then he hopes off and a little girl is standing behind where he was about to get hit.\n\nI don't think this is something I could prepare for or care about.  Also you might get some people here that will fight with you about how the South Pole doesn't exsist because Santa doesn't live there or something.\n\nAgain,.. nothing we could do and hopefully not my problem.  But HEY,.. if it actually hit the South Pole hard enough (which it will hopefully break down before getting there) then maybe some people will get an unexpected Tropical Vacation before the flood of cold water decreaces temp of Earth and as some project would send us into an Ice Age again.
987774
It's the best scientifically tested explaination that we have.  Believe me, scientists aren't so eager to fall into line as you might think.  If someone could get recognition by scientifically disproving the theory of evolution to any great extent, it will be done.
85928
I think it's a bad bad idea. for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and though man likes to think he can control the action and predict the reaction, i shudder to think what nature could react with if the action is bad enough... That is one can of worms that would be better left alone....
449120
No, it really isn't.\n\nThe fundamentals of intelligent design are basically anti-science.  The sole argument used in its support is to cease thinking about any subject which is not immediately understood.\n\n"That feature of life looks hard to evolve, therefore, Unnamed Intelligent Designer did it."\n\nI like to look at how history would be different if the great scientists of the past had used such logic.\n\nIsaac Newton:  "Gravity pulls things down, but the moon stays up.  How strange.  Must be God."  (Nobody works out the laws of physical motion.)\n\nEdward Jenner:  "I wonder why milkmaids get smallpox less seriously than other people... Oh, I guess God did it."  (Nobody invents vaccines.)\n\nIntelligent Design "theory" is the death of science.  It is lazy thinking.  It is simply accepting any unknown as an unknown and finding nothing in it worth investigating further.  It is the most fundamentally anti-science idea possible.\n\nThink my examples of overstated?  Consider the real life guru of the ID movement, Michael Behe.  He testified in court that nobody could figure out the evolution of the immune system.  When he was presented with dozens and dozens of articles working out the evolution of the immune system, he admitted having read none of them, but had no compunction about just declaring it "wasn't enough".  How much would be?  Here is a person who has stopped thinking.  He's supposed be a biochemist, but he has no interest in expanding biochemistry.  He found a gap and declared that God filled it and his thoughts stopped there.  Many, many other scientists, unencumbered by the albatross of ID continued to investigate and have expanded our knowledge of the immune system extensively, just so Behe can sit back smugly and declare whatever progress they've made cannot possibly be enough.\n\nI repeat, ID is the death of science.  ID is the most fundamentally anti-science idea possible.\n\nID "theory" is best stated, "It is absolutely undeniable that someone, somewhere, at some point, did some thing, using some methods, to create life."  That's not a theory.  That hardly qualifies as an idea!  But they can't fill in any of the vapidity.  If they fill in any of the unknowns, it becomes obvious they're trying to force their religion onto the masses.  Therefore, they're stuck with a vague framework of an idea.\n\nIf they could fill in bits, they might stumble into a theory that was testable.  If we replace "someone" with "My great grandmother", suddenly, we have an idea we can test.  A false idea, but still a testable one.  My great grandmother has identifiable properties.  We know how much biochemistry she knew.  We can judge the likelihood of her having done such a thing.  That likelihood is, of course, so close to zero there's little point in calculating it.\n\nIf we fill in the "how" gap with "using a screwdriver", then again, we can test it.\n\nBut ID theory refuses to fill in the gaps.  It claims to not be interested in who.  It claims to not be interested in where, when, how or what.  Dembski says it's a theory of "design detection".  But, again, how do we test it?\n\nDembski's filter resolves to two states:  Yes, it was designed!  We don't know.\n\nSo, can this be falsified?  Can we send something designed through and have the filter produce a false negative?  No, because the filter has no negative state.  It doesn't say "designed/not designed", it says "designed/don't know".  There is no way to test for a false negative.\n\nCan we test for a false positive?  Nope.  Since God is on the table here (and they refuse utterly to let natural laws have sway like real science does), everything in the universe supposedly could be designed.  So there is nothing that you can definitively say isn't designed to run through the filter.
1133665
darwin.nap.edu/books/030906399X/html/101.html
513828
Whoa! Thanks so much for the LOGICAL information against evolution, especially the lie about us being 99 percent identical to chimps. I knew about some of the other forgeries, but thanks. What's disturbing, though, is that some of these things are still promoted by biology teachers in school as fact. For example, the industrial melanism and peppered moth example has still been used in high school biology courses, even AP Biology. Thanks for all the information; it definitely strengthens the idea of a God who wouldn't let this all happen by chance. \nThe only question that remains for the evolutionists, though, is why. Why would they want to support an idea that says we are related to monkeys? Why would they want to downgrade the status of man like this? I simply don't understand it. Though, according to classification, we are primates, we are much greater than that. We are humans. It mystifies me as to why evolutionists can't accept this idea.
546012
The bible should never be considered anything but a work of fiction.\nEdit: I'd also like to point something else out. A lot of people are making the statement that God threatening with the possibility of hell is like a parent warning a child against a blazing fire. For one, the act of burning a child, though perhaps practical, is very cruel and sadistic. Kind loving parents would take a more practical and less cruel approach: simply do all that is necessary to keep the child away from the fire. There are numerous other logical fallacies in this analogy, but I would hope that they are painfully obvious to anyone intelligent enough to consider religion critically.
1105608
Too dangerous now days.
652920
By Arthur Custance \n"Man in Adam and in Christ"\n\nTO MY MIND, one of the saddest and most disastrous results of the theory of evolution as applied to man is that it has led to an entirely false conception of what man's true nature is.\n\nIf human evolution is true in the sense that Huxley and Simpson have held it to be, then man is an angel in the making, changing steadily for the better as he moves further away from his animal ancestors. His propensity for wickedness is recognized as unfortunate, but more in the nature of a relapse, a temporary set-back, a kind of unfulfilled-ness, which there is every reason to believe he will in time grow out of.\n\nBut if man is a divinely created being who has fallen from grace and can by nature change only for the worse, then his propensity for wickedness is something more than merely evidence of unrealized potential. From the biblical point of view it is a demonstration that something has gone dreadfully wrong from which there now seems no possibility of self-recovery.
557031
I agree with you on this one. I too fear that civilization might regress to a point of a Theocracy and tyranny. I see the Dark Ages as the worst time in humanity. Not because of the massive amount of death and suffering, though that did happen, but because of the lack of scientific progress and development of society. \n\nThat being said I saw your site and I fear that while I agree with there ideas I disagree with their approach. From what I saw it seemed to be that it was a Atheistic/agnostic organization that was fighting against religious theists. I am afraid that mentality will cause more conflict and ill will instead of addressing the problems. Rather such organizations should reach out to like minded theists that also want a secular society that way not only do you have a broader base but you can say that you represent both sides and are working for the common good of all.