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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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According to a survey being published in the April 3, 1997, Nature, 40% of scientists in the U.S. believe in God. This ratio has not changed in the 80 years since a similar survey was conducted in 1916. Biologists were the biggest doubters in 1916; physicists and astronomers are now the leading disbelievers, with 77.9% denying the existence of God. Mathematicians, who create their own universes, are the most inclined to believe in God with a total of 44.6%.
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Category: Creationism • History
Posted on: September 1, 2007 1:38 PM, by PZ Myers
Yowza. Vox Day tried to pull his usual ahistorical, illiterate, ignorant schtick, blaming Nazis and Communists on ol' Chuck Darwin, and Ed Darrell completely eviscerated him. I mean, it's like all that's left of Day is a few tattered scraps of skin hanging from a stick, drying in the wind.
Vox Day is a rather cheap and easy target, I know, but still … it's frightening to see. It's so thorough.
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Comments
"So according to Vox, this photograph is impossible:"
That was the best part, methinks. Worth a thousand words, easily.
Posted by: Cody | September 1, 2007 2:10 PM
Naturally, a detailed list of historical people, events, and philosophies which drew inspiration from Darwin's writings is completely unrelated to the veracity of those writings.
Vox may think he's talking about science, but he's talking about history instead. Next!
Posted by: Spaulding | September 1, 2007 2:15 PM
Thanks for noticing.
Alas (for Vox), it's not thorough. I have only scratched the surface of what was quickly available on the internet and in my library, which is pretty meager on Soviet history and the philosophical underpinnings of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
For example, after I posted it, I hit a local library of sorts -- Half-Price Books, actually -- and checked the indices of the entire shelf on the Soviets, the Cold War, Soviet and Chinese history. No major work on the era makes any reference to Darwin or evolution worth listing in the indices. Oh, let's dump the full load: No work on the period lists Darwin or evolution as an influence.
I think I have collected most of Mao's references to Darwin, now. Mao uses Darwin's theory of an example of how people reject ideas initially. Mao doesn't endorse Darwin or evolution, nor is there any hint that any of Mao's policies are related in any fashion to anything Darwin wrote, said or did.
There is one possible exception, though it requires stretching the words of both Mao and Darwin past reasonableness: Mao wrote, "Let a thousand flowers bloom," and Darwin wrote a monograph on orchids.
I'll wager Vox uses that example. Maybe soon.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | September 1, 2007 2:15 PM
Reading Ed's response felt as though I was watching a skilled and talented surgeon gutting a fish. It was perfect and precise --if not a little messy and embarrassing for the poor, unfortunate fish.
Posted by: Dan | September 1, 2007 2:16 PM
Stalin was a Lamarckian who officially opposed Darwinism. All Soviet biologists had to recant Darwin or risk getting sent to Siberia. IIRC, a few were in fact sent there.
Hitler and the Nazis were devout Xians and said so often.
More creos lying their asses off. It is a Death cult thing, you wouldn't understand.
Posted by: raven | September 1, 2007 2:24 PM
There's yet another reason why Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology rejects evolution a la Darwin: according to MLM, humans are perfectible under the aegis of the Communist Party, a type of evolution of sorts.
BUT, biological evolution is blind and not in any way directed toward a goal. Therefore, evolution by natural selection must be a bourgeois ideology. On the contrary, Lamarck's view is compatible with "progress," hence Lysenko.
Posted by: Paul Lurquin | September 1, 2007 2:25 PM
I dunno.
Even if it were demonstrably true that all of Stalin's excesses were directly inspired by Darwin I don't see that it makes any difference at all to the truth of evolution. To claim it does is such an egregious category error that it seems to me to outrank any of Vox's historical idiocy.
I see this from theists quite a bit on the RA forums, arguments on the lines of "if evolution were true it would mean {something nasty that theist doesn't like}, therefore evolution can't be true". WTF is that about anyway? How do these people think it makes one iota of difference?
Posted by: Tim Day (no relation) | September 1, 2007 2:29 PM
If I could interject here, it seems to me that you're never going to get much traction arguing toward Darwin's innocence where the Soviets are concerned, since the early Marxists were eager to embrace anything that smacked of a progressive view of history.
I think it's a much better tactic to point out that, regardless of what Marxists said, what matters is how they first ignored, then attempted to purge any trace of the capitalist economic theories which inspired Darwin's vision from their version of 'Darwinism.' Which really was an 'ism' in the sense of a belief system. It's not science that's responsible for the Marxist repression of legitimate biology and the horrors of the gulag---it's the Marxist version of religion.
And, Ed, Vox is seizing upon a technical error he claims you made in an effort to poison the well. You can't trust either PZ or Ed Darrell (an unlikely tag team, that) because (Vox implies) they can't get their facts about who wore what belt buckle when.
Obviously, I think that's an unworthy argument.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | September 1, 2007 3:00 PM
No it isn't, it's one thing he got actually right (more or less). PZ Myers and Ed Darrell used the belt buckle to suggest a relationship between Nazism and Theism when in fact the slogan "Gott mit uns" dates back not to 1870 like "Vox" says but to 1700 - it was the motto of the prussian kings, later adopted by the german emporers and it was embossed on the belt buckles because it was part of the state regalia (or whatever the appropriate english word is). And of course the military doesn't easily let go of any tradition.
Even in the middle of the culture war it should be possible to admit an error, shouldn't it?
-- eike
Posted by: eike | September 1, 2007 3:30 PM
And, Ed, Vox is seizing upon a technical error he claims you made in an effort to poison the well. You can't trust either PZ or Ed Darrell (an unlikely tag team, that) because (Vox implies) they can't get their facts about who wore what belt buckle when.
Obviously, I think that's an unworthy argument.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | September 1, 2007 3:00 PM
Yes, it is a technical error. But an error nevertheless; to which no attempt to correct or admit has been made. The error has been left intact, being used under false colors.
Posted by: Salt | September 1, 2007 3:30 PM
Ed has already corrected his post.
Posted by: MartinM | September 1, 2007 3:38 PM
Yes, it now says that the fact that he was wrong really means that he was right, only more so. I find that a little disingenious (although if he means to say that the Wehrmacht was a criminal organization I would agree). But by his logic the german Bundeswehr is a fascist army because it uses some of the same insignia as the Wehrmacht.
-- eike
Posted by: eike | September 1, 2007 4:09 PM
Salt, we have yet to see Day make any admission about any of the errors that were pointed out by Darrell. For him, the big sticking point is calling a Wermacht belt buckle an SS belt buckle, and he assumes that this was done in bad faith, so everything that Ed or PZ says is discredited. Needless to say, it's a blatant ad hominem argument, coupled with so many puerile invectives that make me wonder why Darrell or PZ are even talking about this fool.
Posted by: Reinis | September 1, 2007 4:11 PM
So, I'm curious...does the swastika as a symbol of German nationalism also date back to 1870? Because that belt buckle is not just a piece of Franco-Prussian War surplus: it's "Gott Mit Uns" + Nazi symbology.
Posted by: PZ Myers | September 1, 2007 4:20 PM
You still don't get it PZ. Allow me to explain it to you: it's like the christian cross. That has been used for ages before the nazis, hence the nazis cannot have been christians! QED.
Posted by: Arnaud | September 1, 2007 4:25 PM
Capitalism thinks that competition in industry produces products that work better for the intended purpose.
Darwin and subsequent evolutionary theory think that competition produced organisms better adapted for the environment.
Communism thinks that industry competition is a detriment to progress.
Therefore, Communism is like Darwinism.
ROFL!
I'm sorry, but this Vox Day guy is friggin' hilariously dimwitted.
Posted by: Vox is an Ox-y-moron | September 1, 2007 4:25 PM
I must admit I was annoyed by Eds piece and as much as I like a good takedown I feel it suffers from a lot of flaws. His reading of Marx is very very bad ((quote In short, Marx thought that through hard discussions, people could filter out bad ideas, and promote good ideas -- a sort of survival of the best ideas. (/quote)). The whole point of Marx use of dialectics is that they apply to class-struggle, not to the best idea winning in some abstract markedplace of idea. Struggle for Marx was between class and ideas derived from this real social struggle (the ruling ideas are the rulers ideas?). He might be wrong, but at least get the idea right.
Ed seems to be trying to argue that there is some inherent and logical contradiction between Communism and Darwinism because one has competition as a central concept and the other is based on lack of competition.
But here he gives way to much ground to the line of argument Vox day makes, namely that there are unique political conclusions to be made on the basis of Darwins work and that Darwins theory can somehow blamed for those unique consequences.
Ed makes the same mistake by saying:
a) Darwins theory says natural selection hence competition,
b) Communism says collective ownership hence lack of competition
c) ergo Communism and Darwins doesn't mix
The problem is that the theories/political ideology are not at all about the same thing!
Communism is a political ideology based on a theory of history; hence it is about how the economic and political system should be organized.
Darwinism (god I hate that we use this word, damn creationist) is a scientific theory about how the natural world is. It is not a theory of human social history. It does have derived political consequences, because it is a dangerous idea. Once you understand it, it becomes much harder to accept traditional religion and authority derived from it (dangerous in a world where many political systems were based on the authority of God through kings). But it's not a political idea. Darwins theory explain the process by which humans and all life evolved, but it doesn't tell us what forms of ownership one should have in a industrial economy.
It would be like me arguing against same sex marriage because in electromagnetism two opposite poles attract each other and two of the same repulse each other. Or to take some Chopak Woo: in quantum mechanics the observation of a event changes the event (or determines it or whatever he chooses to say that day), therefore how you look on life decides what happens. Its neither here nor there.
Communism might be (is) wrong, but it doesn't have anything to do with whether communist were inspired by or hated Darwin. Darwinism (ei. evolutionary theory) could be wrong (but isn't) but that doesn't have anything to do with whether communist liked it or understood it.
I am not even going to go into the property question but it seems that Ed has not studied economic history very much. Private ownership of the means of production in the modern sense is not a stable or dominant feature in all forms of human economic organization, nor is competition a state of affairs that must exist in capitalist economies.
Also the Lenin quote that he criticises, I don't for the love of god understand with you, PZ, accepts this line of argument:
"Darwin put an end to the belief that the animal and vegetable species bear no relation to one another, except by chance, and that they were created by God, and hence immutable."
- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
To which Ed writes:
The Lenin claim itself is balderdash. Darwin himself didn't believe that evolution negated God (Darwin remained an active member of his church until his death). Asa Gray, the evolution convert in America, didn't believe it -- he was an active Christian. Theodosius Dobzhansky didn't believe it; Dobzhansky left Stalinist Russia partly to keep practicing his Russian Orthodox faith (Dobzhansky having read Darwin in 1915 and been inspired to be a biologist, but not to leave the church) -- Lenin may have hoped for it to be so that Darwin took God out of the picture, but it is not so. There is nothing in Darwin's writings that denies deity, unless one insists deity is separate from nature.
Yeah, Lenin hoped in vain, but how is this different than what Dawkins argues? Lenin and Dawkins don't care what Darwin believed, they care what his theory meant. And what did it mean? Exactly what Lenin wrote: There is no rational reason to believe in a designer or creator who made animals and plants according to his mighty plan. Actually based on this quote he doesn't even say that there is no God because of Darwin, he just says it means no creationism. To take it further than Lenin does in this quote (but I am sure other quotes echoing this sentiment can be found), that Darwin meant an end to the strongest argument for a designer, namely that animals and plants look designed.
Why you faun over this piece is beyond me...
Posted by: Tomas | September 1, 2007 5:28 PM
Sorry for the wall of text.
Posted by: tomas | September 1, 2007 5:30 PM
I agree that errors should be corrected, and I think Ed did make that correction, then add some spin.
But my main point above remains. The Marxists gave lip service to Darwin as inspiration, but you know what? So did the so-called 'Social Darwinists', on the opposite end of the political spectrum. Both the Marxist version of evolution and the reactionary version of eugenics pushed in the first half of the 20th century are contradicted by the facts of biology.
Who wore which belt buckle? Give me a break, and focus on whether or not Soviet-style Marxism or Nazi Germany was inspired by Darwin, or (as I maintain) ideological distortions of science.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | September 1, 2007 5:32 PM
Since everyone appears to be ignoring the more salient points in favor of the simple and obvious error, I'll post here as well.
Salt, we have yet to see Day make any admission about any of the errors that were pointed out by Darrell.
That's because there aren't any except for the possibility of the Mao quote being fictional, which has yet to be established. Darrell's attempt to pose capitalism and competition as contradictory to Communism reveals his ignorance of both the dialectic and the Marxist theory of "scientific" socialism. Properly speaking, socialism is post-capitalist, not anti-capitalist, it is not capitalism's rival but its inevitable heir. In Marxist terms, both "competition" and "evolution" are "struggle", an essential aspect of the dialectic. Neither Darwin nor Hegel were socialists, of course, but their theories - evolution and the dialectic - were integral to the development and intellectual support Marxism and its subsequent variants. That's why the two men are lionized as the two most important pre-Marxists; Darwin is known as "the unconscious dialectitian".
Only parochial and maleducated Americans could possibly think to deny the link between Darwin and Marx, as that link was explicitly taught in most European Communist countries, and in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist period that Darrell erroneously attempts to portray as anti-Darwinist. Stalin was anti-Mengel, but he was never anti-Darwin as Just a Girl, who attended Soviet schools, confirms. Her statements are supported by another VP reader who grew up in East Germany.
Above is the link to the text of the book in Russian, called "The Teaching of Michurin and Religion." (published 1955) In a nutshell it says, that the theory of Darwin is very progressive,and materialistic, but has some drawbacks, which were corrected by a Soviet Darwinist Michurin, who was the only true Darwinist becase he used the works of Marx, Lenin and Stalin as the basis for his scientific research. Stalin was not against the theory of Darwin, he was against genetics, and the book which was published only 2 years after his death, says that those scientists who believed in genetics, were not really Darwinists, and only Michurin, Lisenko and some others were true "creative Darwinists". Vox is absolutely correct, Stalin wasn't against Darwin, the theory of Darwin was very important for the development of historic materialism, which was the basis for marxism-leninism. After Stalin's death, they just proclaimed that he was wrong about genetics, that it was perfectly compatible with theory of Darwin, and went on teaching it at schools.
This chapter of the book is called The role of Darwin's theory in the struggle of science against religion.
The link above is to a part of the document from 1948, when Stalin was yet alive, I think it's a transcript of the session of the Russian Scientific Academy, which calls Lisenko the scientist who is developing the theory of Darwin and Michurin. Once again, Vox is absolutely right. Stalin was against Mendel and Morgan, but NOT against Darwin. And he considered Lisenko and Michurin the true Darwinists.
Of course, none of this has any signficance regarding the truth or falsehood of any aspect of Darwinian thought, merely some of its historical ramifications. I find it very amusing that a group of atheist scientists should attempt to rely on logic in the face of copious and verifiable evidence. What are you, medieval philosophers?
As for the belt buckle, PZ and Ed's argument is historically hopeless. It's like trying to argue that the Rangers are a Catholic institution because the US Army motto is "Semper Fi". The Nazis didn't try to make the Wehrmacht drop its Eagle insignia either, shall we then conclude they were birds?
Posted by: VD | September 1, 2007 5:41 PM
I don't know if you ask in jest or if you are really slow on the uptake, so I try to rephrase the point:
You and Ed suggested the "Gott mit uns" belt buckle meant that the Nazis embraced christian religion. That's wrong. The belt buckle meant that they embraced the military and allowed it to continue it's traditions (they just added the insignia of the new state to that of the old state), and that's really something different.
If your looking for a scandal than it's not that Nazism was particularly close to christian religion, because it wasn't - centerpiece of the Nazist "faith" was the idea that fate (like, a supernatural power) had placed the "aryan race" in the middle of an epic battle in which it would either conquer or vanish. The scandal really is that christians would happily embrace Nazism (including comitting genocide) as long as they were allowed to remain christians at the same time.
-- eike
Posted by: eike | September 1, 2007 5:44 PM
Scott, I would agree that the questions of belt buckles is irrelevant to the Soviet/Nazi-Debate, but I think it's quite relevant to the style of discussion in general - if I know that PZ and Ed insist on being right even if they have been proven wrong then how can I trust in anything else they say?
-- eike
Posted by: Eike | September 1, 2007 5:53 PM
**************************************************
Nazism and christianity were closely intertwined. German antisemitism has its roots in Martin Luther, a notorious antisemite who proposed a Jewish final solution of his own, the 7 point plan. Hitler was a Catholic who invoked god and xianity often as did his party. Christians today have a habit of lying about it to the point where some have forged documents indicating the opposite. Lying for Jesus is pathetic.
Posted by: raven | September 1, 2007 5:59 PM
Who cares what you think or say? You just flat out lied about Hitler and the Nazis not being intertwined with German Christianity. There is a vast history on this, very well documented, very well known, and the Protestant and Catholic churches have been trying to live it down ever since.
Posted by: raven | September 1, 2007 6:03 PM
Where, out of interest? A quick spin through Ed's post reveals no such argument.
Posted by: MartinM | September 1, 2007 6:04 PM
Counting on the faint possibility that you are not an idiot I will again try to make myself clear. I wouldn't deny that the Nazis had ample dealings with the christian church - how could I, I have at least two shelves ob books dedicated to the treaties between the "Third Reich" and the Vatican, and the "rat line" and things like that. I was just commenting on the idea that christian religion had inspired Nazism in any other way than that Hitler recognized an opportunity for grandstanding when he saw it.
Remember that I'm not a native speaker so my meaning might get a little blurred in translation (which is the reason why I have hardly ever commented so far and will cease to do so after this comment). But I'm also trained in social sciences, and even if it's been some time since I praticed in my field I still know what science is supposed to look like, so naturally I'm appalled at the american idea of doing science which is obviously to run a search for g*d on Hitlers "Mein Kampf" and thus conclude he was a devout christian. This is very bad science indeed. Oh, and if I had ever said in my politics courses that communism was unsustainable because it lacked the darwinian idea of competition they would have flunked me (and would propably asked if I was drunk).
I have a feeling that you think I'm either a Nazi or a Christian (or both)- I'm neither. I'm just annoyed that the (social) science of the science faction is so often so incredibly pathetic. And now you all feel free to jump on my head.
-- eike
Posted by: Eike | September 1, 2007 7:04 PM
Sorry, my mistake. Obviously Ed had some room to spare and thought a nice picture would come in handy. I accidentally thought he was trying to tell us some thing or the other.
-- eike
Posted by: Eike | September 1, 2007 7:08 PM
No, you thought he was trying to tell us something very specific; namely that 'the "Gott mit uns" belt buckle meant that the Nazis embraced christian religion.'
Posted by: MartinM | September 1, 2007 7:15 PM
There are differences between the 3 statements: "The nazis were christians", "The nazis embraced christian religion" and "Christianity was the source of nazi ideology".
The first is only broadly true, the second is certainly true but doesn't prove much (the fact that they embraced their own demented version of "darwinism" is in the same category) and the third is broadly false - because nazism and anti-semitism are not the same thing.
Just my 2 cents.
Posted by: Arnaud | September 1, 2007 7:28 PM
As we all know, "after dabbling in radical politics," Adolf Hitler emigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a science fiction illustrator, editor and author. He wrote the science-fantasy novel Lord of the Swastika in less than a month in 1953, shortly before dying of cerebral hemorrhage (possibly caused by tertiary syphilis); Lord of the Swastika subsequently wins the Hugo Award."
[Norman Spinrad, The Iron Dream; as summarized in wikipedia]
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | September 1, 2007 7:36 PM
Ah, kiss my cudgel.
(vroom!)
-- CV
Posted by: CortxVortx | September 1, 2007 8:32 PM
But look at that eagle. It's the typical Nazi eagle standing on top of the swastika. It and the swastika together are a single symbol.
Also, Himmler and Bormann weren't Christians, and Hitler wanted to "take care" of the churches "after the Final Victory(tm)". It's complicated.
One simple thing, though: German does not have separate capitalization rules for headlines. Nouns always begin with capitals, and other words never do (unless beginning a sentence or being part of a proper name). So, Gott mit uns.
Posted by: David Marjanović | September 1, 2007 9:01 PM
Christians today have a habit of lying about it to the point where some have forged documents indicating the opposite. Lying for Jesus is pathetic.
Amen. So true.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | September 1, 2007 9:39 PM
I've got that belt buckle linked on my blog here.
Has anyone noted that Richard Steigmann-Gall has a book called "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945"?
A quote from this review:
Posted by: Norman Doering | September 1, 2007 10:01 PM
To be honest, I couldn't read the entire message written by Vox Day (or someone pretending to be him) without vomiting. However, one item did catch my eye:
Here is a perfect example of an error committed by 'VD'. "Semper Fi" is the motto of the US Marine Corps, not the US Army Rangers. Most Marines I've known would take great offense at being mistaken for an Army soldier. Secondly, although commonly communicated as simply "Semper Fi", the motto is actually "Semper Fidelis". So that's at least two errors right there.
Amongst many other things, 'Eike' wrote:
Here is what I predict may happen:
1) VD will ignore my post
2) VD will claim that the poster "VD" is not he
3) VD will flail about and try to spin this so it looks like he didn't make any errors. Some preemptive excuses include:
Here is what I predict will NOT happen:
1) VD will admit his error(s)
Posted by: GoHawks | September 1, 2007 10:36 PM
Eike, You would like to think "Social science" is science, It is mostly anectdotal gibberish made up by pseudo scientists.
Posted by: TK | September 2, 2007 12:28 AM
Elke, Elke, Elke - um Gottes willen, was fuer ein dummes Maedchen! Of course the Nazis were close to Christianity! When they made their most popular slogan, "Kinder, Kueche, Kirche", did you think they were referring to mosques?
Posted by: dveej | September 2, 2007 1:36 AM
The annoying thing about being a social scientist is that everyone seems to think they know something about your field.
Biologist whine about having creationist and such, but we have to suffer that everyone has a halfass opinion about social science.
So unless you are going to come with some actual evidence for your statement, I will just regard your statment as first class bullshit, TK.
Posted by: Tomas | September 2, 2007 2:52 AM
Here is a perfect example of an error committed by 'VD'.
Yes, precisely. Because it isn't one.
Semper Fi" is the motto of the US Marine Corps, not the US Army Rangers.
Just as "Gott mit uns" was the motto of the Wehrmacht, not the Waffen SS. It's called "an analogy", my good infidel. Sweet Darwin, you people are unbelievable!
Another amusing thing about Darrell's "Nazi" belt buckle is that at the time the belt buckle in the photograph was issued, Nazis were not permitted to serve in the Wehrmacht.
Posted by: VD | September 2, 2007 3:17 AM
See, this is what happens when you allow a tangent to take over the discussion. Who wore which belt buckles is silly, and yet, some of you 'true believers' on both sides are still going back and forth on that, as if that were substantive,to the extent that Vox just suckered one of his critics into providing him with another opportunity to demonstrate his cleverness.
The question of whether or not Darwin inspired the Nazis, logically speaking, has no bearing on whether Christianity inspired the Nazis. You can't defend Darwin by attacking Christianity, or vice versa. I'm sure Ed Darrell and Vox both understand this. Why get bogged down with belt buckles?
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | September 2, 2007 3:30 AM
To Scott Hatfield:
I believe the point of the discussion is to show just how far removed from reality Vox Day really is. Towards that end I conducted a little experiment.
I do not believe that I, assuming you were referring to me, was suckered into anything nor that VD was clever. I fully expected to receive a dissembling reply from VD that completely ignored the substance of my post, and I was not disappointed. I even tried to anticipate which excuse(s) VD would try to use. I couldn't care less about any belt buckles or what they may or may not prove about anyone's ideology. Having read reply #13 and then VD's garbage in #20 (specifically "That's because there aren't any [errors] except for the possibility of the Mao quote being fictional, which has yet to be established."), I saw an obvious error that jumped out at me. I pointed out this very basic, easily verified and noncontroversial (although trivial) error to give VD the opportunity to show that he could admit to making a mistake.
The point of my post was that VD (or whoever is pretending to be him) is apparently incapable of admitting to any error, no matter how minor or trivial it may be. Contrast this to Ed, who made a minor factual error, had said error brought to his attention, then corrected the error after admitting that he made it.
To the entity going by the handle "VD":
Your bald assertion to the contrary, it is an error1. You stated "the US Army motto is "Semper Fi"". First, to be pedantic, the actual motto is "Semper Fidelis". Second, this is not the motto of the Rangers (or any other Army unit), but of the US Marine Corps.
Well, well. Looks like excuse #3b with a side order of "but it's not an error". I understand perfectly well that in your original post, your use of the hypothetical belief that the "Rangers (sic) are a Catholic institution" was an analogy. Further, I understand that the strength of your argument does not depend upon whether you are using the Rangers or the USMC, since in the context of your analogy they represent the same thing. I was not then, nor am I now, attacking that analogy. I was then, and am now, only pointing out your factual error with respect to the motto of the USMC, and seeing if you are capable of admitting to this minor error.
To reiterate one last time: I am not engaged in any philosophical debate with anyone on any issue here; I am *only* trying to see if VD can admit to a very minor mistake.
1Admittedly, an error of no real consequence, which is why I chose to use it to avoid any side discussions.
Posted by: GoHawks | September 2, 2007 5:26 AM
I was then, and am now, only pointing out your factual error with respect to the motto of the USMC, and seeing if you are capable of admitting to this minor error.
No, he is right. That error was clearly made on purpose to mock Ed's error. However, this is a complete red herring:
Another amusing thing about Darrell's "Nazi" belt buckle is that at the time the belt buckle in the photograph was issued, Nazis were not permitted to serve in the Wehrmacht.
Come on. By that time, the Nazis were in power. The requirement of not being affiliated with a political party did not stop the Wehrmacht members from swearing allegiance to Hitler. It's not a belt buckle of the Nazi party, but it's a belt buckle of the army of Nazi Germany.
Posted by: windy | September 2, 2007 9:17 AM
I understand perfectly well that in your original post, your use of the hypothetical belief that the "Rangers (sic) are a Catholic institution" was an analogy.
And what you failed to understand was that the equally hypothetical confusion of the USMC with the US Army was an apt analogy to PZ's and Ed's confusion of the Wehrmacht-Heer with the Waffen SS. It demonstrated how absurd and complete their lack of basic historical knowledge is.
The only error here is yours. The idea that I do not know the USMC motto is downright laughable, considering my familiarity with 8th & I.
And Scott, I have presented plenty of evidence of the direct link between Darwin and the Soviet Union. Not a single person here has yet challenged the evidence provided by the former Soviet citizen, Just a Girl.
Posted by: VD | September 2, 2007 9:19 AM
Here is a Marxist, circa 1912 stating that Marxism and Darwinism are two arms of the same theory.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1912/marxism-darwinism.htm#S5
Posted by: Arun | September 2, 2007 10:30 AM
LOL.
Go Hawks! I think that a 500 word rebuttal is your next step.
Vox, I didn't know you roamed...
Scott Hatfield, it must be tough being you. But I have more sympathy for you than anyone else in the room.
PZ, regarding "eviscerate", in the words of Inigo Montoya:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Posted by: thimscool | September 2, 2007 10:35 AM
And Scott, I have presented plenty of evidence of the direct link between Darwin and the Soviet Union.
Posted here and on Vox's site:
Vox, whether or not the Soviets gave lip service to Darwin is irrelevant. The Social Darwinists, who were arch-capitalists, also gave lip service to Darwin. I do not believe for one moment that the Soviets were inspired by Darwin's actual theories. Instead, they seized upon him as an example of someone who (they thought) provided evidence for Marx's vision of dialectic progression in human history.
And, in so doing, they were wrong, wrong, wrong. Their invocation of Darwin is a spectacular case of intellectuals with blinders on, only seeing what they want to see. Surely you, with your distaste for the radical left, can see quite clearly how such folk could convince themselves that Darwin 'supported' Marx while ignoring Darwin's capitalist origins and the pretty brutal competition implied by his actual theory.
The question is: what did they actually promote? The Soviets manifestly did not promote Darwin's theory of natural selection. They instead accepted evolution, embraced Darwin as providing evidence for it, but first ignored and then attempted to suppress Darwin's explanation for how it occurred (natural selection) as 'counter-revolutionary.' Under Lysenko, scientists who stood up for TENS in the Soviet Union lost their livelihood (and in some cases, their lives) for doing so.
I'll tell you what: you show me evidence that the Soviets enthusiastically incorporated natural selection within their version of Marxism, rather than mere evolution, and then you might have something. Or, alternatively, if you can show me state-approved scientists in 1930-1950 Russia who were lauded for their championing of natural selection, that might be something. But failing that? Until you can show that the Soviets were inspired by Darwin's actual theory, rather than their false take on the fact of evolution, you've got no case.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | September 2, 2007 10:53 AM
I'll tell you what: you show me evidence that the Soviets enthusiastically incorporated natural selection within their version of Marxism, rather than mere evolution, and then you might have something. Or, alternatively, if you can show me state-approved scientists in 1930-1950 Russia who were lauded for their championing of natural selection, that might be something.
I'm sure someone who actually knows something about the history of evolution could do far better, but this should suffice for the purposes requested.
Theodosius Dobzhansky, University of Leningrad
I learned about this guy from you, Scott. At least he had the good sense to leave before his fellow Darwinists got out of hand.
Yuri Filipchenko, University of Leningrad
"Russian entomologist and coiner of the terms microevolution and macroevolution. Mentor of Theodosius Dobzhansky. Though he himself was an orthogenetic he was one of the first scientists to incorporate the laws of Mendel into evolutionary theory and thus had great influence on The Modern Synthesis."
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin - Lenin All-Union Academy of Agriculture
Michurin was one of the founding fathers of scientific agricultural selection. He worked on hybridization of plants of similar and different origins, cultivating methods in connection with the natural course of ontogenesis, directing the process of predominance, evaluation and selection of seedlings, acceleration of process of selection with the help of physical and chemical factors. Michurin's method of crossing of geographically distant plants would be widely used by other selectionists.... Throughout all his life Michurin worked to create new sorts of fruit plants. He introduced over 300 new species. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner of Labor for his achievements.
Sergei Sergeevich Chetverikov - Department of Genetics at Gorky University.
"One of the founders of population genetics and synthetic theory of evolution.
Posted by: VD | September 2, 2007 12:46 PM
VD:
Moved to the US in 1927. Almost all of his significant work was done after that point.
Predates Dobzhansky.
Look farther down in the Wikipedia article you quoted:
"In fact, Michurin's theory of influence of the environment on the heredity was a variant of Lamarckism. He maintained the position that the task of a selectioner is to assist and enhance the natural selection."
Michurin believed in the inheritance of acquired charateristics and criticized the Mendelian model of inheritance. He wasn't as extreme as Lysenko, but then he died in 1935, so he didn't have to be.
Banished in 1929, later allowed to return and did a small amount of work in genetics before the Lysenkoists shut his work down for good in 1948.
So far, you've got scientists being punished by the Soviet government for championing natural selection, or being praised and rewarded for arguing against it. You should probably try to find better examples.
Posted by: Anton Mates | September 2, 2007 1:30 PM
This whole debate is very unfortunate. Vox Day is obviously a hack who pulls unattributed, and likely false, quotes off the internet (why, oh why, do all quote pages on the internet fail to give sources!).
On the other hand, Ed has done a terrible job in rebuttal. His argument is so poorly organized I could hardly follow him, as he jumped from one thing to another.
Worst of all, however, Ed clearly has a worse grasp of Marxism thatn Vox Day! To argue that dialectical materialism was about debating ideas, in a sort of ideas' survival of the fittest, shows he has not even a college undergrad's knowledge of Marxism. Nor does the previous complainant about this have it wholly right.
Dialectical materialism was about the inexorable change in social beliefs caused by changing material conditions; i.e., the economic structure. There was no debating it-it's simply going to happen no matter how vigorously you argue against it. Not that Marx was right--in fact he could have used a good course on Darwinian theory.
But if you set out to fisk the idiots, you need to actually be better educated than they are.
Posted by: JamesH | September 2, 2007 1:33 PM
So far, you've got scientists being punished by the Soviet government for championing natural selection, or being praised and rewarded for arguing against it. You should probably try to find better examples.
Incorrect. Apparently you didn't read this, which was already posted above.
Stalin was not against the theory of Darwin, he was against genetics, and the book which was published only 2 years after his death, says that those scientists who believed in genetics, were not really Darwinists, and only Michurin, Lisenko and some others were true "creative Darwinists". Vox is absolutely correct, Stalin wasn't against Darwin, the theory of Darwin was very important for the development of historic materialism, which was the basis for marxism-leninism. After Stalin's death, they just proclaimed that he was wrong about genetics, that it was perfectly compatible with theory of Darwin, and went on teaching it at schools."
Chetverikov Banished in 1929, later allowed to return and did a small amount of work in genetics before the Lysenkoists shut his work down for good in 1948.
That's a misleading summary. He returned in 1934 and that "small amount of work" included organizing the Department of Genetics at Gorky University over a period of 14 years.
There's also Nikolai Vavilov, who was a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee before being arrested in 1940. Ironically, his work ended up in the hands of the SS, who were much more enthusiastic about genetics.... As for a non-Soviet Marxist Darwinist, there's Richard Dawkins's old hero, J.B.S. Haldane. "In 1937, Haldane had become a Marxist, and an open supporter of the Communist Party, but not yet a member of the Party. He would join the Party in 1942."
This took about five minutes to look up. I'm sure my Russian-speaking friends could provide many more examples; they've already established Michurin's Darwinism. The relevant fact is that Lysenko was anti-Mendel, not anti-Darwin.
Posted by: VD | September 2, 2007 2:12 PM
Oh yeah, quite so. The higher ranks were all deep into mysticism. Thule Society... Theosophy, Anthroposophy... all of the most obnoxious woo from the start of the 20th century has contributed to National Socialism.
Oh, that's why I didn't recognize any Latin word "fi" after having had 6 years of Latin at school!
Ah, no. Eike is a boy's name (...unlike Heike). (Changes everything, I'm sure.)
Now the famous Voice of God himself:
You just don't want to understand what she wrote, right? It's obvious: the Party had made a big mistake. But because the Party, as we all know, never makes mistakes, it put a spin on it (after Stalin had died and Khrushchov had given his shocking secret speech) and taught the next three generations that Scientific [hah!] Socialism was actually compatible with the theory of evolution. Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. We love Big Brother.
And the quote from marxists.org... look at its last sentence:
We have here a Marxist who loves big-P Progress (which, as we all know, inevitably leads to Socialism and then to Communism), wants to find it in science so he can build Scientific Socialism upon it, and mistakenly believes to have found it in the theory of evolution. It's actually quite pathetic.
Admitting ignorance is a good first step, VD. Being proud of it is two steps backwards.
A devout Russian Orthodox. I mean, please.
That was actually a dumb idea, in hindsight.
That means he didn't think that natural selection alone was enough. Instead, he thought a more or less supernatural drive towards big-P Progress was acting.
Then why have I never heard of him?
And why did you leave off all the dates, when they are on the Wikipedia articles you quoted without attribution? Isn't that called "lying by omission"?
No, he didn't argue that. Read his post again.
Stalin was for Lysenko, to put it mildly, and Lysenko was against the theory of natural selection. Now, Darwin's original contribution to the theory of evolution is the theory of natural selection. Ever wondered why we don't celebrate Lamarck or Buffon?
Your spin is too transparent. If you want to continue your career in politics, you'll have to work on that.
It was too late for them to besmirch Darwin's name. So they claimed to praise him and taught the exact opposite of what he had found. Communists can spin, too; you don't have a monopoly on that.
Oh, please. A vitalist. What next? Deepak Chopra?
They are wrong. See comment 48 -- he was a Lamarckist.
Again: Darwin's original contribution, that which made him famous, is natural selection. Lysenko and Michurin did not accept the reality of the power of natural selection.
Так, я думаю что твои русскоязычные друзья не знают ни историю ни биологию.
Posted by: David Marjanović | September 2, 2007 3:05 PM
He never returned to Moscow; Gorky was a small regional college in Nizhny Novgorod. That can hardly be considered evidence of government favor, especially as he even got dismissed from Gorky in '48.
To quote S.M. Gershenson, Russian geneticist, collaborator with Hermann Muller, and student of Chetverikov, from Quarterly Review of Biology 65:4:
"Among these, Chetverikov was attacked in the pages of Pravda for his criticism of the scientific views of the "progressive" Austrian investigator [Paul Kammerer, champion of Lamarckism]. Hence, even the first and relatively mild wave of repression, beginning in the later 1920s, affected Chetverikov. At that time, he was head of the Department of Genetics of the Institute of Experimental Biology in Moscow....Chetverikov had been the first geneticist in the USSR to lecture on biometry and genetics at Moscow University. In 1929 he was arrested, spent several months in prison, and then was exiled from Moscow. He became a teacher in the secondary school of the town Vladimir, and later was appointed to the chair of genetics at Gorky University, where he studied the genetics of the silkworm."
The facts are clear: Chetverikov was systematically persecuted for decades due to his supporting natural selection and rejecting the transmission of acquired characteristics.
...and starving to death in prison after three years, despite the massive contributions he had made to Soviet agriculture, purely because he had opposed Lysenkoism. Really, if this is an example of government support for Darwinists....Who wasn't Soviet, so this isn't relevant. Certainly a political Marxist or semi-Marxist could favor mainstream evolutionary biology--even in the USSR, many did. They just got punished for it.
Five minutes more would tell you that your friends are wrong on that. Michurin was strongly in favor of Lamarckian inheritance, although he did not deny the existence of natural selection. From "Darwin in Russian Thought," by Alexander Vucinich:
"The 1870s witnessed the rise of yet another form of extreme Lamarckism, presented as an orientation consonant with the spirit and the substance of Darwin's scientific legacy. It was at this time that V. I. Michurin, inspired by the atmosphere created by the diffusion of Darwinian ideas, had barely begun his long-term activity of inducing heritable characteristics in fruit trees by changing the environmental conditions under which they grew. He was guided by the idea of the possibility of adding a new dimension to the Lamarckian theory: the artificial inducement of predetermined and accelerated transformation of characters. His method was the crossing of geographically distant plants; his aim was to produce varieties best adapted to specific environments. Not recognized by the scientific community, mainly because he operated in the realm of folk science, Michurin became part of a popular movement devoted to improving domestic plants in Russia and to extending their cultivation to new areas. With exemplary devotion, Michurin worked on developing new varieties of fruit trees in central Russia. Keeping Lamarckism alive, Michurinism became part of a general cultural setting that encouraged a union of Lamarck and Darwin and that stood in the way of a faster diffusion of the theoretical ideas of modern genetics. To its chief articulators, Russian Lamarckism of this period represented a modification rather than a negation of Darwinism."
Again, Michurin was not as anti-Darwin as Lysenko, but he was hardly an "orthodox" Darwinist.
This is false for at least two reasons. First, as Scott Hatfield already pointed out, the question is what theory Lysenko and Stalin promoted, not whose name they slapped on it. Lysenko had very little understanding of the theories of Mendel, Darwin and Michurin alike, and Stalin was not concerned with portraying them accurately.
Second, Lysenko and Stalin were critical even of what they called Darwinism. To quote again from Gershenson: "Second, Lysenko unconditionally accepted the inheritance of acquired characters and denied the leading role of natural selection in evolution He considered natural selection to have been "Darwin's mistake."
And from Kirill Rossiyanov, historian of science from the Russian Academy of Sciences:
Lysenko was anti-Darwin both in name and in substance.
Posted by: Anton Mates | September 2, 2007 3:16 PM
I put it too mildly. Lysenko at least had a religious hatred of it. No wonder. According to him, it was incompatible with Stalinism and therefore... fundamentally wrong.
Stalinism was a religion... one without an afterlife (only Kim Il-Sung got one), but still.
Posted by: David Marjanović | September 2, 2007 3:17 PM
Because the Soviet government squelched his career. A number of Russian geneticists and biologists seem to have anticipated theoretical advances made later in the West, probably because the USSR initially encouraged their work for its agricultural utility. But they never got to elaborate or disseminate their work in their lifetime, because...well...they were Darwinists.
Posted by: Anton Mates | September 2, 2007 3:22 PM
VD is like many wingnuts, in that he conflates everything he disapproves of. He disapproves of Marxism and disapproves of Darwinism, so to him that's more than enough to prove that they're the same thing. By extension, they're also the same thing as atheism and liberalism. If you disagree with him, well that just proves you're a Marxist Evolutionist Liberal Atheist, and thus of course wrong.
Posted by: George Cauldron | September 2, 2007 3:58 PM
Not a single person here has yet challenged the evidence provided by the forme