And it only took you 2 posts to launch your predictable attacks on Darwin, Fulham. Thanks for being dependable like that. I can't wait until you bust out the Darwin led to Hitler meme again.

I thought that was quite a plesant discussion we were having. I do not think that either of us saw it as an attack on Darwin merely an examination of the theory of Natural Selection. Why so defensive Putin, what exactly do you disagree with?

Nothing with you is ever "merely an examination" of Darwin. You quote some passage about Darwin talking about savage races and then try to get somebody to go along with your nonsense about how Natural Selection mandates that homo sapiens are a temporary species, a talking point you've been pushing for a long time now.

@ Putin. ''Natural Selection mandates that homo sapiens are a temporary species,''

Have you another point of view on this then?

I lashed out at atheists who condemn billions of people as being mindless sheep. I have no problem with atheists, I have problems with aggressively proselytizing atheists just like i have problems with aggressively proselytizing theists (ie. Muju).

"Romans were famous for worshipping various Egyptian deities like Isus."

The Roman Pagans were also famous for forcing their subjects to worship the emperor as god. The Zoroastrins persecuted other monotheists and Christians were famously persecuted under Romans as well. Your usual Manichean (pun sort of intended) view of complex developments is yet again on display.

There is no privileged class in Communist society, got it, no party favoritism. You are so smart Putin.

What if the Catholic God exists and it is evil? That explains why he doesn't heal amputees.

Oh, silly humans.

"There is no privileged class in Communist society, got it, no party favoritism. You are so smart Putin."

You hate communists but you appeal to the wisdom of rabbis, the bulk of whom said the Holocaust was God's retribution on Jews. How bizarre.

"There is no privileged class in Communist society, got it, no party favoritism. You are so smart Putin."

So your big critique is that because a society had leaders and administrators that equals the exploitation under the rule of capital and the church? Get real. Most party members lived in simple apartments. Yes there was corruption but at a low level compared to the alternative. Stalin's family were bootmakers and washers. Khrushchov came from a coal miner's family. Brezhnev's father was a metallurgist. That's the "class privilege" communism empowered.

"The Roman Pagans were also famous for forcing their subjects to worship the emperor as god."

A small offering once a year. Big deal. And the Jews were exempt from this anyway, which is why they flourished in Roman Judea for so long. It was a public ritual, nothing more. Nobody seriously thought the emperor was a god. It was a matter of patriotic duty.

"Christians were famously persecuted under Romans as well."

Most of these "persecutions" are outright lies. There is very little evidence for Nero's persecution, for example. The Christians were largely left alone, despite their treachery against the Roman state, for most of the first century. They were considered a small irrelevant sect. See: Pliny the Younger's letter to the Emperor about what to do with the Christians. If there was a long record of laws against them then he wouldn't need to inquire about this. The Zoroastrians only became intolerant under the Sassanid Empire. Prior to that there was no 'official' Zoroastrian church and their beliefs mixed with Greek beliefs quite fine.

"You hate communists but you appeal to the wisdom of rabbis, the bulk of whom said the Holocaust was God's retribution on Jews. How bizarre."

How about you try to source that because that is patently false. Small offshoots of orthodox Judaism claim this, it is by no means the common belief even in the Ultra Orthdox Jewish community.

I think some of you are missing the point of the Amputees question. If you are a Christian, you believe that miracles happen, and prayer cures cancer and other illnesses. Lets say for a moment that that is true. If one person prays for his family member to recover from cancer, and it works, HALLELUJAH! A miracle! God has heard your heartfelt prayer, and answered.

But if a million people pray for a child to regrow the leg he lost in that horrible grain-threshing accident, it will never, ever, ever work. How do you justify that? Why, then, has prayer NEVER cured amputee ism? Does god have a special dislike for amputees? Or is it just that nobody is listening....

From Chabad:

Was the Holocaust a punishment?

There are those who wish to suggest that the Holocaust was a punishment for the sins of that generation.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe rejects this view. He stated (Sefer HaSichot 5751 Vol.1 p.233):

The destruction of six million Jews in such a horrific manner that surpassed the cruelty of all previous generations, could not possibly be because of a punishment for sins. Even the Satan himself could not possibly find a sufficient number of sins that would warrant such genocide!

There is absolutely no rationalistic explanation for the Holocaust except for the fact that it was a Divine decree … why it happened is above human comprehension – but it is definitely not because of punishment for sin.

On the contrary: All those who were murdered in the Holocaust are called “Kedoshim” – holy ones – since they were murdered in sanctification of G–d’s name. Since they were Jews, it is only G–d who will avenge their blood. As we say on Shabbat in the Av Harachamim prayer, “the holy communities who gave their lives for the sanctification of the Divine Name ... and avenge the spilled blood of His servants, as it is written in the Torah of Moshe ... for he will avenge the blood of his servants ... And in the Holy Writings it is said ... Let there be known among the nations, before our eyes, the retribution of the spilled blood of your servants.” G–d describes those who were sanctified as His servants, and promises to avenge their blood.

So great is the spiritual level of the Kedoshim – even disregarding their standing in mitzvah performance – that the Rabbis say about them, “no creation can stand in their place.” How much more so of those who died in the Holocaust, many of whom, as is well known, were among the finest of Europe’s Torah scholars and observant Jews.

It is inconceivable that the Holocaust be regarded as an example of punishment for sin, in particular when addressing this generation, which as mentioned before is “a firebrand plucked from the fire” of the Holocaust.

In short, one can only apply the words of Isaiah, “My thoughts are not your thoughts and My ways are not your ways, says the L–rd.” (Isaiah 55:8)

Putin, there's the same evidence for Nero's persecution as there is for many of the things that happened in the Roman empire that you accept fine -- a couple of Roman historians mention it. Do you disbelieve everything that only a couple of historians attest to? No, only those things you dislike. What a great historical method.

(See Tacitus, Suetonius).

I" think some of you are missing the point of the Amputees question. If you are a Christian, you believe that miracles happen, and prayer cures cancer and other illnesses. Lets say for a moment that that is true. If one person prays for his family member to recover from cancer, and it works, HALLELUJAH! A miracle! God has heard your heartfelt prayer, and answered."

And you misunderstand the whole purpose of the religion in which the body and the material are secondary to the soul and spirit.

@fulhamish - This is going to be a huge derailment and I've had this argument like 8 or 9 times before on this forum, but I agree that naturally homo sapiens must only exist for a limited amount of time and we won't go on existing forever. But I think that you're putting far too much emphasis on the scientifically fictitious concept of "race". Biologically speaking races, the way we think about them don't exist. And in order for humanity to speciate along racial lines races would need to exist in genetic isolation (ie, no interracial mating) and frankly, such a situation has never existed for any length of time. And don't go on quoting the Descent of Man to prove me wrong. When Darwin wrote that book he was very much, either pandering to, or buying into the racist beliefs of his time.

yellowjacket,

"If you are a Christian, you believe that miracles happen, and prayer cures cancer and other illnesses. Lets say for a moment that that is true."

First of all, this is false, in such universal terms. Some Christians believe this. Others believe that miracles no longer happen (see cessationism).

Second, the cancer situation. One could pray for the curing of cancer realizing that sometimes cancer heals, and sometimes it doesn't, for wildly complex reasons that are not fully understood or under human control. One could be praying that this would be one of those cases where, by God's Providence and control over all things, it would heal (by whatever the usual means are whereby it does). In such a case, one is not really asking for a miracle, per se, but a providential healing. One likely does not have the same attitude toward amputations.

Third, suppose one is a non-cessationist, and does really believe that in some scenarios, the curing of cancer was an actual miracle, say because it should never have happened. One is still left with my earlier answer for why God wouldn't heal an amputee, if He wouldn't (again, I wouldn't actually presume this in advance): I don't know why, and the fact that millions are praying for Him to do so, doesn't change it. Presumably, He has His reasons.

I can see, of course, how this might be a reasonable argument against my faith if the reason I believed was that God had answered such and such a prayer. But if I have independent reasons to believe, then I'm obviously just going to say, OK, well, He didn't want to I guess. What else can I say? And why would that allegedly bother me so much? Of course I'd love it if He chose to heal the amputee.

God is not on the hook to do whatever I want Him to, nor whatever I and a million others want Him to.

Putin writes - ''And the Jews were exempt from this anyway, which is why they flourished in Roman Judea for so long.''

I suggest that you look up Hadrian and Judea. As a starting point there was a very good exhibition recently at the British Museum which put the total slain at c.500 000.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/future_exhibitions/hadrian.aspx

Just like Putin never to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

@ Mafia. I agree with all you write except that one can easily envisage isolation leading to speciation. Indeed, I think that I wrote earlier something along the lines of - ''to deny that homo sapiens will speciate at some point in the future is anthropocentrically niave.'' I fell sure that you must agree.

As to Darwin I am pleased that you agree that the extract from the Descent of Man is ''racist''. Of course not every educated person in mid 19th century Britain was racist. It was therefore not inevitable that Darwin took this line, a line which has led to much evil perpetrated in the name of science ever since.

the roman campaigns had little to do with religion until possibly the third war, when hadrian was supposedly planning on building a pagan temple on the temple mount

yellowjacket

You ignore the point about the ''theme park world'' I made earlier in the thread.

"As to Darwin I am pleased that you agree that the extract from the Descent of Man is ''racist''. Of course not every educated person in mid 19th century Britain was racist. It was therefore not inevitable that Darwin took this line, a line which has led to much evil perpetrated in the name of science ever since."

Ah there we go.

"Just like Putin never to let the facts get in the way of a good story."

It's a fact that Judea was exempt from sacrifices to the imperial cult, and given wide autonomy in their own affairs. You being a Christian I'd thought you'd realize these things, considering the prominent role Herod plays in your 'good story'. The Hadrian issue only comes to the fore in the 2nd century AD, when Hadrian wanted Jerusalem to, as Santa said, build a Roman city on the ruins of Jerusalem. The campaign then was very bitter. But only someone as intellectually dishonest as Fulham would extrapolate that to mean that the general Roman attitude towards religious minorities was one of intolerance. If Simon Bar-Cochba hadn't destroyed an entire Roman legion, there likely would have been no war.

@Mafia et al., it's not silly if it's real. Just because it's simple doesn't make it untrue. And from my own experience I can tell you what I have seen, and I've seen God do miracles in my family and my own life as well as others. Why so resistant to investigating? Second point: Christianity is not a religion in the sense that one works one's way to heaven by being good/doing good works, although many believe that. Christianity is this: "We love, because He first loved us." I John 4:19.

The thing that is really obnoxious about Fulham is that this bullshit argument of his has already been addressed many times and multitudes of quotes have been brought to his attention pointing out that Darwin was an *anti-racist*, and the fact that human ability to travel and integration will prevent any kind of further speciation. Fulham takes Darwin out of context and then attacks him, ignoring the fact that Christianity was the source of the racism that buttressed both the slave trade and the Hitlerites.

Oh, I never said that speciation was impossible. I just said it was unlikely to happen along racial lines, because people keep having sex with people of other races.

Also it's not necessarily anthropocentric to say that genetic isolation is unlikely among humans if you extend it to other widely distributed species like rats, mice, fruit flies and orcas, or domesticated species which are allowed to breed in certain situations (ie. dogs, cats, cattle, chickens, pigs etc.). The point is, speciation can occur for reasons other than physical isolation, which barring some major, and I mean really really really major catastrophe, is unlikely.

"Our naturalist would likewise be much disturbed as soon as he perceived that the distinctive characters of all the races were highly variable. This fact strikes every one on first beholding the negro slaves in Brazil, who have been imported from all parts of Africa. The same remark holds good with the Polynesians, and with many other races. It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant. Savages, even within the limits of the same tribe, are not nearly so uniform in character, as has been often asserted. Hottentot women offer certain peculiarities, more strongly marked than those occurring in any other race, but these are known not to be of constant occurrence. In the several American tribes, colour and hairiness differ considerably; as does colour to a certain degree, and the shape of the features greatly, in the Negroes of Africa. The shape of the skull varies much in some races; and so it is with every other character. Now all naturalists have learnt by dearly bought experience, how rash it is to attempt to define species by the aid of inconstant characters.

But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having inter-crossed. Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke. This diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them."
- Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man, 1871

While the religious were arguing that blacks were "separate species", Darwin led to the annihilation of scientific racism by showing the world that all the 'races' were from the same human family.

"Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet if their whole structure be taken into consideration they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. Many of these are of so unimportant or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. The American aborigines, Negroes and Europeans are as different from each other in mind as any three races that can be named; yet I was incessantly struck, whilst living with the Feugians on board the "Beagle," with the many little traits of character, shewing how similar their minds were to ours; and so it was with a full-blooded negro with whom I happened once to be intimate.

He who will read Mr. Tylor's and Sir J. Lubbock's interesting works can hardly fail to be deeply impressed with the close similarity between the men of all races in tastes, dispositions and habits. This is shown by the pleasure which they all take in dancing, rude music, acting, painting, tattoing, and otherwise decorating themselves; in their mutual comprehension of gesture-language, by the same expression in their features, and by the same inarticulate cries, when excited by the same emotions. This similarity, or rather identity, is striking, when contrasted with the different expressions and cries made by distinct species of monkeys. There is good evidence that the art of shooting with bows and arrows has not been handed down from any common progenitor of mankind, yet as Westropp and Nilsson have remarked, the stone arrow-heads, brought from the most distant parts of the world, and manufactured at the most remote periods, are almost identical; and this fact can only be accounted for by the various races having similar inventive or mental powers. The same observation has been made by archeologists with respect to certain widely-prevalent ornaments, such as zig-zags, &c.; and with respect to various simple beliefs and customs, such as the burying of the dead under megalithic structures. I remember observing in South America, that there, as in so many other parts of the world, men have generally chosen the summits of lofty hills, to throw up piles of stones, either as a record of some remarkable event, or for burying their dead.

Now when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes, and dispositions between two or more domestic races, or between nearly-allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that they are descended from a common progenitor who was thus endowed; and consequently that all should be classed under the same species. The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man.

As it is improbable that the numerous and unimportant points of resemblance between the several races of man in bodily structure and mental faculties (I do not here refer to similar customs) should all have been independently acquired, they must have been inherited from progenitors who had these same characters.
- The Descent of Man; Charles Darwin; 1871"

Oh, absolutely Putin, for his time Darwin was very progressive, and relative to most of the people around him was quite anti-racist, and I would never suggest that Darwin was in any way responsible for justifying, or buttressing the slave trade or Hitler or anything like that.

That being said, there are passages in the Descent of Man, that are somewhat problematic when read in the context of a modern, scientific understanding of what race really is (ie, completely made up). This is not to pass judgement on Darwin, or to place blame on him for anything, it isn't fair to judge him outside of his time, that said, it's also absurd to expect that he wouldn't be influenced by the prejudices of his environment. I'm not advocating blaming evolution or Darwinism for racism or anything. I'm just taking issue with the idea of reading "The Descent of Man" as an accurate treatise on the concept of race.

(It is of course more accurate that virtually anything else that was published at the time, but considerably less accurate than much of the scholarship that is published on race today.)

As for the claim that the rabbinical view that the Holocaust is "divine retribution" is a small fringe one, I beg to differ.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=82957&page=1

Shas is a pretty big deal in Israel, and their leader made this comment.

Then there was the ever popular Mordechai Eliyahu who blamed it on liberal Jews.

http://www.vosizneias.com/8412/2007/04/18/jeruslam-israel-rabbis-blame-for/

In case anyone thinks this guy was small potatoes, he was chief rabbi of the Sephardi for a decade.

Hell Rabbi Elchonon allegedly gave a speech before he was murdered by Lithuanian Nazis that what they were doing was making Jews atone for their sins. The famous anti-Zionist Joel Teitelbaum said much the same thing.

Does no one read my posts before replying to them? Ugh.
@ Mujus - I never said you believing in God was silly. If you've felt him in your life then that's something I can't argue with or take away from you. All I said is that I find your view that atheists are atheists because we're too cynical to believe in altruism or benevolence is simplistic and patronizing.