NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/talk/origins/15886

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-23 | 5.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!fedfil!news
From: [e-mail] (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Throop/Nietzsche problems
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Dec 92 04:22:25 GMT
Organization: HTE
Lines: 137





From:  Wayne Throop


[quoting me]
>>: From everything which we can directly observe and come to any general
>>: consensus about, man's nature would appear to be much as Nietzsche and
>>: later students of psychology have described it.  There are the three
>>: basic drives of food, sex, and sleep, and above them if you believe
>>: Nietzsche, the will to power.  And if you accept evolution, then all of
>>: this is quite natural and even possibly desirable.

Basically,  I was trying to point out the fact that evolutionism, as
presently taught, offers man precisely nothing, as well as the far
lesser known fact that new studies are revealing that the spiritual
realm which most normal people believe in and can sense, once existed at
least in part on this earth.  At present we cannot perceive this other
realm directly or with our senses, and a goodly number of people have
always been tempted to write off anything not amenable to description or
direct observation.

>The above is basically gibberish.  We can see that Ted is completely
>innocent of even the simplest facts about evolutionary theory, by the
>"nature red in tooth and claw", "survival of the fittest", "the powerful
>exploit the weak" caricature he alludes to above.  Not to mention the
>laughable simplification of psychology into a handful of "drives".  And,
>of course, "desirable" is not a conclusion that can be legitimately
>drawn from evolutionary theory, not even "possibly".

What gets the Throops of the world so riled at this sort of talk is the
following consideration.  Suppose evolutionists are right, that man is
simply a freak accident, the final end product of a long chain of events
governed by random and chance processes, originating with single-celled
creatures somehow self-generating from inert/inorganic materials which
somehow simply got lucky.  Then basically, you're saying to the common
man, "Abandon hope!  You're going to die in thirty or forty years, and
like as not, nobody will give a damn about anything you ever did 30
years later, and that's every bit of it.  Even the greatest man of the
age will be forgotton 5000 years from now, and that's just a grain of
sand on the beach in the framework of the oceans of time we're talking
about."

Is it any wonder that the common man does not buy any of this?  Is it
any wonder that the masses do not beat a path to Throop's door?

I have tried to point out, that if you have to rebel against
Christianity, the logical starting point is Nietzsche and not Darwin.
The NT really is about sin, and redemption from sin, and Nietzsche
really does raise valid objections to the entire notion.  Beyond that, I
have a problem with Christianity because the American Indians went 1400
years without ever hearing of Christ, and I have a hard time squaring
that with the notion of Christ being an annointed savior of mankind.

There are other problems as well.  For one thing, the anti-sexual tone of
Christianity does not appear to be a part of most versions of the antediluvian
paradise.  The enforced other-worldiness appears to be a product of the times
in which Jesus lived.

Nonetheless, I tend to hold jusgement of Jesus in abeyance.

Jesus claimed to be a prince of the land which people inhabit AFTER they
die.  The thing which totally separated him from all other people in the
bible, is the statement of the apostles that "...he spoke as one with
authority", concerning the afterworld kingdom.

Consider the most grandiose nation ever put together (the Mongol
Empire), as well as the longest lasting (the Byzantine), and ask
yourself, "Where are they today?  What remains of them?"

And then consider that the empire which Jesus established is still with
us, that the best architecture on earth is still the collection of
temples built in his honor.  Consider that the esteem in which Christ is
still held is so great, that even the phoniest con artist on this earth,
a man like Jim Baker or Oral Roberts, can make money almost in any
desired amount almost effortlessly simply preaching his gospel.

That has to be what gets to the Throops of the world.  How much money
did you make preaching evolution this year, Throop?  How many people
built temples and cathedrals in honor of Darwin this year?

>Evolutionary theory models cooperation just as easily as competition,
>dominance and "will to power", as anybody must realize if they know
>anything about the evolutionary account of the nucleus or organelles in
>cells, or anything about the evolutionary account of multicellular
>organisms.

See what I mean?  Throop just doesn't get it.  The fact that man's
entire existence becomes utterly meaningless under this system does not
even strike him as a problem.  Kind of like somebody standing there
naked in a blizzard and shouting to the world:  "GEE!  I've got it
knocked!!!"


You're offering mankind    N - O - T - H - I - N - G.

That's why you're not having any luck selling that garbage in America,
Throop.  They say you get what you pay for in life, and a contrapositive
would have to be that most people don't pay more than they figure
they're getting if they can help it.


>    God: a mythical being created by a recent primate species
>         on earth to account for origins, because they just couldn't
>         imagine all this stuff lying around without an alpha male
>         in charge of it.


I'll sell fertility pills in China before you ever sell that.


Again, for any normal person who might chance to be reading this, I am
recommending Richard Heinberg's "Memories and Visions of Paradise", Tarcher,
1989.  The notion that the afterworld is completely inaccessible and/or
unknowable to us in this world no longer appears to be entirely the case.

e














--
Ted Holden
HTE