posted February 22, 2008 05:17 PM         

quote:

---

I've never claimed to be spiritual. I claim to try to do better.

I'd like to always remember the love... because that is all that is true.

I try to be kind, I try to be fun, I try to appreciate other's efforts, I try to add to the happiness of others and help them look at the sun if they seem unhappy in the darkness. I can't spend all of my energy deflecting your anger and soothing your upset when you take my words whatever ****** up way you feel like taking them at the moment.

I'm exhausted and I have nothing left to give. Think whatever you want about me. I really don't care. You aren't the first to not see me and you won't be the last.

I'll tell you one thing though. I may not be some perfect spiritual princess that so many try to put off on me, but I TRY really hard to be kind and fair and peaceful. So, I don't think the problem is in me. I think it is in some people's dark perceptions.

---

Melody, i think you need to know that someone sees you
and hears you.

Thank you for your Presence in our lives.
Take time to heal you.

posted February 22, 2008 05:34 PM         

there are also many people in Asia who have their own scientific theories about the origin of life. according to them, life did not originate in Africa.

posted February 22, 2008 05:47 PM         

quote:

---

AG ~ I'm sure there are many like you who support the efforts of scientists such as Pianka as well.

---

That's a stretch. I not remotely familiar with Pianka even after your brief introduction.

quote:

---

there are also many people in Asia who have their own scientific theories about the origin of life. according to them, life did not originate in Africa.

---

What does that have to do with what's been studied? Nothing. Do these Asians have more reliable proof than the people who study anthropology? No. That's not even an argument.

quote:

---

i seem to recall a study that you posted once "proving" that white, university-educated males are more intelligent than the rest of the population.

---

I would have to challenge your assertion as I would have no reason to suggest any such thing.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

posted February 22, 2008 05:55 PM         

there is ample evidence here showing how erroneous darwinism is.

i don't mind that you disagree with Linda Goodman. there is a lot more to the world than superficial, materialistic western science, as she, and others have stated.

i enjoy your perspective so much. if i were interested in disproving science though, i would post at an anti-science website. however i find so much truth in LG's words and vision. that's why i post about things related to her ideas at this Linda Goodman website.

posted February 22, 2008 06:25 PM         

I don't mind vegetarianism either. I merely wanted to point out that you may not have been able to have this conversation if it weren't for meat.

posted February 22, 2008 06:52 PM         

I tend to think that this world may be part of a life bigger than this world. I think that everything that's here is to be accepted for whatever evolutionary process it subjects us to. Idealism does serve a purpose, but the lesson continues to be that idealism alone doesn't accomplish much. There has to be practical action behind it that conforms to the laws of Earth.

posted February 22, 2008 07:24 PM         

I couldn't.
And I'd die to change things if I felt that it would make any difference.

That was the most difficult thing about being an animal rights activist. Being aware of such pain, yet feeling that I couldn't really change things simply by protesting.

I decided that the only way to change things would be somehow to appeal to the greater majority of people, the ones with so much power, the ones in control.

I still don't know if there's any way a person can change another person's perception on animals though, when it comes to all that.

posted February 22, 2008 08:28 PM         

______________________________________________________________________
http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Saints/Authors/Quotes/quotes3.htm

"We can not do great things-- only small things with great love."
--Mother Theresa (author)
"If all the beasts were gone, man would die from loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beast, happens to the man."
--Chief Seattle

"Until he extends the circle of compassion to all livings things, Man will not himself find peace."
--Albert Schweitzer

"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."
--Immanuel Kant

"A righteous man has regard for the life of his beast."
--Proverbs 12:10

"By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe."
--A. Schweitzer

"...We know from the truths of evolution and ecology that we are all related and interdependent. Anthropomorphism (crediting animals with human emotions and traits) is, however, outdated. Rather we know that we are like animals."
--Michael W. Fox

"I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth."
--Mohandas Gandhi

"I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."
--Abraham Lincoln

"The Anti-Vivisector does not deny that physiologists must make experiments and even take chances with new methods. He says that they must not seek knowledge by criminal methods, just as they must not make money by criminal methods. He does not object to Galileo dropping cannon balls from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa; but he would object to shoving off two dogs or American tourists."
--George Bernard Shaw

"The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But can they suffer?"
--Jeremy Bentham

"...we sacrifice other species to our own not because our own has any objective metaphysical privilege over others, but simply because it is ours. It may be very natural to have this loyalty to our own species, but let us hear no more from the naturalists about the "sentimentality" of anti-vivisectionists. If loyalty to our own species--preference for man simply because we are men--is not sentiment, then what is?"
--C.S. Lewis

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
--Ghandi

"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
--Abraham Lincoln

"I believe I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. THE PAIN WHICH IT INFLICTS UPON NON-CONSENTING ANIMALS is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."
--Mark Twain

"For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal (man) is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say "I have loved as truly and I have lived as decently as my dog." And yet we call them "only animals"!"
--Henry Ward Beecher (abolitionist)

"I despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection... I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured to death on the pretense of sparing me a twinge or two."
--Robert Browning (poet)

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature, and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky (novelist)

"Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you--alas, it is true of almost every one of us!"
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky (novelist)

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
--Thomas Edison (inventor)

"Every year tens of thousands of animals suffer and die in laboratory tests of cosmetics and household products...despite the fact that the test results do not help prevent or treat accidental or purposeful misuse of the products. Please join me in using your voice for those whose cries are forever sealed behind the laboratory doors."
--Woody Harrelson (actor)

"Even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is Vanity."
--Ecclesiastes 3:19

"Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
--Albert Einstein (physicist, Nobel 1921)

"Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission--to be of service to them whenever they require it... If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."
--Saint Francis of Assisi (mystic and preacher)

"There is not an animal on the earth, nor a flying creature on two wings, but they are people like unto you."
--The Koran (sacred scripture of Islam)

"I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence."
--Mahatma Gandhi (statesman and philosopher)

"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body."
--Mahatma Gandhi

"If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalist for the same reasons."
--C. S. Lewis (novelist and essayist)

"All cruelty springs from weakness."
--Seneca (4 BC - AD 65)

"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form."
--William Ralph Inge (1860-1954)

"Love of animals is a universal impulse, a common ground on which all of us may meet. By loving and understanding animals, perhaps we humans shall come to understand each other."
--Dr Louis J.Camuti (1893-1981)

"It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else."
--Maimonides (physician and philosopher)

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
--Pythagoras (philosopher and mathematician)

"Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul."
--Pythagoras (philosopher and mathematician)

"Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man."
--Arthur Schopenhauer (philosopher)

"The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest."
--Henry David Thoreau (essayist and poet)

"The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different."
--Hippocrates (philosopher)

"I have always felt that the way we treat animals is a pretty good indicator of the compassion we are capable of for the human race."
--Ali McGraw (actress)

"In studying the traits and dispositions of the so-called lower animals, and contrasting them with man's, I find the result humiliating to me."
--Mark Twain (author)

posted February 23, 2008 11:57 AM         

A Primer on the Evolution of Consciousness
by Don Cruse

Christianity today is confronted by the resurgence of a movement that was suppressed as a heresy by the early Roman church, and has since then existed as a kind of spiritual underground, only now beginning to come again to the surface. I refer, of course, to Christian Gnosis, which was that dimension of early Christian thought most closely connected with the mystery religions of the ancient world, in which the emphasis was placed on a direct experience of the spiritual rather than on faith in authority. This resurgence is perhaps one of the reasons that authority of all kinds is becoming increasingly suspect today. Another is the widespread influence of science, because the modern mind wants more to ‘know’ than it does to ‘believe,’ and ‘gnosis’ is the Greek word for knowledge. The resurgence of Christian Gnosis, therefore, appeals to a very deep-seated need in the modern human soul, the need to be an individual in charge if his or her own destiny, independent of any kind of authority, but particularly of religious authority, and it is not hard to discern that this need stands behind the gradual decline of orthodox Christianity in so many parts of the world, particularly of the developed world. During the twentieth century many events have contributed to this resurgence, not least among them being the discovery, at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, of the long-buried Gnostic Gospels, and the scholarly analysis that followed from this discovery by writers like Elaine Pagels, Andrew Welburn and Dan Burstein.

At the start of the twenty-first century, the mind of the reading public has been captured by such best-selling works as the novel The DaVinci Code, by the consummate mystery writer Dan Brown, in which the return of the Goddess element in Christian thought becomes a major focus. His earlier novel Angels & Demons, is also indicative of this, and it contains the following remarkable public declaration by the dead Pope’s secretary, the Camerlengo, a Catholic priest who is one of the work’s principal protagonists:

“The ancient war between science and religion is over. You have won. But you have not won fairly….You have not won by providing answers. You have won by so radically reorienting our society that the truths we once saw as signposts now seem inapplicable. Religion cannot keep up. Scientific growth is exponential. It feeds on itself like a virus. Every new breakthrough opens doors for new breakthroughs. Mankind took thousands of years to progress from the wheel to the car. Yet only decades from the car into space. Now we measure scientific progress in weeks. We are spinning out of control. The rift between us grows deeper and deeper, and as religion is left behind, people find themselves in a spiritual void. We cry out for meaning. And believe me we do cry out. We see UFOs, engage in channelling, spirit contact, out-of-body experiences, mindquests—all these eccentric ideas have a scientific veneer, but they are unashamedly irrational. They are the desperate cry of the modern soul, lonely and tormented, crippled by its own enlightenment and its inability to accept meaning in anything removed from technology.”

This, I think, is a fair assessment of Christianity’s predicament, if not now then in the not too distant future, and it brings strongly to the fore our growing dependence upon empirical science.

Darwinism and Religion

Nowhere is the conflict between science and religion more pronounced today that on the matter of Darwinism. In America especially this is the case. Here a battle continues to rage between Darwin’s now well-established theory of evolution, and an anti-evolutionary Christian Creationism, based upon a literal reading of Genesis. Very many Christian thinkers, however, support Darwin—not biblical Creationism. This fact is in itself problematic, because for the most part Christianity is still based only upon faith in the bible, and faith, in and of itself, can give us no reason to exclude the book of Genesis. It is the influence of science that has given us the reason for this exclusion, and having accepted it one can no longer make such a big issue out of ‘faith’. If it claims to be a Christian virtue then faith in the bible is all or nothing, it does not give us leave to pick and choose.

Many Christian thinkers who are also scientists—notable among them the North American biologists Kenneth Miller, Richard Colling and Denis Lamoureux—sincerely believe that their fellow Christians do not take the physical world seriously enough; and that when they do take it seriously, Darwinism becomes their only rational choice “because it works” In reaching that conclusion, however, they themselves must be willing to overlook at least one truly enormous though long-hidden problem with Darwin’s great theory—great because it has played a vital role in the evolution of human consciousness—a problem so serious that on grounds of simple logic it must eventually lead to its complete demise. I refer to the easily discernable fact that from the very outset this theory has been couched in the language of human creative activity, i.e. that entire sub-set of language that is termed ‘intentional,’ and that it is ultimately this and only this that makes the theory appear to work. Because by this simple error the divine creativity that the theory specifically seeks to deny, has simply been unconsciously replaced by human creativity. This is what the late Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History meant when he stated in a 1981 talk (taking his cue from Neal C. Gillespie's Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation, Chicago University Press), that Darwinism is "not a research-governing theory, since its power to explain is only verbal, but an anti-theory, a void that has the function of knowledge, but conveys none.” He then added that his twenty years of Darwinian study had taught him “not one thing.” Why is it that intelligent thinkers reach such diametrically opposite conclusions where this theory is concerned, the majority believing that they are dealing with one of the greatest achievements of modern science, while a small minority, who have brought themselves to think about its claims and its inner logic more deeply, contend that the theory is almost entirely without merit?

The reason for this dissension seems to be that while the theory works well in the mind, it does not work anywhere near as well in nature. It works in the mind because of its unintentionally deceptive use of intentional and volitional language, whereas in nature, as has recently been pointed out, there is a greater likelihood that ‘a tornado passing through a junk yard could assemble a Boeing 747,’ than that this theory can account for life’s incredible complexity. Human creativity, obviously, did not create the natural world, and if one takes the descriptive language of human creative activity out of the Darwinian theory, as simple logic demands, then the theory no longer ‘works’ even in the human mind. One may not claim that the use of such language is merely expedient—or as Darwin put it, “a form of shorthand”—because if that were the case the theory would not collapse without it, as it most assuredly does. Also, the claim of ‘shorthand’ requires that there be an equivalent but more convincing non-intentional ’longhand’, and there is not.

Paterson will in time prove to be right, because the error in simple logic upon which the theory is based, invisible though it has been, must finally be recognized for what it is. This will, of course, be a very painful pill for science to swallow. Christians will also feel it, and not just those who have embraced Darwinism, because after the rejection of gnosis, Christianity completely lost the possibility of developing an evolutionary content of its own. The first symptom of a recovery from this will be the realization that an ‘evolution of human consciousness’ is everywhere taking place. The resurgence of Gnosis, once its implications are fully understood, will give Christianity back that which it has lost, but now in a new and critical form, as befits this age of individualism.

Professors Miller, Colling and Lamoureux, and the many others who try to combine Christianity and Darwinism, will try to get around the highly awkward fact of logic referred to above, by claiming that the Darwinian theory is empirically based, and that the “scientific evidence for it is overwhelming.” This claim, however, only appears to work if one insists that empirical evidence has only one possible interpretation—the materialistic one—which claim is entirely untrue, a fact that Darwin himself well understood. The exact same empirical evidence, without changing it in any way or doing it any injustice, can be used to justify the very opposite worldview. This means that only the interpretation, not the evidence itself, needs to be changed to give us an empirically based spiritual worldview. However, for more than a century now, and without the slightest philosophical or scientific justification, science has insisted that the causal interpretation that is placed upon all empirical evidence must be a purely physical one, in part because it is claimed that no other kind is ‘testable,’ but also because no other kind is permitted (see Owen Barfield’s ‘Great Tabu’). Testing the Darwinian theory, we should note, has long been a major problem for science, because every so-called test is based upon the same entirely unproven set of presuppositions, perhaps the most dubious of which is the rarely questioned assumption that thinking is always the product of a stimulated organism. If this premise alone is shown to be false, as the scholastic Realists once held to be the case, then Ideas will again become a part of nature, and Darwinian ‘natural selection,’ which was at best a substitute for ‘Ideas’ in nature, will no longer be needed. Much then must depend on a true solution to the epistemological riddle ‘what is the nature of thought?’ a solution to which has existed now for more than a century in the works of Rudolf Steiner, but because of the ‘great tabu’ science has tried very hard to ignore it.

Gnosis and Empiricism

What it is crucial to understand here is that Gnosis has from the outset been based upon a higher form of empiricism, one that was cultivated for thousands of years within the ancient mystery religions, but at a time when human consciousness itself was markedly different from what it is now. To begin with that ancient consciousness was not an individual attainment. It was racially based, and its possessors did not feel themselves to be individuals as we now do, but the representatives of a racial bloodline.

One of the chief barriers between Gnosis and orthodox Christianity is the latter’s rejection of the idea of reincarnation. This was made clear fairly recently when the question of reincarnation was put before England’s Archbishop of Canterbury, who reportedly passed it on to his theological advisors. Their answer was that Christians could not accept reincarnation, because if they did they would not know in what body to present themselves at the Final Judgement. There is hope, however, because the Canadian theologian Tom Harpur, who had argued strongly against reincarnation in his best-selling book Life After Death, is apparently beginning to have doubts. In researching his latest book he discovered that many of the important figures of the early church firmly believed in reincarnation, and that it was first declared a heresy (along with gnosis) by the established Roman church, because it did not meet the requirements of an authoritarian belief system (see The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur, Thomas Allen, Publishers, Toronto 2004, p193). It should also be noted that C.S. Lewis—in what has been called his ‘Barfieldian streak’—also supported reincarnation, because, logical as always, he saw that the ideal of Christian perfection required more than just one life (see In Search of Salt, by Raymond P. Tripp Jr., Society for New Language Study, 2004, p43).

A much deeper question, of course, is whether or not spiritual knowledge is even possible, because if it is not, if there are definable limits to human knowledge as Immanuel Kant has argued, then an evolution of consciousness is impossible and where spiritual matters are concerned we are condemned to go no further than belief. The answer to this question is tied closely to that mentioned earlier concerning the nature of human thought itself, and it was given in the work Truth and Science, the 1892 doctoral thesis of the Austrian seer/scientist Rudolf Steiner, whose later strivings provide us with what must be the modern world’s best example of what Christian Gnosis is capable of. In his presentation Steiner is entirely non-dogmatic, but in the course of fifty written works and the shorthand-recorded text of some six thousand lectures, he opens for us a truly tremendous vista of knowledge. This is why the late Russell Davenport, former Managing Editor of Fortune Magazine, said of him in his book The Dignity of Man:

“That the academic world has managed to dismiss Rudolf Steiner’s works as inconsequential and irrelevant, is one of the intellectual wonders of the twentieth century. Anyone who is willing to study these vast works with an open mind (let us say a hundred of his titles) will find themselves confronted with one of the greatest thinkers of all time, whose grasp of modern science is equalled only by his profound learning in the ancient ones. Steiner was no more of a mystic than Albert Einstein; he was a scientist, rather—but a scientist who dared enter into the mysteries of life.”

The “intellectual wonder” of which Davenport speaks, has been created by the workings of ‘the great tabu’ an insight that we owe to Owen Barfield, who is perhaps best known as C.S. Lewis’s “second” friend. Our second friend, so Lewis tells us, is the one who disagrees with us about just about everything—who “has read all the right books but got the wrong thing out of every one of them.” Wrong, that is, from the viewpoint of orthodox Christianity. Owen Barfield, like Russell Davenport, was an ardent admirer of the life’s work of Rudolf Steiner, to which Steiner had given the name ‘anthroposophy’ (anthropos sophia). It is in these vast works, perhaps more than in any other, that Christian Gnosis comes again to the surface in modern thought. Because of this, as Owen Barfield well understood, anthroposophy is capable of fully rescuing Christianity from its present predicament, if only it is taken seriously. The late Rev. A.P.Shepard D.D., Cannon of England’s Worchester Cathedral, superbly expressed this view of Steiner’s Trinitarian Christology in his book Scientist of the Invisible. The beginnings of the answers that the Camerlengo could not find in science, are there in Rudolf Steiner’s science of the spirit, in his ‘anthroposophy’.

The ‘great tabu’, Barfield tells us, is the irrational precept that forbids science from even considering the possibility of spiritual causation in nature, because it has not yet understood either the need for or the manner in which empiricism can be expanded into a spiritual as well as a physical discipline. This tabu is one that orthodox religion also supports, because it does not want the objects of its ‘belief’ to be made into the subject of scientific enquiry, a willingness towards which is something that Rudolf Steiner’s work especially requires of us. The Jesus Seminar has made some attempt at this, but only where the interpretation of biblical text is concerned, they have not begun to address the deeper epistemological issues. There is today, therefore, what amounts to an unholy alliance between materialistic science and religion, to resist the resurgence of Gnosis, and one way that we seek to accomplish this, is to combine religion and science in such a manner that neither is changed in any significant way. Stephen Jay Gould’s book Rock of Ages, here comes first to mind. This solution, however, depends upon the acceptance of an epistemological dualism, and it is therefore, fully irrational from the very outset. In contrast Rudolf Steiner’s work rests upon a “monism of thought” in which thought itself is seen as a vital part of nature’s reality, i.e. that thought is nature’s ‘inside;’ which answers the question that so puzzled Albert Einstein—why is it that thought maps so well onto the world’s reality? The answer is, as gnosis has always known, that thought is the spiritual inside of outer physical reality. It is the inner part of that reality that can be perceived only by the mind, just as the outer part is perceived only by the senses. When we come to grips with this truth, science and religion will once again become one, but without any dualistic compromise. In Barfield’s words “There will be a revival of Christianity when it becomes impossible to write a popular manual of science without referring to the incarnation of the Word.”

posted February 23, 2008 12:51 PM         

http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Saints/Authors/Quotes/quotes-index.htm

posted February 24, 2008 01:24 PM         

Creation Museum founder's book says Darwinism fuels racism

By Dylan T. Lovan
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 02/09/2008 07:25:05 AM

What Darwinian evolution did, I would say, is provide what people thought was a scientific justification for separation of races.
KEN HAM, founder of Creation Museum


LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The founder of a popular Kentucky Christian museum that rejects evolution says in a new book that Darwin's theory fuels racism and genocide.
Ken Ham, who opened the Creation Museum last year, and co-author Charles Ware, president of Crossroads Bible College in Indianapolis, have written Darwin's Plantation: Evolution's Racist Roots, arguing that the theory inspired the Nazi belief in racial superiority and the murderous policies of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
''What Darwinian evolution did, I would say, is provide what people thought was a scientific justification for separation of races,'' Ham said in an interview.
Ham is not the first to try to tie Darwin with racism. The charge has been made for years.
It came up last month in arguments over science curriculum at a South Carolina state school board meeting. In 2001, Louisiana's legislature considered a bill that said Darwin supported racist ideologies.
David L. Schultz, associate professor of biology at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, said Darwin was egalitarian and had a history of speaking out against slavery.

''Darwin was not a racist,'' he said.
Ham runs the Christian group Answers in Genesis and has already made an impact with his $27 million high-tech museum in Petersburg, south of Cincinnati.
The complex has attracted more than 300,000 visitors with exhibits that treat the Bible's creation story as natural history and contend that evolution theory is wrong because it contradicts the Old Testament. The Creation Museum asserts that the Earth is just a few thousand years old, dinosaurs coexisted with man and Adam and Eve were the first humans.
In the new book, Ham says that Darwin's theory - that natural selection caused gradual biological changes over time - puts some races ''higher on the evolutionary scale'' and others ''closer to the apes.''
''Although racism did not begin with Darwinism, Darwin did more than any person to popularize it,'' Ham writes. He further contends that the theory fanned the flames of ''ethnic superiority.''
''Stalin, Hitler and Mao were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions - and it can be shown they did this because of the influence of Darwinian naturalism,'' Ham writes.
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, a California group that defends teaching evolution in public schools, said Hitler rarely mentioned evolution.
''Darwinian evolution is based on natural selection, which means that any population can adapt to its environment,'' Scott said. ''The ironic thing for the creationists is that Hitler grounded Aryan superiority as a God-given quality.''
Ham said he came to the topic because he was upset by the unfair treatment of aboriginal tribes in his native Australia and the racism he saw in the United States when he arrived here in the 1970s. He said he experienced a backlash from some church groups after he wrote an article critical of biblical-based arguments against interracial marriage, which made him even more determined to tackle the issue.
''I got more what I would call hate mail from people, supposedly Christians in the church, than for any other article I've ever written,'' Ham said. ''So to me I just had a real burden that I wanted to educate the church on this matter.''
But Schultz called the argument ''a ploy to get evolution out of the curriculum.''
''Of course everybody's against teaching children racism, so if you call it racist, you can have it removed,'' said Schultz. He testified before a Louisiana legislative panel that took up the bill that would have tied evolution with racism. The measure was eventually stripped of any reference to Darwin.
Ham said Answers in Genesis does not advocate teaching creationism in public schools.
In South Carolina, that state's board of education approved a biology textbook that references evolution. One board member had argued that the scientific theory was used by Nazi Germany as an excuse to kill millions of people.

posted February 25, 2008 01:25 PM         

This is one reason why I do my best to stay away from hospitals and doctors in general; the thought of giving the responsibility of my health and wellbeing to someone else is too frightening.

posted February 26, 2008 11:51 PM         

Party for the Animals

The Party for the Animals is a Dutch political party that aims to improve the position of animals in our society. The party was founded to promote an awareness of the way in which humans treat animals and to emphasise that this needs to change – in the interest of not only the animals themselves, but also humans and the environment in which we all live.

Party Platform
The Party for the Animals’ platform is built around the belief that both animals and humans are living creatures with emotions and a conscience and therefore, animals have the right to be treated with respect by humans. This means that regardless of whether they are in the wild or are kept in farms or homes, animals should be able to live according to their own nature and not have their well-being affected by humans without reasonable or necessary reason. The party believes the extent to which a human society is ‘civilised’ can be measured by the way in which its members treat other living creatures and the natural environment in general.

History of the Party for the Animals
The Party for the Animals was founded in October 2002 because the political environment in the Netherlands did not (and still does not) pay any attention to the interests of animals. Other political parties place concepts such as the economy, law and order, and integration above nature, the environment, and animal welfare. The Party for the Animals will give animal welfare the priority it deserves. Taking part in the political process provides the party with the opportunity of placing the legal protection of animals high on the political and social agenda and convincing other parties to support the interests of animals.

From the day it was founded, the number of people supporting the Party for the Animals’ has continually grown. In January 2003 the party stood for the first time in a Dutch parliamentary election and received 0.5% of the votes (around 50,000 votes), which just fell short of the number required for a seat in the lower house of the national parliament. In 2004, the European Parliament elections saw the Party for the Animals receive 3.2% of the votes (around 153,000 votes), again coming close to winning a seat. In terms of membership numbers, the Party for the Animals was the fastest-growing political party in the Netherlands in 2005. This is unprecedented for a young party that has not even been elected to parliament yet.

In a number of other countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and the UK, political parties similar to the Party for the Animals were recently set up, and opinion polls indicate that the Party for the Animals could potentially win 8% of the votes in the Netherlands. The Dutch political system is based upon proportional representation, which means that the heterogeneous character of the voting population is reflected in the make-up of parliament. On 22 November 2006, new parliamentary elections will take place in the Netherlands and these should see the Party for the Animals elected to the national parliament; it will be the first time in the world that a political party which champions the interests of animals has achieved this feat.

We are on the verge of an historical breakthrough in the campaign for animal rights. The success of the Party for the Animals in the Netherlands could gain international importance and thereby improve the lives of billions of animals. If you wish to assist us in our breakthrough, please send an e-mail to info@partijvoordedieren.nl Thank you very much for your support!