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reenkaSee, okay-- there's this one thing I don't understand. I don't know if I want to understand. I stare and stare at it and it makes no more sense than it did 5 minutes ago, when I first started staring at it, trying to divine how any human being who can string 2 sentences together can be this stupid-- and yet, this is more than 1 human being. This is basically a whole bunch of people.
(And, uh, to see that link you have to be logged in and registered, so I'll reproduce the contents for this ebook torrent link here:)
WHAT IS "THE SPELL OF DARWINISM"?
Imagine yourself meeting a person who seems very reasonable and cultured. You'd naturally think that whatever this person says is a reflection of the culture and intelligence you assume him to have. But when he begins to speak, even though you perceive no other change in his reasonable demeanor, he startles you with his incredible nonsense. He may insist that white is just a lighter shade of black, for example, or claim that the clouds in the sky are simply huge bunches of cotton. He believes things that no reasonable person with normal awareness and judgment could believe. He claims it is raining even though the sun is shining; and if you take him outside and show him the evident sunlight, still he persists in his claim that rain is falling and he even declares that he's getting wet! If you saw such a person, you could describe him in several ways. You might say he was being illogical, deluded, or even that he'd lost lost his mind, or even that he was crazy. You might even say that he seemed to be under a spell and to have no clear view of reality.
This term "under a spell" is very significant. Some ordinary people resort to various kinds of magic spells and incantations to make others do something they wouldn't ordinarily want to do; to control them; make them believe irrational things, get them to harm another person; and to put them into something akin to a state of hallucination where they remain unaware of what they're doing. In short, the whole purpose of a spell is to bring someone under another's control and to make him believe the most unlikely, irrational things.
This book's title, The Dark Spell of Darwinism, comes from this very analogy. The goal of Darwinism is to get people to reject the obvious fact of Creation, which is clearly evident and assured, and to believe in the myth embodied in the theory of evolution. When someone falls under the spell of Darwinism, he also comes under the control of those who support the theory of evolution. Darwinism, and the theory of evolution, are incredible and illogical beliefs; they are like the proposition that that black is a chance byproduct of the changes that white undergoes, over time. But over the past 150 years, countless individuals have adopted these ideas passionately, and nothing can convince them to give them up. All the scientific evidence and plain facts in the world haven't been able to free them from this spell's influence. It is as if they've been bewitched to believe that it is raining when the sun is out and to insist that they are getting wet.
At this point, perhaps you think it might be more appropriate to describe the Darwinists' inner condition as a deficiency of mental or conceptual ability, instead of as a spell. But those who believe in Darwinism include educated individuals, professors and even Nobel Prizewinners. Rather than indicating any lack of conceptual ability, their attachment to Darwinism shows that they are under some kind of spell.
The purpose of this book is to rescue people from Darwinism's influence by revealing the exact ways in which it effects its persuasions and by uncovering the efforts that Darwinists make to prevent this illusion from losing its power. At the same time, we'll help you employ your own conscience and intelligence to consider-and understand-the self-evident fact of Creation.
Anyone who's been rescued from the spell of Darwinism and grasps the reality of Creation will also understand that God, the Lord of all the Worlds, has created him as well. This fact is the greatest import, because the sole purpose for the world's coming into existence is so that for people may come to know God and serve Him.
360 pages with 200 pictures in color.
~~
I think the thing that really pings me about this particular bit of stupidity is that the whole thing is ranting about exactly the sort of 'omg, black is not white' stupidity I'm talking about. It's like, they're saying 'but wake up!' while they're actually dead asleep themselves. I don't get it. Isn't that some sort of meta-level of extreme stupidity??
How can anyone be both of mental age older than 12 and also this stupid? I mean-- what is it that drives people to this? Are they just gullible? But what makes anyone that gullible? What is it about our psyches that makes us prey to ideas that basically make no sense no matter how you look at it?
And I'm not saying believing in god in general makes no sense-- I'm saying if you believe in that while denying reality and logical thought and other people's freedoms, and if you think that's the only way you can believe (which a lot of people seem to), doesn't that admit that basically you're wrong & in denial by definition? Isn't belief of that paranoid sort kind of self-destructive? Like, on some level these people must -know-, right, that they're spewing 100% grade-A bullshit, and yet they keep doing it, why? Because they think if they stopped, they'd have to kill themselves of despair? What? Does their entire world crumble if evolution is real? Do they not know how to go on? What?
I think I'm sort of spell-bound by this whole concept. I don't even know if 'stupidity' explains the phenomenon; it seems more to dismiss it. How is it that memes like this so entirely destroy the human capacity for rational thought? How can people's brains be -that- vulnerable to utter pollution? It's almost like all our intelligence, all our understanding, is a tiny sapling being bent in the horrendous wind of-- I dunno-- mass dementia, the dementia of group-think & superstition. It's just really scary.
~~
...On a vaguely more cheerful note, I find I can't really get into the idea of ebooks, even though I read all this fic online. It's not any moral reason (I basically have no moral fibre when it comes to this sort of thing, or rather my moral fibre consists of saying 'to hell with it')... it's just that I can't imagine enjoying reading 200+ pages of a pdf file. I dunno if I'm being sentimental or just literally only able to comprehend/enjoy books if they're printed. I also like to print my fanfic sometimes, but I don't -have- to, so it's odd.
(And, uh, to see that link you have to be logged in and registered, so I'll reproduce the contents for this ebook torrent link here:)
WHAT IS "THE SPELL OF DARWINISM"?
Imagine yourself meeting a person who seems very reasonable and cultured. You'd naturally think that whatever this person says is a reflection of the culture and intelligence you assume him to have. But when he begins to speak, even though you perceive no other change in his reasonable demeanor, he startles you with his incredible nonsense. He may insist that white is just a lighter shade of black, for example, or claim that the clouds in the sky are simply huge bunches of cotton. He believes things that no reasonable person with normal awareness and judgment could believe. He claims it is raining even though the sun is shining; and if you take him outside and show him the evident sunlight, still he persists in his claim that rain is falling and he even declares that he's getting wet! If you saw such a person, you could describe him in several ways. You might say he was being illogical, deluded, or even that he'd lost lost his mind, or even that he was crazy. You might even say that he seemed to be under a spell and to have no clear view of reality.
This term "under a spell" is very significant. Some ordinary people resort to various kinds of magic spells and incantations to make others do something they wouldn't ordinarily want to do; to control them; make them believe irrational things, get them to harm another person; and to put them into something akin to a state of hallucination where they remain unaware of what they're doing. In short, the whole purpose of a spell is to bring someone under another's control and to make him believe the most unlikely, irrational things.
This book's title, The Dark Spell of Darwinism, comes from this very analogy. The goal of Darwinism is to get people to reject the obvious fact of Creation, which is clearly evident and assured, and to believe in the myth embodied in the theory of evolution. When someone falls under the spell of Darwinism, he also comes under the control of those who support the theory of evolution. Darwinism, and the theory of evolution, are incredible and illogical beliefs; they are like the proposition that that black is a chance byproduct of the changes that white undergoes, over time. But over the past 150 years, countless individuals have adopted these ideas passionately, and nothing can convince them to give them up. All the scientific evidence and plain facts in the world haven't been able to free them from this spell's influence. It is as if they've been bewitched to believe that it is raining when the sun is out and to insist that they are getting wet.
At this point, perhaps you think it might be more appropriate to describe the Darwinists' inner condition as a deficiency of mental or conceptual ability, instead of as a spell. But those who believe in Darwinism include educated individuals, professors and even Nobel Prizewinners. Rather than indicating any lack of conceptual ability, their attachment to Darwinism shows that they are under some kind of spell.
The purpose of this book is to rescue people from Darwinism's influence by revealing the exact ways in which it effects its persuasions and by uncovering the efforts that Darwinists make to prevent this illusion from losing its power. At the same time, we'll help you employ your own conscience and intelligence to consider-and understand-the self-evident fact of Creation.
Anyone who's been rescued from the spell of Darwinism and grasps the reality of Creation will also understand that God, the Lord of all the Worlds, has created him as well. This fact is the greatest import, because the sole purpose for the world's coming into existence is so that for people may come to know God and serve Him.
360 pages with 200 pictures in color.
~~
I think the thing that really pings me about this particular bit of stupidity is that the whole thing is ranting about exactly the sort of 'omg, black is not white' stupidity I'm talking about. It's like, they're saying 'but wake up!' while they're actually dead asleep themselves. I don't get it. Isn't that some sort of meta-level of extreme stupidity??
How can anyone be both of mental age older than 12 and also this stupid? I mean-- what is it that drives people to this? Are they just gullible? But what makes anyone that gullible? What is it about our psyches that makes us prey to ideas that basically make no sense no matter how you look at it?
And I'm not saying believing in god in general makes no sense-- I'm saying if you believe in that while denying reality and logical thought and other people's freedoms, and if you think that's the only way you can believe (which a lot of people seem to), doesn't that admit that basically you're wrong & in denial by definition? Isn't belief of that paranoid sort kind of self-destructive? Like, on some level these people must -know-, right, that they're spewing 100% grade-A bullshit, and yet they keep doing it, why? Because they think if they stopped, they'd have to kill themselves of despair? What? Does their entire world crumble if evolution is real? Do they not know how to go on? What?
I think I'm sort of spell-bound by this whole concept. I don't even know if 'stupidity' explains the phenomenon; it seems more to dismiss it. How is it that memes like this so entirely destroy the human capacity for rational thought? How can people's brains be -that- vulnerable to utter pollution? It's almost like all our intelligence, all our understanding, is a tiny sapling being bent in the horrendous wind of-- I dunno-- mass dementia, the dementia of group-think & superstition. It's just really scary.
~~
...On a vaguely more cheerful note, I find I can't really get into the idea of ebooks, even though I read all this fic online. It's not any moral reason (I basically have no moral fibre when it comes to this sort of thing, or rather my moral fibre consists of saying 'to hell with it')... it's just that I can't imagine enjoying reading 200+ pages of a pdf file. I dunno if I'm being sentimental or just literally only able to comprehend/enjoy books if they're printed. I also like to print my fanfic sometimes, but I don't -have- to, so it's odd.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 05:21 pm (UTC)But it drives me crazy because they have learned to use the very things science has going for it and just say they have those things. It's literally like saying, "Listen to this crazy person who thinks that the earth revolves around the sun when common sense shows it's being eaten by a god every night and spat back up again the next morning!" Yeah, I follow the idea, but that's still not what's happening, and revolving around the sun is actually more logical.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 11:59 pm (UTC)Isn't that some sort of meta-level of extreme stupidity??
Isn't that what a belief in god is in the first place? Faith relies on the complete abscence of logic, facts or evidence. Therefore, it's stupid and ignorant at its most basic nature.
People's brains are that vulnerable because people want to believe in things that make them feel safe and comfortable. Never underestimate the power of the human ego to override every other working facet of someone's existence.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 09:14 am (UTC)I've long wondered why is it that people I otherwise find intelligent and discerning would participate or believe in an organized religion, but then I also wonder why people like pink & Stallone movies, y'know? There are plenty of scientists who are spiritual if not religious, and science and religion aren't as separate as all that in their origins. I mean, sure, Galileo got excommunicated, but did he stop believing in his god? That sort of thing. I think people can be smart & stupid at the same time, it's just frustrating.
But I think you're right about ego, and it makes me wonder if peole with stronger egos lean towards non-belief or non-faith in things in general (ie, tend to be cynics? or pragmatists? so why am I a romantic non-believer? supposedly I shouldn't exist). But I always wanted -escape- moreso than safety, which might make a difference. Escape implies risk & uncertainty, so maybe I'm more comfortable with that. The world being cold & lonely is just reality, and I don't need pretty lies. But some people just can't cope, I guess-- and a part of me sneers at weakness where another part of me is just frustrated when that weakness becomes overriding, yeah. People are so...argh. Heh.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 09:20 am (UTC)Hahah, except they're not using science, just science jargot-- I mean, it's frustrating but also ridiculous, like a little boy trying on his mom's make-up and shoes and feather boa. You know, it's like-- I'm not anti-faith, I don't think of myself as a 'logical' person myself-- but there's a difference between illogical (me) and irrational (them)--? Maybe. It's like they don't use words the same way-- like an actual mental disease, y'know, where people -literally- don't process words the same way we do. I mean, that seems almost too neat an explanation (ie, 'he's insane'), but. It would be reassuring, wouldn't it.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 10:27 am (UTC)Yes, but ultimately, faith bridges the gap between logic, understanding & rationale, & existence. It exists because humans will always have a little bit of stupidity, their limitations, the things they simply can't understand. I agree that the environment around the faith can change, and shift its requirement to different aspects (eg- from the imposition of the ego on the universe through the concept of god to faith in humanity or other forms of belief) depending on what the human needs as their understanding and knowledge grows, but ultimately, it exists because we are stupid. It's the reason people like pink and Stallone movies and scientists are still theists - because we're all stupid, in a universal sense. Yeah, it's frustrating, but *shrugs* that's faith. Some people need a faith in science being the answer to everything to get through their work. It's as misplaced as a faith in spirituality or religion, and can be equally used/abused, but it's faith.
I don't think those with stronger egos lean towards non-faith in a deity, per se. Look at the types controlling religions. You could argue that maybe, deep-down, they don't believe as fervently as someone who really needs a belief in a deity to get from day to day, but for all intents and purposes, they believe strongly, and have massive egos.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 12:23 pm (UTC)So I'm reading this shoujo manhwa (....I know) called Masca (pretty good! though has indifferent-spunky-girl/infatuated-bored-demon-bastard love-story that's pretty central so you prolly won't dig it), and.... The spunky girl's teacher's own teacher says at one point that there 'are no answers to the questions of life'. And that sort of struck me weirdly. Because like... I'm so much closer to that belief than I was when I was a teenager, and thought that as ignorant as I knew I was, there -was- an answer for everything, it's just a question of 'can I know it?'-- so I took it as a challenge. Now... my awareness of my own ignorance grows, the complications and contradictions and implications multiply, and everything seems both too simple and too complex to grasp a lot of times.
I'm not sure what that has to do with faith. I think I'm further away from indulging in much of it than I was as a child, but at the same time that leeched much of the drive/passion from me. Faith is really what gives one the strength to conceptualize/imagine things & then go after them, in some ways. In one form or another, it give us a reason to live-- funny, since that same teacher said 'try looking for reason to live' before he said that about there being no answers, ahahah. I guess he meant one finds one's own answers depending on need.
I have always tried to lessen my certainty and increase it at the same time. But even faith in 'the truth' or the drive that makes me so dedicated to becoming still more open-minded is a product of a belief-system. It's hard to tell what's misplaced (liking pink probably isn't, though I still think it's a horrible color on most people, but) unless you mean it's -blinding- someone to tangible reality like 'I'm currently MAKING NO SENSE'. Or something. Which is how I made my peace with religious people, sort of. I still have flare-ups of just thinking they're all insane~:))
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 01:06 pm (UTC)I don't mean stupid as in necessarily bad, just without thought process or knowledge. The greatest genius or the most idiotic knuckle dragger can have the same kind of faith, in this way, because we're all a little bit stupid.
I always find "questions of life" interesting, because most of them seem to assume life is a means to something, whereas I have always assumed it was an end in itself. Like, "what's the meaning of life" and "why are we here" and all that shite. Like life has to have some purpose for it to exist.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 01:22 pm (UTC)You're right about life in general (like, biological life) needing no exact 'purpose' as such, basically being an end in itself, but at the same time every human being (or consciousness in general) has meaning as a sort of emergent property, as in-- they have a 'best function' or a 'preferred mode' or something; a life which suits them best, a life which is most fulfilling and 'meaningful'. And I believe the 'meaning of life' arises, then, from self-actualization on an individual & social level. Although this applies only to beings with consciousness and not to life in general or the universe, which just exists.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 10:43 pm (UTC)I don't buy into that sort of stuff. To me, everything can be explained rationally. Most of what people call "intuition" is just the rational workings of the brain making sure we don't get hit by a bus or fall down a cliff. Whether it's deja vu caused by the two processing sections of the brain doubling back on each other or the certain pheremones or subconscious facial movements that clue us in that a certain person isn't who they say they are. It may appear like it's some other thing, because that's why consciousness exists, but it's really all worked out in your brain already.
But again, even with "emotional intelligence", it's not required for faith. Faith is belief in the abscence of all evidence. It's the leap you have to make between what you know and what you don't know, whether what you know is science or intuition. You could argue that the basic "emotional intelligence" (I really hate that phrase) of one's ego is the very basis of faith ("I believe because I need to"), but as a means of leading one to faith, it simply can't work.