From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Subject: Re: Some answers for Chuck (on evolution and marriage)
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: 23 Jul 92 02:46:51 GMT

	I wish I had seen the original posting from Maier, It would have
been fun to rip him to shreads for this stupidity. He acutally does this
group a service by revealing the emotions the more deceptive Creationists
conceal with rhetoric, Robert Bales, which drive people to believe in
Creationism. I have known for a long time that alot of people embrace
their religion which needs Creationism for the sole purpose of finding
an absolute authority for morals. They are so wrapped up in control
that they sap the spiritual basis for faith. I wonder if these people
are some kind of addicts who never had spirituality but who traded
a disfunctional upbringing or substance abuse for authoritarian religion.
They do no service to other more reasoned Christians.

amorgan@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Crunchy Frog) writes:

>There are a great many religious scientists whom you have offended with
>this posting, men and women of integrity (look the word up, it might teach you
>something).  They *should* reject evolution?  What if it happens to be correct?
>Is your religious belief so weak and ill founded that it can't fact up to fact?

>Rejecting scientific fact because it is immoral is sickening.

	I wonder why people need to settle on certainty never leaving
either room for doubt or having curiosity to ask if their first
impressions are true. It amazes me how wonderous the world appears
when greater complexity is revealed and when the truth has become
more uncertain the more one learns. The above is meant to suggest that
maybe people who creave certinty in moral standards and absolute truths
have a mental defect, either of nature or nurture.

	I don't know what comments have been said about social
conventions and evolution, but it is clear to me that while
finding the roots of human behavior and choosing in evolution form
animals does not justify social conventions, it does explain quite
well many human inclinations such as to monagamy and long-term
relationships, whether in the formal institution of Marriage,
sacrement and all, or not. It is obvious that Sexual Selection,
as in animals, plays a role in mate selection in Humans, and that
the neotany of human offspring and the long period of time
from birth to maturity with the attendant social learning is a
biological adaptation that necessitates some kind of family and
coheseasive social unit, but not just the kind mandated by our
traditions.

	The opposing tendencies, the ones not sanctioned by
Civilization and moral standards, also come from our animal natures.
These competative and violent tendencies that lead to stealing of
mates, to rape, to the license that Chuck most fears, do not need
to be repressed, swept under the rug, but acknowledged and delt
with. I think that Jeffery Dahmer was raised in a very repressed
environment where he could not find healthy outlets for his homo-
sexual tendencies. Weren't his parents religious? How many horible
criminals are created by parents who hide form the awful truth
behind a vail of religious denial? So then, Chuck, why can't I
suggest that the moral system you advocate pushes the misfits
into worse abberations? Afterall, Chuck, the Inquisition had its
uses for such monsters, eh Chuck?


	Chuck's opposition to evolution has nothing to do with any
evidence against it, but with an argument against it that is not
discussed at great length here. Why it is not explored more is
a mystery to me. I think that it is preverbial to most Creationist
sympathiziers and the more astute amomg them do not want the idea
that morals are not absolute and are to some extant arbritary social
conventions and to some other extant based on the very idea they
oppose, animal behavior and evolution, and not handed down from on
high. If we could get past the emotional element and find out
from Chuck why morals must have a trancendant and thestic basis
we would find that maybe he hasn't thought about it, or, worse,
that Christianity is, for him and a lot of people, not a source
of peace and hope, but a means to control and coerce others. We
may then be more interested in Chuck's political philosophy and
not his theology. I know I give him the benefit of the doubt
for having formulated his views to this depth. There is evidence
to doubt that he has.

Bruce Salem