DMB

Huh???? I asked you:

This is your reply?
FYI I haven't mentioned slavery genocide or divorce in this thread and your answer has apparently nothing to do with Darwin or the alleged "long and bloody partnership between science and racism". Which planet are you on?

I did ask the following
to which you replied
Hitler et al. were hardly social elites. They were dictators, just as Saddam Hussein is. They may have marketed what they claimed to be a rational ideology, but not all of them believed their own propaganda and I would certainly not accept their predominant ideology as rational. How did evolution come into it? It may have been dragged in, but in no case could it be said to be central to the dogma.

Where are the modern social elites who allegedly believe all this hogwash, and what does that have to do with the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights?

You have then failed to reply to my question about who are the contemporary elite academics who have been trying to market death as a necessary side effect of progress.

Your justification for saying
is the following
I might as well say "There's nothing wrong with the bible until some fanatic uses it as an excuse for starting a crusade." The human rights instruments of the UN stand or fall by their content, not by the current political actions of the UN and its members. This thread, in particular, started off by considering them in that way. You are apparently trying to make some political allegation about the UN supporting terrorism (you used the word "when" not "if"). I cannot see how by any stretch of the imagination the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could be interpreted as legitimising terrorism. Which clauses of it do you have in mind?

Ion

The thread is 'UN Code versus the Bible' isn't it?

So my post mockes body mutilation (i.e. circumcision) in the Bible, as a barbaric religious ritual with no value today.

Ion

'When' in this statement, means that it is in your imagination only dk, that UN legitimizes terrorism.

Do not confuse your imagination with reality, dk.

dk

Oops double post sorry

dk

• Posted by DMB on February 23, 2003 08:58 PM:
  Huh???? I asked you:
  Originally posted by DMB
  In any case, even supposing that Darwin's work were inherently racist (which, of course, it isn't) how would that demonstrate " a long and bloody partnership between science and racism"? You would need a lot more evidence than Darwin's title!
  This is your reply? (snip)
  dk: No, my reply was in response to your poorly worded question: “ I may well be a dogmatist, but how does my asking you to provide evidence prove that? ” Answer: Scientific Racism, as in “survival of the favoured races”. In 4 paragraphs you asked 7 questions, you’ll note I only provided 4 answers. I have no idea why anyone would write a 2 sentence paragraph containing 2 questions. As to evidence you seem offended when I provide it, and I have provided several references besides Darwin’s title including quotes from Darwin, Young Turks, and Hitler.
  o
• DMB: FYI I haven't mentioned slavery genocide or divorce in this thread and your answer has apparently nothing to do with Darwin or the alleged "long and bloody partnership between science and racism". Which planet are you on?
  (snip)
  I did ask the following
  Originally posted by DMB
  Would you care to be more specific about who constitute the social elites who see war, famine, petulance, eugenics and genocide as a progressive cure for poverty and a prescription for prosperity? I don't know who you are on about. How do they misuse evolution to provide a rationalisation?
  dk: A rationalization is an excuse for unethical conduct. For example during WWI the Young Turks rationalized genocide against the Armenians on the basis of national purification i.e. based on a specific application of Social Darwinism. Spencer and Darwin developed their theories independent from the economic theories of Malthus. Darwin applied Malthus to biology, and Spence applied Malthus to sociology.
  -If you try to state your questions more clearly, then I’ll try to answer more directly.
  For example NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the Harvard Afro-American Studies department put “political pressure” on Harvard’s President Summers to realign academic standards and policies. This was not an isolated incident but systemic. Departments of Philosophy, Law, Sociology, political science, history etc... are cowed by protected fanatical political factions in the US, just like Bismarck, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao subjugated their pet intellectuals to political pressures. It seems clear to me many intellectual elites lack the courage to standup and deliver. Many intellectual elites play a preeminent role in media bias, for example the AIDs story in the 1980s asserted the AIDs pandemic would spread from men who have sex with men (MSM) to the heterosexual community. Begging the question, “If the media shape the public agenda, what shapes the media's agenda?” Its now 2003, and obvious to anyone that can read a medical journal that the gateway (means of exposure) to the heterosexual community proceeds through IDU and bisexuals. Still the storyline broadcast by media, higher education and the NIH remains unrepentant and unchanged, even as a new generation gets indoctrinated and infected by relapsed advocates(taking HIV drug cocktails). For example heres an article I found in the gay press, Transmitting the Problem by Kim Stephenson (url) “statistics and scientific studies concerning the transmission of HIV/AIDS say otherwise. Last year marked the twentieth anniversary of AIDS and the demographics have roughly remained the same throughout the two decades: The disease affects mostly men (93 percent in Oregon) and mostly white gay men. To say this is considered to be homophobic, and therein lies the problem.”
  o
• Originally posted by dk
  Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to name a few. Each of them destroyed the lives of millions of their own people in service to what they marketed as a rational ideology. For example Moa in The Great Leap Forwarded (1959-60) starved 10s of millions of his own people to restructure China.
  DMB:
  Hitler et al. were hardly social elites. They were dictators, just as Saddam Hussein is. They may have marketed what they claimed to be a rational ideology, but not all of them believed their own propaganda and I would certainly not accept their predominant ideology as rational. How did evolution come into it? It may have been dragged in, but in no case could it be said to be central to the dogma.
  dk: Spenser, Darwin, Galton, Hegel, Nietzsche and Marx became intellectual fascists independent of their personal opinions and intentions. The theories they founded served to hoist up the flag pole of progress the ideologies that justified modern war, forced labor, working poor and genocide. They fundamentally deposed metaphysics as transcendental moonshine to socialize a new brand of spiritualism conceived in the principles of logical necessity, dedicated to nationalism, patriotism, humanism, materialism and scientism. Malthus’ basis economic theories of deprivation became the platform for everyone’s economics, sociology, biology, psychology and history. Darwin said in Origin of Species, “this is the doctrine of Malthus applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms." Hegel, Nietzsche, Spencer and Marx each had their own ideas about the perfectibility of mankind and society, but they all subscribed to Malthus’ basic economic principles focused upon the personality of nations. Still, fascists, demagogues, communists, capitalists, terrorists and industrialists rationalized human beings as the means to progress, and progress a necessity at any cost. The 10s of millions of lives they destroy are/were justified by the ends irrespective of the means. Malthus argued precipitously against the ideologies of his benefactors, but his arguments were easily discarded out of a feeling of necessity. Still at every milestone there’s painfully little evidence that Malthus’ basic economic principle hold water.
  o
• DMB:
  Where are the modern social elites who allegedly believe all this hogwash, and what does that have to do with the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights?
  dk: They are off chasing their tails over animals rights, the failed Welfare State, crisis in education, Feminist philosophy, Strong AI, and the collapse of the USSR. In my opinion philosophy has been undercut by recent advances/follies in psychology, sociology, genetics and computer science. Philosophy today is literally caught in the cross currents of progress and history.
  o
• DMB:
  You have then failed to reply to my question about who are the contemporary elite academics who have been trying to market death as a necessary side effect of progress.
  Your justification for saying
  dk: Here’s a list, good as any, link . I’ve done more than offer a list of intellectual elites, I’ve provided the basic tenants to which they apply a myriad of solutions using 1) logical necessity 2) progress at any cost. For example the birth ratio of Old Europe has fallen below replacement level threatening the future of everyone in Europe with economic catastrophe. In the United States I’ve read several commentaries that claim abortion keeps the crime rate down because 30 million blacks citizens have aborted an estimated 15 million black babies. Naturally the commentaries put it in more discrete terms but here’s an example, Chicago economist links abortion to falling crime rates
  o
• Quote:

  Originally posted by dk Its called “stare decisis” i.e. a principle of law that finds its basis in past precedent. For example Hitler justified his genocidal plans with the atrocities committed by the Young Turks during WWI. The League of Nations had little to say about the extermination of the Armenians, just as the United Nations risks becoming irrelevant today. Clearly the UN is the only strategic vehicle positioned to fight international terrorism, so when the UN supports nations that sponsor terrorism they legitimize terrorism, and that's what the UN DoHR comes to mean. DMB: I might as well say "There's nothing wrong with the bible until some fanatic uses it as an excuse for starting a crusade." The human rights instruments of the UN stand or fall by their content, not by the current political actions of the UN and its members. This thread, in particular, started off by considering them in that way. You are apparently trying to make some political allegation about the UN supporting terrorism (you used the word "when" not "if"). I cannot see how by any stretch of the imagination the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could be interpreted as legitimizing terrorism. Which clauses of it do you have in mind?

  dk: I don’t follow you, is that like, “Do as I say, not as I do”. The UN interprets its Code and Charter from NGOs well practiced in the art of semantic gynmastics, and they determine what the articles of Human Rights mean. I’d say the UN is on its way to irrelevance like the League of Nations, Why? .. because they have failed back up their articles with action. My point in this discussion has been simple. The bible isn’t simply a book of statutes or a legal platitudes, so its folly compare it verse for text with the UN DoHR. We can however compare the 10 Commandments with UN DoHR, and it turns out the “Rule of Law” follows from the 1st Commandment that places all people under the law, including kings, presidents, emperors, legislatures, theocrats, demagogues, fascists, scientists, Dalai Lamas, sultans, popes, and caliphs.

dk

If I’ve asked once, I’ve asked 50 times,
“What is the basis of the UN DoHR?”


Posted by Ion: the UN Code of Human Rights is being designed since 1945 from the ground up, with chosen inputs from the past and the present.

dk: This is the best/only answer you’ve provided. Frankly the content is irrational, part circular and all meaningless. I assume you think the UN DoHR is rational, so the question should be easy to answer.

Ion

"...the content is irrational, part circular and all meaningless.", that's your dogma (i.e.: a decree without reasoning) dk, subjective to you.

Your time is stuck in dogmatic religious superstitions from one population, while you wrongly belive that the non-dogmatic UN rights for all populations condone terrorism.

dk

Pushed to answer the question, “What is the rational basis for universal human rights”, you turn to ad hominem attacks. I gave a rational answer to the question, and you don’t have a clue. Let me give you a clue, go to any good Marxist web site and search for “Malthus and Marx”. Why are you having such a difficult time with this.

DMB

OK, dk. I don't in general like long posts, but you post in such a tangled way that this will probably end up rather longer than I would like.

First of all, with reference to Darwin's full title of the Origin of Species, you originally posted this:
I replied to you at the time:
I note, however, that you still think that this title alone is evidence that Darwin was racist. I wonder whether you have actually read the book in question rather than merely looking up references to it on websites. If you had, you would know that in it Darwin looks at the origin of speciation in non-humans and does not deal with humans. That is one reason why much later he wrote the separate book on The Descent of Man. My understanding of the word "racist" is that it applies to discrimination between the supposed "races" of humankind, not other animals. So in The Origin, Darwin was certainly not dealing with what you apparently mean by "Scientific Racism", so your stuff about the survival of the Jews seems to have nothing to do with this, just as it has little or nothing to do with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

You also say
This is an extraordinary claim. I do not see how anyone can become any sort of fascist independently of his personal opinions and intentions.

Your claim about "a long and bloody partnership between science and racism" appears to come down to various ideologies being based on the ideas of Malthus. Malthus was undoubtedly influential in the 19th Century, but I would suggest that his infulence was much less than you seem to think. Darwin and Wallace came to their conclusions mainly as a result of direct observation of nature. Marx and Engels came to theirs at least partly because of direct observation of the misery of the poor under the early capitalist system. And although we may pick out particular names like these, political and economic thought in the 19th Century was being developed by a large number of people, many of whom also used their own direct observations to come to their conclusions.

You said
I asked you who these social and academic elites were. Note that you were talking about "the last 50 years", so we can discount the Young Turks, Hitler and Stalin. Mao and Pol Pot come into the period in question, but are no longer with us. So it seems to come down to this:
Fascinating though all this may be, it is hardly evidence that "war, famine, petulance, eugenics and genocide are to the social elites a progressive cure for poverty and a prescription for prosperity" nor do I see how it shows elite academics "trying to explain with a hodgepodge of revisionists histories a scheme that essentially markets death as a necessary side affect of progress". What you have here is a bit of a damp squib:a possible bit of bullying by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (hardly part of either an acadmeic or a social elite). As for the stuff about HIV, worldwide it is overwhelmingly a heterosexual disease, heterosexually transmitted, although there is also transmission by needles, by blood products and from mother to child. And I still don't see the relevance.

I note your link to the Contributors to The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. I suppose they do constitute some sort of academic elite, but are you accusing the whole boiling of some sort of evil conspiracy? You must be more paranoid than I thought. What has the falling birthrate in the overcrowded continent of Europe got to do with anything? As for the link between abortion and lower crime rates, I am not aware that anyone is advocating abortion for this reason. It is a speculation based on the fact that unwanted children are often neglected children who go on to become criminals.

Finally we come back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (and, I would think, subsequent UN human rights instruments). You say:
I don't know where you get this idea from. NGOs do have a voice in the UN, but the main voice is that of governments, not NGOs. It is governments who agree what goes into UN documents and how they should be interpreted. NGOs have as much voice in the UN as they do in individual governments. Some NGOs act as pressure groups, but the best they can do is to influence public opinion so that it in turn brings pressure to bear on individual governments.
I note your view on the future of the UN but am unconvinced. That, however, is neither here nor there. The OP of this thread asked about the Universal Declaration as a basis for morals. You feel it is in some way weakened because the UN has failed to back it up with action. If we compare this with the bible as providing an alternative code, what sort of action are you thinking of: burning of heretics? religious wars?

lpetrich

dk:
... Answer: Scientific Racism, as in “survival of the favoured races”.

Darwin had used the term "races" in a very generic sort of sense.

... and I have provided several references besides Darwin’s title including quotes from Darwin, Young Turks, and Hitler.

While leaving out the part in which Hitler states that fighting the Jews is following the precedent set by Jesus Christ's famous temple temper tantrum -- it's right out of Mein Kampf.

Also, dk has a habit of lumping together lots of people who have very little in common, which suggests that he has little real understanding of their beliefs.

DMB:
Where are the modern social elites who allegedly believe all this hogwash, and what does that have to do with the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights?
dk:
They are off chasing their tails over animals rights, the failed Welfare State, crisis in education, Feminist philosophy, Strong AI, and the collapse of the USSR. ...

And how do such people supposedly advocate mass murder as some sort of cure-all?

... In the United States I’ve read several commentaries that claim abortion keeps the crime rate down because 30 million blacks citizens have aborted an estimated 15 million black babies. ...

I don't see what's so terrible about abortion. I can understand objections to late abortion, but early abortion, in the first month or so, seems to me to be OK.

And as to keeping children from being born, why not hold it against Catholic priests that they are shirking that painful duty?