JLT
Posts: 740
Joined: Jan. 2008
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Jerry rewrites history:
| Quote | It [Ireland] is one of the greenest places on earth and you know instantly why the Irish color is green. Food is abundant there and always was.
In Killarney there is a grave of about a thousand children who starved to death during the famine. Not three miles away is a 2000 acre estate that was there at the time of the famine where there was food a plenty but it went to England and not to the children starving to death outside the estate.
What sort of attitude led to such thinking and behavior? Victorian Britain ruled Ireland and this was the time when Darwin was beginning his musings about what it all meant. |
It is unquestionable that the British Government made descisions (e.g. that it didn't suspense the Corn Law which restricted import of corn/grain) that considerably worsened the extend of the famine but the proximate course was potatoe blight which destroyed most of the harvest in five consecutive years. Plenty of food? I don't think so.
It's impossible for Jerry to blame it on Darwin because at the time of the famine (1845-1850) he hadn't published Origin of Species but he sure tries to.
But even better:
| Quote | | And yet when these Celts come to the US they flourish as well or better than the Anglo Saxons who were their oppressors. |
I'm sure in Jerry's mind that started at the moment the Irish who had fled the famine left the ship. Maybe he should look up Irish American on wikipedia:
| Quote | It was common for Irishmen to be discriminated against in social situations. Intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants was uncommon (and strongly discouraged by both ministers and priests).
Public schools relied heavily on the King James Version of the Bible, with passages considered derogatory by Catholics; an important response was the creation of a Catholic parochial school system. These schools, and numerous Catholic colleges, allowed Irish youth to be educated without this discrimination in public school systems.
Prejudice against Irish Catholics in the US reached a peak in the mid-1850s with the Know Nothing Movement, which tried to oust Catholics from public office. Thomas Hardy and Thomas Nast published popular political cartoons of Irish drinking, fighting, ignoring their children, gambling, and crowding poorhouses.
After 1860 the Irish sang songs (see illustration) about signs reading "HELP WANTED - NO IRISH NEED APPLY", which were also referred to as "the NINA signs." The song may have had a deep impact on the Irish sense of discrimination, and these "Nina" signs continue to be referred to today (2008). |
Maybe he could also read "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt and find out whether that had altered much by 1930.
Jerry:
| Quote | | There are those who defend Darwin who say he was a product of his time and everyone in elite circles in Victorian England was a racist and thus his race judgments were a product of his environment. Well why doesn’t the same line of thinking condemn the rest of his judgments as well. If the rest of Victorian England was screwed up, how does that make Darwin’s judgments on evolution not subject to a critical analysis that these ideas may have also been screwed up. |
I'm sure Jerry will - after he found out that discrimination and prejudice against Irish people by protestants were prevalent in the US as well - critically analyse everything any protestant thought about between 1850 and 1930 because their ideas obviously may have been screwed up, too.
That e. g. Africans were closer to apes than Europeans was the scientific opinion of that time and Darwin accepted it (no doubt, this scientific opinion was deeply influenced by racistic prejudice. I remember seeing a history of science documentary once in which someone measured the brain capacity of different skulls and falsified his results to fit his opinion that the brain capacity of Africans must be lower than that of Caucasians).
But contrary to e. g. Jerry or StephenB* Darwin was quite capable of distinguishing between what he accepted as "is" from "ought".
Laelaps just had a post about The Tragedy of Saartje Baartman, a story about an African woman who was "on display" in Britain and France in the beginning of the 18th century:
| Quote | Saartje continued making appearances in England for several more years by in 1814 she was sold to a new owner in Paris. Thus began a new round of exhibitions and parties where she was invited to the salons so that the elite could watch her perform as they might watch a trained beast. Even the famed anatomist Georges Cuvier came to see her, and while he felt that her appearance and gestures were very ape-like he was impressed by her memory and ability with languages (she knew Dutch, some English, and was beginning to learn French).
It was not only her mannerisms that Cuvier was interested in, however. While Saartje appeared at parties naturalists were debating whether her extraordinarily large buttocks were the result of disease, indicated a distinct and low type of humanity, or represented something else entirely. Her new owner apparently did not allow any detailed anatomical examinations, but when Saartje died the naturalists of Paris were free to poke and prod all they wished.[...]
This type of demeaning treatment would continue but it would be veiled in academic discourse. Saartje's appearance was so repulsive to many Europeans that they had little doubt that she was the most bestial of humanity, the closest human approximation to an ape. This was illustrated in an 1843 issue of The Family Magazine which compared the facial angles of various "races" [native Americans, orangutan, Africans, and a grecian statue] to show how far Saartje's face differed from that of the "Grecian ideal." These types of illustrations had deep roots in the Great Chain of Being and certainly implied that she was closer to apes than Europeans even if her membership within our species had to be admitted. |
To blame Darwin and/or evolution theory for that kind of racism is disingeniuous, clueless, and utterly wrong.
*StephenB = TARD:
| Quote | In the “Descent of Man,” for example, he tempers his “scientifically based conclusions” with humanely oriented sentiments. On the one hand, he continually suggests that nature is cruel and ignoble, hinting at a decidedly cruel and ignoble social policy. On the other hand, he does, from time to time, tone things down a bit by suggesting that we are, nevertheless, noble in some sense, and ought to at least feel bad about what we must ultimately do to survive. [...]
There is no way around the fact that Darwin was both ambivalent and dishonest about what he was doing and why he was doing it. He was ambivalent because his conscience and love of family were at odds with his loveless way of looking at the world. |
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"Random mutations, if they are truly random, will affect, and potentially damage, any aspect of the organism, [...]
Thus, a realistic [computer] simulation [of evolution] would allow the program, OS, and hardware to be affected in a random fashion." GilDodgen, Frilly shirt owner
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