How's this for a coincidence? Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809. As historical facts go, it amounts to little more than a footnote. Still, while it's just a coincidence, it's a coincidence that's guaranteed to make you do a double take the first time you run across it. Everybody knows Darwin and Lincoln were near-mythic figures in the 19th century. But who ever thinks of them in tandem? Who puts the theory of evolution and the Civil War in the same sentence? Why would you, unless you're writing your dissertation on epochal events in the 19th century? But instinctively, we want to say that they belong together. It's not just because they were both great men, and not because they happen to be exact coevals. Rather, it's because the scientist and the politician each touched off a revolution that changed the world....
Stein et al.deftly allow the paladins of Darwin in today’s academy to make fools of themselves by putting on display their own comical pomposity, bigotry and lack of credible answers to the most basic questions. One by one, pop culture’s leading lights of Darwinism and scientific atheism, so accustomed to being carried hither and yon on the cushy sedan chair of media adulation, are seen ranting, smugly pontificating, or stumbling and bumbling in Stein’s hot seat. Richard Dawkins of Oxford, Daniel Dennett of Tufts, William Provine of Cornell, an almost self-parodically school marmish Eugenie Scott at the “National Center for Science Education” (a think tank that oversees Darwinian orthodoxy in the public schools), Michael Ruse of Florida State, P. Z. Myers of the University of Minnesota - all of them cooperate handily in making the case against themselves by simply speaking unguardedly to the camera. The last few minutes of the film are worth the price of admission: Stein makes an absolute FOOL of Dawkins, the reigning pope of the Church of Darwin, with nothing more than a few simple questions and a double take!
MH: Science works on a different MO than Religion. Questions need to be asked if only to get the discussion out of the way for the next question. In Religion there are a few solid unassailable concepts, while to have unassailable concepts in Science invites the widely known and much complained about (especially by Prots)Gallileo and Capericus scandals. The only reason for a Science that is shackled by constipated thinking is Tyranny. MH...interested in tyranny?
GG wrote: Lincoln is rightly or wrongly credited with ending slavery in the US and he is an icon in the fight against slavery even today. Darwin broke the old mind-set of the past and caused science to take another look at the facts. Which more important ending human misery or human ignorance? God knows!
GG Darwin did NOT contribute to ending human ignorance but contributed much to increasing it.
Lincoln is rightly or wrongly credited with ending slavery in the US and he is an icon in the fight against slavery even today. Darwin broke the old mind-set of the past and caused science to take another look at the facts. Which more important ending human misery or human ignorance? God knows!
Jefferson Davis attended Transylvania College which is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
It is not a Roman Catholic institution.
Jefferson Davis belonged to the Episcopal church. He walked to St. John's Episcopal Church while living in Montgomery.
President Davis's pastor in Richmond, Dr.Minnigerode wrote this:
"He[Davis] never failed to be there unless he was sick or away from town."
And if the Pope appealing to the Federal government for President Davis's release makes him an "almost Catholic" I pray that if you ever get thrown in jail unjustly, that Pope Benedict will appeal for your release. Then the same could be said of you.
You need to go back and do your homework on President Davis. See if you can find out who Jim Limber was.
Jim Lincoln wrote: Lincoln a locality and not name...though it would be no dishonor to bear it.
Yes, but as ANY of us derive our Patronymic ultimately from ADAM, and we DO bear THAT dishonor:thus my scepticism of the "lionizing" of Lincoln (a sinner,BUT Darwin was WORSE by FAR).
Lincoln Reconsidered Lincoln enthusiastically embraced (and orchestrated) the secession of western Virginia (a slave state) when it joined the Union. And on January 12, 1848, he announced that "any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. . . . Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." Don’t look for this quote, though, in any of the materials produced by the Declaration Foundation."
Lincoln’s career-long goal, which he clung to until the day he died, was colonization – to send every last black person in the U.S. to Africa, Central America, Haiti – anywhere but the U.S.
Are we to believe, then, that resupplying a Federal fort in the harbor of a seceded state constitutes an act of aggression against it? Lincoln didn't call for troops until *after* Sumter's surrender.
Jim Lincoln wrote: Mike that great Southerner, Andrew Jackson, stopped the nonsense of succession by South Carolina about 30 years before Ol' Abe had to do it more forcefully. As you probably gathered Engineer, Lincoln is a locality and not my name, though it would be no dishonor to bear it. However, there was infamous American neo-Nazi who had that last name, and he certainly did a disservice to it.
Jim,
We may call secession nonsense if we wish, however subjective the calling. But the issue is whether South Carolina, or any other State, was forbidden by the Constitution from leaving the Union. If they were not forbidden, Abe assumed and abused his authority by doing "it more forcefully." See Amendment 10.
It is also not surprising that Andrew "Our federal Union - It must be preserved" Jackson, the introducer of the spoils system, would feel that way. This same Jackson viewed nullification of Federal laws by States as treason, when treason is clearly defined by the Constitution as something else entirely. But hey, we can't let a little thing like the law of the land stand in the way of a grab for power and control, can we?
My, doesn't preserve the "FEDERAL Union" sound noble?
Mike that great Southerner, Andrew Jackson, stopped the nonsense of succession by South Carolina about 30 years before Ol' Abe had to do it more forcefully.
As you probably gathered Engineer, Lincoln is a locality and not my name, though it would be no dishonor to bear it. However, there was infamous American neo-Nazi who had that last name, and he certainly did a disservice to it.
Does the Constitution say colonies or territories that voluntarily joined the Union as States, had no right to voluntarily leave the Union, and if they did, the Federal govt. could forcibly prevent them from doing so?
Bill, I know my facts about Jefferson Davis. He went to a Catholic school when he was young, and he was close enough to being Catholic that the proto-Nazi Pope, sent him a crown of thorns when he was in prison. Pope Pius IX, was a very big supporter of the Confederacy. Other sources pointed out that Jeff Davis, knew about the Lincoln assassination also, Lincoln's prophetic warning, go down to that topic in the article and you will get some very useful information.
I'm glad to see Neil backed on the forum. Yes, the South wanted to be free to have slavery. The Northern abolitionist was a big supporter of the Civil War. Lincoln did come to realize that he had to support the abolition of slavery and to use black manpower for troops. As Neil pointed out, even the South tried to use blacks in their military near the end of the war.
Mike, you are correct. Slavery became AN issue, but wasn't the issue. The textiles of the north needed the south's cotton. So when the south wanted to seceede, the north wasn't going to let that happen since they needed their cheap cotton.
Actually, emancipation was suggested to Lincoln a year before from a senetor from Missouri (if I am not mistaken. If so, I would like to be corrected). Loncoln didn't think it was the right time to propose emancipation.
curious, you are correct. That Northern motives may have changed during the War is beside the point. It was the *politics* of slavery that troubled the US for the preceding 40 yrs or so. As more States got added, Southerners feared an excess of free states would lead to national abolition. Only a series of cleverly-devised compromises kept the peace, but events of the late 1850's caused this to unravel. The master Congressional compromisers were dead by then.
Underlying all this, of course, were cultural attitudes (N & S) towards blacks, the American "pariah" caste. It is not well known that Robert E. Lee, near the end, proposed enlisting black soldiers to redress his manpower shortage, but Davis wouldn't "go there." That speaks volumes - better to lose than fight alongside blacks. And there was a quarrel in the North about whether black soldiers deserved comparable pay.
curious wrote: But wasn't slavery the key issue that drove the southern states to secede?
No, it became the "key" issue that provided the rallying support the North needed to continue an unpopular war against other Americans. The preservation of the Union became less important as more blood flowed. Few of the Southerners in the war had slaves of their own. They weren't fighting for slavery.
Also consider- Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, touted as setting the slaves free, and taking effect on 1/1/1863, only freed slaves held in secessionist States. It didn't apply to slaves held in states that were loyal to the Union.
Commander - "I hardly think Aleander Stephens had Darwin's theories in mind when he wrote what he did in his cornerstone speech."
Of course not! I only mentioned Darwinism in passing, so you misrepresented me. Racism was by no means restricted to the South - the North had many "Jim Crow"-style restrictions on "free" blacks. The US Constitution Art. 4 Sect. 2 logically implied legalized slavery (which was made explicit in the CSA Constitution). That was a fatal & wicked compromise. As Lincoln said, you can't have a nation half-slave & half-free.
This is why I believe the Civil War was a divine judgement upon *both* sides for tolerating or practicing this evil.
I hardly think Aleander Stephens had Darwin's theories in mind when he wrote what he did in his cornerstone speech. The Origin of Species was barely known in America in 1861. Americans and Europeans commonly held the view that other cultures throughout the world were inferior to their own. Even Abraham Lincoln held this view. These other cultures, no doubt, thought the same of us. Missionaries of that era taught their converts that to be Christian was to live like Europeans or Americans. Only in the late 19th century did missonaries began to teach people of other cultures to express Christ in that culture's terms. So, you're incorrect to link Vice President Stephens's remarks to Darwin. President Lincoln did not start his illegal war against southern states to free the slaves. I'll close by letting him tell you himself why he started this war in an open letter to Horace Greely: "My paramount object in the struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."
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