Now I see that you've commented twice - is it all right if I forgo reading the links? Or perhaps you'll give me one - one link that matters most.
> If evolution was outside godly intervention, why does it not lead to supermen or infinitely deadly bacteria?
Mother is mindless, not like The Heavenly Father above. She does her best, but She has no consciousnesses, unless such should arise somehow from the collective mind of us all.
The basic rule of evolution is "survival of the fittest". That would imply either supermen or superbacteria, both evolving fairly quickly. Neither exist. Only a certain Noahide promise makes sense of the world we live in.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, The fittest shall survive. But I say unto you, Blessed are those systems which renew and reproduce themselves, for the future belongs to them.
"There is an evolutionary trade off between virus virulence and virus transmission. A virulent virus does a lot of damage to its host, and produces a lot of offspring. However, if the host's illness prevents the host from coming into contact that new hosts that the virus could jump to, the virus actually has relatively low evolutionary fitness. In contrast, a virus that is less virulent could infect far more hosts because the hosts are well enough to come in contact with many other potential hosts."
We've seen this very recently with COVID's declining virulence.
You've got your feminist history wrong. Quite a few of the first-wave feminists were specifically and verbosely anti-abortion. Abortion as a feminist issue didn't really take off until the second-wave feminists came in. (Abortion was a thing before second-wave feminism, but it was explicitly eugenic; read Margaret Sanger's early texts.)
So looking carefully, in fact it does appear that *at least* Victoria Woodhull seemed pro-choice; I updated the article to say "earlier waves of feminism" rather than just "early feminism."
Sadly, the topic has become rather muddled by politicized opinions lately, and it's hard to ignore prominent sites like this:
"Without known exception, every first-wave feminist who spoke out on abortion strongly opposed it. Some addressed the unmet needs of women driven to abortion; others focused on the children threatened by it; and all expressed intense and unwavering opposition to it."
This is simply not true - insofar as we can trust *anything* we read, plenty of first-wave feminists, like Margaret Sanger, Hedwig Dohm, and the infamous Mr. A, had explicitly pro-choice views. I'm also not able to verify any suffragettes besides Woodhull who were against abortion (the above page insists there are many, but lists none). The fact that Planned Parenthood *began* during the first wave tends to suggest that first-wave feminism really was pro-choice. Still, so long as we can find at least *one* feminist who can be verified as pro-life, we can at least say that abortion was controversial within the first wave of feminism.
I've read a fair amount of the history of feminism, but I don't have any sources to hand; however, a bing search for "first wave feminists opposed to feminism" yielded this:
which, sadly, is paywalled, but the second paragraph says:
"Among American feminists in the nineteenth century opposition to abortion was widespread. Prominent feminists of the period who opposed it included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Anthony and Alice Paul."
I agree with your final statement that abortion was controversial in first-wave feminism.
Bing? Good for you! Most people seem not to know anything besides Google even exists anymore. I love duckduckgo.
Susab B Anthony has often been claimed to have had pro-life positions; I've never seen any, and don't really believe that she was. I've never heard of Alice Paul, and can't find anything about her regarding abortion.
But later in life she wrote the Woman's Bible, a secular work where she denounced the idea that anyone even spoke with God; she ultimately said things like "I am in the sunset of life, and I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear, instead of echoing worn-out opinions." https://archive.org/details/eightyyearsandm00stangoog/page/372/mode/2up Was Stanton pro-life? For a while, at least.
I'm aware of Sanger's eugenic attitudes, but it's interesting if there was a significant contingent of first wave feminists who were anti-abortion. I'll look into this; can you provide a good source?
I instinctively liked Not Genesis 1:1-26. It was very pleasant. Why not? I can't se why it would be unscientific.
Have you read anything by Simone Weil? She tried very, very hard to sort out the entirely religious aspects from Christianity and leave the rest to science.
Well I'm glad to have enlivened your day by quoting books that don't exist!
Unfortunately though, I haven't read Weil yet. I'm still frustrated that all of my materials on anthropology (and thus horticulturalism, and eventually, the Yanomamö) are gone, and completely unfindable. This is what I get for surviving past my university degree. :/
I miss my old book. I didn't buy it for a class. I don't remember the title. It had a black cover, and it said beautiful, beautiful things about Horticulturalists building the Great Wall, and about Maritime societies being distinctive from Pastoralists, Fishers, Agriculturalists, and everybody else in their reliance on trade as a subsistence technology. But I didn't treasure it the way that I should. I left it somewhere, somewhere far away in the distant North, in a messy apartment protected by the echoing howls of the midnight wolves, and now Santa Claus has it, forever.
I reject the idea of a conflict between religion and science; see my posts on this:
https://eharding.substack.com/p/why-does-russian-physical-therapy
https://eharding.substack.com/p/why-not-infinite-contagion
https://eharding.substack.com/p/regress-studies
If evolution was outside godly intervention, why does it not lead to supermen or infinitely deadly bacteria?
Now I see that you've commented twice - is it all right if I forgo reading the links? Or perhaps you'll give me one - one link that matters most.
> If evolution was outside godly intervention, why does it not lead to supermen or infinitely deadly bacteria?
Mother is mindless, not like The Heavenly Father above. She does her best, but She has no consciousnesses, unless such should arise somehow from the collective mind of us all.
The basic rule of evolution is "survival of the fittest". That would imply either supermen or superbacteria, both evolving fairly quickly. Neither exist. Only a certain Noahide promise makes sense of the world we live in.
Read the first link if you are to read any.
All right, I think I understand you better, now.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, The fittest shall survive. But I say unto you, Blessed are those systems which renew and reproduce themselves, for the future belongs to them.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/teach-resources/virus-evolution-and-virulence/
"There is an evolutionary trade off between virus virulence and virus transmission. A virulent virus does a lot of damage to its host, and produces a lot of offspring. However, if the host's illness prevents the host from coming into contact that new hosts that the virus could jump to, the virus actually has relatively low evolutionary fitness. In contrast, a virus that is less virulent could infect far more hosts because the hosts are well enough to come in contact with many other potential hosts."
We've seen this very recently with COVID's declining virulence.
You've got your feminist history wrong. Quite a few of the first-wave feminists were specifically and verbosely anti-abortion. Abortion as a feminist issue didn't really take off until the second-wave feminists came in. (Abortion was a thing before second-wave feminism, but it was explicitly eugenic; read Margaret Sanger's early texts.)
So looking carefully, in fact it does appear that *at least* Victoria Woodhull seemed pro-choice; I updated the article to say "earlier waves of feminism" rather than just "early feminism."
Sadly, the topic has become rather muddled by politicized opinions lately, and it's hard to ignore prominent sites like this:
https://www.feministsforlife.org/the-american-feminist-entitled-first-wave-feminists-remarkable-pro-life-women-and-other-suffragists-you-should-know/
"Without known exception, every first-wave feminist who spoke out on abortion strongly opposed it. Some addressed the unmet needs of women driven to abortion; others focused on the children threatened by it; and all expressed intense and unwavering opposition to it."
This is simply not true - insofar as we can trust *anything* we read, plenty of first-wave feminists, like Margaret Sanger, Hedwig Dohm, and the infamous Mr. A, had explicitly pro-choice views. I'm also not able to verify any suffragettes besides Woodhull who were against abortion (the above page insists there are many, but lists none). The fact that Planned Parenthood *began* during the first wave tends to suggest that first-wave feminism really was pro-choice. Still, so long as we can find at least *one* feminist who can be verified as pro-life, we can at least say that abortion was controversial within the first wave of feminism.
I've read a fair amount of the history of feminism, but I don't have any sources to hand; however, a bing search for "first wave feminists opposed to feminism" yielded this:
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feminism-and-abortion
which, sadly, is paywalled, but the second paragraph says:
"Among American feminists in the nineteenth century opposition to abortion was widespread. Prominent feminists of the period who opposed it included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Anthony and Alice Paul."
I agree with your final statement that abortion was controversial in first-wave feminism.
Bing? Good for you! Most people seem not to know anything besides Google even exists anymore. I love duckduckgo.
Susab B Anthony has often been claimed to have had pro-life positions; I've never seen any, and don't really believe that she was. I've never heard of Alice Paul, and can't find anything about her regarding abortion.
The most interesting case is probably Elizabeth Stanton, because of the way her views evolved over time. Early on, she did seem to have been clearly against abortion, and she had very Christian attitudes which you can see here: https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/stanton-elizabeth-cady-primary-sources
But later in life she wrote the Woman's Bible, a secular work where she denounced the idea that anyone even spoke with God; she ultimately said things like "I am in the sunset of life, and I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear, instead of echoing worn-out opinions." https://archive.org/details/eightyyearsandm00stangoog/page/372/mode/2up Was Stanton pro-life? For a while, at least.
I'm aware of Sanger's eugenic attitudes, but it's interesting if there was a significant contingent of first wave feminists who were anti-abortion. I'll look into this; can you provide a good source?
Niels Bohr is misspelled / The Scandinavian
I instinctively liked Not Genesis 1:1-26. It was very pleasant. Why not? I can't se why it would be unscientific.
Have you read anything by Simone Weil? She tried very, very hard to sort out the entirely religious aspects from Christianity and leave the rest to science.
Well I'm glad to have enlivened your day by quoting books that don't exist!
Unfortunately though, I haven't read Weil yet. I'm still frustrated that all of my materials on anthropology (and thus horticulturalism, and eventually, the Yanomamö) are gone, and completely unfindable. This is what I get for surviving past my university degree. :/
Now it exists... or at least a very small part of it.
Why don't you do like normal people and steal books at Z-lib? I also have one anthropology textbook on paper and it always gets lost. Big mistake!
I miss my old book. I didn't buy it for a class. I don't remember the title. It had a black cover, and it said beautiful, beautiful things about Horticulturalists building the Great Wall, and about Maritime societies being distinctive from Pastoralists, Fishers, Agriculturalists, and everybody else in their reliance on trade as a subsistence technology. But I didn't treasure it the way that I should. I left it somewhere, somewhere far away in the distant North, in a messy apartment protected by the echoing howls of the midnight wolves, and now Santa Claus has it, forever.
*Despondently goes to Z-lib to find another book*