Although, that IS a pretty elegant summation of the ID mindset.
Oh, just to answer the actual thread, I always assumed that their vegetarianism would make New Agers weak, and therefore less of a threat than creationists.
On the other hand, if New Agers continue thin their own numbers this way, then all we’re seeing is evolution in action, and your descendants may be rid of them. Creationists, on the other hand, are breeding like flies and, as their principles against evolution only apply until one of them gets sick and needs a treatment developed by evil scientists that believe in evolution, we can only hope for education to overcome them.
To be fair, he’s responding to the assertion that it’s necessary to accept evolution in order to do anything even remotely related to biology.
Of course, saying that 95% of biology can be done without touching on evolution goes a step beyond simply challenging an assertion, so.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Marx, Engels, and Trotsky were frank admirers of Darwin and his theory of evolution. Engels picked up a copy of The Origin of Species when it first appeared in 1859 and had this to say scarcely a month later:
Two years later, in the middle of writing Vol. 1 of Capital - a copy of which he sent to Darwin, inscribed “on the part of his sincere admirer” - Marx comments on Darwin thus:
This was no passing fancy, either; Trotsky, writing on dialectical materialism almost eighty years later in 1939, said:
And here is Lenin, at the very beginning of his political career in 1894:
Lysenkoism didn’t arise in the Soviet Union because of generalized Communist ideological antipathy to Darwin’s theories, but because Stalin was a fucking criminal and a BINO.
Stupid people can’t handle complexity. 
Competition is only a part of Darwinian evolution. There is no mutation. It’s a very good analogy, though. I mostly agree with you.
I’m sure your mother loves you very much and hope you’ll have good supper tonight.
HIJACK: Whatever makes you happy.
CHALLENGE: I detect the presence of domestic fowl. Your refusal doesn’t prove I’m right, it only proves your inability to rise to it even though you say it’s so essential to know evolution and I imagine you could put your money where your mouth was. Classic cyber-tough guy
YOUR CHALLENGE: Sorry , first come first serve…poor thing, I’m crazy and retarded and you still can beat a very simple question.
It was a number with no expectation of real accuracy. I wasn’t hoping it’d get published in Science.
A method of my chosing of course, but it’s so simple I didn’t think the brigth progressive minds could not rise to something so vrey simple.
You can’t even accuse me of dodging.
If my answer were “God decided to make His creatures similar in many awe-inspiring ways to help us save lives” I could see the point of the spinal-chord research you do without Wallace and stem-cell without Darwin. It’d not very scientific, but you would still do the resaerch and get the results.
Your kind of research is the kind that accept Evolution as an axiom, but don’r really use it anymore. If you know that, say, guinea pig reitnas work like hyuman retinas you KNOW (because it’s tru) that common ancesntry and evolution give you the reason; but in the actual research you already know that so it’s no worry for you.
Dude.
If you can’t address the specific, concrete issues relevant to the discussion, and instead invent some stupid, irrelevant challenge–“I can’t make my case, but here’s a hoop for you to jump through!”–WTF? And you’re the only one who doesn’t see that this only makes YOU look stupid?
You refuse to understand the basic facts underlying this discussion: that practically none of the knowledge that a modern biologist has would exist without an understanding of evolution; that many of the processes he deals with require an understanding of evolution; and that there’s no way in hell to get far enough in your biological education to call yourself a “physiologist” without gaining an understanding of evolution. It’s exactly the same thing as asking if someone can be an engineer who builds bridges without “believing” in the laws of physics.
Only by the most bizarre and retarded internet message board logic–“See, there’s the guy, he’s an engineer, he designs bridges, but see aliens zap his brain and suddenly he doesn’t believe in the laws of physics; can he still go through the motions of his job?”–that’s how retarded your position is. If people refuse to “rise” (if that’s the word; I say not) to your hilariously irrelevant challenge, it’s because it’s completely obvious that your “challenge” is nothing more than a distraction from the fact that you’ve painted yourself into a corner and your “argument” doesn’t have a leg to stand on. And what makes this all especially entertaining is that this all stems from your refusal to simply admit that you misread, or failed to read, a part of the thread. Unless you’re a troll and you’re just doing this as an exercise to see how long you can keep some idiot like me typing at you.
And weren’t around when Lysenkoism became prominent. Ideologies do change over time, you know.
“BINO”?
No; it arose because it fit the Communist ideal of the time that they were reshaping the people of the USSR into a new kind of human, “New Soviet Man”. Darwinism didn’t allow for the transmission of acquired characteristics, which meant reshaping human nature by manipulating society and propaganda wouldn’t work, at least not for a very long time. Plus, Gregor Mendel was a priest and Nazi Germany was into a twisted version of Darwinism; both tainted Darwinian evolution in Soviet eyes. So it was therefore declared against Communism.
I think it’s that stuff you take before eating cabbage so you don’t get gas.
After a few moments’ thought, I have deduced that that means “Bolshevist in Name Only,” in parallel to RINO–“Republican in Name Only.” Olentzero is one of those people confused about the purpose of written communication.
Tack on “the rest is commentary” somewhere and you will have done for all recorded human history what Hillel’s synopsis did for Jewish laws.
Okay, so let’s presume, for the sake of argument, that you’re right. (Not that you are, but I’d rather not touch that argument). Next question: why on earth would all the scientists be utterly incurious and apathetic about the question of biological development? They would have no reason to–if biologists are doing research that presumes similarities between animals (as you specified), you’d better believe that they’d be investigating the underlying reasons as to why they’re similar in the first place! Even if evolution wasn’t necessary, it would still be discovered, and applied. What you are arguing for is, quite simply, the validity of a stupid hypotheicalLand.
Who said they would be incurious? I said that, for a creationist, his curiosity would be satisfied. For that gigantically great super majority who are not creationsits they would continue their research.
But even in the "worst"case scenario (i.e. most or all biologist suddenly become creationists) they would still be able to recognise the similarities and work with them. Are there creationists who deny the biological similiarites between living creatures?
If I were doing research on a new organ transplant technique and I were using pigs to test it, and I saw in my practice and that of others that it worked, why wouls I need the knowledge (in purely practical terms) that humans and pigs evolved from a 200 million year old rat?).
I’ve read my fair share of biological and medical research, and most of them didn’t mention evolution. Many of them ASSUMED evolution but really didn’t need it.
Where do you think the competing strains come from?
New Agers may be aggressively ignorant, but they seem pretty laid back about the whole thing. Great spirit? Crystal vibrations? Whatever! They’re also usually OK with drugs and loose morales in general. In other words, fun folk. At least in my experience.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously! Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo!
What’s so hard to understand about that?!
You do deduce largely correctly, however; it was a small attempt at a joke playing on other Dopers’ usage of RINO and DINO. (‘Bolshevik’ instead of ‘Bolshevist’.)
Trotsky was around (though not in the Soviet Union) when Lysenkoism arose, and to offer the praise of Darwin he did shortly before the end of his life when Lysenkoism ruled the USSR indicates, to me at least, that its acceptance was not a change in Communist ideology but a rejection of it.
I’ll go out on a limb…competition?
As to the OP, what I most hate about the New-Agers is how not only they ix from every philophy, religion and traditional medicine, but how the do it in sometimes contradictory ways, like using colours an candles to call Christian angels while praying to a Buddha statue.
Wow.
Yes. BECAUSE evolution is assumed, they DON’T need to mention it.
100000000%agreed