Tony Perkins: Teaching Evolution Contributes to Mass Shootings

[pbrower2a]

He's half right. Evolution doesn't have anything to do with it, but the idea that people have inherent worth (whether that's from being made in God's image or any secular reason) is on the decline, which does play a role in the increase in mass shootings (as a lot of other factors do).

No. See Japan.

Of course, Japan is a conformist  and repressive (on everything except politics) society, and neither Buddhism not Shinto shows tolerance for violence.

Buddhism says little about Creation, and the Creation myth (it was practically lifted from Babylonian sources) is something that most Jews and Christians no longer take seriously -- about as much as both take such advice as "suffer not a witch to live" seriously.

(an aside: I am contemplating writing a play in which the Devil is the star in a one-character play... and I am going to give the Evil One culpability for the witch persecutions because injustice is very much a part of the Devil's repertory. Why the Devil? He is the greatest adventurer of all time, bigger than a fictional Indiana Jones. Think of the potential of an entity who can be in the war room and the trenches at the same time, someone who has existed from antiquity, someone who can bend ethnicity and gender at will, and someone of infinite cleverness, and someone who can imitate the Voice of God if he so chooses. I can have him as a street thug and a tycoon at once). 

[Progressive Pessimist]

He can say whatever he wants; the rest of us know that these shootings are really happening because they replaced the lime Skittles with apple.

You sir, are wrong! It's the purple Skittle that's the issue. We're the only country where it's grape flavored. Everywhere else in the world it's blackcurrant.

[GP270watch]

 Science is dangerous but semi-automatic weapons with a nearly endless supply of ammo, that's just a freedom!

[Bojack Horseman]

This isn’t an uncommon view among the religious right. Brian Rohrbough, the father of a Columbine victim and Alan Keyes’ running mate in 2008 claims that evolution must be false and shootings happen because the schools teach those wicked things. Eric Harris wire a t-shirt that said “Natural Selection” during the shooting, so clearly if evolution was real then kids with weapons would be running around killing each other because they’ve got the superior traits.

Anti-intellectualism at its finest.

[Badger]

This isn’t an uncommon view among the religious right. Brian Rohrbough, the father of a Columbine victim and Alan Keyes’ running mate in 2008 claims that evolution must be false and shootings happen because the schools teach those wicked things. Eric Harris wire a t-shirt that said “Natural Selection” during the shooting, so clearly if evolution was real then kids with weapons would be running around killing each other because they’ve got the superior traits.

Anti-intellectualism at its finest.

Indeed, we've seen at least two posters in this thread, while not tying shootings directly to teaching evolution, directly to a moral failing based on our Nations fair to live as a non secular christianized Nation.

Having the laxest gun control laws in the developed world is merely a coincidence.

[Hammy]

Everything contributes to mass shootings except the tools used in mass shootings--it's pure coincidence easily available high-powered rifles that can spray a large volume of bullets in seconds are the weapon of choice for people who want to inflict maximum casualties.

[T'Chenka]

Republican gun lovers need to read up on Occam's Razor before they spout off about video games or mental health.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You know the ironic thing is, Perkins might have a leg to stand on, if at the same time he criticized the social Darwinism of lassiez faire, which leads to isolation and detachment from community, family and society when left to its most extreme ends.

We don't have economic policies that reflect the desire to build and stabilize family and community ties, we instead have the opposite.

That being said, I love evolutionary biology and natural science and find it fascinating to study.

[RI]

You know the ironic thing is, Perkins might have a leg to stand on, if at the same time he criticized the social Darwinism of lassiez faire, which leads to isolation and detachment from community, family and society when left to its most extreme ends.

We don't have economic policies that reflect the desire to build and stabilize family and community ties, we instead have the opposite.

That being said, I love evolutionary biology and natural science and find it fascinating to study.

Wouldn't it be great to have a party which was pro-community, pro-family, and viewed each human life as a source for good in the world?

[T'Chenka]

You know the ironic thing is, Perkins might have a leg to stand on, if at the same time he criticized the social Darwinism of lassiez faire, which leads to isolation and detachment from community, family and society when left to its most extreme ends.

We don't have economic policies that reflect the desire to build and stabilize family and community ties, we instead have the opposite.

That being said, I love evolutionary biology and natural science and find it fascinating to study.

Wouldn't it be great to have a party which was pro-community, pro-family, and viewed each human life as a source for good in the world?

"Pro family" is VERY disturbing code talk that originally meant - and still means to an extent - anti-gay, anti-divorce, anti-feminist. Which is extremely disturbing for an American political party, as imposing limits legally on those rhibgs violate the Constitution and American values.

Liberals are ACTUALLY pro-family too. Kids should ideally have 2 parents if possible. Almost everybody on the planet is pro-family.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

You know the ironic thing is, Perkins might have a leg to stand on, if at the same time he criticized the social Darwinism of lassiez faire, which leads to isolation and detachment from community, family and society when left to its most extreme ends.

We don't have economic policies that reflect the desire to build and stabilize family and community ties, we instead have the opposite.

That being said, I love evolutionary biology and natural science and find it fascinating to study.

Wouldn't it be great to have a party which was pro-community, pro-family, and viewed each human life as a source for good in the world?

"Pro family" is VERY disturbing code talk that originally meant - and still means to an extent - anti-gay, anti-divorce, anti-feminist. Which is extremely disturbing for an American political party, as imposing limits legally on those rhibgs violate the Constitution and American values.

Liberals are ACTUALLY pro-family too. Kids should ideally have 2 parents if possible. Almost everybody on the planet is pro-family.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/04/dan-quayle-was-right/307015/

One benefit of the regime effect is to create greater equality in adult family relationships. Husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, enjoy relationships far more egalitarian than past relationships were, and most Americans prefer it that way. But the political principles of the regime effect can threaten another kind of family relationship--that between parent and child. Owing to their biological and developmental immaturity, children are needy dependents. They are not able to express their choices according to limited, easily terminable, voluntary agreements. They are not able to act as negotiators in family decisions, even those that most affect their own interests. As one writer has put it, "a newborn does not make a good 'partner.'" Correspondingly, the parental role is antithetical to the spirit of the regime. Parental investment in children involves a diminished investment in self, a willing deference to the needs and claims of the dependent child. Perhaps more than any other family relationship, the parent-child relationship--shaped as it is by patterns of dependency and deference--can be undermined and weakened by the principles of the regime.

The article I posted describes, very much, my view on family, and what "pro-family" means, as far as I am concerned.

To be pro-family means to encourage behaviors that recognize that, in the aggregate, the two-parent nuclear biological family is, indeed, the best possible unit of family organization, in terms of outcomes of children.  To be pro-family means to accept the overwhelming body of data that supports that conclusion with the same zeal that they accept the data that suggests that Climate Change is real and human behavior adds to that trend.  To be pro-family means to recognize that the interests of adults are often in direct conflict with the interests of children, and that what contributes to the happiness of adults often detracts from the happiness of children.  And to truly be pro-family is to recognize that children are vested in the relationship their parents share, and to encourage public policy that encourages the formation of biological marital families (and, honestly, to discourage purely single parenting, divorce, and cohabitation) for the reason that such institutions do not produce the sort of outcomes, in the aggregate, that the marital biological family produces.

Is that ideal always possible?  Of course not.  There are many instances where separation and divorce ought to happen, due to behavioral dysfunction.  But should two people who've "fallen out of love" be persuaded to stay together "for the sake of the children"?  By and large, yes; that's part of being an unselfish adult (and, in many cases, part of being realistic).  While it was once almost impossible for a couple to divorce, even under the worst of circumstances, it has, IMO, certainly become too easy, and children are paying the price.  And this doesn't even begin to deal with the issues that arise from cohabiting couples, and purely single parents (who often find themselves in ongoing poverty). 

The term "pro-family" has a specific meaning.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You know the ironic thing is, Perkins might have a leg to stand on, if at the same time he criticized the social Darwinism of lassiez faire, which leads to isolation and detachment from community, family and society when left to its most extreme ends.

We don't have economic policies that reflect the desire to build and stabilize family and community ties, we instead have the opposite.

That being said, I love evolutionary biology and natural science and find it fascinating to study.

Wouldn't it be great to have a party which was pro-community, pro-family, and viewed each human life as a source for good in the world?

"Pro family" is VERY disturbing code talk that originally meant - and still means to an extent - anti-gay, anti-divorce, anti-feminist. Which is extremely disturbing for an American political party, as imposing limits legally on those rhibgs violate the Constitution and American values.

Liberals are ACTUALLY pro-family too. Kids should ideally have 2 parents if possible. Almost everybody on the planet is pro-family.

Lassiez Faire has destroyed more families than all the gays that have ever lived. If you are not going to tangibly create an economic environment that is beneficial to the family, then the very political incentives moves towards finding scapegoats for destroying the family, which is inevitably is Gays and Women.

Divorce is in some cases a symptom of financial hardship. Again the failure to resolve those hardships, leads to divorce and then it is brain dead politicians who blame the divorce itself and want to restrict those laws.

You know the funny thing about both of these scenarios, is that none of them are actually "helping the family" when they do that and thus it is hard to call them pro-family. They are only pro-family to the extent that it gains them votes by blaming scapegoats for problems they themselves caused with their economic policies.

Even more so when you throw in mass incarceration, war, the war on drugs, deregulation of wall street and many other policies that have directly or indirectly broken up families or put them under severe financial strain. 

You pour your life savings and years of hard work to build a business only to have it wiped out because a bunch of paper pushers suddenly lost 5 trillion dollars and the economy tanks. You did everything right but some jack wagon has the balls to say that is just the market doing its thing, meanwhile the paper pushers get golden parachutes. No. Just No

Capitalism needs to have its excesses reigned in to make it work for the benefit of the people, the market is not some holy alter to be prayed it and every decision made to suit its benefit. It is to be shaped to benefit the county and the people who live in it. We should bar people from doing business with rogue states for national security reasons or to achieve a diplomatic solution to a brewing crisis. We should keep Wall Street's excess from wrecking the main street economy and we should ensure that families have stable incomes and that the tax code is structured to help them, that the schools are improving not being gutted and that health care is affordable and accessible. The difference between Conservatism and Liberalism should be over how best to accomplish these objectives not whether or not to even try.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

He's half right. Evolution doesn't have anything to do with it, but the idea that people have inherent worth (whether that's from being made in God's image or any secular reason) is on the decline, which does play a role in the increase in mass shootings (as a lot of other factors do).

No. See Japan.

What about Japan?

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

You know the ironic thing is, Perkins might have a leg to stand on, if at the same time he criticized the social Darwinism of lassiez faire, which leads to isolation and detachment from community, family and society when left to its most extreme ends.

We don't have economic policies that reflect the desire to build and stabilize family and community ties, we instead have the opposite.

That being said, I love evolutionary biology and natural science and find it fascinating to study.

Wouldn't it be great to have a party which was pro-community, pro-family, and viewed each human life as a source for good in the world?

"Pro family" is VERY disturbing code talk that originally meant - and still means to an extent - anti-gay, anti-divorce, anti-feminist. Which is extremely disturbing for an American political party, as imposing limits legally on those rhibgs violate the Constitution and American values.

Liberals are ACTUALLY pro-family too. Kids should ideally have 2 parents if possible. Almost everybody on the planet is pro-family.

Lassiez Faire has destroyed more families than all the gays that have ever lived. If you are not going to tangibly create an economic environment that is beneficial to the family, then the very political incentives moves towards finding scapegoats for destroying the family, which is inevitably is Gays and Women.

Divorce is in some cases a symptom of financial hardship. Again the failure to resolve those hardships, leads to divorce and then it is brain dead politicians who blame the divorce itself and want to restrict those laws.

You know the funny thing about both of these scenarios, is that none of them are actually "helping the family" when they do that and thus it is hard to call them pro-family. They are only pro-family to the extent that it gains them votes by blaming scapegoats for problems they themselves caused with their economic policies.

Even more so when you throw in mass incarceration, war, the war on drugs, deregulation of wall street and many other policies that have directly or indirectly broken up families or put them under severe financial strain. 

You pour your life savings and years of hard work to build a business only to have it wiped out because a bunch of paper pushers suddenly lost 5 trillion dollars and the economy tanks. You did everything right but some jack wagon has the balls to say that is just the market doing its thing, meanwhile the paper pushers get golden parachutes. No. Just No

Capitalism needs to have its excesses reigned in to make it work for the benefit of the people, the market is not some holy alter to be prayed it and every decision made to suit its benefit. It is to be shaped to benefit the county and the people who live in it. We should bar people from doing business with rogue states for national security reasons or to achieve a diplomatic solution to a brewing crisis. We should keep Wall Street's excess from wrecking the main street economy and we should ensure that families have stable incomes and that the tax code is structured to help them, that the schools are improving not being gutted and that health care is affordable and accessible. The difference between Conservatism and Liberalism should be over how best to accomplish these objectives not whether or not to even try.

I certainly agree with the highlighted posts in principle.  I would suggest that we don't have true "Laissez Faire" and true "Free Enterprise" in today's America.  "Free Enterprise" and "Laissez Faire" imply an economy where there are minimal barriers to entry and where there is competition.  I suppose that these days are gone for good.  Today's economy is such to where it is not truly "left alone"; forces make it easier for the biggest and create impossible barriers to entry to challenge the largest players.  It's why no one on Earth these days has the realistic potential to challenge Walmart. 

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Morality has across the ages been understood as related to the cosmos and the place of human beings in it.  The world's creation stories are fundamentally addressed to questions of identity, moral order, and the meaning of existence, more than any disinterested scientific or pre-scientific understanding.  Replacing a story that gives a more-or-less morally coherent meaning to life with one that doesn't will cause problems.  Nietzsche said that while the "Death of God" could be liberating for philosophical exploration, it could lead many people into nihilism. It's entirely possible that this nihilism could look different across various cultures and subcultures of a disenchanted modern world, depending on what substitutes for meaning these cultures provide, or habits of passivity or aggressiveness.  Some social environments may be more able than others to withstand or compensate for the destabilization of a loss of cosmic meaning. 

Perhaps evolutionary theory can be consistent with a life-affirming account of existence, but has that been developed, and is that accessible to people?

[Omega21]

Not surprising tbh, America gave birth to some weird sects.

Glad Europe kept it Vanilla with the 3 main branches.

[pbrower2a]

I accept evolution. I see myself no more violent than those supposed Christians who persecuted witches, slaughtered First Peoples, did the Atlantic slave trade, and beat slaves before anyone ever contemplated evolution.

[DINGO Joe]

I guess he's right.  Animals who haven't evolved opposable thumbs tend to be lousy shooters.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I guess he's right.  Animals who haven't evolved opposable thumbs tend to be lousy shooters.

At least until a 'Planet of the Apes' scenario happens.

[Badger]

You know the ironic thing is, Perkins might have a leg to stand on, if at the same time he criticized the social Darwinism of lassiez faire, which leads to isolation and detachment from community, family and society when left to its most extreme ends.

We don't have economic policies that reflect the desire to build and stabilize family and community ties, we instead have the opposite.

That being said, I love evolutionary biology and natural science and find it fascinating to study.

Wouldn't it be great to have a party which was pro-community, pro-family, and viewed each human life as a source for good in the world?

"Pro family" is VERY disturbing code talk that originally meant - and still means to an extent - anti-gay, anti-divorce, anti-feminist. Which is extremely disturbing for an American political party, as imposing limits legally on those rhibgs violate the Constitution and American values.

Liberals are ACTUALLY pro-family too. Kids should ideally have 2 parents if possible. Almost everybody on the planet is pro-family.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/04/dan-quayle-was-right/307015/

One benefit of the regime effect is to create greater equality in adult family relationships. Husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, enjoy relationships far more egalitarian than past relationships were, and most Americans prefer it that way. But the political principles of the regime effect can threaten another kind of family relationship--that between parent and child. Owing to their biological and developmental immaturity, children are needy dependents. They are not able to express their choices according to limited, easily terminable, voluntary agreements. They are not able to act as negotiators in family decisions, even those that most affect their own interests. As one writer has put it, "a newborn does not make a good 'partner.'" Correspondingly, the parental role is antithetical to the spirit of the regime. Parental investment in children involves a diminished investment in self, a willing deference to the needs and claims of the dependent child. Perhaps more than any other family relationship, the parent-child relationship--shaped as it is by patterns of dependency and deference--can be undermined and weakened by the principles of the regime.

The article I posted describes, very much, my view on family, and what "pro-family" means, as far as I am concerned.

To be pro-family means to encourage behaviors that recognize that, in the aggregate, the two-parent nuclear biological family is, indeed, the best possible unit of family organization, in terms of outcomes of children.  To be pro-family means to accept the overwhelming body of data that supports that conclusion with the same zeal that they accept the data that suggests that Climate Change is real and human behavior adds to that trend.  To be pro-family means to recognize that the interests of adults are often in direct conflict with the interests of children, and that what contributes to the happiness of adults often detracts from the happiness of children.  And to truly be pro-family is to recognize that children are vested in the relationship their parents share, and to encourage public policy that encourages the formation of biological marital families (and, honestly, to discourage purely single parenting, divorce, and cohabitation) for the reason that such institutions do not produce the sort of outcomes, in the aggregate, that the marital biological family produces.

Is that ideal always possible?  Of course not.  There are many instances where separation and divorce ought to happen, due to behavioral dysfunction.  But should two people who've "fallen out of love" be persuaded to stay together "for the sake of the children"?  By and large, yes; that's part of being an unselfish adult (and, in many cases, part of being realistic).  While it was once almost impossible for a couple to divorce, even under the worst of circumstances, it has, IMO, certainly become too easy, and children are paying the price.  And this doesn't even begin to deal with the issues that arise from cohabiting couples, and purely single parents (who often find themselves in ongoing poverty).  

The term "pro-family" has a specific meaning.

That article was stupid then and it is stupid now. It misses the fundamental Point, as did Dan Quayle, that party Harms the building block of a stable family more than the other way around. It conflates cause and effect, but serves as a lovely little talking point for social conservatives.

And once more, we have repeated pseudo-intellectual yammering throughout this post that fundamentally agree with Perkins thesis. That being, " you know, maybe if we had imposed Christian culture and theology as more of a litmus test for moral, social, and political advancement, rather than adopting secular Notions were people any faith can advance on an equal basis, maybe kids would be shooting each other up in school gosh darn it."

[Stranger in a strange land]

Did I step in a wormhole back to 1999? Last week, conservatives were blaming violent video games for mass shootings, and this week they're blaming evolution? I bet they'll find a way to blame Marilyn Manson for the next one.

[Person Man]

Who knows what they will blame next? Being uncircumcised? Drinking alcohol? Not eating halal? Eating meat? Not burning the right incense? Wearing mixed fabric and tight clothing around the taint?

[pbrower2a]

It is safe to assume that such people as K-12 teachers in public schools largely believe in evolution. That occupational group does very little violent crime. Research scientists? Likewise.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Who knows what they will blame next? Being uncircumcised? Drinking alcohol? Not eating halal? Eating meat? Not burning the right incense? Wearing mixed fabric and tight clothing around the taint?

If we're going back to the 90s playbook, it'll be lack of prayer in public schools, violent movies like The Matrix, and sagging pants.

[Badger]

Who knows what they will blame next? Being uncircumcised? Drinking alcohol? Not eating halal? Eating meat? Not burning the right incense? Wearing mixed fabric and tight clothing around the taint?

If we're going back to the 90s playbook, it'll be lack of prayer in public schools, violent movies like The Matrix, and sagging pants.

Why stop at the 90s? Let's go full on old school and blame Ozzy Osbourne, backwards messages in albums, and Dungeons & Dragons!