"God is change." -- Octavia Butler
"We change, whether we like it or not." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today's post is dedicated to 2 Aquarians, born on this day, who changed our world with their vision. They are Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.
For those who say honest Abe wasn't actually anti-slavery, here is a passage from Abraham Lincoln's second Inaugural Address:
The Almighty has his own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses!
for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense
cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses
which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both
North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense
came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which
the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently
do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood
drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.”
I take that to mean slavery is wrong and our punishment from God for allowing it to go on is this war in which so many have died.
And another quote:
"The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested
class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you,
and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own
negroes." -- August 24, 1855 - Letter to Joshua Speed
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Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
-- Charles Darwin
Remember kids, there is nothing intelligent about intelligent design and if the scientific theory of evolution can destroy someone's belief in god or a higher power or whatever, I would propose that they never had much faith to begin with. Here is a link explaining why so-called "intelligent design" is baseless and intolerant.
Happy Darwin Day and Lincoln's Birthday!
We gotta make a change... It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes. Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live and let's change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do what we gotta do, to survive.We gotta make a change... 
Change or die.
4 comments:
So heres the thing: The world was flat 500 years ago.
And everyone believed it.
We are not nearly at the level where we can say whether one thing is wrong and the other is right. Granted humanity is technologically as advanced as its ever been but theres thousands of theories yet to be proven and ways have not even been devised of proving them. Evolution itself has tens of thousands of gaps and my belief is that in the future we will certainly find a way to make both the rationalists and religious lot be content with the explanations science has to offer. We're too young at this point in time to discount anything. As a poet once said:
"You to your stars, I to mine"
(No im not a religious zealot whose gonna whack you on the forehead with a pocket bible =p)
OK, anonymous, I do agree that evolution is NOT the end all and be all, however we do have a whole body of evidence suggesting that evolution is a very viable hypothesis and until we come up with something better...
I do find that some scientists stick as staunchly to a narrow view of science -- to the point of ignoring data and facts that don't fit in with their pat theories -- just as many religious zealots stick to their bibles as the only source of information in the universe.
However, what I like about science is that (in theory at least) it is evidenced - based. You have to follow a system of investigation. You are supposed to be unbiased in your search. Darwin's theory of evolution will prove more flawed as we discover more, but without that theory we wouldn't be able to figure out the next thing -- which probably won't be quite right either.
Science, by it's very nature, must be investigative and not revelatory. I am all for revelations, but they belong in religous instruction -- or in art and literature. Teaching revelations as scientific fact cheats students out of the skills and discipline of methodological investigation and discovery.
Thanks for not hitting me over the head with your bible. :~)
Shame there's more patriarchs than the other in our beautiful white pantheon. How paltry must our efforts appear to a real god but how gloriously fragile too. There's pathos in them ther hills but sadly few heroes. Unless if one followed Bowie's claim that we can all be heroes. Which, elevated to a dictum (that would be an anathema though) would surely do away with every kind of dogma from Lao Tsu to Aristotle to JC to Lincoln and Darwin. The only true knowledge is dead knowledge, only life is true and death is a strange bedfellow.
Z
Evolve or die, motherfuckers!!
Besides, my God is better than your God! My God could beat your God up! My God has fangs and x-ray eyes and rocket launchers in his arms!
Good old Charles Darwin with his big beard and his face on the £10 notes... And we've even got a statue of Lincoln in Parliament Square in London, too... Along with one of George Washington, a gift from the people of Virginia I believe...
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