Audio Lectures by Father Thomas Hopko - The Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia
Written Observation by Fr Symeon Elias - The Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A.
"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." President Dwight Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation, Jan. 17, 1961.
Audio only, for Ipod download.
Jan 26, 2010
| Christianity in the Time of Darwin
In part 3 of the Darwin series, Fr. Tom explores the Darwin era and what was happening at that time in Christianity.
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48:47
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Is America based upon the "secularization of Calvinism"? I have a close friend and Presbyterian pastor who has explained his denomination's belief that the Presbyterian government structure and the American government mirror each other and were designed to mirror each other. It would be a little like which came first the chicken or the egg to decide which model was formed upon the other, or if both forms arrived by similar influence. I believe for reason the latter, but that is a subject for another time.
Fr Tom pointed to the fact that although Abraham Lincoln invoked the name of God many times, that he rarely attended church and was never baptized. Then he offered the usual proposition (not strongly stated but there) that America's founding was by a group of Deists. He recalled that Thomas Jefferson had "re-written" the Gospels, etc. This has been the propaganda of the left (not that Fr Tom is leftist) that America was a product of the "Enlightenment" and not founded upon Judeo/Christian principles. Father Tom goes further, in his analysis of America's founding saying that the founders were disconnected from the Bible. That's a step too far. Let me give you the exact quote, "The American revolution of course was earliest but then you had the French Revolution, then you had the Russian Revolution as the last big one. . ah . . in these other countries based on Marxism and materialism, anti-religious, anti-christian, anti-church, anti-imperial. In fact, it has been said about the United States of America, that our America exists based on the rejection and the hatred of bishops and kings ah huh" "you get rid of the kings and you get rid of the priests and then you have the perfect society that's free and liberal and lead by intellectual white people who are following their reason, their natural reason and not some superstitious understanding of some ancient Jewish book called the bible or something like that." Of course Father Tom prefaced this quote saying, "It has been suggested." Then Father Tom trucks out the story of Thomas Jefferson's, cut and paste bible, where he created a New Testament that included only what he thought reflected the "Jesus" he knew. Jefferson said, "I believe in Jesus in every way he would have wanted me to believe in him. I believe in what he said." Jefferson was one more of an era, a Unitarians who believed that Jesus was a "wise teacher" and nothing more. However, Father Tom props up Jefferson as "typical" of the faith of the American Founding Fathers. That's simply a false picture that cannot stand the test of history.
I used to hold this view, and how could I not since it was the pervasive mythology of academia, the only story told in public secondary education and every college and university; taught with the same monotony that evolution is taught; taught without recourse to any other possible scenario. Only fundamentalist Christians suggested something different and for decades the claims seemed not credible. However, like I said previously, I like original sources. It is the reason I waded through "Origin of the Species by Natural Selection." I would recommend to anyone interested in the Godly foundations of America, and the Truth of America's revolution and founding that is unique, exceptional, and yes an evolutionary step forward in government, that you study the works of David Barton and "Wall Builders" on the subject and that you take the course on constitutional law offered on line by Hillsdale College for free. I would also suggest Kirt Camerion's movie, Monumental, In Search of America's National Treasure. I personally stand at odds with many Eastern Orthodox teachers and "lights" who believe the U.S. to be formed "in rebellions to God" and out of Divine Order. I don't know if Father Tom is one of these but he has done a lecture series on Church and Government and I intend in the future to listen carefully and comment just as with this series. I've suffered some persecution for my stance, but I stand by my stance. The pretense that Tradition favors Imperialism is simply false. We cannot claim that any country so far founded on so called Orthodox Symphonia is superior to the U.S. in any way, and truly superior to any country at a particular era. I think the mythologies of symphonia are religious sickness, pure mythology and reflect a golden age in history when secular governments were supposedly more in line with Divine Will, a period which simply has never existed. It is an argument for another place, another paper, but one that needs expressing. It is absolutely true that America was not founded on the totality of Orthodox Christian principles, but it was founded on some foundational Ancient Judeo/Christian principles.
This was an interesting exposition on the atmosphere of Darwin's era, the "religion, philosophy and political" times in which Charles Darwin lived. It is obvious that Father Tom wants to picture Charles Darwin as a sympathetic character. I wish I could go there, but rather I see Darwin as a pathetic character, yet one more indolent member of the ultra privileged class, without faith, hoping but never finding meaning in the tragedies and in the tedium of his life. I can't imagine living decades of life with nothing to do but ramble through the rooms of ones own psyche and find only one outlet for expression, the gathering of natural specimens and then forcing a family mythology upon them, an inherited paradigm of "evolution" inherited from his grand-father. That is the objective short picture of Charles Darwin from what I can see.
Few realize the degree to which this sad character of Charles Darwin was not needed in the drama of this unfolding history, where those who for myriad reasons (mostly justified) had lost faith and needed a new paradigm, a theory of creation without a creator, where the heresy of Pelagianism could find full expression in an agnostic and/or atheistic secularism, a paradigm where man through his good works and wise husbandry could improve and save himself. The insanity of evolution as an explanation of BEING and LIFE and the expansion of atheism would have happened without Darwin, as Father Tom pointed out, with the introduction of Alfred Russel Wallace, the British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist, who independently proposed a theory of evolution due to natural selection that prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own work on the subject. But take note of the times and how quickly the talk of evolution ushered in radical political challenges to the status quo. In 1881, Wallace was elected as the first president of the newly formed Land Nationalisation Society. In the next year, he published a book, Land Nationalisation; Its Necessity and Its Aims. Something that had profound impact in Ukraine fifty years later, costing twenty to thirty million lives. In 1889, Wallace read Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy and declared himself a socialist; no surprise there, since Land Nationalization was the act of a socialist. This was contemporary with Marx. At the same time the Austrian priest-monk Gregor Mendel was conducting his hybridization experiments. This was a subject of much interest to Darwin. Between 1856 and 1863, Mendel cultivated and tested some 29,000 pea plants. From these experiments, he deduced two generalizations which later became known as Mendel's Principles of Heredity or Mendelian inheritance. He described these principles in a two-part paper, Experiments on Plant Hybridization, that he read to the Natural History Society of Brunn on February 8 and March 8, 1865, and which was published in 1866. This was the seed of Eugenics, which transferred the hypothesis from plants to animals, to humans. It occurred, contemporaneously to Darwin/Wallace and Socialism and each reinforced the other, creating hellish results in the 20th Century; results we are still battling in the 21st Century. No, Darwin was not necessary but he was willing and had time on his hands.
I'll have to admit that Father Tom has turned my attitude toward Darwin slightly, from willing conspirator to probable sad dupe. I'm still at a lost as to why Father Tom thinks it necessary to "get to know Darwin the man" and to have "sympathy for him." Carl Marx has had a huge impact upon world history, should I care what his influences were, or should I judge him by what he himself has written. I could say the same of Hitler, Stalin, Mao. There is no reason I can discover so far, for the truth of the story to require this pop-psych, tromp through Darwin's life and circumstances. After all what he was purporting to show was, objective observation and a hypothesis based upon objective observation. We can all participate in that aspect. Were his observations objective? Was his hypothesis reasonable? It would be different if we were discussing Carl Jung or Sigmund Freud, since their topic was insights into the psyche, the development and influence of their psyche become part of the story. But for supposed objectively observable natural science, what meaning does such an exercise hold?
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