Now the lectures turn to effects of biology on sociology, religion, and demographics. Demographics and thus social-Darwinism has been tied to Darwinism from the very beginning.The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus Fellow of the Royal Science Academy (13 or 14 February 1766 – 23 or 29 December 1834 was an English scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularized the economic theory of rent.
Malthus has become widely known for his theories about population and its increase or decrease in response to various factors. The six editions of his An Essay on the Principle of Population, published from 1798 to 1826, observed that sooner or later population gets checked by famine and disease. He wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible. William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, for example, believed in the possibility of almost limitless improvement of society. In a more complex way, so did Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose notions centered on the goodness of man and the liberty of citizens bound only by the social contract—a form of popular sovereignty.
Malthus thought that the dangers of population growth would preclude endless progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". As an Anglican clergyman, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour. Believing that one could not change human nature, Malthus wrote:
Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in every State in which man has existed, or does now exist
That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,
That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and, That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.
Malthus placed the longer-term stability of the economy above short-term expediency. He criticised the Poor Laws, and (alone among important contemporary economists) supported the Corn Laws, which introduced a system of taxes on British imports of wheat. He thought these measures would encourage domestic production, and so promote long-term benefits.
Malthus became hugely influential, and controversial, in economic, political, social and scientific thought. Many of those whom subsequent centuries term evolutionary biologists read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, for each of whom Malthusianism became an intellectual stepping-stone to the idea of natural selection. Malthus remains a writer of great significance and controversy. - Wikipedia UK.
Dr Wyman tells a fair story of the Roman Catholic Church being co-opted by the Franco-Latin War Lords, the ultimate result of Charlemagne's conquest, which took a few centuries post Charlemagne to complete. Actually, he tells none of the history of "why" or "how" the Roman Church became a massive land owner. It happened via the Franco-Latin takeover of the Church.
Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine - An Interplay Between Theology and Society - by John S Romanides This is something that the Roman Church faced with militant heretical groups in it own ranks, is beginning to realize. Something I think Pope Benedict fully appreciates. This "late latinizing" of the Church which then made a hero of Augustin of Hippo, accounts for the "seed" of the errors of both Roman Catholicism and its children the Protestant denominations. I'm sure Wyman will take full advantage of the words of Augustine, which were in error.
What Dr Wyman describes as "Church ownership" and the "ownership of civil authorities" is a false category. Since in truth the Church had become a civil authority, where many Bishops were simply conquering war-lords. They corrupted the hierarchy by buying offices, or gaining office by intimidation and if those things would not work they became bishops by killing bishops. So what he describes in reality is a great period of Apostasy of the Roman Church, not all the Roman Church but the greater part of its European hierarchal structure Any honest theologian will tell you that around one thousand and around the 15th and 16th centuries were the lowest point for the Roman Church:
"In later Europe, Europe underwent huge vicissitudes of population. In the Classic ages up through Rome, through the whole Roman Empire the population of the Mediterranean world was clearly increasing; whatever data we have always points to that. Then starting with the Dark Ages, maybe as early as 300 or 400 Europe gets invaded by all kinds of "barbarians hordes," as they are perceived by the Romans. First, it's the Germanic tribes, then it's the Huns, then it's the Saracens, then it's the Vikings. By the year 1000, European population is extremely cut down; European civilization is cut down, and we don't really have good ideas of why all these invasions stopped. One history that I particularly like says the reason they stopped, there was nothing left worth taking in Europe. About 1000 the invasions stopped and then civilization started recovering and it only took about 200 years for Europe to basically repopulate itself. When you have land, when you have space, people then have a lot of children, and keep them alive. In these good years, it was good climate at that time also, life expectancies in the 1200s were between 35 and 40 years old, which is very good for this very early era. Then around 1250 the population stopped increasing, and for another 100 years or so, it was more or less level. When you find a level population that means there's something limiting, some block, and they can't grow beyond this block. Historians attribute it to the whole sort of a state of culture there, so the land was not owned by peasants. So the peasants -- if you own your own land you'll have a lot of interest in farming it maximally and improving it, and doing stuff and when someone else owns the land, you don't have much interest in that and the worse the conditions you're under, the less interest you have in improving the land for the landowner because he's going to take as much as he can away from you and leave you just the bare amount that you can live on. At this time the Catholic Church was by far the biggest landowner in Europe, and they owned 30% to 50% of all the productive lands in Europe. The peasants on the land were serfs and lived in this extreme poverty, and they were not allowed to leave the estate; they were stuck there living in that kind of condition. The ones that - - well the church itself got very rich. This is a period of the tremendous dominance of the church. The income from church lands, going to church nobility and to Rome, was ten times larger and all the church lands -- you had all the crown lands of all the crowns in Europe. The church got ten times as much income from their lands as as did the so-called civil authorities. The civil authorities controlled what was left of the land, the kings and so forth, and it turns out that the serfs on the civil land had somewhat better conditions, somewhat more rights than on church lands. (I need a citing for this?) On church lands they were really the lowest of the low, but on civil lands they had somewhat better situations, but they were still deep in poverty. Because of this serfs just continued, they were totally uneducated and totally illiterate, and so they continued to farm the small plots just as they had done for centuries and so the productivity of the land did not increase and the population could not increase. Europe was full so there was no place that a serf could just run away and start his own farm with someone else because that land was owned already by someone else. In the cities that were beginning a little bit the Guilds were trying to keep members away, they were closed, they only took children of the members of the Guild, there was no way for someone to rise up and become a craftsman."
Amazing that Dr Wyman would use a heavily stylized art film as a depiction of the age he is describing, and waxing on about the practices of penance, as if flagellation was a common practice of the peasantry and not just the practice of certain sects of monks in the Roman Catholic Church. So amazingly he turns the spread of the plague into the responsibility of some sects of Roman monks! He even called it a "major mechanism for the spread of the plague." (Please find me some evidence in history where this is recorded.) This is intellectual laziness or bigotry and part of the mandate of "Scientism" to paint all things concerning its greatest "competitor" the religion it has to supplant to survive, since it cannot survive upon its "pure and real science."
He did admit in passing that contrary to the common mythology that syphilis was introduced to indigenous populations from Europe, that in fact syphilis came from the New World. That surely pokes a hole in the decades long story that syphilis was a weapon of "white man's domination" and a tool to decimate indigenous American populations. I heard that myth as fact from historians and forensic anthropologists for all my life. After he spins his tale about Roman Catholic monks spreading the plague and people purposely infecting themselves with syphilis as a protection against the plague he says, "whether it's true or not, I don't know." It is amazing the mythologies that the Scientistic establishment will create and promote, all under the banner of supposed empirical investigation. But did you notice that anachronistic slight of hand, where he introduced the insanity of syphilitic infection as a prophylactic against the Plague 150 years displaced in time? He says it, admits it in his speech, and young people listening don't get it. He needed it to paint the ruling class as ignorant and insane, and the Typhoid-Mary-Monks were not enough, he needed something else to paint the picture, so he pulled a foolishness that developed more than one hundred and fifty years later in to support and color of the tale he was telling. Silliness and laziness.
I'm an expert at reading people, what I offer here is opinion, though I know it in my gut. Reading what was first "micro-expressions" of disbelief turned to amused incredulity (humorous total disbelief) by one hour on the video. In my gut, from decades of reading faces I don't believe this fellow believes a thing he is saying, from about minute one-hour through 104:00. As an evolutionary/biologist/demographer he is suggesting that the "space" create by the black death, create the field for the Renaissance. This idea of mass death causing 'evolutionary steps' is the subliminal message of his thesis and has been part of the evolutionary paradigm from the beginning. Without Malthus, Darwinism would have no "teeth" no platform for "social darwinism." Actually it is nothing but "Scientism" as the new Pagan Mythology, taking the place of the ancient gods.
"I described medieval Europe as having this sort of Malthusian kind of land lock, that things were unchanging and couldn't change because no one was allowed to change, and then all of the sudden you get the Black Death, and immediately after the Black Death you get the Renaissance. What happens is a lot of fluidity, people can leave the church estates, can leave their lord's estates there's plenty of empty land, they go out there, they can farm themselves, the Guilds don't have members, they can join Guilds, they can do technology, they can move around, all kinds of things turn up. The first and most virulent wave of the plague lasted from 1340s to 1400, and the next generation was the core of the renaissance."
I want you to read that bold paragraph again and consider the following paragraph in that light, as a core deception of modern Scientism.
"Contemporary science is predicated upon empiricism, the epistemological stance that all knowledge is derived exclusively through the senses. Yet, an exclusively empirical approach relegates cause to the realm of metaphysical fantasy. This holds enormous ramifications for science. What is perceived as A causing B could be merely a consequence of circumstantial juxtaposition. Although temporal succession and spatial proximity are axiomatic, cause connection is not. Affirmation of causal relationship is impossible. Given the absence of causality, all of a scientist's findings must be taken on faith. Ironically, science relies on the affirmation of such cause and effect relationship." (- Collins 19)
Regardless of what you think of the book, "The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship," the paragraph in bold proves the premise. And this is so of almost every causal conclusion Dr Wyman has suggested. He has describes events, and in some cases processes, but not once has he empirically proved causation. And all the time Dr Wyman is reading from his notes, minutes one hour to 104:00- look closely at his expression. It appears as if he doesn't believe a word of what he is saying. Having watched him for hours, and seeing that he only used this expressing for seconds at a time, when speaking of gross sexual things, here as he is positing his main theory, FOR MINUTES he is embarrassed by everything he is saying. Why? If you have studied the expressions of chimps, that study fits. Notice that the embarrassment leaves his face at about 1:04, and the demeanor of the serious scholar arrives. His embarrassment leaves his face as he describes that what he is offering is tenuous, "simplistic."
"Now that's - not everybody had to agree that that was the seminal event that caused the renaissance in some - nothing is that simple, but it clearly was one of the major things that one has to consider in describing why did Renaissance happen."
Here is why the Renaissance happened. It is a matter of Church History. Documents, books, tablets, and scrolls of the classical Greek period were held in isolated monasteries of the Celtic Orthodox Church, which had been absorbed by the Roman Catholic Church. When it was deemed relatively safe, these resources of the former empire were shared. As the cosmology of Aristotle was renewed, so the Renaissance appeared. Read How The Irish Saved Civilization.
"How The Irish Saved Civilization" is the untold story of Ireland's heroic role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, a non-fiction historical book written by Thomas Cahill. Cahill argues a case for the Irish people's critical role in preserving Western Civilization from utter destruction by the Huns and the Germanic tribes (Visigoths, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Ostrogoths, etc.). The book retells the story from the collapse of the Roman Empire and the pivotal role played by members of the clergy at the time. A particular focus is placed upon Saint Patrick and retells his early struggles through slavery; basically retelling portions of The Confession of Saint Patrick. Early parts of the book examine Ireland before Patrick and the role of Saint Augustine of Hippo. Particular focus is placed upon Saint Columba and the monks he trained and the monasteries he set up in the Hiberno-Scottish mission. In a sense, these holy men salvaged everything possible from the destruction of the Roman Empire.
Even though this is factual, a "concrete" reality provable via the science of Forensic Textual Archeology, and has everything to do with the "mindset" of the Renaissance, what priest of Scientism ever mentions it?
This isn't the first time that Dr Wyman has called upon "faith in mythology" as the underlying strength of his argument. Remember hour one and "Evolution likes . . " and "Evolution does not like . . " "Evolutions wants . . . " "Evolution abhors . . " that is the anthropomorphizing of "evolution," giving it personhood and a will. This is clearly religious language and maybe only a theologian gets it, but it is there. This is the common dialectic tactic of the evolutionist; to ascribe "will" to causation, without hypothesizing upon the nature and cause of the "will." It is a method of pretending a grasp of metaphysics, while only holding an incomplete material model of ontology.
Next he tackles the Reformation Period - I can't wait.
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