Two world views?

“Two world views are in conflict.. two philosophies of life.. one of these two worlds must break asunder.”

There are actually two groups of people in the world: Those who divide people into two groups of people and those who don’t.

I have read that Adolph Hitler made the top statement, but I have only documented the attribution as far as the Axis Powers, in a 1942 publication. In any case, it is a common position predicted by social identity theory. One premise of this sociological theory is that we all tend to consider ourselves to be in the “in group,” and everyone else is in the “out group.” Further we tend to consider all out group members to be alike, hence two groups. As an example, evolutionists seldom distinguish between creationists and intelligent design theorists. Likewise creationists often represent the masses as having only two world views, one Christian and one pagan. The result in both cases is that they can be blind-sides by the variety of attacks by those opposing their view. Evolutionists can pigeonhole scientists as religious and abandoning science, simply because they voice legitimate objection to Darwinian evolution. Some atheists do that. But likewise Christians may think they see softening in the opposition, just because they introduce “spiritualism” into the debate. Ernst Haeckel, whom Darwin cited for his now controversial illustrations of evolution using embryos, professed and promoted Monism (see Politics under Haeckel), an Eastern religious thought. Alfred Russel Wallace, who simultaneously published an almost identical theory of evolution with Darwin, became a mystic in later years. Darwin’s response to this was “I hope you have not murdered too completely your own & my child.” Even though Darwin was displeased with Wallace’s introduction of spiritualism into his theory of evolution, that does not mean that Wallace was any closer to a Christian Worldview. There was still a strict avoidance of direction by a Designer.

This entry was posted on August 15, 2007 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Notable Quotes, History, Science and faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.