The 'new atheists' of Darwin's day; part 3

This post continues on from a couple previous ones.

Quotes and comments;

Herbert Spencer;
1. 'Kaminsky correctly observes: "It is fairly clear that the theory of evolution had the same logical status for Spencer as the dialectic had for Hegel: no evidence was to be allowed to repudiate the doctrine." [1.]

2. Marx;
'It would be better, according to evolutionary standards, to leave the question of origins unanswered than to confess the existence of the Creator God. A classic example of just this sort of religious apriorism is Karl Marx's attitude. In the early manuscript, "Private Property and Communism," part of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, he denied the legitimacy of the question, "Who begot the first man, and nature as a whole? I can only answer you: Your question is a product of abstraction."

- In other words, if I can't answer the question it's a meaningless question. (i.e. if a question can't be answered in terms of matter in motion, then it's not a legitimate question.) This was the approach the evolutionists of Darwin's day took. They were only interested in giving materialistic answers to questions... and claimed these were the only answers that had any value or respectability. (Darwinism is a research program, not an attempt to discover truth. It's a particular method of looking at the world; and the method trumps the data. It's a way of looking at the world, not a concern with objective truth. This is why e. elite place such a stress upon method; on insisting that science equals materialistic method.)
- I take it that by 'abstraction' Marx is referring to that which is not material. (i.e. only physical is real)

3. Kant;
"It seems to me," he wrote, "that we can here say with intelligent certainty and without audacity... "give me matter and I will construct a world out of it!" i.e. give me matter and I will show you how a world shall arise out of it."[184] All it takes, he tried to prove in his study, is millions and millions of centuries - the creative hand of immeasurable time.

- Kant's cosmology (and I haven't read his book) seems to depend upon reifying time; on turning this 'abstraction' into a concrete and creative force. When we talk about time we're basically referring to perceived change... and particular rates of change. This means we're talking about entropy and decay. It's a mystery to me how this process can have a creative ability, especially one of the momentous kind required. (It's sort of like expecting the process of rust not to destruct a car but to construct a car.)

4. Kant;
'The Darwinian bandwagon was filled with men who wanted desperately to believe in a god of their own creation. That God must be, preferably, an impersonal god, a god who in no way interferes with the activities of the external universe, but at all costs, a god infinitely remote in time. Even the impotent god of Kant's Universal History, who was reduced merely to the incessant creation of matter - an autonomously evolving matter was too powerful for Kant in his post-critical years.' - Greg Bahnsen [186]

Notes;
1. Quotations taken from 'Worshipping the creature rather than the creator' - Greg Bahnsen
- reference #104