And, according to Mein Kampf, Hitler got some of his inspiration, inter alia, from Lutheran ideas of christianity and bizarre ideas about 'racial purity' from seeing Jews in Austria where he grew up, but don't let ignorance of little facts like that get in the way of your opinion.

Not that your comment has anything to so with my post though, but thanks for the strawman.

Professing yourself to be so wise, you come off as a fool!

The only other thing I might say is don’t hold your breath for approval on that blog. If you made a good argument, I’m sure you can rest assured that your rebuttal will never see the light of day.

Feel free to post it here if you wish.

Charles Darwin’s book Voyage of the Beagle had many sections that were anti-slavery and several of his letters show a staunch anti-slavery feeling. He might not have been as active as some of his relatives such as his grandfather Josiah Wedgwood, who btw was a friend of Wilberforce, but he was almost certainly more active than most in Britain. As for racist, most serious racists don’t hire a man of a different race as a teacher as Charles Darwin did when a student at Edinburgh. He probably wouldn’t have wanted his daughter to marry a non-white but then I doubt Wilberforce would have liked that idea either.

His original point of mentioning the Fabian Society at all was just a fallacious appeal to authority. Sadly this lead to a complete misrepresentation of their position, which not only doesn’t support his fantastically pointless ad hominem argument, it actually contradicts it as confirmed by their general secretary.

Don’t sweat it, Chris. Cynicism is a virtue when applied to the poor arguments and ‘evidence’ of creationism.

Damn… I’m so cynical.

The historian Linda Colley noted (in an interview with the Fabian Review, in December 2005) that “There are all sorts of practical things we might do to improve historical education and notions of citizenship here … Why, for instance, are the people on British banknotes always white? Why not have Olaudah Equiano, the great 18th century anti-slavery writer and big enlightenment figure on a note? Or the first Indian MP? We had Indian MPs here in the nineteenth, but most people don’t know about it”,

The idea was as much about engaging people with less well known aspects of our history, as much as reflecting diversity of Britain today.

This led to a wide number of suggestions from various newspapers and others about different people – Mary Seacole being a popular suggestion. We suggested that a ‘Great Britons’ style public debate when notes are next being changed would be good in creating public debate and engagement with history. This might involve Shakespeare, leading suffragettes, anti-slavery campaigners and others being nominated and debated (and certainly Science would be an impotant theme to represent)

The only person on a note who we mentioned is Sir John Houblon on the fifty pound note. As there are already different notes in Scotland, it would not necessarily mean droppping people, but in any event Darwin wasn’t mentioned by us.

http://www.fabian-society.org.uk/press_office/display.asp?cat=24&id=512

p.p.s. Well said on the anti-special treatment bit. That is one of the most annoying things the crackpots get up to. (If you get spare time have a look at http:// recycledart.org / drupal-5.0-rc1 / (spaced out to avoid creating a link just in case it improves the sites rankings…)

Three mistakes in the very first paragraph — way to research, Dembski!

It is ok for Dembski – he doesnt need Research, God tells him everything he needs to know. Sadly for everyone else, God speaks through Dembski’s toaster….