Um, death bed? LAST DANCE!

How anyone could doubt such a touching story, told by an obvious cat-fearing woman is beyond me.
Thanks for the hymns, they set just the right mood….

Disco will never be over. It will always live in our minds and hearts. Something like this, that was this big, and this important, and this great, will never die. Oh, for a few years - maybe many years - it’ll be considered passé and ridiculous. It will be misrepresented and caricatured and sneered at, or - worse - completely ignored. People will laugh about John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, white polyester suits and platform shoes and people going like *this* [strikes disco pose] , but we had nothing to do with those things and still loved disco. Those who didn’t understand will never understand: disco was much more, and much better, than all that. Disco was too great, and too much fun, to be gone forever! It’s got to come back someday. I just hope it will be in our own lifetimes.

From the Gospel of Walt Stillman, The Last Days of Disco

how Darwin converted to Christianity on his deathbed.

According to Wikipedia, Charles Darwin was baptized into the Anglican church as an infant.

And thus, there is no way he could possibly have been “converted” at any time in his life, let alone on his deathbed.  This is yet another attempt of the fundies to coopt Christianity to mean their especially ridiculous version of it.  Bored now.

What?  They just got Constantine confused with Darwin.  Happens all the time.

And of course it wouldn’t make any difference to the validity of evolution even if it had happened. If scientists’ mental failings in later life invalidated their earlier work, we’d all have to give up transistors on the spot, because Shockley was a complete loon. (The kind of loon the wingnuts like, but still a loon.)

Sometimes I think ostensibly-religious crazies such as creationists have a sort of minor version of Korsakoff’s syndrome: once they get the crazy in their heads, they can’t form any new memories about the world, so the fact that something has been debunked a dozen times passes right out of their minds.

The funniest thing about the lie is that it’s only worth telling if you’re thinking of Darwin as a prophet, rather than a guy who made a famous argument.  Maybe it’s the beard.  Or maybe its that if your entire belief system is based on authority figures saying “because I said so,” you can’t conceive of rigorous thought.

  This Darwin editorial in the LA Times sideswipes it nicely.

While it’s probably preferable to not give a shit about Darwin’s beliefs, it is kind of satisfying to see that fundies are so flabbergastingly horrified by the fact of Darwin’s lifelong Christianity that they have to make the exact inverse up, out of whole cloth.

Oh, nope nope nope. I didn’t realize I had fallen a bit for the reverse fallacy.

(Evolution-accepting Christians who gin up the argument to try to convince their creationist brethren.)

“And thus, there is no way he could possibly have been “converted” at any time in his life, let alone on his deathbed.  “

These are the same people that stated Abe Lincoln and US Grant converted to Christanity on their death beds. It was quite widespread in newspapers of the time btw.

Also Darwin was buried in Westminister Abbey with hymns praising him.

(breaks out his “DEATH BEFORE DISCO” t-shirt and starts scanning YouTube for Pistols videos)

Theirs was a love that burned like an active volcano, and with enough passion to start one.  Of course, like the best storied romances, their love was also forbidden.  But they didn’t need to share their fevered feelings for each other with anyone but themselves.

After Charles passed from this mortal coil, Lady Hope was compelled to admit she knew him, without exposing that she knew him best in the biblical sense.  She concocted a story about being a witness to him renouncing Evolution and embracing Jesus, which would satisfy the curious and disguise the sensual truth.  In actuality, the only embracing that had occurred involving Lady Hope was the two of them making the beast with two backs…

There’s nothing new in false claims of “deathbed conversions” for various folks thought to be anti-Christian throughout the years, the 19th Century free-thinker and agnostic Col Robert Ingersoll published a few essays demonstrating that contrary to legend, Thomas Payne didn’t convert on his deathbed.

Ingersoll was alleged to have converted as well and commended his son to Christianity, it’s mentioned in Elmer Gantry that the only flaw in this story is that Ingersoll only had daughters.

According to Wikipedia, Charles Darwin was baptized into the Anglican church as an infant.

And thus, there is no way he could possibly have been “converted” at any time in his life, let alone on his deathbed.

Oh crap. If I’m already baptized, I can never leave?

From what I understand, even though Darwin was baptized Anglican and studied to be a priest, he actually died an atheist.  I might be wrong, but I think he fully embraced the implications of his theory.

But regardless of what he did, worry not my fellows!  I was baptized in the same church as Mr. Darwin and no one has told me I can’t be an atheist.

the fact of Darwin’s lifelong Christianity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin’s_views_on_religion

He affirmed agnosticism in the latter half of his life. My reading of his statements on his lack of beliefs leads me to believe it was the sort of agnosticism that is today called weak atheism.

Or what Amanda said.

he actually died an atheist.

Who cares?

Not to mention that, in terms of Christian theology, if Darwin was baptized and lived his life as a Christian, he died a Christian in their eyes.  We can understand that, in his heart of hearts, he was not a believer, but on Christians own terms he was one of them his whole life.  Once you’ve been baptized, you can never be “converted” to Christianity.  You already were converted to Christianity, as an infant. 

The only way this might not be the case is if you later officially converted to a different religion.  But atheism isn’t a religion.

I’ve always found this to an interesting argument for wingnuts to make because of it says about them. It’s complete bullshit, of course, but it’s also completely irrelevant. Charles Darwin might have disavowed evolution and become a monk, he might have murdered a dozen prostitutes, or he might have been nailed to cross and stuck up on a hill. No matter what Darwin did, it wouldn’t affect the reality of the principles of evolution.

I was baptized in the same church as Mr. Darwin and no one has told me I can’t be an atheist.

I think I’m still officially a member of the United Methodist Church. Just never got around to saying, “take me off the list.”  Somehow, though, I doubt people will be making up these silly stories about me.  That’s ok. Dance!

I’m pretty sure that even though I consider myself somewhere on the earth-worshipping / neo-pagan / animistic spectrum, because I was baptized Episcopalian and haven’t formally converted to any “normal” religion that involves that sort of thing, I’m still a Christian in Christians’ eyes.  Meh, whatever.  I stopped worrying where I stood spiritually with Christians when I was under 10 years old.

It doesn’t matter what Darwin thought when he died, except that it is interesting that he was willing to embrace the implications of his own theory.  But it has no bearing on the truth of evolutionary theory.  If he’d died born again, that wouldn’t mean his theory was wrong.

But the reality does go a long way to explaining why the wingnuts lie about it. They have to slander freethinkers after we die when we can’t defend ourselves.  Too bad there’s no afterlife, or we could confront these asswipes in the afterlife. 

Opop, I guess when the fundies say Darwin converted, they mean he was born again.  Most Anglicans aren’t, even if they die believing.

But the reality does go a long way to explaining why the wingnuts lie about it. They have to slander freethinkers after we die when we can’t defend ourselves.  Too bad there’s no afterlife, or we could confront these asswipes in the afterlife.

Darwin has managed to haunt them from beyond the grave. You can too, if you develop sufficiently intriguing ideas that subtly erode the need for immortal parentage.

Opop, I guess when the fundies say Darwin converted, they mean he was born again.  Most Anglicans aren’t, even if they die believing.

Yeah, that’s pretty much the upshot of what I said above.  It’s another example of the fundies deciding that their particular brand of Christianity is “real true” Christianity, to the extent that members of other denominations or people who have a different understanding of what it means to be Christian aren’t “really” Christian.  Only born again evangelicals who hold a certain very narrow set of beliefs and worship in a very specific way are really Christian. 

Though it seems from PZ’s links that the original story wasn’t that Darwin had “converted”, but that he had renounced evolution and affirmed specific belief in a particular kind of evangelical Christianity (a kind that would have been pretty antithetical to the beliefs he grew up with, even if he hadn’t become atheist/agnostic later in life).  It’s fairly recent that “got saved” or “was born-again” or “affirmed belief in the kind of Christianity I prefer” has been called “converting” to Christianity or “becoming” a Christian.

It’s kind of a weird story just on that level, because I doubt Darwin had any knowledge or interest in born again theologies, if they really even existed in England in his time.

He couldn’t have been born again.

That’s not how birth works.

I wonder if the way to counter this would be to circulate stories that Norman Vincent Peale or Jerry Falwell or JPII converted to atheism on their deathbeds.

Well, probably not, but it would certainly make the wingnuts splutter entertainingly. 

Is the theory of evolution somehow incompatible with Christianity? My biology class in Catholic high school covered it.

The only thing that’s interesting about the Lady Hope story is that it was first published in a Baptist journal in 1915. What had been published in the previous five years? That would be The Fundamentals. That kind of anti-evolutionism is primarily a creation of American fundamentalism, not contemporary English (or American) Christianity.

I doubt Darwin had any knowledge or interest in born again theologies, if they really even existed in England in his time.

It’s worth remembering that the controversy over Darwin was nothing compared to the shitstorm over the incorporation of higher criticism into contemporary Anglican thinking, and whether it was appropriate to subject the Bible to the kind of historical, textual and contextual analysis that was applied, say, to Homer. Fundamentalism was a reaction to that period of scholarship, and Darwin got swept up in the reactionary movement.

Baptized Catholic, raised Catholic, including the rites of Communion and Confirmation.

Okay, I may still be haunted by that upbringing, but I’m firmly agnostic (firmly?) now.

Shit, they can’t still claim me, can they?

One good thing about Catholicism at an early age, it can scare you straight off any other religion, as well.

Boyfriend: I don’t think that’s what Darwin really said on his deathbed…

Me: You don’t?

Boyfriend: No…Darwin was into punk, man. Original punk!

Is the theory of evolution somehow incompatible with Christianity?

For the fundies it is. Because that means that human beings aren’t special little snowflakes put on this earth especially for… I don’t know what. And it means that Eve didn’t temp Adam with that fruit and cause the downfall of man and thus women need to be punished for eternity.

And also, if that never happened, they hate to think about what that implies for the rest of the bible.

He waved his hand toward the window as he pointed out the scene beyond, while in the other hand he held a vinyl copy of the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack while “How Deep Is Your Love” played softly in the background.

I call shenanigans.  How exactly could he be waving the soundtrack in his hand if a song from that very same soundtrack was playing in the background?  Are we supposed to believe he had *two* of them?

Slightly more seriously, I saw a good review for a biography by Adrian Desmond and James Moore looking at Darwin’s ties to the abolition movement.

Wait, Lincoln converted on his deathbed????  He couldn’t have - he was shot in the head and never regained consciousness.  Did people really fall for such nonsense?

From the UUA:

Charles Robert Darwin grew up worshipping at the Unitarian Church of Shrewsbury, England, where his mother was a member. His wife, Emma Wedgewood, was a devout Unitarian her whole life.

Darwin himself, of course, broke from the tradition as the conflict between religious dogma and scientific findings became harder and harder to reconcile.

(Wikipedia is wrong, he was not baptized Anglican as an infant—his mother was a devout Unitarian and she is buried at the Unitarian Church in Shrewsbury; he did study Anglican Theology later, but he broke from all traditional religion later in life. His wife remained a strong Unitarian her entire life, though Darwin attended services only occasionally.)

Wikipedia is wrong, he was not baptized Anglican as an infant

This contemporary account shows that he was baptized as an Anglican, although his family was Unitarian—not uncommon in a country where the Anglican Church was (and still is) a branch of the government:

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A7&pageseq=1

he was not baptized Anglican as an infant—his mother was a devout Unitarian and she is buried at the Unitarian Church in Shrewsbury

Apparently it was his father who decided to have him baptized in the Anglican church. 

It’s not really that rare to be baptized in one denomination, but ultimately be more active in another denomination.  My brothers who still practice Christianity were baptized in the Episcopal church like I was, but have probably spent more of their lives attending Methodist churches (mainly because, like Darwin, we come from a bi-denominational family).

These people are unable to understand how you can follow the ideas of a great person, yet not worship them or care if they did have contradictions.

Newton was a nasty twerp and mad as a hatter by the time of his death, and rather devout as well.  That doesn’t mean that gravity doesn’t work, or that his “laws” are not useful approximations up to the point where they go Planck.

I’m interested in some of the moral philosophy attributed to Jesus and the impact it has had for two millenia, but that doesn’t mean I worship him or buy into the surrounding mythology.

These people are as bad as the Freud worshippers, or the Aristotle worshipers before them.

Is the theory of evolution somehow incompatible with Christianity? My biology class in Catholic high school covered it.

No, it is not incompatible with Christianity any more than believing that the Earth revolves around the sun (which caused some problems during its time).  Both the Methodist and Catholic churches officially accept that evolution does not contradict their faith.  Plenty of other churches hold the same position, but I don’t know which ones specifically.  Essentially, fundies have very weak faith so they feel threatened by anything that is different from what they grew up learning, because that requires actual thinking, and they are afraid that thinking about their beliefs will reveal that they are wrong.  People who are confident in their faith are not threatened by science and reality.

Wait, Lincoln converted on his deathbed????  He couldn’t have - he was shot in the head and never regained consciousness.  Did people really fall for such nonsense?

Hey, if you think the adventures of the clay man, the rib woman, and the talking snake actually happened, Born-Again Zombie Lincoln is easy.

asdf, I had a lifelong RC friend who let me know that because I was baptised RC, I couldn’t leave the church!

Yup, I have no agency, and whether I consider myself now an atheist, I’m still baptised and subject to the dogma and consequences of being an RC.

Yup, no thirst for control there!

Now that we have five RC’s on the Supreme Court, I can understand why the Founding Fathers were famously reluctant to give Papists an equal footing in the founding of the nation. It’s just taken a little more than two hundred years to see the consequences of putting people on the Court that have no intention of following the principles of the Enlightenment.

We have more to worry about than lies told about Darwin.

Both the Methodist and Catholic churches officially accept that evolution does not contradict their faith.  Plenty of other churches hold the same position, but I don’t know which ones specifically.

As a nun who taught at the school where my husband was teaching middle school science put it, “creation isn’t finished yet”.

...because I was baptised RC, I couldn’t leave the church!

The way I see it, it’s more like everybody falls into their hierarchy somewhere, and by virtue of having been baptized Catholic, you have a particular spot on their particular pyramid.  A spot that is not for you to accept or deny via belief, any more than you can accept or deny the laws of physics.  Though, again, I think that maybe if you were formally apostate (i.e. specifically converted to another religion that actually has a formal conversion process), your status might change.  But otherwise, you’re just a lapsed Catholic who’s going to have a lot of ‘splainin to do at the pearly gates.

This is all sort of related in my mind to the fucked-up-ness of the Mormons who go around baptizing people after their death.  It’s all about hierarchies and control.  They want to be able to decide what happens on the micro level after we die, like picking cosmic kickball teams.  Which, to me, is so beside the point as to be laughable.  “OK, I just decided that Plato would TOTES have been a Catholic!  *Shazzam* Now he’s in heaven, yay!”

“And thus, there is no way he could possibly have been “converted” at any time in his life, let alone on his deathbed.  This is yet another attempt of the fundies to coopt Christianity to mean their especially ridiculous version of it.  Bored now.”

The story I always heard when I was growing up in fundieland was that he recanted his theory of evolution on his deathbed.  This only works if you aren’t aware that he spent his entire life writing enough scientific works to bury an elephant and that just saying “I was wrong” wouldn’t even begin to cover it.

Ahemm…

Disco ain’t funky, disco bounces with the beat, Funk, on the hand, grooves with the bass line,

Groove with it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31vbS1bOrbg

Pronounced
Psycho•alpha•disco•beta•bio•aqua•doloop

Hence, you see, disco aka TheBeat is just a small part of the total, all-encompassing life-giving groove.

This only works if you aren’t aware that he spent his entire life writing enough scientific works to bury an elephant and that just saying “I was wrong” wouldn’t even begin to cover it.

Mantis, that would require that certain folks believe in the “weight of evidence” approach of science rather than the “cult of personality” approach of megachurches and Televangelists.  In their mind, it’s all about Teh Man, not about Teh Evidence.

Darwin couldn’t have attended Cambridge without signing the Thirty-Nine Articles and receiving communion in the Anglican form. But holy orders was regarded as a profession rather than a vocation—think about Jane Austen, and those younger sons of wealthy families who wouldn’t get the inheritance.

The issue here is a category error. If you find out that a teacher of morality was a hypocritical shit (hi, Ted Haggard!) then you might question those teachings. If you find out that a scientist falsified data, then you might question the conclusions drawn by the scientist from that data. Fundies regard science as doctrinal, which is fundamentally fucked up. (If you’re a historian of science, you know that there are moments where doctrinal elements creep in from extrinsic and intrinsic sources, but that requires a degree of engagement and understanding that the fundies don’t have.)

Now that we have five RC’s on the Supreme Court, I can understand why the Founding Fathers were famously reluctant to give Papists an equal footing in the founding of the nation.

I call bullshit on that one. Fundie evo-denialism is a pure product of Protestant America, and the Scalito brand of white-ethnic Papism is a generational, rather than a denominational phenomenon.

he actually died an atheist.

Who cares?

This.  Watson and Crick couldn’t un-discover DNA, for example, even if they’d converted to FSM or Angry Bob worship on their deathbeds.  But the fibber’s story about the deathbed conversion does go to the reality that has been noted here in other threads: if you are so damned sure of the universal truth of your position then why do you need to lie????

“Evolution” is merely a convenient shorthand for both the process of evolution itself and the scientific method which produces, tests and thus proves or disproves or further examines theories and facts about us and the world around us.  In essence, it’s a straightforward, honest an ongoing way of examining and understanding complex reality and ensuring that knowledge is both objective and truthful.  Honesty and self-correction are built into it, in other words.  Which, naturally, is why the fundies froth so at its very existence.  They have their answers for “who are we?” and “how’d we get here”, written down by ass-scratching tribesmen 3000 years ago and imperfectly translated since, so they don’t need to think.

I love the fact that people use the notion that Darwin spoke of “God” as proof that he believed in god.  I’m a stone-cold atheist, but I say things like “God rest him” of beloved people who have died, or “God help us” when facing adversity.  It’s simply a linguistic quirk of the culture in which I was raised where “God” was at the top of the food chain of importance.  I don’t expect a God to give, for example, my much-loved father rest; I use the expression to demonstrate how much I miss him and what a good man he was.  Learned colloquialisms are not proof of a belief in the supernatural.

pseud, sorry, I see the behaviors from Scalia,“Scalito” and Thomas as both doctrinal and denominational in nature. I truly believe these judges especially, are putting the Vatican before the Constitution, and lying to themselves when they do it. It would be the only way to make it palatable to their consciences as they betray the precepts of the Enlightenment as embodied in our Constitution.

I find it ironic, that the worries of the Founding Fathers about those they would have called Papists manifest themselves now.

Evo-denialism? Not pertinent to discussing the attitudes of the Founding Fathers—Darwin came much later.

Watson and Crick couldn’t un-discover DNA, for example, even if they’d converted to FSM or Angry Bob worship on their deathbeds.

Watson was recently fired from somewhere after converting to racism. The double helix still exists.

asdf, I had a lifelong RC friend who let me know that because I was baptised RC, I couldn’t leave the church!

Likewise Judaism. You cannot leave. That said, if you’re not a member of a synagogue, there’s not really any demands. Without the fear of hell, other people don’t really have any incentive to push you into practicing.

This is all sort of related in my mind to the fucked-up-ness of the Mormons who go around baptizing people after their death.  It’s all about hierarchies and control.  They want to be able to decide what happens on the micro level after we die, like picking cosmic kickball teams.  Which, to me, is so beside the point as to be laughable.  “OK, I just decided that Plato would TOTES have been a Catholic!  *Shazzam* Now he’s in heaven, yay!”

As I understand it, this is a sales point for conversion. Typically it’s used to baptize the dead relatives of recent converts, so that now you get to go to heaven and so do your grandparents, so you don’t have to worry about them.

LCforevah:
Bear in mind, though, that “Scalito” is a pejorative which, frighteningly enough, underestimates what an authoritarian Alito is.  Scalia is, on occasion, capable of coming out with a decision in favour of civil liberties.  (His joining the majority in the “random searches on buses by groping bags” case springs to mind.)  Alito never does, no matter how outrageous the situation.  He has even held that a search warrant which was granted for one premises but specifically denied for another was valid to search the “refused” premises because that’s what the issuing judge really meant.

Makes my point, seeker.

LCforevah, you do realise that you sound like a Chick Tract, or the bigots who railed against Al Smith and JFK? Spare us this shit.

Typically it’s used to baptize the dead relatives of recent converts, so that now you get to go to heaven and so do your grandparents, so you don’t have to worry about them.

That, too, but I’ve mainly heard about it in the context of baptizing Jewish people who died in the Holocaust.  Apparently because Mormons think it’s the nice thing to do, or whatever - I never got the straight dope on that, because it was explained to me by a Mormon.  Ultimately, the idea is that they get to decide who goes to heaven, and who doesn’t.  It can be used to comfort the family members of the dead, but it’s bigger than just that.  They’ve decided that Holocaust victims “deserve” heaven, et voila!  Heaven is what they get!

I’m an atheist, formerly RC. How in “heavens name” do I sound like a chick tract by pointing out that the RC’s on the Supreme Court are behaving EXACTLY like RC’s?

I don’t spare the politically correct—if this makes anyone who is PC uncomfortable, well, I expect you to uphold my first amendment rights, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel.

seeker, in order for Alito to be such an authoritian smuck, he must adhere to the authoritarian RC conventions of treating the laity, read American citizens, like sheep. I hope this clears up why by you pointing out Alito’s anti civil rights decisions, you make my point.

I wasn’t arguing against your point, LCforevah, so you might want to be a little less defensive.  I was merely supplementing it by pointing out that his nickname, in seeking to mock his authoritarian tendencies actually serves to understate them.

seeker, agreed.