Feb 19, 2018
To be fair she did say of Kibbutzim “I will admit that my knowledge is scanty and I have not looked into them,”… “ but I understand them to be successful collectives.”
In the same way “I have never read Darwin but it is apparent that one can read what he wrote and understand widely different things, or at least reach diametrically opposed conclusions about human nature.”
If she hasn’t researched either, how can she understand one, and find anything apparent about the other? Darwin’s writings defined natural selection as the “principle by which each slight variation [of a trait], if useful, is preserved”. It (plus random mutation) is the driver for the evolution of the Species. I don’t see much room for diametrically opposed conclusions, there.
It is in attempting to reconcile evolution with creation that people develop diametrically opposed conclusions on the nature of humanity. Either God created Adam and Eve, or we evolved from African Apes: you can’t have both explanations be correct, can you? Well actually you can (as an intellectual exercise) if the Jews are descended from Adam and Eve, and the rest of us from evolved descendants of African Hominids. That would explain how Cain after being exiled for his brother’s murder was able to marry and have children:
“And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and born Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son — Enoch (Genesis 4:17).” Cain could have married an African Neanderthal woman, their offspring would have been Homo Sapiens. By now all of us would have a mixture of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal DNA, and ...we do.
