Darwinism = War?

I have seen this topic mentioned before and I am a bit curious as to what others think about it. My question is, how have Darwin’s theories, or other theories created off of his, contributed to inhumane acts such as war?Now, I feel that it is not Darwin or his initial theories that have any real connection to inhumane acts like war but I feel that theories taken and spawned from Darwin's initial theories may have gone toward such acts of violence. The whole concept of survival of the fittest has been taken to such extremes along with natural selection, Hitler and the extermination of the Jews seems to be a good example among many others.

So, what do you guys think?

Response to Megan Cooney's Question

Megan posed the question, "What is it that changed the minds of people to become more accepting of atheism?"

I believe that people have become more accepting of atheism for some of the same reasons that they have become more accepting of other things like gay marriage, for example. Over time it seems that new things pop up in society that people develop issues with and eventually they overcome those issues or learn to deal with them. This is not saying that there aren't people who continue to have issues as many do, but I think that people eventually notice with most things that there are people that support whatever the "issue" is, in this case atheism, and they realize that people can have differences of opinions and beliefs.

So, as I was typing this my roommate read an article about the boy scouts written by a former boy scout. It mentioned that the boy scouts frown upon gay and atheist members and I was wondering if anyone had any knowledge of this or what they thought?

Plausible?

The past weeks discussion has been about existentialism and how and existentialist would run a liberal arts college like MCLA. Now, this has been discussed and ideas have been thrown around but, what about non liberal arts colleges? How might a college that wasn't a liberal arts college run if it were up to an existentialist? Would this even work or would the idea of trying to make something like this happen be completely ridiculous?

Response to Bryan's Question

Bryan posed the question, "Do you think the fear of change exists, and is problematic in the lives of most humans?"

I do believe that the fear of change is persent in a great majoriy of people. We fear what we do not know or understand, now, that is not to say that all people fear the different or unkown. Some do embrace change more quickly than others but it seems that a great deal of people do have trouble getting over their fear of change.

These fears can cause rifts between people and their ways of thinking (think of gay allies versus gay opposers as one example). Fear of change can break apart groups of people, it can keep people from trying new and different things and isolate people from the world. Fear of change is a big issue that many people face so my question is.....would you view fear of change as an epidemic of sorts?

Reccuring Dreams

So, I have talked to many friends and family members and most of them have told me about a recurring dream or two. I myself have about three recurring dreams that I have experienced since childhood. These dreams, for me anyway, do not occur more than once a year if that, but they do still pop up. Could this be a kind of buried emotion surfacing every few years, as a sort of Freudian reminder that I/we have untended emotions?

Response to Megan Cooney's Question

Megan posed the question, " Why do you think we remember certain dreams, and not others? I for instance, have not remembered a dream for many years."

We know by now that a person can have multiple dreams throughout the period of one night, I believe psychology tells us that their are atleast six dream cycles a night for the average person (correct me if I am wrong). We never remember every dream that we have in that one night, so it makes sense that we do not remember dreams that span over years of our lives. I too have periods of time, months or even years, where I do not remember my dreams. Supposedly we dream most when in the REM cycle, perhaps not remembering your dreams has more to do with how soon after your last REM cycle you awake.

This may not answer Megan's question but it has helped me pose my own which I believe would be interesting to answer...Does the quality of our sleep, in your opinion, increase/decrease our ability to remember our dreams? How else would that affect our dreams?

In Response to Bryan's Question

Bryan asked, "Do you think that finding meaning in your dreams would make a significant improvement in your life?".

I feel that dreams hold importance some of the time. Some dreams are completely pointless while others hold significance. Finding meaning in ones dreams can help improve life but I don't believe that it would improve life beyond a minimal basis. Understanding our dreams can help us understand why we are stressed or a number of other situations but I don't believe that understanding dreams will cause an epiphany about anything that will have and end result of a completely different outlook on life.

Now, my arguement may be way too onesided so....anyone disagree?

Dreams

So, this weeks discussion of Freud had a decent mention of dreams. I'm going to metion a situation I experienced and then just ask for some feedback as this experience i had fits in nicely with the discussion of dreams.

Okay, when I was ten or so I went biking in New Hampshire and ended up having a bad accident that almost ended my life. I flew over the handlebars of the bike I was riding and slid a few feet on my head...not enjoyable. Now, the interesting thing is that the night before my accident I had a dream of this happening and, to make this even more interesting, I didn't fully remember the dream until after I had the accident. I have never really been able to understand how or why I didn't fully remember this dream until after I almost died so, my question is basic.

What do you guys think about this?