!Old Conspiracy Theory: Antecedents of Darwin Central

__THE OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY__ holds that __Darwin Central__ is only the most recent and the most visible face of an ancient conspiratorial cabal unofficially known as __The Brotherhood in Pondscum__, which has had many names and even more fronts down through the ages and remains bent on Total World Domination 

Cloaked in secrecy and carefully covering its own traces across millennia, it may never be fully exposed and its Satanic purposes defeated.  Nonetheless, using the established methodology of ((Creation Scholarship)), this tentative history has been compiled.

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!!The Ancient Brotherhood of Pondscum

Many ((Creation Scholarship|Creation Scholars)) insist that the notorious   __Brotherhood of Pondscum__ conspiracy began in 4004 BC, at the instigation of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.  In this view, the probable first leader, or ((Grand Master)), of the cabal was __Cain__, slayer of his own brother.

But more rigourous ((Creation Science|Creation Scientists)), such as ((Dr. Abe Chilehem)), while not discounting the above claim, point out that the lack of specific reference to the forerunners of Darwin Central in scripture means this view is ''only a theory''. 

!!Early Origins: The Garden School of Epikouros

These same scholars suggest, with greater confidence, a rather different garden venue than Eden for the conspiracy's early origin, the "__Garden School__" of the ancient Greek philospher Epikouros (341 BC - 270 BC).  Located in Athens between the competing schools of the __Stoa__ and the Platonic __Academy__ (from which many doctrines could be salvaged by later Church Fathers), the __Garden__ of Epikouros taught pernicious doctrines of materialism, atomism, and rationality under the inscribed motto:

::''Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure''::

The vile teachings of Epikouros assured him a wide following among the Godless pagans of antiquity. In Rome, his doctrines were further promulgated by the poet __Lucretius__, and papyri of Epikouros' own works have recently been recovered from the villa of Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 BC.

Particularly unforgiveable of this school is the framing of what has become known as the ''Epicurean Paradox'':

^''God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can.

If he wants to and cannot, he is weak -- and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful -- which is equally foreign to god's nature.

If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful and so not a god.

If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?''^

!!The Church Triumphant: The Age of Faith 313 - 1380

With the issuing of the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, Emperor Constantine I established Christianity as a legal religion (''religio licita'') of the Roman Empire. With official sanction, early theocrats of the Church were able to purge blaspheming heretics, gain control of the apparatus of the state, and begin the long-overdue book-burnings and other suppressions of diabolical paganism. The previously popular works of Lucretius, for example, escaped the purifying flames of the Church in only a single manuscript.

Thereupon ensued the fabled '__Age of Faith__', from the fall of Rome to the 14th Century AD.  Through this era, 'The Golden Millennium',when the Church ruled supreme and unchallenged by secular power, Western man was surely at its pinnacle of virtue and contentment. 

Throughout Europe, happy smiling serfs enjoyed honest agricultural recreation, spared from the horrors of old age by the blessings of the Black Death. Witches were rarely troublesome, and promptly burned by diligent authorities when they were.  No "activist Judges" made laws from the bench when God Almighty Himself, personally intervening in 'Trials by Combat' to indicate guilt, was on the case. Church attendance was at an all time high, as were its tithe-filled coffers. 

Blessed it was to live in that happy, bygone era!

But alas, the fell forces of rationalism and paganism had not been entirely extirpated even by the vigilence of the Church, for such are the unrelenting ways of the Devil. In dark, underground places, the enemys of ((TRVTH)) were busy regrouping and recruiting, plotting and scheming, and above all practising  their vile creeds of empirical enquiry, rational humanism, and sensual indulgence.  And they would escape detection by wrapping their evil agenda in layer upon layer of arcane esoterica and ritual, and making themselves known to one another by a secret ((Meiotic Handshake)) and other signs.

!!The Knights Templar

The Secret Brotherhood of Pondscum first dared publically rear its ugly head in 1118, when Hughes de Payens (c. 1070-1136) founded the order of the __Knights Templar__ in Jerusalem.  Declaring himself its first ((Grand Master)), de Payens endeavoured to re-order the underground Brotherhood into a publically-visible band of noble 'warrior-monks.'

Initially, the __Knights Templar__ did indeed achieve high prestige, lauded for their military prowess, boundless courage and wide learning. The order rapidly grew, in adherents and in wealth, for nearly two centuries under a succession of 23 Grand Masters.

Secretly, of course, the Knights Templar were recovering the lost sources of ancient pagan science from eastern archives and hiding them in layer upon layer of weird arcana and bizarre rituals, such as the mysterious worship of ((Baphomet)).

Fortunately, the ever-vigilent Inquisitors of the Church eventually exposed the conspiracy, and the order was dissolved in 1312 by __Pope Clement V__ in 1312 on charges of heresy on which grounds the "last" Grand Master, __Jacques de Molay__, was burned at the stake in 1314, his ashes scattered into the Seine to leave no relics.

But many of the Order, escaping on board the lost Templar fleet from Brest, fled persecution with the bulk of their considerable financial assets to Galloway in western Scotland, where they found protection at the court of __Robert the Bruce__. In the remote Scottish Highlands, the Templars went underground and, through a continuing succession of Grand Masters, preserved their esoteric knowledge and rituals, extended their clandestine power and influence throughout Europe, and ultimately spawned a number of other secret societies, such as the Freemasons, the Bavarian Illuminati, the Rosicrucians and the __Invisible College__. 

!!Freemasons and their Tentacles

We cannot hope to even briefly summarise the vast body of Freemasonic conspiracy theory literature in an article of this restricted scope.  At best, we can draw attention to a few salient points of interest.

It is through Freemasonry that the Brotherhood in Pondscum perfected their dark arts of deception, misinformation, and inflitration--and of course, only Freemasons of the highest degrees would be privy to knowledge that their secret society was in fact merely a tool of a far larger and more sinister global conspiracy, and its manifold offshoots.

One may ask, "If Darwin Central evolved from Freemasonry, why are there still Freemasons?" 

The answer, of course, is a ''common ancestor'', for which there is irrefutable evidence in all of the common traits -- excessive secrecy, hidden wealth, secret handshakes, and so forth.

There can be no doubt that the Masonic trowel is the ancestor of the palaeontologist's tool adopted by Darwin Central for its notorious ((Trowel Strategy)).

!!The Invisible College

The Invisible College, believed to have included ''the'' Grand Master and his immediate circle of initiates, had probably established itself in London in the course of the early Tudor era.  Many researchers claim that __Francis Bacon __(1561-1626), 1st Viscount St. Alban and prominent Freemason, was a Grand Master at the time of __Elizabeth I__, while others contend that the astronomer and occultist __John Dee__ (1527-1609) is a more likely candidate; the matter cannot be conclusively determined.

The earliest known document referencing the Invisible College is a letter of 1646 by __Robert Boyle __(1627-1691), the celebrated physicist and chemist and an acquaintance, as a young man studying in Florence, of __Galilleo Galilei__ (1564-1642).  Other known members of the Invisible College at that time include the architect  __Sir Christopher Wren __(1632-1723), scientist __Robert Hooke__ (1635-1703), and Scottish polymath __Sir Robert Moray__ (?-1673).

!!The Royal Society:

Moray, an influential Freemason, secured from the newly-restored King Charles II a formal charter in 1660 for the founding of The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge (later known more simply as The Royal Society).  The Invisible College, heirs to the Knights Templar, had now created a powerful institution in its growing quest for Total World Domination under the banner of ''"Nullius in Verba"''

The roster of Fellows of the Royal Society may be taken more or less as a list of card-carrying Brothers in Pondscum.  But their influence did not stop there, but spread throughout the intellectual circles of the world.  And it can be no co-incidence that __Adam Smith__, in seeking a term to describe the market forces at play in free enterprise, should choose the term '__The Invisible Hand__' -- certainly a veiled reference to the secret ((Meiotic Handshake)).

!!Re-branding the Brotherhood: Darwin Central

And the greatest breakthrough for the secret cabal arrived on 1 July 1858, when ((Karl Darwin|Karl Darwin's)) world-transforming __Theory of Evolution__ was presented before the Linnean Society (founded in 1788, but doubtless fully infiltrated by agents of the Invisible from the outset).  Here at last was the solid scientific foundation for the secret Brotherhood to launch a fully-formed bid for Total World Domination. 

Adherents of the __Young Conspiracy Theory__ have simply assumed that Darwin was the first ((Grand Master)) of the arch-conspiracy that bears his name.  All OCTists, on the other hand, agree that Darwin was certainly not the 'First' of the Grand Masters, and many OCTists additionally maintain that Darwin was never a Grand Master at all. These OCT researchers point out that Darwin himself did not take up public cudgels to advance his own work, instead leaving such tasks to colleagues such as __Thomas Huxley__. They further claim it seems unlikely that Darwin, with his deep commitment to his own program of scientific inquiry, would have also wished to additionally shoulder the burden of leading a sophisticated global conspiracy.

Moreover, the name 'Darwin Central' does not appear until the 1870's, some 15 years after the publication of ''Origin of Species''.  It would appear the name change of the Invisible College was prompted by the emergence, in the United States, of the KKK, which (hoping to acquire thereby some measure of legitimacy and prestige) aped the title with the name 'Invisible Empire.'  To distance themselves from this backward and racist band of thugs, a re-branding to 'Darwin Central' was in order.

But both OCTists and YCTists agree that it is to Darwin's domestic arrangements at his home in Down House we must look to find the immediate origins of the modern Darwin Central Conspiracy. 

The story continues: ((YCT|YCT: The Evolution of the Janitorial Pool))