Posted on 05/01/2011 7:24:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
The squabble between Darwin lobbyists who openly hate religion and those who only quietly disdain it grows ever more personal, bitter and pathetic. On one side, evangelizing New or "Gnu" (ha ha) Atheists like Jerry Coyne and his acolytes at Why Evolution Is True. Dr. Coyne is a biologist who teaches and ostensibly researches at the University of Chicago but has a heck of a lot of free time on his hands for blogging and posting pictures of cute cats.
On the other side, so-called accommodationists like the crowd at the National Center for Science Education, who attack the New Atheists for the political offense of being rude to religious believers and supposedly messing up the alliance between religious and irreligious Darwinists.
I say "supposedly" because there's no evidence any substantial body of opinion is actually being changed on religion or evolution by anything the open haters or the quiet disdainers say. Everyone seems to seriously think they're either going to defeat religion, or merely "creationism," or both by blogging for an audience of fellow Darwinists.
Want to see what I mean? This is all pretty strictly a battle of stinkbugs in a bottle. Try to follow it without getting a headache.
Coyne recently drew excited applause from fellow biologist-atheist-blogger PZ Myers for Coyne's "open letter" (published on his blog) to the NCSE and its British equivalent, the British Centre for Science Education. In the letter, Coyne took umbrage at criticism of the New Atheists, mostly on blogs, emanating from the two accommodationist organizations. He vowed that,
We will continue to answer the misguided attacks [on the New Atheists] by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks.Like the NCSE, the BCSE seeks to pump up Darwin in the public mind without scaring religious people. This guy called Stanyard at the BCSE complains of losing a night's sleep over the nastiness of the rhetoric on Coyne's blog. Coyne in turn complained that Stanyard complained that a blog commenter complained that Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE, is like "vermin." Coyne also hit out at blogger Jason Rosenhouse for an "epic"-length blog post complaining of New Atheist "incivility." In the blog, Rosenhouse, who teaches math at James Madison University, wrote an update about how he had revised an insulting comment about the NCSE's Josh Rosenau that he, Rosenhouse, made in a previous version of the post.
That last bit briefly confused me. In occasionally skimming the writings of Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau in the past, I realized now I had been assuming they were the same person. They are not!
It goes on and on. In the course of his own blog post, Professor Coyne disavowed name-calling and berated Stanyard (remember him? The British guy) for "glomming onto" the Matzke-vermin insult like "white on rice, or Kwok on a Leica." What's a Kwok? Not a what but a who -- John Kwok, presumably a pseudonym, one of the most tirelessly obsessive commenters on Darwinist blog sites. Besides lashing at intelligent design, he often writes of his interest in photographic gear such as a camera by Leica. I have the impression that Kwok irritates even fellow Darwinists.
There's no need to keep all the names straight in your head. I certainly can't. I'm only taking your time, recounting just a small part of one confused exchange, to illustrate the culture of these Darwinists who write so impassionedly about religion, whether for abolishing it or befriending it. Writes Coyne in reply to Stanyard,
I'd suggest, then, that you lay off telling us what to do until you've read about our goals. The fact is that we'll always be fighting creationism until religion goes away, and when it does the fight will be over, as it is in Scandinavia.A skeptic might suggest that turning America into Scandinavia, as far as religion goes, is an outsized goal, more like a delusion, for this group as they sit hunched over their computers shooting intemperate comments back and forth at each other all day. Or in poor Stanyard's case, all night.
There's a feverish, terrarium-like and oxygen-starved quality to this world of online Darwinists and atheists. It could only be sustained by the isolation of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that the public accepts Darwinism to the extent it does -- which is not much -- primarily because of what William James would call the sheer, simple "prestige" that the opinion grants. Arguments and evidence have little to do with it.
The prestige of Darwinism is not going to be affected by how the battle between Jerry Coyne and the NCSE turns out. New Atheist arguments are hobbled by the same isolation from what people think and feel. I have not yet read anything by any of these gentlemen or ladies, whether the open haters or the quiet disdainers, that conveys anything like a real comprehension of religious feeling or thought.
Even as they fight over the most effective way to relate to "religion," the open atheists and the accomodationists speak of an abstraction, a cartoon, that no actual religious person would recognize. No one is going to be persuaded if he doesn't already wish to be persuaded for other personal reasons. No faith is under threat from the likes of Jerry Coyne.
So, you’re a Calvinist atheist.
Who knew.
Your reference <>http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2010/08/creation-myths-of-tenured.html<> posits an infinite gap between animal and human consciousness.
I have played with dolphins in the wild. They are as aware of life and their existence as I am. In the ocean I am the poor crippled blind idiot compared to them.
Life, in all its forms, is the same and it all traces back to if not one, then a few single sources.
Too bad lg. The world goes on without you and without your direction and permission.
What hubris.
Jesus GAVE His life. He made that clear.
No one took it from Him; He laid it down to willingly take the punishment for our sin that He might redeem us.
That is a far cry from sacrificing humans to demons.
Atheists love nothing more than to charge God with evil to justify their rejection of Him, even when they have to make it up, which is all the time.
Atheists love nothing more than to charge God with evil to justify their rejection of Him, even when they have to make it up, which is all the time.
Arrogance at its most blatant - setting themselves up as the judge of God Almight... and assuming the position of God for themselves.
whats the matter kosta - still challenged by the presence of God in-spite of all your fist shaking? You attributed predestination (even though highly flawed) to God - a characteristic. Is that a statement of faith or fact. If you want to argue that, then the same burden of proof is upon you kosta - even before you try your little shut down argument.
Your ignorance is on display lg. The bible is about God and his relationship to mankind.
And yet the Bible can't make a single, accurate, verifiable, prediction.
Been there, done countless times. Jesus fulfilled dozens during the course of his life here. Next lame bleat.
You have offered nothing by your opinion based on faith. You have no fact to back up ANYTHING you've been saying.
Why are you demanding a standard of proof that you yourself are unwilling to give?
Because that is all atheists can do - redirect attention from the bankruptcy of their own preferred dogma.
Hebrews 9:27
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.
No, Technique calling.
Flim-flam is your modus operandi.
The behavior of humans around the world prior to our present awareness in the U.S. that the Creator endowed every human being with certain inalienable rights included such things as genocide, killing, cannibalism, rape, slavery - all kinds of brutality much like predator animal species, i.e. kill or be killed, survival of the fittest, unconstrained lust.
A true atheist/agnostic would say that all this killing was a good thing, evolution at work - the clever, strong, industrious and skillful got rid of the weaker humans thus improving the gene pool. Indeed, he would say the genetically inferior should be killed in the womb or in infancy and if already matured then sterilized to prosper the gene pool. Eugenics or infanticide (e.g. Singer) follows from that worldview.
But many who call themselves atheist or agnostic are actually anti-God or anti-Christ and instead seek to set themselves up as the measure of what is right and what is wrong seeing themselves as superior, i.e. "god" like.
Should they succeed in gaining political power, the prognosis is bleak. Death by government was much higher in countries which were officially atheistic and when colonizing governments officially viewed the inhabits as less valuable than themselves.
Alternatively in the present age of political correctness, such a government may view the rights of animals as equal to that of humans because there can be no qualitative difference in a PC intellectually atheistic/agnostic worldview (e.g. Singer.)
Fact or faith huh? My faith is real therefore it is a fact.
But for anyone on the outside looking in it may appear to be an illusion. One must first take the leap of faith by placing sincere trust in Jesus, confessing sins and repenting of this earthly sinful lifestyle. If you are afraid to make decision or do it by consensus then good luck b/c the Bible states that there are few that find it.
Word or Jesus = Logos. Actually I believe you can take it at this level or you can also dig deeper. There is another NT scripture where the ‘word’ was translated originally from Rhema.
To my understanding logos or logic is the natural coded physical laws of which God is claiming to be the author. 3 billion quad coded protein segments in DNA is just one awesome and staggering testament to his vast knowledge.
Conversely, God is also claiming authorship for the Rhema [some say the actions of the Holy Spirit here] which I interpret as super-natural or all the things which science can never fully comprehend nor explain adequately. For instance the very acts/miracles of creation week. Or how about getting animal pairs of every kind to make a trek to Noah’s ark and some most probably even set aside their carnivorous appetites. I’m sure there were also some super-natural events that took place in securing the sea-worthiness of the ark for a whole year.
Future prophecies. I’m looking forward to the rapture which I can only hope/guess will be w/i my lifetime or sometime before 2081. From reading other saintly authors I’m looking for the rebuilding of the temple mount in Jerusalem soon but most probably after the apocalypse.
The apocalypse preceeds the war of armegeddon. Many think it will happen when all the countries of the world refuse to be an ally to Israel and all the countries surrounding Israel rise up to wipe her out. Then God says he will supernaturally defeat these enemies. Could take that to include all of Islam or just radical terrorist Islam which most probably leads to a great spiritual worldwide re-awakening but I also expect a great falling away much like the wave of patriotism and falling away that USA experienced following Sept. 11th 2001. This super-natural war [hinted at in the beginning of the Left Behind book series] will most probably also destroy the Islamic Dome of the Rock that may indeed be sitting atop the original Temple Mount. Destruction of the Dome of the Rock would pave the way for archaeological digs to determine the precise coordinates.
Are you certain of that?
Cordially,
See Psalm 22. This is several prophecies fulfilled by Christ on the cross that were written approx 1,000 years before Jesus Christ became a man and walked the earth.
If you begin to study any of those who have studied prophecy you will see how wrong you are. Start w/ Dr. David Reagan or Joel Rosenberg.
Since the physical world exists prior to our exploration of it, so do the higher worlds. This is easy to prove to anyone who goes there. But for those who wish they were mere animals no proof is enough to convince them otherwise.
How stupid would I have to be to think any of my answers to questions asked by ignorant flat-landers --(who limit their thinking to the horizontal world)-- would make any sense at all to them?
We have gained an ability to understand God's pointing and this alone can replace a multitude of instincts that would be necessary if living apart from God. Imagine a dog trying to explain the concept of pointing to a wolf. The wolf would just look dumbly and say: 'It's a hand. No matter how it moves, it is still just a hand. Can we eat it already?'" In a way, the capacity to point and to understand pointing is everything, for it is what lifts us out of our engulfment in matter and imprisonment in the senses. It is the essence of Polanyi's philosophy, what he calls the distinction between subsidiary (the finger) and focal (the moon) knowledge. The obligatory atheist is essentially fixated on the finger while barking at the moon.
So once again, since that's the case, please excuse me if I'm not dumb enough to believe that those who Work on Darwin's Farm have the capacity to understand any of the answers I would give to their "questions". bttt
Horse hockey. You can not prove that and the Cambrian explosion absolutely dis-proves this most inane conjecture.
Real mature christians would have been praying their own private prayers too. Something along the lines of these bombs doing their necessary work but sparing the innocent.
And Jesus Christ paraphrase trumps a Patton quote every time.
LOL.
It wasn’t a put down. Most atheists are pretty puffed about their intelligence.
I just acknowledge it and move on or forward with whatever topic they choose.
Your acceptance of Jesus Christ, your sinful nature, desire to change your spirit, your spiritual intent and priorities, acknowledgement of your failed state, Asking/begging God's mercy and that he become primary in your life and master of your spirit from now on.
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