Churches urged to back evolution

British Broadcasting Corporation ^ | 20 February 2006 | Paul Rincon

[Dominic Harr]

Sorry, I had to run and my second link did not make it in the post, but it is here.

?

You did it again! That link -- oh, wait, I see.

You're quoting from the *thesaurus*, not the dictionary part!!!

And the bit you just quoted from the Thesaurus makes clear that is a *religous* usage only! Since we were talking about science . . . obviously not applicable (and don't give me the 'Evolution is religion' line, cuz that only suggests a total lack of understanding of religion).

Find a dictionary that defines 'affirm' in the way you claim, pleaze. Or else you lose on this one point, I'm afraid.

Quoting definitions from a thesaurus is an interesting tactic. Dishonest, in the extreme.

I might say, rather 'un-Christian' behavior, even . . .

[jwalsh07]

That's irrelevant to the Dini case. Dini never said he would discriminate against anyone. He said he would require a belief in a scientific theory of human origins, something that is an entirely defensible requirment for a career in medicine.

Levin's case is irrelevant. And I already stated that concluding Dini's overheated rhetoric was discrimination is arguable.

But for the sake of argument, the Justice Department concluded a reasonable man would could see that as discrimination. I'm arguing that state paid employees using state money run afoul of the constitution when they state they will discriminate.

You disagree, we'll go on from there.

In Dini's case he went back to language that was more in the line of meritocracy rather than an oath of fealty. Good move on his part. Of course I'm sure it has no effect on who he recommends or doesn't recommend for medical school. He's already made his views clear on that. I work with Cardiologists and Radiologists on a daily bais. Many of them are theists. They are very smart folks who have no problem balancing the medical profession and their religious beliefs so after 25 years I know that you and Dini are full of crap when you claim that theistic medical professionals are inferior.

[Elsie]

But in this case, it isn't for want of understanding Evolution

WHAT!?

Do you mean that MOST of the 'handeroutters' believed in the ToE???

[stands2reason]

Science is neither "balanced" nor "fair."

[jwalsh07]

LOL, I will lose the point when Dini changed his criteria to avoid losing in court? That's rich. There aren't a abundance of these cases to reference because not many Porfessors have been so brazen.

But don't let me stop you, go right on thinking that state paid employees using state resources can state they will discriminate based on race, religion, creed, or sex.

In fact, just test it. If you are a public employee, just state on your public website that you will not hire or promote creationists. Let me know how you make out.

[Right Wing Professor]

I work with Cardiologists and Radiologists on a daily bais. Many of them are theists. They are very smart folks who have no problem balancing the medical profession and their religious beliefs so after 25 years I know that you and Dini are full of crap when you claim that theistic medical professionals are inferior.

Neither I nor Dini said that or anything remotely like it, it appears you've reverted to type. Serves me right. Arguments with you almost invariably end with a lying slur on your part. Why would this time be any different?

[Elsie]

The selection of organisms for transplants or gene therapy is dictated by one's view of relatedness,

Dang!

I would have hoped there'd be TESTS and TRIALS and STUDIES!

Who knew it was done on FAITH!

[Jo Nuvark]

Hey guys... Couldn't help but notice your discussion about oaths and vows. Hope this helps.

Ecc 5:4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for [he hath] no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.

Ecc 5:5 Better [is it] that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

[Elsie]

Evolution does not advance civility, it excuses depravity.

NOW you've done it!

Hitler, Stalin and Planned Parenthood won't be far behind!

[Vicomte13]

Ooh, but see, I think that the trouble is that in BRITAIN politics and religion were divorced long ago.

The problem was that in the English Civil War, the Puritans won full, plenary, absolute power: Cromwell and his Ironsides were invincible in the field. He ruled everything, and they ruled everything.

But was Jerusalem builded there, among those dark satanic mills?

No.

And that was the problem. The desiderata of plenary political power having been achieved, the Puritans very sincerely and with utterly true hearts (in my analysis) set about really and truly trying to build the New Jerusalem there, in England.

And it failed utterly.
It failed massively.
A Frenchman might have said "Mais, mon cher monsieur, il faut que vous sachiez que le monde ne veut pas etre sauver" - "But, my dear sir, you MUST understand that the world does not WANT to be saved", but you English actually had to play it out in three acts.

In the buildup to the war, there was tension, Anglican supremacy, and the Roundhead assertion that the established order was morally corrupt. Then the Roundheads WON, and they went to every length to build Jerusalem there in England's green and pleasant land. Gambling, card games, 'baccy, everything banned, restricted. England entire became Salem, and it stayed that way for a decade. The Puritans had no challengers really, and they did not lose any sincerity either. The true Puritan believers were as true at the end of Cromwell's rule as at the beginning. Trouble was, the rest of England, which by that point was the overwhelming majority, was well and truly SICK of the joyless Puritan impositions.

Now, remember, Catholicism is a pretty joyful religion, really. Lots and lots of feasts. Lots of candlelight and dancing and music. Drinking is alright. Dancing is alright. Gambling is alright (at least to a point). There are some moral demands in Catholicism, but it's a much less restraining corset than Roundhead Puritanism was.

A good American analogy is Prohibition. The Christian Women's Temperance Union succeeded in organizing and dominating the American political process sufficiently to actually amend the US Constitution to get alcohol banned after World War I. They won the victory, complete and absolutely. But then the sun came up the next day, and the day after, and a whole country full of people who WEREN'T Christian Women's Temperance ladies found themselves living in a country where they couldn't get a drink anymore. You had Catholics who have drinking wine as part of the religious rite, and Irish and Germans (Catholic and Lutheran both), not to mention Episcopalians!, for whom drinking in substantial quantities is an important part of normal social intercourse. But those shrivelled up old prudes managed to get the laws of the country changed to take the drink right out of their hands!

Obviously rigorous puritanism about drink didn't work in America, and Puritanism didn't work as the basis of government in England either. People do not WANT to live like that, and when faced with the argument that the religion and piety DEMANDS it, people will change their religion and chuck out the tenets of the bad religion in favor of something they could stand.

And that's what happened when Cromwell died. Puritanism was DEAD in England after that. It wasn't because Puritans themselves lost faith, but because the sum total of the rest of the people were well and truly and utterly SICK of the nagging little Puritan ninnies being in their faced. They were shoved out of power, forever, never, ever to return. Puritanism was DISCREDITED by the fact of governance, in the same way that Christian Temperance was destroyed by its very success. Once the Christian Temperance movement actually took drink away from Americans, their reaction, when they took power back, was to make sure that the Christian Temperance types became a very model of how NOT to govern a republic.

Charles II was invited back. Catholic, this worried a lot of folks, but the Church of England came back into command, and with it, the corset of Puritanism was untied. Embittered, the Puritans emigrated to America in droves.

The overall result was a general diminution of the importance of and respect for religion IN GENERAL in England. It's not that the English stopped being Christians. It was that they were no longer willing to tolerate an excess of piety in their laws. Anglican Catholicism, with its much looser rules of conduct and much greater pageantry, fit the bill nicely. The ceremonial and ritual demands are real, but the CIVIC demands, enforceable by the magistrate, these relics of the Puritan rule did not pass, and nobody would have tolerated their passing.

Ten years of Cromwell and the Puritans was enough to discredit the concept of theocracy in England FOREVER. Really, the candle of English piety was burnt at both ends by the Puritans, and by the time Cromwell's life was done, the English were quite done with EXCESSIVE piety forever.

And so this is why drawing parallels between the British Left today and the Roundheads seems a bit inapposite to me. I might agree that on certain concepts of the organization of government, that's true. But the crux of the difference is too important: the Left and Right, in Britain are worried about government and politics. Argument and history are means to a political end. The Puritans were really worried about piety and building the New Jerusalem; theirs really was a religious project. And it failed catastrophically, so much so that nobody, left, right, center, pious or impious dreams of that anymore in England.

That is also true on the Continent. The lesson of the intense bloodshed of the Protestant Reformation was a GENERAL diminution in the willingness to accept any sort of REAL religious power over affairs in the Protestant countries. The excesses of zeal of the victorious Reformers in the North, and Savanrola in the South, were quite sufficient to convince Germans and Italians to diminish the importance of Christianity as a POTENT force. Christianity remained, and remains, as a symbolic thing in Europe, but the torrents of blood that Puritans of all stripes unleashed in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s were sufficient to leave the lasting impression that, really, we do not want to attempt to build the New Jerusalem anywhere nearby, and to never let the really pious ever get CLOSE to the levers of power again.

The legacy of Christian rule in the Europe of Cromwell, the Lutheran Fathers, Calvin and Savanarolla is that Europeans recognize from experience that Christianity is NOT really a viable principle for remotely civilized government, and needs to be confined to the quaint traditions of Churches and the like. The worst government in English history was the Puritan. The worst government in German history was the Lutheran establishment. The worst government in Italian history was the likes of Savanarolla and his fanatics. The worst government in Spanish history was the Spanish Inquisition. All of Europe remembers, collectively, that Christianity rampant, armed with the sword, is evil. That's the real legacy of the Wars of the Reformation and the Cromwellian dicatorship.

America never went through that.
In America, the intense desire is still there among various Puritan elements to well and truly have a state that is founded upon and respects "Christian principles". This it the evolution argument. The public schools teaching Darwin are teaching apostasy and blasphemy, according to those who believe that the Bible is being traduced thereby. And so they seek to use their numbers to vote in people who will teach the truth as they understand it.

So, I think it would be fair to say that the activist religious right in America descends from Cromwell and the Roundheads, but that BOTH political traditions in England - whatever their pretenses - are post-Christian. They BOTH descend from the Restoration Compromise, whereby an overtly Catholic King was allowed to take back the throne, so long as he would, very hypocritically, allow the functioning of the Protestant Anglican Episcopacy, which would, in turn, ignore the core tenets of its faith, tolerate the heathen Catholic on the throne. And everyone would let people dance, play cards and fornicate without further religious intrusion...because to do otherwise would be to break the compromise. What got compromised away was ANY form of Christianity with any teeth in it, in favor of a government which everyone could stand. That compromise holds in England and across Europe in most places.

In America, the closest to any of that was Prohibition, but that was not so murderous as Cromwell and Savanarolla, and therefore religion as a viable force in politics is nowhere near spent in American politics. It has been spent in Europe since Cromwell and Louis XIII.

[Right Wing Professor]

Well, I've been reminded (again) that arguing with creationists is like wrestling pigs; you may win, but you'll still end up wanting to take a shower. I'm taking a break for a few weeks, to try to reconcile myself to the unpleasant fact that I belong to the same species as these creatures.

[Elsie]

Well, creationists and socialists have many similarities.

See!!!

[jwalsh07]

I'm a Catholic metmom, A creationist if you will. Evolution happens, intelligent design happens. That can all be observed from right here in front of my Dell.

My belief is that God did it His way and His way is good enough for me. Of course being a Catholic means that I am a Christian and so I don't believe that God started it all and then sat back to watch on the flat screen.

But I also don't believe that He moves us all around the board like checkers. Free will God gave us and I, for one, like to use it.

[Always Right]

Find a dictionary that defines 'affirm' in the way you claim, pleaze. Or else you lose on this one point, I'm afraid.

Main Entry: af·fir·ma·tion
Pronunciation: "a-f&r-'mA-sh&n
Function: noun
1 a : the act of affirming b : something affirmed : a positive assertion
2 : a solemn declaration made under the penalties of perjury by a person who conscientiously declines taking an oath

So the affirmation is the equivalent of an oath for someone who does not believe in God. That is the distinction and why the definition says it is not an oath. Oath implies a belief in God, affirmation does not. An affirmation is an oath for a secular person. Reguardless, it is much more than an assertion.

[Elsie]

Dishonest, in the extreme.

Or at least hyperbolic...

[whattajoke]

The first thing to understand is that those who "assault" Darwinism are not assaulting science, despite the fact that many scientists have embraced Darwinism.

Those who assault "Darwinism" are also assaulting scientists. The phrase "Darwinism" is a creationist construct - There are no "Churches of Darwin" or Darwinist Schools or anything that gives that term credence. Charles Darwin was a mortal man who lived in the 19th century and through diligent research, published a few really good, really important books. One was all about barnacles. Another was about his ideas on speciation. Nothing more. That said, by attacking Darwin's ideas, you ARE attacking science as a whole. Or, at least ALL of biology and all its branches, like it or not.

Both Creation and Darwinism are, fundamentally, religions.

I suppose this may be right if you can show me where this "Darwinism" is practiced. Since it doesn't exist in scient, maybe it IS a religion of some sort.

Christian Creation cannot be proven, though an excellent case can be made that it takes less faith to accept Creationism than it does to accept Darwinism.

It's not just that Christian Creationism can't be proven - it can't even be studied. That's the problem. Nor can any of the thousands of other creation myths out there. Evolution (which is what I guess you mean when you continue to type "Darwinism," CAN be studied and falsified. Hence, it's science, NOT religion. Now, if you could please state this "excellent case," we're all ears.

Darwinism cannot and has not been proven.

There is no such thing as Darwinism. What IS your idea of what Darwinism is anyway? Do you not understand that tens of thousands of scientists have built upon Darwin's ideas and that while he certainly nailed the framework, his word was hardly the last in the biological sciences. And oh, as anyone who has ever read a single CREVO thread knows, no one can ever, EVER "Prove" a theory. Ever. Never ever. Never.

The fossil record does not support a slow morphing of species into each other and the timelines that scientists parrot at every opportunity are sheer speculation.

I'm not sure which fossil record your creationist pamphlets have been lying to you about, but there is literally mountains of fossil evidence that would blow your mind, if you chose to look at it. Fish to elephants, courtesy of Ichneumon, for a start.

The process of carbon dating relies on assumptions that are unscientific and unproveable, besides unlikely like: the rate of carbon depletion is constant, the rate of carbon depletion is unaffected by external conditions, there are no traces of the daughter element to be found in the original specimen. These are all unproveable and highly improbably, generally speaking.

You forgot to add, except when dating shrouds, ark pieces, or bible stuff - then it works fine. Aside from your falsehoods about C-dating, surely you realize that now in 2006 there are LOTS of other dating methods. When different methods are independently used on something, and they date that something the same, it works damn well. Here's another excellent essay by Ichneumon refuting your creationist talking points.

To sum up: Darwinism is unscientific, ergo attacking Darwinism is not attacking science.

Hmm, methinks you must do some more work. What's funniest here is that if we pretended your points were valid, they were, "Darwinism is a religion, it can't be proven, the fossil record is lacking, and carbon dating is prone to error." Wrong, theories never are, You could spend a lifetime studying fossil lineages, and we would do fine without C-dating, if we needed to. Whoops.

You then prattled on about how "Darwinism" results in all sorts of anarchy and lawlessness and men without direction adn origins and atoms and space blah, blah, blah. You know, typical creationist claptrap. Evolution says nothing of any God, government, or social more. Y'know, stuff like this:

I would argue that we can never definitively, imperically prove how the world began

... which has absolutely nothing in the world to do with evolution. Then you linked AiG, which explains where you get your empty arguments from (though I think they are the most honest creationist site.)

And besides, "Intelligent Design" pretends that it isn't about "faith," that it is indeed science. So thanks for dispensing with that nonsense forthrightly.

[Dominic Harr]

But don't let me stop you, go right on thinking that state paid employees using state resources can state they will discriminate based on race, religion, creed, or sex.

Absolutetly, thanks for your permission. :-)

And you, please feel free to go on thinking it's against the law even tho you can't find any evidence to suggest it is.

At this point, it appears no one has ever lost a case in court on this basis. I could be wrong, but would need to see examples/evidence before that could be proven.

You feel no need for evidence, then that's cool too.

I could be wrong. It happens every day (just ask my wife, she'll give you a list!).

[stands2reason]

I think he's saying that the natural world is easier to study than God. The agnostic in me totally agrees. I find God nigh to unknowable and difficult for my puny brain to encapsulate.

What I know about God is what has been revealed to me directly, and that ain't much. And God is too important a subject to take any other man's word for it -- especially a single source. I wouldn't take a single source for the repair record for a used Nissan -- why would I accept it for anything actually important?

[Elsie]

Oink!

[Dominic Harr]

Oh, Hi!

We're just curious about the actual definition of 'affirm'.

To most of the world, it simply means to answer in the affirmative in a serious manner.

We were searching for a dictionary somewhere that supported the definition of 'affirm' as an 'oath'. So far, no luck.

Any ideas/links?