Coulter vs Darwin

Godless | 06/06 | Ann Coulter

[RightWingNilla]

Indirectly, yes. It's not as if physical reality must be some kind of mystical superstition. Intelligent design lessens the chance of dealing with an entity, or its products, that is frivolous or flippant. With intelligent design we expect organized matter that performs specific functions, and all that attends to the background. Without intelligent design, directly or indirectly, there would be no science.

It isnt clear what you are tyring to say here.

If you were preparing a high school biology class, how would you explain the concept of ID?

[sinkspur]

Do you know what a fact-narrative is? Do you believe that Tobit, Esther, and Ruth are historical books in the same way Matthew is?

You won't answer those questions. I said the Catholic Encyclopedia states that Jonah is a fact-narrative.

You have turned into a literalist where Scripture is concerned, it appears. If that's where you want to be, fine.

[The_Reader_David]

Read more attentively. I was advocating interpreting Scripture according to Holy Tradition, not discarding Scripture. The unbelief you decry has its roots in the introduction of rationalism into Scriptural hermeneutics centuries ago, first by Blessed Augustine, and accelerating from the time Charlemagne's court raised Augustine to the status of 'Father among Fathers' of the Church. The exaltation of human reason over Scripture was not begun by modern atheistic secularists, but by a sequence of Popes of Rome, who arrogated a humanistic primacy over the Church and Scripture to themselves beginning in the 9th century, and was broadened and universalized by all of the protestant 'reformers' and their 'sola scriptura' followers (who make every man armed with a Bible his own infallible Pope).

Only later, when reading Scripture in the dim light of human reason outside the tradition of the Church became normative, did purported contraditions between Scripture and science or experience lead to the general unbelief which besets Western society today, and the subsequent turning aside from Scripture.

If you'd like to get your moorings, get a copy of St. Basil the Great's Hexameron, St. Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Moses, and (just for fun to see how an Orthodox Christian can look German textual criticism in the face, and say 'yeah, so?'--a sharp contrast to the protestant 'that's not so' in response to any scholarship about the authorial process which lead to the Scriptures) some of Fr. Paul Tarazi's commentaries on the Old Testament.

We Orthodox pray that our bishops be granted 'rightly dividing the word of Thy truth'. Humanistic rationalism, whether applied by a fervent Christian or a secular humanist, never rightly divides (interprets) Scripture. The entire creation-evolution debate is a row within Western rationalism between rationalists who reason from the truth of Scripture to the falsity of anything which contradicts its (rationalistic) surface meaning, and rationalists who reason from the truth of scientific discovery to the falsity of Scripture, which they read (can read?) only with its rationalistic surface meaning.

[VadeRetro]

The lack of transitional forms between higher taxonomic ranks is not necessarily evidence of creation as the author asserts. The author makes claims of showing something to be "absolutely false." What kind of scientist does that?

The kind like Lavoisier, who once and for all killed phlogiston. As science refines its picture, it eliminates possibilities. You may never know what's absolutely true, but you can indeed know that a thing is absolutely false.

You guys don't like progress in science because you're still somewhere pre-1859. Science is leaving you ever further behind while you sit and ponder if Lyell got something wrong in 1826.

The entire article describes creatures that are comprised of organized matter performing specific functions.

You said it right this time. Specific, not specified.

The author takes issue with Phillip Johnson who asserts the arguments of evolutionists contradict physical reality by declaring its organized features to be only an "appearance..."

A lot of people take issue with PJ, who along with Jonathan Welles most blatantly recycles old creationist canards, omitting the young-earth material only. At any rate, evos say evolution produces the appearance but not the reality of design, yes.

... yet the author says: "[D]ifferent body plans are not assigned different phyla and this creates an appearance that phyla can't evolve."

I can't imagine where you're seeing the contradiction. A group of sponges evolved a whole new, rather un-spongelike body plan. We could nevertheless tell from (IIRC) cellular similarities that they were, as creationists like to put it, "A sponge! Just a variation within sponge-kind!" They were not assigned a new phylum, although in theory a phylum is a group of creatures with the same body plan.

The trend in taxonomy now is to preserve common descent relationships in such a way that nothing ever evolves OUT of its ancestral group, no matter how it changes. Traditional Linnaean systems put Aves outside of Reptilia, which would mean that dinos becoming birds were evolving right out of their old order. But new cladistic systems put Aves under Reptilia. Thus, now a bird is still "A reptile! Just a variation within reptile-kind!"

Oddly enough, then, by considering common descent as real and important, taxonomists have played right into creationist hands. Oh, well! Lawyering on taxonomy is just a smoke screen. Taxonomy is arbitrary. There is no "true" one. The history of life on Earth is not arbitrary. There is a true one and a billion wrong ones. No one has the true one in detail, but some are far better than others.

[Dimensio]

Although fanatical muslims may hold to some form of creationism, they do not use this doctrine in support of their aims in establishing Sharia Law.

I have made no such suggestion otherwise.

Not so with those who employ, by extension, the tenets of Darwinism in the interest of genocide.

You have yet to demonstrate that the theory of evolution actually supports genocide. Merely quoting an author who asserts that it does does not actually demonstrate a link. You have yet to show that the theoy of evolution itself actually supports genocide.

[PatrickHenry]

You have yet to demonstrate that the theory of evolution actually supports genocide.

Genocide is a form of ID.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Proponents call it Intelligent Selection.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Taxonomy is arbitrary.

Not really (although the Creationists argue it that way.) Groupings are by common ancestor; this has been the case in plant taxonomy since at least 1890. The Creationists are arguing a battle decided more than a century ago.

[Right Wing Professor]

tomzz Troll Since Mar 15, 2006

He's a retread.

[kellynch]

And, speaking of Adam and Eve, if they were the only humans and were created in God's image, then where did Lilith come from? Was she not in God's image? What about Adam and Eve's sons? With whom did they marry and reproduce? Were these women not in God's image? Were Adam and Eve's grandchildren made in God's image?

I am a Christian, and I go to Church regularly, but I simply cannot imagine for an instant that God wants me to take the Bible 100% literally.

And even if I'm wrong about the exact capabilities of radio carbon dating, 65,000 years old is still older than 5,000. The cave paintings at Lascaux are around 15,000 years old. Which is still more than 5,000. And none of those paintings shows dinosaurs. As was pointed out in the Scopes trial, if God can do anything, why should He be limited to the same 24-hour day that we mere mortals are limited to?

[Doctor Stochastic]

...where did Lilith come from?

Boston.

[kellynch]

It's a good thing I'm not eating or drinking anything. Otherwise, you'd owe me a new keyboard! LOL!!!

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Behaviorally, most public advocates of neo-Darwinism invoke a tautological understanding of natural selection."

Actually, it's most creationists who do that.

"Instead of making assertions without proof, you, yourself, in this forum, do what Popper observed was possible, and reformulate natural selection in a way far from tautological."

Already done.

[PatrickHenry]

Non-tautological description of natural selection:

Two young deer are fleeing from a lion. Neither deer has reproduced yet. One deer was born with a club foot; the other wasn't. The deformed deer, being slower, gets scarfed; the other gets away and eventually breeds successfully. Repeat. Repeat again. Etc.

[The_Reader_David]

Already done? Good. For those interested, in which post number did you give the non-tautological reformulation?

[SaveUS]

Would you like to see a pic? Send me an FR email and remind me. It is definitely pyrite deposited on the shell. Now, a true geologist may tell us that it landed on the shell and became encrusted there, but it is there. The shell is pretty cool looking too.

[VadeRetro]

Would you like to see a pic?

Oh, no. You'd do better to get rid of the thing before the Black Helicopters find you.

[Fester Chugabrew]

I would only remark tangentially regarding ID, if at all. There is enough to learn concerning the nuts and bolts of biology without attempting to theorize about all the conjectured history involved. As it stands, the more we learn about the details of biology, the more apparent is structure, organization, and function at every level.

Actually I've been thinking about teaching at a middle school or high school level. Biology would be a good subject. Or History. Or English.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your excellent post, 1000. And thank you for the ping, P-Marlowe.

[Fester Chugabrew]

I've never thought the idea of common descent and common creator to be far apart WRT whatever evidence would result in either case. Of all the contributions made by evolutionists, taxonomy is one of the greatest.