Posted on 05/11/2003 4:38:14 PM PDT by Junior
Despite movements across the nation to teach creationism in public schools, a science historian said Monday that Christians haven't always used a literal interpretation of the Bible to explain the world's origins.
"For them, the Bible is mostly to teach a religious lesson," said Ernan McMullin of the earliest Christian scholars.
McMullin spoke to a crowd of about 60 people at Montana State University on "Evolution as a Christian theme."
McMullin, a professor at the University of Notre Dame and a Catholic priest, is recognized one of the world's leading science historians and philosophers, according to MSU.
He has written about Galileo, Issac Newton, the concept of matter and, of course, evolution.
It's a subject has been hotly debated ever since Charles Darwin first published "On the Origins of Species" in 1859.
Christian fundamentalists have long pushed the nation's public schools to teach creationism as an alternative, which in its strictest form claims that the world was created in six days, as stated in the Bible's Old Testament Book of Genesis.
But McMullin said creationism largely is an American phenomenon. Other countries simply don't have major creationist movements, leading him to ask: "What makes it in the U.S. ... such an issue (over) evolution and Christian belief?"
The answer probably lies in the nation's history, with the settlement by religious groups, he said. Also, public education and religion are more intertwined here than other countries.
McMullin discussed how Christians have tried to explain their origins over the past 2,000 years, using several examples to show that many viewed Genesis as more of a religious lesson than an exact record of what happened.
It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century that Genesis started to be taken literally. Then theologians started using nature - and its many complexities - as proof of creation.
Charles Darwin spoiled that through his theory of natural selection, and the battle lines have been drawn ever since.
"It replaced an older view that had sounded like a strong argument for the existence of God," McMullin said.
Hardly anything is more specialized than alligators. They were just lucky that their niche wasn't disrupted to the same degree.
If there is no creation, there is no need to describe sin or the need of a Saviour, and you call the clear teaching of the Bible a lie.
Those are certainly excellent reasons for discarding inconvenient facts. Believe things because the alternative is icky.
Don't evolutionist think and say the weirdist things ?
RIGHT ON!
Present all theories - warts and all.
Allow students TO THINK not tell them what to think.
I would love to see supporting evidence for this intellectually juvenile claim.
There is a sub-set of lunatic loons who appear to wish the end of American society as we know it. Like the Nazis and the communists in Weimar Germany, they have a great deal in common as ... potential destroyers --- of the social fabric.
I have engaged in several debates in the last few days, and I admire FreeRepublic as a forum for the free expression of ideas, but the overwhelming presence of this bunch of loons is very off-putting.
Lenin is supposed to have said that capitalists would sell him the rope by which they were to be hung. The anarcho-loons on this forum would not bother to sell the rope but provide it as a public service.
401 posted on 05/06/2003 5:54 PM PDT by moneyrunner (I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed to its idolatries a patient knee.)
They taught it as such. There was no qualification such as "but not all the data is in," nor was any opposing theory presented.
I've struggled with this for years. First being fully indoctrinated on young earth creationism (before it had that name), then being fully indoctrinated with evolutionary naturalism.
Never have fully sorted it out, but I have reached a few conclusions.
I. The Bible is open to some limited interpretation. Day-age, for starters. Which hebrew words are used for "made"? For that matter, look at what leading Jewish theologians say about it, its vastly different that what they teach in mainstream protestant sunday school.
II. Science itself is not anti-God. It is a study of that which God has made, and can provide a multitude of lessons about the nature of God.
III. Science is limited to naturalistic assumptions. Meaning, being based on repeatable experiments, it [i]a priori[/i] excludes the miraculous. Some misunderstand this and conclude miracles are impossible. No, they are just not subject to investigation by science, because they are by their very nature non-natural, non-repeatable.
IV. The Theory of Evolution is a mixture of good and bad science, and advocated zealously by the naturalists. The naturalists seem to think that the T-of-E removes the need for a God. Ignoring the whole question of where did the universe come from in the first place.
V. The two single biggest problems for the T-of-E are macroevolution and abiogenesis.
A) Abiogenesis, that life arose from inorganic material, is, scientifically, a discipline in shambles. A lot of time and energy spent, a lot of speculations made, and so far, nothing but some impossible speculations to show for it.
Oddly ... the impossibilities are suppressed --- the cleverness of the speculation trumpeted, and in some quarters people think its already proven.
B) Macro-evolution - perhaps a bad term. I mean to say, descent with change is proven - children differ from their parents, over time this can lead to changes in a species.
But, the assumption or speculation that this accounts for the grand diveristy of all life on the planet has not been proven, and in fact, scientifically, is a huge and largely unsupported leap. Put another way: the fossil record supports this theory very poorly.
7 posted on 04/28/2003 8:03 AM PDT by FactQuest
A gratuitous and thoughtless ad hominem.
Many of you like to point the finger at creationists and insist that they behave like your simplistic concept of the historical Jesus. Do you every wonder why your peace-and-love Jesus was hated? Why he was executed? Perhaps a more appropriate comparison would be between the indoctrinated evolutionists and the Pharisees who stopped up their ears before they stoned Stephen.
More silly statements. Protestantism is merely a variation of Judaism and traces its origin to the origin of Judaism. (hint: Protestantism is not a religion per se)
double-verified in unbiased historical reference books
Yeah. Right.
If you are an agnostic, you profess an uncertainty or skepticism about the existence of God, or any being higher than yourself.
More crap. Show me one agnostic that thinks he or she is a higher being.
Present all theories - warts and all.
Allow students TO THINK not tell them what to think.
Allowing students to think for themselves is unacceptable to the Left. It is also unacceptable to the evolutionists. You think there might be a connection? Perhaps one evolved from the other.
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