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.
I can live with that so long as there was one literal Adam from whom Jesus' genealogy is traced (two different ways). He either created man from the dust (non-living matter) or he borrowed dna from somewhere else. There is no wiggle room there for me.
I shouldn't have read all the negative posts attacking the old testament (not on this forum) because it has put me in a turmoil. Some of the things God ordered seem almost evil now like killing every man woman and child and in another case killing everybody only allowing the Isrealites to have the virgins as their own. Circumcision makes no sense to me. If he created man he could or should have created him circumcized and used something else to set the Israelites apart. Women unclean for twice as long after having a female baby; that makes no sense whatsoever. Some of the things they believed and passed down through the generations have caused a lot of unnecessary pain to lots of people. It makes it difficult for me to believe that God is truly good.
It's going to take me awhile to come to terms with some of this,, if ever.
This would affect the catholic belief system as well even though they use the church for their sole rule of faith because the rule of faith is based on Jesus' life and interpretation of the scriptures. Catholics are a little more flexible because they trust their leaders more than I am inclined to do in matters of faith.
Could it be that other countries are either (1)non-Christian, (2) post-Christian (Europe) with dead state-controlled churches, (3) too poor to waste resources trying to indoctrinate children about evolution. or (4) too aware of the spiritual world to pay any attention to a materialistic worldview.
What was the name of the movie? It ends with the creature escaping the zoo and eating the villagers right? I know it.
Do you have a hypothesis that doesn't require a Supreme Being to conjure up a few dimesnions and their occupants?
Adam and Eve may have been the first people, but that doesn't necessarily imply they are the sole ancestors of the human race. After Cain slew Abel and fled, he found one or more women to mate with. This would imply that either there were daughters born to Eve which were mentioned nowhere in Genesis, and one or more of these daughters somehow wandered into Cain, or else it would imply that there were other people created.
Likewise, there is more diversity in the male human genome than could come from one male ancestor unless...
Yes. Specifically, young-earth, flood-geology, "scientific creationism" or "creation science," as propounded most notably by Henry M. Morris and company through the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research, was a product of Seventh Day Adventism. This is the conclusion of several researchers, but has been most completely documented by Ronald L. Numbers in his The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism.
A review of Numbers' book by evangelical historian Mark A. Noll which discusses the relevent history can be found here. For Numbers' own comments, in brief, see this site. (Click on "Historical Perspectives on Creationism" and then read, especially, "George McCready Price and ‘Flood Geology’," and "The Creationist Revival after 1961.")
As for my own quick and off the cuff summary: You have to understand that from the time of Darwin up to fairly recent decades, the large majority of creationists, even those strongly motivated by conservative religious views, have readily accepted that the earth is ancient, and that fossil bearing rocks record long ages of earth history. These views were developed and established in the scientific community when Darwin was still a child, i.e. by real scientific creationists.
Before evolution came along, in the 1840's and 50's primarily, there was a small band of "Mosaic Geologists" who argued for something quite like "flood-geology," but they had little geological experience and were thoroughly rebutted by geologists of the time like Adam Sedgewick (who would later be an opponent of evolution, despite a freindship with Darwin).
The first serious attempt at reviving "Mosaic Geology" was made by the George McCready Price, a Seventh Day Adventist. Price's motivation was quite clear. The founder of Seventh Day Adventism, Ellen White, was considered a "prophetess." To conservative adventists, like Price, her writtings were as infalliable as the Bible, and White had written quite plainly that the creation occured in a literal week, and that the flood had assembled the geological record and the fossils it contained.
Price began writting on "flood-geology" in the twenties, but had virtually no influence outside of the Adventist cult, at least until the 1940's and 50's when Lutherans of the conservative Missouri Synod also took up "flood-geology".
"Flood-geology," and thereby "young earth" creationism only gained wider influence among fundamentalists and evangelicals as a result of Henry Morris and John C. Whitcomb's 1961 book, The Genesis Flood, which was basically an updating of Prices flood geology. This is seldom acknowledged by modern young earth creationists, but Morris came very close with his lauding of Price in A History of Modern Creationism.
This is something very few biblical literalists consider. Man at the time might not have been ready yet for the scientific details. A simple story which affirmed a beginning and a sequence may have been all that could have been practically conveyed.
It is much more than speculative. The comparative genetic data strongly supports common ancestry. How certain mutations were selected for remain to be elucidated, but these are details for the most part.
What in Heaven's name are they so afraid of? I still don't understand them, even after having started out as a Creationist.
Dinosaurs were a specific family of animals, not all ancient animals were necessarily dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years.
By your definition a coelacanth would be a dinosaur too, living fossils are not dinosaurs, they are animals that have been immune from the pressure to evolve because their environment has changed very little over the millions of years.
Exactly. Now, if rotating a whip is such a good way to propel an object thru liquid, how come boats & submarines don't twirl whips around? Every marine-oriented company is looking for the most efficient way to propel things, aren't they? Don't you think that they'd be making speedboats powered by rotating whips by now instead of rotating propellers? Don't you see a patent opportunity here?
You are correct, and Race is wrong, however...
Crocodilians are the last surviving "archosaurs" or "ruling reptiles," the major division of reptiles to which the dinosaurs (and marine reptiles) also belonged.
For this reason crocodiles are actually more closely related to birds than they are to other living reptiles like snakes and lizards. This can be verified by comparisons of DNA and proteins. This amounts to a sucessful prediction of evolutionary theory since the status of the crocodilians as archosaurs was established on the basis of comparative anatomy and the fossil record many decades before it was possible to sequence proteins or DNA.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.