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Fact, Fable, and Darwin (If you haven't read this already, you should!!!)
American Enterprise Magazine ^ | 8/04 | Rodney Stark

Posted on 08/02/2004 3:58:04 PM PDT by Renfield

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To: Strategerist
I think evolution is something of a cult. It requires a leap of faith to accept it. No one can drag the theory into the lab and submit it to the scientific method to prove it's validity. This isn't so much a criticism, as a statement of fact. But the "Darwinists" take it as a criticism. It's plain that Darwin's theory of the rise of species has been used by many for over a hundred years to attack belief in the Bible. When used for this purpose, evolution ceases to be an explanation of origins, and becomes a soapbox in a war of religious viewpoints.

My opinion about evolution is that it is the best explanation that man has been able to come up with to explain the origin of species, without God.

21 posted on 08/02/2004 4:51:10 PM PDT by My2Cents (http://www.conservativesforbush.com)
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To: Tax-chick

later


22 posted on 08/02/2004 4:51:23 PM PDT by Tax-chick (You just can't mistake a St. Bernard for a pot-bellied pig.)
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To: siunevada

BTW, I love to sit back and watch the paleontologists duke it out with the mircobiologists over various unproveable assumptions of evolution.


23 posted on 08/02/2004 4:53:59 PM PDT by My2Cents (http://www.conservativesforbush.com)
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To: My2Cents
No one can drag the theory into the lab and submit it to the scientific method to prove it's validity.

It's been done, many times.

24 posted on 08/02/2004 4:57:54 PM PDT by narby (Democrat = Internationalist ... Republican = American)
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To: siunevada
There is a reason we still call it a theory after all these years.

They still have classes in "music theory" too. You going to propose that there is no such thing as "music".

25 posted on 08/02/2004 4:59:03 PM PDT by narby (Democrat = Internationalist ... Republican = American)
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To: Strategerist
"When a thoroughly ideological Darwinist like Richard Dawkins claims, "The theory is about as much in doubt as that the earth goes round the sun," he does not state a fact, but merely aims to discredit a priori anyone who dares to express reservations about evolution."

The article's author's aspersions aside, do you not consider statements such as this, by Dawkins to be reckless?

26 posted on 08/02/2004 5:03:07 PM PDT by Tench_Coxe
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To: Elsie; AndrewC; jennyp; lockeliberty; RadioAstronomer; LiteKeeper; Fester Chugabrew; ...

Pingist!


27 posted on 08/02/2004 5:03:11 PM PDT by bondserv (Alignment is critical!)
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To: razoroccam
Why couldn't God have created the Big Bang, as well as evolution?

A fair question. One might also ask, "Why would God want to cause the Big Bang and evolution?" Since the Bible tells us that God's greatest interest is in the relationship He has with the people on this planet, why would He create a process in which He had to sit around for a few billion years while He watched the slime mold turned into humanity? It seems pointless. As God, He can do what He wants, but the slow, ruthless process of evolution to enable "life" to give rise to a species He could relate to, reveal Himself to, and ultimately to redeem, seems a waste of valuable resources.

Secondly, if God created everything in a bang, followed by billions of years of evolutionary change, then He lied to us in the early chapters of Genesis. A common theory is that the creation story of Gen. 1-2, up through the story of Noah and the flood, are myth, and that real history picks up when Abram comes on the scene. But where does the book of Genesis indicate that myth ends, and real history begins? The Bible doesn't give us the luxury of that convenient dismissal of the first chapters of Genesis.

28 posted on 08/02/2004 5:03:49 PM PDT by My2Cents (http://www.conservativesforbush.com)
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To: Strategerist
"What the average Creationist thinks the definition of "theory" is, a scientist would call a "hypothesis" not a theory."

Very true. And what certain evolution folks tout as scientific 'fact' is what a scientist would call a theory.

29 posted on 08/02/2004 5:04:58 PM PDT by Tench_Coxe
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To: narby

Someone has observed the rise of a new specie in the lab? Funny, I missed that bit of news.


30 posted on 08/02/2004 5:05:00 PM PDT by My2Cents (http://www.conservativesforbush.com)
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To: bondserv

"Modern physics provides a model of how science benefits from being willing to live with open questions rather than embracing obviously flawed conjectures."

I like that!


31 posted on 08/02/2004 5:05:16 PM PDT by bondserv (Alignment is critical!)
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To: Tench_Coxe
do you not consider statements such as this, by Dawkins to be reckless?

I don't know if "reckless" is the right term. "Desperate" may be more like it. He can't prove to anyone's satisfaction the fact of evolution, so Dawkins resorts to insult as his main weapon of debate.

32 posted on 08/02/2004 5:06:59 PM PDT by My2Cents (http://www.conservativesforbush.com)
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To: bondserv

That's a good one. I consider it the height of arrogance that some cannot accept that fact that some things in this universe cannot be explained, and that faith is ultimately the best way to understand those mysteries.


33 posted on 08/02/2004 5:08:50 PM PDT by My2Cents (http://www.conservativesforbush.com)
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To: My2Cents; narby
Someone has observed the rise of a new specie in the lab? Funny, I missed that bit of news.

Happens all the time. Whenever a new coin is issued, they do test mintings first.

34 posted on 08/02/2004 5:12:52 PM PDT by Oztrich Boy ("Despise not the jester. Often he is the only one speaking the truth")
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To: razoroccam

It boggles the human mind, to ponder anything like the Big Bang.

I have been privileged to spend most of my adult life working outdoors in isolated rural areas. Anyone who has ever seen a luna moth (or any one of a million other spectacular creatures) cannot question the authority of a divine Creator, unless he is an enervated blockhead.

There was a flock of wild turkeys foraging in one of the fields next to our house this morning. I watched them for a while before driving to work. I refuse to believe that turkeys are accidental, random occurences. Or that I am.

I am sipping a delightful Pinot Noir, with deep, charactful flavor. Is this not proof that God loves me, and wants me to be happy? Why would he reveal to me orchids, clouds, flying fish, and the love of my beautiful wife, if not to illustrate his divine majesty?

It is a sorry man who does not view God in everything he sees.


35 posted on 08/02/2004 5:12:52 PM PDT by Renfield (Philosophy chair at the University of Wallamalloo!!)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Excuse me, but a creationist started the ad hominems with this article. The first few paragraphs call those who won't subscribe to creationism liars, ideologues, militant Atheists, haters of religion and crusaders.


36 posted on 08/02/2004 5:17:01 PM PDT by sumocide
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To: Renfield

Great article. I especially liked the quote:
"It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane...."
Condescension worthy of a Kerry liberal.


37 posted on 08/02/2004 5:19:43 PM PDT by plain talk
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To: balrog666
What a diaper-load.

Such brilliant analysis could only come from somebody clinging to a fairy tale called EVOLUTION.

38 posted on 08/02/2004 5:22:19 PM PDT by GLDNGUN (.)
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To: My2Cents
Someone has observed the rise of a new specie [sic] in the lab? Funny, I missed that bit of news.

You haven't been watching, have you?
Parting Genomes: UA Biologists Discover Seeds of Speciation [Happening as they observe!].
Changing One Gene Launches New Fly Species.

39 posted on 08/02/2004 5:27:34 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Since 28 Oct 1999, #26,303, over 193 threads posted, and somehow never suspended.)
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To: razoroccam
This "either or" logic doesn't hold water

The Creation story tells us that on one day God created plants, and the next day he set the sun in the sky to provide light. I'm sure you'll tell us how plants requiring photosynthesis to live can last for eons in pitch darkness.. They don't. Even the hardiest plants begin to wilt in a matter of days - not months or years - let alone eons.

Evolution creates more problems than it solves and it blasphemes God in the doing. Relegating the rise of mankind to an accident in nature instead of making it a direct and willful act of God. Theorizing attempts to gloss this over and make it seem acceptable amongst liberals who have more ability to be duped by philosophy than they have faith in God. That speaks ill of those people, not the evolutionists. Evolution has come along like the snake in the garden and has said 'God didn't really say that. He knows that if you do x you'll be as a god yourself...' It makes God's word a lie on it's face and those pretending at Christianity in some part haven't the sense to recognize blasphemy as the same groups largely have surrendered faith in God to philosophy and reason to begin with.

40 posted on 08/02/2004 5:30:12 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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