Posted on 12/18/2004 5:56:30 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Professional danger comes in many flavors, and while Richard Colling doesn't jump into forest fires or test experimental jets for a living, he does do the academic's equivalent: He teaches biology and evolution at a fundamentalist Christian college.
At Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill., he says, "as soon as you mention evolution in anything louder than a whisper, you have people who aren't very happy." And within the larger conservative-Christian community, he adds, "I've been called some interesting names."
But those experiences haven't stopped Prof. Colling -- who received a Ph.D. in microbiology, chairs the biology department at Olivet Nazarene and is himself a devout conservative Christian -- from coming out swinging. In his new book, "Random Designer," he writes: "It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods" when they say evolutionary theory is "in crisis" and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. "Such statements are blatantly untrue," he argues; "evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny."
His is hardly the standard scientific defense of Darwin, however. His central claim is that both the origin of life from a primordial goo of nonliving chemicals, and the evolution of species according to the processes of random mutation and natural selection, are "fully compatible with the available scientific evidence and also contemporary religious beliefs." In addition, as he bluntly told me, "denying science makes us [Conservative Christians] look stupid."
Prof. Colling is one of a small number of conservative Christian scholars who are trying to convince biblical literalists that Darwin's theory of evolution is no more the work of the devil than is Newton's theory of gravity. They haven't picked an easy time to enter the fray. Evolution is under assault from Georgia to Pennsylvania and from Kansas to Wisconsin, with schools ordering science teachers to raise questions about its validity and, in some cases, teach "intelligent design," which asserts that only a supernatural tinkerer could have produced such coups as the human eye. According to a Gallup poll released last month, only one-third of Americans regard Darwin's theory of evolution as well supported by empirical evidence; 45% believe God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago.
Usually, the defense of evolution comes from scientists and those trying to maintain the separation of church and state. But Prof. Colling has another motivation. "People should not feel they have to deny reality in order to experience their faith," he says. He therefore offers a rendering of evolution fully compatible with faith, including his own. The Church of the Nazarene, which runs his university, "believes in the biblical account of creation," explains its manual. "We oppose a godless interpretation of the evolutionary hypothesis."
It's a small opening, but Prof. Colling took it. He finds a place for God in evolution by positing a "random designer" who harnesses the laws of nature he created. "What the designer designed is the random-design process," or Darwinian evolution, Prof. Colling says. "God devised these natural laws, and uses evolution to accomplish his goals." God is not in there with a divine screwdriver and spare parts every time a new species or a wondrous biological structure appears.
Unlike those who see evolution as an assault on faith, Prof. Colling finds it strengthens his own. "A God who can harness the laws of randomness and chaos, and create beauty and wonder and all of these marvelous structures, is a lot more creative than fundamentalists give him credit for," he told me. Creating the laws of physics and chemistry that, over the eons, coaxed life from nonliving molecules is something he finds just as awe inspiring as the idea that God instantly and supernaturally created life from nonlife.
Prof. Colling reserves some of his sharpest barbs for intelligent design, the idea that the intricate structures and processes in the living world -- from exquisitely engineered flagella that propel bacteria to the marvels of the human immune system -- can't be the work of random chance and natural selection. Intelligent-design advocates look at these sophisticated components of living things, can't imagine how evolution could have produced them, and conclude that only God could have.
That makes Prof. Colling see red. "When Christians insert God into the gaps that science cannot explain -- in this case how wondrous structures and forms of life came to be -- they set themselves up for failure and even ridicule," he told me. "Soon -- and it's already happening with the flagellum -- science is going to come along and explain" how a seemingly miraculous bit of biological engineering in fact could have evolved by Darwinian mechanisms. And that will leave intelligent design backed into an ever-shrinking corner.
It won't be easy to persuade conservative Christians of this; at least half of them believe that the six-day creation story of Genesis is the literal truth. But Prof. Colling intends to try.
LOL! Indeed. :-)
per capita wealth has doubled a dozen times or more, dozens of killer diseases have been eliminated, billions of people have benefited from medicine and public health, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union have been defeated, the mean lifespan has been extended, we have nifty quartz watches that synchronize daily with a standard time source, and the internet.
Point being, lots of things have happened in the last 140 years.
I see the makings of a doctorate thesis in here somewhere. LOL!
No, that is your prediction of what would falsify. When faced with something that actually falsifies, you deny it or handwring - such as human footprints and dino footprints captured in the same layer of rock and hardened for posterity. We have to make excuses and change the laws of physics to account for this - don't we. But there are examples of it all over the planet that evolutionists won't recognize for what they are. They rather dismiss them out of hand and pretend it's made up, a fluke or some fantasy, even though the evidence stands on it's own.
Evolution is not falsifiable. You cannot produce an instance of it actually happening and reproduce the conditions such that it can be fully observed and proven. It is not possible because it doesn't happen. That is why you need millions and billions of years - so that you can claim without evidence that it takes long periods of time to happen. Time becomes the god of your machine. When you can't sell the vast amount of time, the whole thing falls apart. Which is not to say it's the only thing that causes it to fall apart, it's just one of the more obvious.
And, as for your second sentence above, Evolution does not in any way teach that this would be possible. That you believe it does shows a profound ignorance of that which you rale against.
On the contrary, it most certainly does. For an organism to "evolve" it would either have to be born in mutated form or mutate after being born. In either case, it must be born and mutated and then be able to reproduce it's mutation in another generation to be a viable evolved creature. That is the heart and sole of evolution. And that is exactly what your textbooks teach the kids as to how man came from apes.
Science demands that the theory be falsifiable. It is not and never will be. It cannot be observed, tested nor reproduced. And you have no evidence that it has ever happened once - much less the millions of times needed to account for all the species. This renders it a belief system - not science.
Yes. And all the bad ones are the result of eeeevilll-louuu-shun!
</creationoid mode>
Pop test: how old are the oldest existing scriptural documents. Feel free to be specific.
Once more, I'm here to help:
Observed Instances of Speciation. That's right ... observed!
Ring Species. We can observe two species and the intermediate forms connecting them.
Ensatina eschscholtzi: Speciation in Progress. A Classic Example of Darwinian Evolution.
Don't need Jack Chick. Don't read Jack Chick. And if I was inclined to read something you might classify as misleading, I'd read your posts all the time. As it happens, I'd rather read something truthful, so I pay attention to the facts. The moons of several planets in our galaxy here spin counter to the direction of the planets. If, as your big bang theory posits, a whole bunch of nothing was spinning and condensed down to a speck in the nothing, then exploded. The nothing that exploded into everything would preserve angular momentum in all that exploded from it. This is a falsifiable law. Planetary bodies are not the only things subject to this law, galaxies, stars and so on are all subject to said law. Galaxies, however, do not all spin the same direction either. Theory fall down go boom. I know it sucks for you; but, live with it. We've had to put up with it - knowing better - for as long as you have chosen to believe that "codswallop" or longer.
Right, essentially you want to argue that the polonium in the rocks surrounded by the halos didn't cause their own halos and that plutonium or something else might have caused it though there's no evidence of that. Right. Exactly the type of proofs we've come to expect. Aliens must have done it cause it conflicts with our theory and that just can't stand.
Science, as we know it, didn't really get its start until the 16th century. As for the idea of the Earth being flat, the Church took that position because that is what Scripture implied; folks who actually studied and were learned for their period knew the Earth was a sphere from classical times.
As I said before, because science and Christianity are not fundamentally opposed, there are great Creationist scientists out there. But we don't hear about them because they are quietly engaged in their research. The Creationists we hear about are more like televangelists than theologians, out there trying to make a name for themselves as Creationists. I'm betting that, as an astronomer, you have got some Evangelical Christian collegues whose reasearch you respect - because they actually know what they are talking about, and don't just shoot their mouths off.
(How the heck would the law of Conservation of Momentum have to say about the Big Bang?)
Feel free. You may learn something. Do a find in forum and look back a few months. :-)
As far as your position on the Big Bang? You are just a wee bit misled. Here is an excellent place to get a better understanding of the Big Bang:
Then learn something about science. No science excludes God. Science simply has nothing to say about God. If God created the universe via the big bang and allowed it to proceed according to natural laws that He created until such a point that somehow life arose on the earth and that this life proceeded to evolve (with or without intervention from God) until today, science would have no way to detect the fact that God played any role. The theory of evolution no more mentions or contradicts God than any other theory in science. It may be contraditory to your beliefs. However, you need to remember that you are human and no matter how strongly you believe whatever it is you believe, you may be wrong.
More "than" bigamy, not "that." Spell chequers or off limited sofa use.
You are right on the money! :-)
Where? Even AIG denies the Paluxy River tracks are made by human feet.
LOL! I do the same thing. :-) I go back over some of my posts and cringe!
Did I say Galileo was in trouble over the shape of the earth? I think I said he was in trouble over defying prevailing wisdom and the Pope. I may have mispoken as quickly as I'm typing; but, I don't remember saying that.
I never was that great with physics, but as I understand things, the law of conservation only discusses items at equilibirium, which certainly does not describe a big explosion. Am I correct?
I very much doubt that the devil is going to touch me for learning something about Galileo. The Catholics might jab me for taking after them; but, then I'm used to that. Got me a real true-to-life anti-catholic bigot button and everything. They all think you hate their guts if you show them to be wrong on something. Sad. Entertaining for you evolutionist types I'm sure; but, sad nonetheless.
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