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.
Didn't read my link I see.
Appeal to authority? I'm talking about the authority of the evidence. It's like chain of custody. Heresay and inference aren't valid evidentiary methods. Theory is not truth. You may call it fact; but, truth and fact are not identical in nature. That is perhaps why you might prefer to use the word fact. If you have nothing but modern evidences and infinite possibilities for causality, an inference isn't true, nor is it necessarily fact. It is a working hypothesis. In absence of capacity to falsify and exclude all other possibilities, you are left with a hypothesis at best - not a fact.
Effdot seems to have returned
In what way? No one has claimed that you have any innate lack of learning ability, only that you have chosen to be ignorant. I have made no claim about race at all.
The same would apply to the "mainstream scientific community," which supports a naturalist worldview.
Probably the best argument against monistic Darwinism being " universally accepted by the scientific community " is the fact that global warming is " universally accepted in the scientific community."
Religious belief in the face or the facts is NOT limited to the religious obscurantist. It happens in the scientific community, it happens frequently in the scientific community, and if it pisses you off for me to say it, that is just tough.
Suppose that would depend on circumstance but in that case, the you've got authoritative evidence - ie the fingerprints and powder burns. You have no such thing to stand on in saying "a planet exploded and created x rings and asteroid feilds etc." Your evidence is - well these things are there - therefore something caused them to be there, so we'll infer a planet exploded. So a comparable instance re your murder example would be, the person is dead, your brother knew them, Your brother had as much reason to kill the person as anyone, therefore your brother did it. You don't have finger prints or powder burns. You have no prime suspect or evidence pointing to a prime suspect. You have a result looking for a cause and are blindly stating one cause as being the instigator of the situation. That is not science. And there is no confidence in your result. I'd refer you to first year logic, among other things.
I do not think this is likely to gain much traction among the logicians and philosophers of the world, but let me know how it works out.
It's not. I've had creationists "witness" against complex numbers in class. Even on this thread we have at least one creationist continually posting nonsense with respect to rotational mathematics. I'm sure these anti-mathematical posters appreciate your support.
No, I sure didn't. I don't need your link to tell me the opposite of what I've tested myself. I know the law, I know science. I don't need theory that can't explain things it should be able to account for. Things like, if an explosion happens in a frictionless environmnet, why isn't everything in the universe still travelling from a central point at the same unrestricted speed given the absence of friction. I mean, in a frictionless environment, things all will move at the same rate regardless of mass as in the laws of gravity. You could therefore not ever have a collision of spacial bodies.. it would be literally impossible. The problem is you assume the big bang though it's unsupportable in and of itself. It's a shell game. You guys evidently never learned that the more assumptions you pile up, the less reliable your conclusions. And yet you balk when people have no confidence in your conclusions - it's because there is no authority behind them. If you presented a book and advised it was written by one of the apostles, yet has glaring contradictions to the NT in it, has no greek original text and has never been heard of before, it would be rejected out of hand for lack of authority among other things. Kinda funny that we've more respect for method than you guys. How do you suppose that happens.
Christmas decoration placemarker
Would it be valid to state that it is difficult to teach biology to evolutionists because of this error?
Mathmatics don't stand the universe or the laws of physics on their head. Sophistry does. The problem isn't math, nor will it ever be math. The problem is that you guys are unconstrained by anything at all because you've never been constrained to any law. In lawlessness, "I posit" becomes the law and that is precisely what you demonstrate here today, then act offended that someone corrects you. It's high time someone did.
Facts are not slurs. The deficiency in learning ability is a fact demonstrated quite clearly on this thread. Any creationist who has the mental capacity is free to demonstrate that capacity by stating a good and true case for evolution, prior to arguing against it. The inability to state your opponent's position will cost you the debate every time.
It is not sufficient to present a charactiture of a position. In a debate you must argue against your opponent's best case.
The best case for evolution is not found in out of contest quotes. Nor is it found in 100 year old textbooks. Nor is it found in the speculative writings of science popularizers. Nor in Time Magazine, nor even in national Geographic. It isn't even found here on these threads.
Rather it is found in 200 years of painstaking research by tens of thousands of biologists and geologists, and their cumulative publications. If you have a case to present, it will need to be sufficient to overthrow nearly all of physics, chemistry, geology biology, and astronomy -- or it will at least have to present a mathematically self-consistent alternative to all those sciences. You really can't single out evolution as the bad guy without taking on all of science.
Nicely said! :-)
What law?
I know science
Care to elaborate?
"I am the law!" </Judge Dredd>
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