Posted on 01/25/2005 6:15:41 PM PST by gobucks
Ken Miller is an interesting guy. He is co-author of the nation's best-selling biology textbook. It was on his book, "Biology," that schools in Cobb County, Ga., slapped a sticker casting doubt on its discussion of evolution theory. And it was this sticker that a federal judge recently ordered removed because it endorsed religion. Miller, who testified against the label, gets a lot of hate mail these days.
But Miller is also a practicing Roman Catholic. "I attend Mass every Sunday morning," he said, "and I'm tired of being called an atheist."
A professor of biology at Brown University, Miller does not believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution contradicts the creation passages in the Bible. And he will argue the point till dawn.
"None of the six creative verses (in Genesis) describe an out-of-nothing, puff-of-smoke creation," he says. "All of them amount to a command by the creator for the earth, the soil and the water of this planet to bring forth life. And that's exactly what natural history tells us happened." (Miller has written a book on the subject: "Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution.")
Still, today's emotional conflicts over teaching this science in public schools leave the impression that Christianity and evolution cannot be reconciled. This is not so.
In 1996, Pope John II wrote a strong letter to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences supporting the scientific understanding of evolution. That's one reason why students in Catholic parochial schools get a more clearheaded education in evolution science than do children at many public schools racked by the evolution debate.
American parents who want Darwin's name erased from the textbooks might be surprised at the father of evolution's burial spot. Darwin was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, an Anglican church and England's national shrine.
Not every illustrious Englishman gains admission to an abbey burial site. Darwin died in 1882. Two years before, friends of George Eliot wanted the famous (female) writer laid to rest at the abbey. Eliot had lived immorally, according to the church fathers, and was denied a place. (She is buried at London's Highgate Cemetery, not far from Karl Marx.)
But Darwin had been an upright man. The clergy were proud both of Darwin's accomplishments and of their own comfort with modern science.
In 1882, during the memorial service for the great evolutionist, one church leader after the other rose to praise Charles Darwin. Canon Alfred Barry, for one, had recently delivered a sermon declaring that Darwin's theory was "by no means alien to the Christian religion."
Nowadays, Catholics and old-line Protestants have largely made peace with evolution theory. Most objections come from evangelicals — and not all of them.
Francis S. Collins is head of the National Genome Project and a born-again Christian. He belongs to the American Scientific Affiliation — a self-described fellowship of scientists "who share a common fidelity to the word of God and a commitment to integrity in the practice of science." Its Web address is www.asa3.org.
But back in Cobb County, the debate rages. The sticker taken off Miller's textbook read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
Why should Miller care that the Cobb County School Board — having bought his book in great quantity — pastes those words on the cover?
First off, he says, "It implies that facts are things we are certain of and theories are things that are shaky." In science, theory is a higher level of understanding than facts, he notes. "Theories don't grow up to become facts. Rather, theories explain facts."
Then, he questions why, of all the material in his book, only evolution is singled out for special consideration. Miller says that if he could write the sticker, it would say, "Everything in this book should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
Clearly, many religious people regard evolution theory with sincere and heartfelt concern. But theirs is not a mainstream view — even among practicing Christians. Most theologians these days will argue that the biology book and the Good Book are reading from the same page.
Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is fharrop@projo.com
I remember that Sean Hannity brought it up on his radio show. But he quickly found out that it was a can of worms and dropped it.
Of course. I have never seen anyone committed to "random-chance-natural-selection-based" evolutionary theory on these threads. The only ones that are repeating that evolution is "random-chance" is the creationists.
IF SH thought it was a can of worms, it is time to jump ship!
Not at all. I quite readily admit that, over time, new evidence can change or override old understandings in science.
It is interesting that you imply that the Word of God is fallible and is therefore in error.
Show me proof that we know what the word of god is, then maybe we can talk.
For a Christian, you sure have a knack for bearing false witness on others. He didn't say that. Now if you want to talk about how men have made errors in spreading the "word of god" we can continue.
What will probably happen is that high schools will avoid the problem and just won't teach ID, or Evolution, or much of biology, at all. They're already looking for excuses for dumbing down the curriculum so their union employees don't have to study their subjects.
The Creation Institute clowns probably will not like this result. They depend on controversy for a living. If ID was accepted completely, then they would have to find other controversies, like the civil rights organizations did.
The universities don't care what anyone says. They'll do what they like. They'll have enough judges as alumni that they will not be forced into anything.
But if the fight really hit the full mainstream, and scientists got off their duff and onto the boob tube and explained their case. A few dozen programs on the Discovery Channel, for example. Then the polls where people seem to favor literal creationism I think would fade fast.
There are lots of people that just studied the subject for a few days in school, and really don't know much about it. Educating them completely would change their minds.
Also, the generation that witnessed the scopes monkey trial is just about gone. That was a huge embarrassment for creationism literalists, and they are just now raising their head up into the mainstream again. They'll get their hand slapped again and they'll disappear again like last time. Their literal interpretation of Genesis has'nt changed, but the understanding of Evolution via DNA etc. has been increased drastically.
They'll lose a genuine public argument. Again.
Either your interpretation of a few hundred words in the Bible are in error. Or science is in error in interpreting the fossil and DNA record.
Since there is a much larger amount of information contained in Gods Creation than in His Word, I trust His Creation to tell me about His Creation.
I trust His Word to tell me about other things.
I wasn't speaking about posters here (and I haven't read thousands of posts on this myself). I simply meant to point out that evolution says nothing about Creation, but I'm sure in the wide-wide world, there are those who cite evolution to deny Creation. My point is that it can not be used that way.
There seems to be long range artillery barrages going on between Biblical literalists and secular atheists and too often shells are falling short on those of us in the middle who find no logical, theological or scientific problem in accepting both Creation and Evolution.
And scientists do not use it that way. There are some that use the Bible to enslave and torture.
Almost. The missiles launched by the Biblical literalists are intended to destroy evolution and are intentionally falling on all those that believe in science and believe that religion should not be in the science class.
You have no trouble with those that accuse scientists as being responsible for sexual promiscuity, homesexuality, naziism, communism, halitosis and wearing stripes with plaid though. Your silence must mean endorsement.
Is his Christian belief any the less because he belonged to the Church of England?
What ARe you talking about ?
As a professed Agnostic, I believe in God through faith alone..
You are an agnostic? You sound more like a DEIST.
Okay... I've got a confession, too. I made up the part about trying for a foot-tall fruit fly... I doubt there are any studies that specifically show sterility among fruit flies selectively bred for a large size... especially studies with the goal of producing a race of 12-inch-high monster-flies. :) It just seemed funny to visualize :)
But selective breeding for any number of traits tends to produce sterility.
"Studies" abound. Ask a dog breeder, a horticulturist... or google for "selective breeding" and "sterility".
Cheers.
Santorum's column will get things going. I expect to see even more scientists leave the GOP. Many I know just won't support those that act anti-science anymore than they will support the postmoderndeconstructionists, new-agers, scientologists, or raeleans (spelling?)
You are correct. The post I was responding to claimed that evolutionary theory was the basis of racism. Reading Darwin or Huxley or any of the early writers would show that they very anti-racist, at least for their time. Huxley was against slavery.
Very sweeping generalizations of both parties, I would say.
Science is very familiar with samples that fall well outside the statistical norm, and religious people are quite familiar with those who abuse faith for secular gain. The problem is that while both can make significant noise they are poor samples to use to make generalizations.
If it's impending doom from "Global Warming" or impending doom from "Fire & Brimstone", both sets of hucksters are outside the range of standard deviation and are using their credentials to advance their own self interest.
BigLusr: I'm not so sure
I totally agree with Narby in concept, but same sex unions aren't the albatross that they were made out to be. In the 2004 presidential election, 47% of Bush voters are in favor of either same sex marriage or civil unions - this number swells to 60% when its applied to all voters. In reality, the moderates which are the difference makers in elections didn't really care that much.
Narby is totally correct that we have to be careful where we spend our political capital. To that point, we as a party have to decide if abortion is the ONLY issue that we care about because it will take ALL of our political capital for possibly a generation if try to pack the court with justices adversarial to Roe V Wade.
In the 2004 presidential election, 55% of the voters believe abortion should be legal or mostly legal and 42% believe it should be illegal or mostly illegal. 37% of Bush voters fall into the legal or mostly legal group.
The 55% in favor of legalized abortion will swell if Roe V Wade is ever perceived to be under any real threat. If a SCOTUS vacancy comes up before 2006 and conservatives publicly make abortion policy the number one qualification, then the senate will be probably be lost in the 2006 mid-term elections as many pro-abortion republicans will be forced to change parties for their political survival.
I'm just saying that we as conservatives have to look at the big picture when it comes to the image we portray and the manner in which we spend political capital. There are lots of issues that are important to the very survival to this country (immigration, national defense, national sovereignty, tax reform, tort reform, property rights, etc) that we do have the political capital to address if we have the will and proper foresight.
With all of these other critical issues, is it really wise to spend all of our political capital on stickers for texbooks? Most kids sleep through science class anyway and don't remember anything from it.
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