Posted on 08/01/2005 10:58:13 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.
But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."
Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.
In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Schönborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.
This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.
How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.
To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.
I left my reply as was and gave you several openings. Your ignorance is willful. That's not an ad hominum, it's a fact and you've just proved it. You know no more about science than my cats, you talk as if you're an expert and you refuse to think rationally.
I have an uncle who is a priest and another who is a bishop in the Church of Rome. I do not believe that they are Christians due to their extra-biblical requirements, teachings and doctrines.
Did that help clarify my response to your question?
evolutionist ought to be made to wear labels on their heads as to which flavor they are...
Oh didn't you know...the evidence is in Genesis. I suggest you read it.
I was forced to read some of Darwin and evolutionary science in school.
I'm no expert, but I happen to know the difference between reasonable conjecture and immutable fact. Can you say as much for your cats, or are they the ones who tell you what to think? I'd like to know your sources, and particularly why you believe them.
What about God? Does God belong in the classroom?
YOur ignorance on evolutionary research is astounding. Astounding but expected.
The idea if "moral science" ended in the nineteenth century with Social Darwinism and later in the twentieth century with Ontal Logics.
Not since Kant has philosophy seriously entertained the notion of moral absolutes.
In terms of epistemonogy science has never entertained the notion of absolutes; moral or physical.
Not since Aristole has science been confused with theology. Accept by the Catholic Church during the time of Ptolomemy.
"Senseless dribble."
Unless they can come up with some testable and falsifiable theories, their exclusion is very true. It does not have anything to do with close mindedness, just science. An example of this is theories such as Lamarckism, Mutationism, and Neutralism, all at one time considered radical. Lamarkism was rejected and Neutralism and Mutationism were both accepted and incorporated into the modern synthesis. That is not being close minded.
We don't have to ask for yours. Just google creationism and DVD.
First you have to have a theory to be taught, what you are promoting is not theory, it is mythology. All religion is mythology. No value judgement here just a fact. I happen to believe in Christian mythology, but I don't want the pseudo-science of "Scientific Creationism" to be taught in schools.
Scientific Creationism was make up out of whole cloth by those whose faith is so shakey that they can't stand the idea that the Bible may not be verbatim fact. Evolution is based on cold hard science, not wishes.
Wrong. We have four or five creos on every thread that confuse science and theology.
"Oh why should Nature's law be mutual butchery!"
--Jude the Obscure
Actually the ID debate turns on whether microevolution is "random" or not, as I understand it. This is where intelligent folks can disagree. IDers assert it isn't random, that it's directed and couldn't be otherwise, atheists assert it's a Godless natural thing, agnostics stay out of the fray and defend evolution on its on merits.
Neither the IDers nor the atheists can prove their case as it's a metaphysical assertion on both sides. (Faith tells me that the IDers are right.)
The main thing is we will all get a chance to ask God what really happened, face to face, on Judgment Day. Right?
SD
Wrong!
The Christian faith is not mythology...That is an inaccurate statement of your own making.
The New Testament clearly separates itself and the Christian faith from mythology..."Have nothing to do with godless myths..."(I Tim. 4:7)
The New Testament delineates the Christian faith from mythology in several passages.
Isn't it interesting that evo's on this site are always clamoring in regard to the alleged ignorance and deceit of creationists ...pot, kettle, black.
Not regarding science you don't, not in the least. You have no knowledge available within you to do so. That means you have no understanding of the subject matter whatsoever. The conclusions you state are false, void, you're completely oblivious to that, and you make zero effort ot correct that.
"I'd like to know your sources"
The source for what I say is me, unless otherwise noted.
Given the reaction of those who have previously stood in the presence of the Almighty...I believe that we will be face down on the ground and not requiring that any of our questions be responded to.
The secularists educationists made me read Marx too. Never thought I'd have to read a Marxist here.
Get thee into the dustbin.
This is Reagan on Marx.
"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
and
"The Bible holds all the answers" - again, Reagan
I know.
There was a touch of sarcasm and irony in there, might I point out.
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