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.
You might make your wife listen to your phoney baloney but you bore me.
Religion has its place. Science has its place. Why insist on putting religion into science. If you fear science uncovering problems with your religion, make sure there are religious classes in schools that explain the two different worlds.
I just wanted to clarify for narby and the others.
How many ways do I need to say it? Teach darwinism as a theory not fact. And allow other beliefs into the classroom. We do not need the dictatorship of the Darwinians in our society.
;-)
Is that where you read that Catholics were not Christians?
That is what is being done. STFU or provide evidence for your false witness.
And allow other beliefs into the classroom.
Beliefs are allowed in the classroom; in the theology classes. Science class is for science, not beliefs.
We do not need the dictatorship of the Darwinians in our society.
You have your dictators - your church dictates your beliefs.
You have your dictators - your church dictates your beliefs.
_______________________________________________________
To the contrary.
Actually the dictators have evolved from the stuff you have swallowed: Try reading this and it might change your mind (Oops - I forgot evolutionists don't change their minds - they are fixed in time and space forever attached to Darwin's apron strings.
FROM DARWIN TO HITLER:
EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS, EUGENICS, AND RACISM IN GERMANY
by
Richard Weikart
Name one.
Uh, just last night we were criticized for modifying our evolutionary theory as new evidence was uncovered. Duh. Y'all can't have it both ways. Of course, there is something in the bible about bearing false witness but I have never see a creo that let a little thing like sin get in his way as a "Soldier of God".
You are one sick dude, dude.
Duh, I guess you would also call Tellar a link to the terrorists.
Jesus, almost every New Testament author, fulfilled prophecy, archeology, and manuscripts corroborate Genesis.
Where is Genesis vague? "Here-say" laden? Citations please.
Genesis does not expect you to suspend your disbelief...God does.
God requires you to suspend your disbelief in regard to Jesus Christ, His only Son...that Jesus died on the cross to atone for your sins and then rose again. Will you suspend your disbelief in regard to God's Son?
Willingly now, or unwillingly later, your disbelief will be suspended.
The choice is yours and your response has eternal consequences.
"How God endorsed human slavery" writen by God. Best Seller.
A context would be nice.
Narby has previously stated that there is no evidence that Jesus is God's Son, and so on.
Apparently for narby, and many others I suppose, if science can't prove it, then it doesn't exist, nor is it truth.
(form my link)
American have long relied on their Bible to help them organize their social world and Stephen R. Haynes here returns us to the wellspring of the American South's religious rationale for slavery. Shedding light on the distinctive and creative ways in which the curse was appropriated by pro-slavery and pro-segregationist interpreters, Haynes demonstrates how this ancient biblical tale was compelling for antebellum white Southerners because it resonated with core values and beliefs regarding antiquity, tradition, domesticity, race, and sin.
Through the writings of, among others, influential Southern Presbyterian clergyman Benjamin M. Palmer, who predicted that, once freed, the black race would experience "rapid extinction before they had time to waste away through listlessness, filth, and vice," Haynes shows how Southerners would cling to these texts as a means of making sense of the South's volcanic history of secession, war, and defeat. Finally, the book presents counter-readings of Genesis 9 by abolitionists, biblical critics and literary artists who have challenged pro-slavery interpretations by articulating redemptive readings of the curse.
Tracing the continuum between racial apartheid and the southern ruling class's exaggerated sense of honor, between the curse of Noah and the Confederate flags that still wave over some state capitols, Stephen R. Haynes here makes the compelling case that the Bible is in fact one of the foundational texts of American slavery.
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