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.
Elsie, could you please read post 139 and tell me how you would take it? Our whole banter back and forth was a result of how he described my position RE this article.
Most creationists have only one thing in mind: to bring all walks of human life under strict religious control and to quash freedom of thought and expression. These people are the neo-fascists.
Yes. But I am trying to communicate to you that any calculation done for the probability of abiogenesis has to take into account the number of concurrent repeated Bernoulli trials as well as the number of sequential trials. You don't seem to understand this. Is this why you pinged Alamo-Girl?
I am also saying that if we are not sure of the initial conditions and available chemical combinations, any such calculation is bound to be inaccurate.
Can you briefly outline what a science "rid...of the presupposition of methodological naturalism" might look like?
Don't forget that Marx offered to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin. Of course, Darwin declined the "honor" because Darwin correctly understood that his biological theory did not translate to proper social science, but don't let facts get in the way of your mindless attempt to falsely imply that Darwin somehow advocated badly-designed social systems.
It's the one that takes that counts, and it happened at one point in time. Turning inanimate to animate was a no time the odds on favorite.
So, again I make my point that the probability AGAINST inanimate to animate is enormous.
btw, I pinged Alamo because we're friends from other threads, and I thought she'd enjoy this.
Exactly. You pointed out that a creationist's argument was logically fallacious. That's a "cheap shot". We're not supposed to point out that their arguments are faulty and without merit; that's mean!
I agree with that. The question you have failed to ask is 'what convinced them to become atheists?'. If Dawkins (and others) is like most, he was brought up in a religious society and later, through a decision making process, decided that society was incorrect in its belief of a God. What evidence, or lack thereof, contributed to that decision?
I, because of personal experience, assume that it was a lack of evidence for God, and the existence of evidence that makes it more and more difficult to hide God, that convinced him - or at least influenced his decision.
If you want to know what kind of society Dawkins grew up in, I suggest you start by reading A.N. Wilson's "God's Funeral." He--and you and I --have grown up in a society whose elites are more and more inclined to hide whatever evidence of God's presence does exist. If his Will is not evident, then more and more rests in human hands, which is to say, the powerful of this world.
Einstein, on the other hand, actually was a socialist. But Einstein's physics has stood up quite well, notwithstanding his kookiness in other fields. Darwin, from all that's known about him, probably never had a socialist thought in his life. (And his science has stood up quite well too.)
I am making up the fact that Dawkins rejects the possibility of miracle?
Nope, only of himself. None of us on either side are responsible for anyone's posts but our own.
First, there is absolutely no doctrine in science. Doctrine is dictate, protected by dictate. Science only holds truth, which is open for examination and rejection if called for.
I looked up the Catholic meaning of Providence. It is a long set of claims, many of which are tortuous. The relevant rule from God in this matter, which governs what can be observed from science is:
Matthew 12:38-39
Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, "Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you. "He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. (the Holy Spirit)
That means that through science, all you'll ever see is physics. That's it. No ID whatsoever and nothing that points to many of the claims in Providence. That's not by doctrine, that's by God's own word. Science can only examine what it can observe.
Not really.
As one approaches zero it is in fact zero.
Therefore, the odds of YOU winning the lottery is zero.
Wanna test it next week?
I'll bet you lose and you can bet that you win. I'll wager a cup of Starbucks Gold Coast.
NO it's not.
Here is more material on Darwin - the atheist - and Marx.
According to biologist Ernst Mayr, a founder of neo-Darwinism:
"It is apparent that Darwin lost his faith in the years 1836-39, much of it clearly prior to the reading of Malthus. In order not to hurt the feelings of his friends and of his wife, Darwin often used deistic language in his publications, but much in his Notebooks indicates that by this time he had become a 'materialist.'"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.