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 are asking that one ticket "abiogenesis" hit the jackpot.
You are also hoping that your ticket wins. That's 1 out of total possible combination of numbers.
True. But this is not an analog to abiogenesis.
" My knowing that a greater intelligence exists doesn't change either my ability or the laws of physics."
This statement is totally unrelated to your ID model(math+physics). You just simply make this statement. This statement just floats all by itself, it's logically disconnected from your ID model.
Next Thursday.
How do you say no twice without repeating yourself?
Either I'm not understanding well or you're not writing well. We seem to be at an impasse.
Precisely my point, although perhaps inartfully stated. The phrase "effecitively zero" is effectively meaningless.
I have. It is a pro-evolution book btw.
"Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds by Phillip E. Johnson
Wouldn't dream of it. Johnson is a lawyer that openly admits he knows nothing of evolution and has no intention of learning. He is also one of the designers of the Wedge document.
I don't know where that number came from, and probably you don't either, but it doesn't matter. The whole setup is wrong. You're watching one molecule, and waiting for it to do something.
Assume (this isn't a wild scenario) that you have an ocean full of organic molecules. They naturally combine, and form long, complex chains. It's what they do. Nothing can stop them from doing it. That's how the chemistry works. And now assume that you have billions of years to play with, which indeed, the earth has had. Bear in mind that you also have billions of molecular interactions going on every second of every day!
Now plug that into your calculations.
Lets go back...
"Now if you make calculations in GR and the answer disagrees with reality, either your understanding of nature is wrong(bad model), or there's some unseen force acting(physics, or intel)."
Here's the possibilities:
The model is wrong-math
The model is wrong-knowledge and understanding(physics)
The model is right and there's an intelligent force
Do you agree?
This sounds more like a reason to teach it in school.
"Still believed and still defended.
Please. Learn some logic. You are driving me crazy.
Clearly the point was made...between these two infamous secularists of the 19th century.
You've done nothing but. You wouldn't know logic if you were told.
Go grab a cocktail. It appears that even homo sapiens needs one of those sometimes.
How about a Cuba Libre?
2 oz light rum
juice of 1/2 limes
Coca-Cola®
I find it incredibly ironic that a creationist whose entire philosophy is based on absolutism and an unchanging and unchangeable book, who at the mere suggestion of a non-literal interpretation of said book results in him suffering terminal spasms and hives, is asking evolutionists to think outside the box.
""In order to claim an intelligent unseen force is there, you must abandon immediately.....must claim perfection"
Lets go back...
"Now if you make calculations in GR and the answer disagrees with reality, either your understanding of nature is wrong(bad model), or there's some unseen force acting(physics, or intel)."
Here's the possibilities:
1) The model is wrong-math-logic error
Something's missing, there's 2 possibilities:
2a) The model is wrong-knowledge and understanding(physics)
2b) The model is right and there's an intelligent force
Do you agree?
terminal spasms and hives,
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