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.
"if two organisms have the identical insertion located at the identical location in their genomes that it is astronomically unlikely that this is the result of two independent insertions"
So, why?
Because God demonstrates his existence by doing things which are "astronomically unlikely".
BTW, FRiends I appreciate your thoughtful and reasoned posts. I have been very impressed by the scholarly demonstrations of some on this thread.
"Nice attempt to avoid looking like a coward while running away from the facts"
Facts?
After that we'll go to a number of churches and see if they have any Bibles that portray the flood as fact. Then we'll look for interesting immoral acts done by supposedly moral characters in the Bible, shall we?
Then we'll take a look at all the problems religion has caused in the world over time, that should prove religion is wrong shouldn't it? /S
The least you can do is come up with an argument.
You want to attack evolution, at least learn critical thinking skills first.
"Do you have any facts to bring to the discussion"
Facts again.
Creationists don't have "confident belief" in the truth of their ideas?
Hyper speciation after the flood.
Evolution anyone?
While I wish it weren't so, the fact is that a great many Christians do have this sort of filter on. There was a great article.
Here is a great post by someone who used to have such blinders on. It is a great read as it helps scientist understand where Creationists are coming from. It also points out that maybe a little more patience should be shown toward them as well.
Another comfortable straw man. What, do you guys sleep with these straw men? You come up with them so gall darn quickly.
The theory of evolution is considered a theory not fact. The fact of evolution is the observation of the variance in allele frequency within a population. The theory is a theory and the fact is a fact. Simple isn't it?
Not based on material evidence. That is the difference between usage #1 and usage #2. Faith is one of the words like "scan" that have two popular use meanings that are totally opposite in meaning.
So, why?
Because God demonstrates his existence by doing things which are "astronomically unlikely".
We might as well close shop on all the sciences right now then if that's going to be how we explain unlikely phenomena. It may very well be that some would be fine with that. I just wish they'd be up front about it and say they want a faith-based structure for natural inquiry and not a scientific one rather than trying to conflate the two.
Spontanious evolution violates the law of entropy, also known as the second law of thermal dynamics. The law states that without external input no system can become more complex (more ordered or better constructed). This is simple physics, but many "scientists" don't understand it.
It's magic?
Too attractive to be Ginsburg!
When I grow up I want to be just like you. ;->
Respectfully, the only ones who don't understand it are the ones that are making these claims. Evolution does not violate entropy for several reasons. For one, it is not a closed system - we have the sun.
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