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're kidding, right? You don't understand that what he was saying was that the Earth's entropy can locally decrease at the expense of a corresponding and greater increase in entropy in the sun? There is NO violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics here. None.
Other way around, IIRC. Shemp => Curley => Curley Joe.
I said: "And where does he mention the teaching of evolution as justification for religious people to feel threatened?"
You replied: He doesn't. He just mentions that religious people had a justification to feel threatened.
Now which article did you read? The one where Krauthammer hit the nail on the head about how evolution is seen as part of a general assault on religion. Or the article where he didn't?
I think this is a general problem with creationists. They have very little reading comprehension and memory. They learn cartoon versions of evolution and cannot comprehend the theory any further. Or even comprehend the scientific meaning of "theory".
I can understand why the preachers are pushing this stuff now. It filters out anyone in the congregation with thinking skills. And when the preacher says "give me money", the folks in the congregation say "how much"?
It's just good business to preach literal Genesis these days.
And the overall entropy of the system is increasing, but localized decreases in entropy within the system are still allowed.
When did the Sun ever cause an increase in complexity, without intellegent guidance or intervention?
God guides the growth of every blade of grass?
Is HTML all you saw in that post?
Well, now I understand.
Geez. Good one. To choose between text taken from a work of fiction intended to capture and preserve a culture primarily based on animal husbandry, and its attempt to explain the (at that time) unexplainable on one hand and text gleaned from the works of thousands of dedicated, educated ,hard working scientists using a tested methodology that has given us technology and understanding far beyond what those original herders could even imagine on the other hand.
Hmmm. Hard decision.
Post 27 was to an evo skeptic. How about this: He hits the nail on the head, however, about a general, and undeniable, assault on religion, of which religious people see evolution as part.
Would you disagree with that?
Evolution is seen as part of an undeniable general assault on religion by religious people whether Krauthammer spells it out or not.
Which would probably explain why some religious people would rather cover their eyes and pretend it doesn't exist.
Such a fundamental ignorance of evolution is unfortunate. That some choose to remain ignorant is shameful.
[whisper] Pssst Narby, over here. I bet he never read any of it. Maybe he's afraid to? Whaddya think? [/whisper]
Let the games begin!
Yup, he's wrong all right.
EVERYONE knows that us AND apes morphed from something else...
That is a very interesting article. It's like the creationists are like cultists who have to undergo deprogramming. Interesting.
I don't think anybody's arguing that it doesn't exist. What's being argued is whether it explain every thing its proponents claim. Further, there is a concern stemming from he recognition that it has been used in many cases to advance philosophical or social causes that violate fundamental American beliefs.
OH??
Methinks thou shouldest read the Book again....
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