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.
I saw that I posted his informative explanations. I really don't think that 1dado3 even bothered to read them.
I think you should have worded that a little differently. Such as:
I believe the word "ubiquitous" was ascribed to these ERVs. Maybe you have all of the above, but I, and most folks whom I know, have none, so I guess you have no point to make other than to demonstrate your inherent bias against my truth.
I have no problem with being like a child. Neither does God. It so happens that child-like faith is the very thing that pleases Him most. So I will try to say it like the child I am:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He sustains them to this day for the sake of those whom He has redeemed in Christ Jesus. This creation is slowly fading away (entropy). A new heaven and a new earth are on the way. There is no need for a "monkey trial" to decide these things. They are outside of the power and laws of men. What has been written in the biblical texts will be fulfilled completely.
Meanwhile your ranting against the truth fits very well into the picture. But that's okay. Jesus loves you, and He desires that I love you, too. To the extent I abide in Him, I do love you. To the extent I am but a poor reflection of my Maker I do not. That's just how it is.
If I could serve you up a cold one I would, but you're too far away, and I don't really know who you are. I'll leave that to God. He's given you life. I hope it proves to be abundant in more ways than one.
No, it's anti-CREATIONIST bias. Some Christians are creationists, and some are not.
One of the interesting things is that creationists have just about the same entrenched attitude with evolutionist Christians as they do with science. The creationists are always right, and everyone else is wrong, even if they're another Christian.
I was on that side of the fence for perhaps a year on these threads, so I know of where I speak.
Be ye not drunk, yet be filled with the spirit.
Are you French?
There are three other laws (the zeroth, first and third).
hmmmm. You reject the writings of learned people but want us to prove to you? Ha Ha Ha. You will never change your mind. Your are a religious zealot bent on spewing your fake science in the unreal belief that if you destroy science, more people will follow your 'faith'.
You're quotes around "theory" are enough to tell me that I'm wasting my time.
There have been enough posts right in this thread that speak about what a theory is to demonstrate that if you still don't get it. Then you never will.
Oh. I see. You wish to paint me as the sole possessor of those things I believe to be true and let "my truth" stand among as many truths as happen to be individuals. If so, may I paint you in the same way and dub you the sole individual worthy of establishing the educational cirriculum in all public schools? Or shall we add up all the adherents of our own beliefs and see how many agree with us, take a vote, and then decide what is really "truth?"
I have a standard. I have a text by which I judge all other information that comes into my hearing. What do you have? What do you use? What guides you? Anything? Nothing? Something in between?
Yah, what you said.
No, just those that come hear and repeat the false arguments they read on some creationist website.
and un educated. IM WAITING ----PROOF ??????
The proof of your lack of education is shown each time you post.
Uh, have you ever heard of the scientific method?
A text much of which was written by people that thought the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. Fortunately we also read more modern texts.
Biblical quotes from those who deny the authority of biblical texts strike me as coming from those who are drunk with themselves first, then drunk with wine, but averse to the Spirit. You seem to be one of those. That's okay. Jesus loves you, too.
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.