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.
"From my perspective as a scientist working on the genome, the evidence in favor of evolution is overwhelming."
"Professor Darrel Falk has recently pointed out that one should not take the view that young-earth creationism is simply tinkering around the edges of science. If the tenets of young earth creationism were true, basically all of the sciences of geology, cosmology, and biology would utterly collapse. It would be the same as saying 2 plus 2 is actually 5. The tragedy of young-earth creationism is that it takes a relatively recent and extreme view of Genesis, applies to it an unjustified scientific gloss, and then asks sincere and well-meaning seekers to swallow this whole, despite the massive discordance with decades of scientific evidence from multiple disciplines."
"Design proponents point to the complexity of multicomponent molecular machines as unlikely products of a random evolutionary process. The argument about irreducible complexity is an interesting one. And yet I must say, the more one looks at these supposedly complex and irreducibly complex structures (whether it is the flagella, the eye, or the clotting cascade), the more one begins to see some evidence of intermediate forms that could have had some selective advantage. While not offering strong evidence against Intelligent Design, the study of genomes offers absolutely no support either. In fact, I would say— and many others have said it better—a major problem with the Intelligent Design theory is its lack of a plan for experimental verification. I view Intelligent Design ideas as an intriguing set of proposals, but I certainly do not view them as the kind of threat to evolution that its most vocal proponents imply."
Don't you just Haydn it when the Chopin cart Handel at the Mahler is Gummy? (Had to get the other stooge in there)
I'm not agreeing with him.
But the sun is as much the center of the universe as anyplace.
The sun is the center of the universe now...no, now...no now.
You obviously have a valid point. I noticed some replies that appear to suggest that theory equals fact. They seem incredulous that you don't buy into that interpretation. I don't know what these people have been told, but it looks like they were fed updated (false) definitions of the words "theory" and "fact." They have been so completely indoctrinated that they actually think anyone who doesn't accept these lies is a moron. It's sad really. I wonder if they were ever given a definition for "hypothesis." If so, I'd be curious to know what they were told about that. I'll bet you .50¢ they think that also means fact.
theories and facts are not mutually exclusive.
A hypothesis is a poorly tested explaination.
The theory is a well tested explaination. It can contain elements of fact. Fact being something with evidence beyond doubt.
You lose. In all these threads I have seen only the creos screw those definitions up while the non-creos repeatedly try to inform them of the true meanings.
Its a waste of Jim's space.
Curious behavior.
That's number 6, but at least you didn't post any of the good doctor's words ...
Then inform me, oh wise one. Define those three terms.
Hyperbole city
The waste of space is all the ignorant creo posts. At least Ichy posts are informative and not bogus, ideological rantings.
see #645
I have never heard an atheist say this, or anything similar for that matter. It does seem to be a Christian mantra though.
I have, repeatedly.
LMAO
Bull! This is the first time I've asked you that question. You have never given me the answer to that question. Don't bother answering it now. I wouldn't trust anything you say after your first lie. Now that I think about it, I've read lies from you on other subjects. Oh well.
good point
He said he had repeatedly defined those terms. Not that he had repeatedly defined them to you.
Zing!
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