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.
Ah the character assasination ploy. Rule #4 for the "Soldiers of God".
Cry me a river
Bearing false witness. Seems like I have seen that phrase written somewhere. Now where was that? Work with me on this one. I know I heard it somewhere.
Lies. Rule #1 for the "Soldiers of Satan." Don't bother posting to me any more. You aren't worth my time.
After much reading and analysis (okay, I don't have much of a life) I've figured out the popularity of the evolution threads.
A)Everyone gets to feel superior. The "believers" are firm in their knowledge that they're going to heaven for a skybox view of those nasty unbelievers spending eternity asking, "Hot enough for ya?" While the evolutionists get to take comfort in their mastery of scientific theory, fact and rational thinking.
B)There is always an adequate number of participants because nobody -- and I mean nobody -- ever seems to change sides on the issue.
So, in the interest of livening things up -- I just want to say that string theory is an abomination in the eyes of god.
How do you sleep at night knowing that you have sinned?
The snarky superior attitude from both sides is embarassing.
I rarely see calm freeps who thoughtfully appreciate both sides of the issue.
The believers can't PROVE there's a God to the Godless, and the Godless can't prove there's no God to the believers.
People come to believe in God and/or evolutionary theory on their own.
Not by people mocking them on internet forum.
ROFL
Argumentum ad Stoogium. Macro-suck has been defined and observed many times.
I've already donated all my money to Stooge Central.
No comfort here. Actually, it is very frustrating to try to counter the irrational.
See you're post 666.
That just proves how wicked you are.
lol
BURN THE STRING THEORISTS! THEY ARE EVIL!
Your post is confusing. Evolution has nothing to do with "proving there is no God".
You miss the point entirely. It is NOT about belief in God. We have posted the words of Good Christians that believe in evolution but the creos will have none of that.
666 posted on 08/01/2005 9:16:47 PM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
Now that's creepy! How did "666" get into this thread!
Silly to get emotional about it.
Not so. I linked you to him at least twice before.
I am just trying to bump the thread to see who joins the "700" club!
From my vantage point, evolution is the lie. It has to be reinforced by falsehood upon falsehood, and whenever a new discovery is made, the current evolutionary paradigm has to be altered to fit the new facts, or the new facts are covered up so that the old model can preserve its foundations.
Please educate yourself. You and a few million like you are making conservatives look like uneducated hicks.
I have an education thank you very much. I also know the difference between a THEORY and a FACT, and evolution is only a THEORY. Yet every current textbook teaches it as if it were fact. The fact that you disagree with my statement does not give you the right to question my intelligence nor my integrity. If you have no greater argument than that, and must resort to denigration of your opponent, you have already lost the discussion. As far as being a "hick", yes, I might be, but Green Acres theme song says it all for my position regarding the diametric polarities of rural vs. urban existence.
And we all want to thank you for pointing us to his pro-evolution words.
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