Let's Have No More Monkey Trials - To teach faith as science is to undermine both

Time Magazine ^ | Monday, Aug. 01, 2005 | CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

[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.

[Selkie]

Are you sure you're not confusing this with something your pastor said about evolutionists?>>>>

I clearly chastized BOTH sides.

[WildTurkey]

I clearly chastized BOTH sides.

But you clearly misrepresented the position of one side.

[Selkie]

God I love that silly little thing so much !

[Selkie]

Nope

[WildTurkey]

YES! You have portrayed the evolutionists as "Godless" but have not been able to point to a single post in spite of your claims of having seen too many posts.

[WildTurkey]

Then where is your reply to my 698?

[spunkets]

Well a hypothesis is always a guess, but if it's not testable, it doesn't have the possibility of being theory. Testibility is implied buy the inclusion of "w/o proof".

[mwilli20]

You seem to have done a bit of research on the subject. I have a question you may be able to help with.

There is almost immeasurable variety in the species populating the planet. If they all evolved from one single original organism, I cannot account for why there is only one kind of DNA comprised of 4 molecules. Why has DNA not evolved into various forms some more advanced than others?

Is there any good reading on this subject? Thanks.

[Selkie]

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b85c16f4046.htm#13

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b85c16f4046.htm#121

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b24e9ec4db1.htm#220

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1433020/posts?page=338#338

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b24e9ec4db1.htm#198

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b85c16f4046.htm#148

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b85c16f4046.htm#124

There are plenty more over the years.

Just google Evolution, God, Creationists and Free Republic.

[WildTurkey]

I looked at the top one on your list. It was not a "Godless" post.

[WildTurkey]

In fact, he even capitalized "God". That is not a "Godless" post.

[bobhoskins]

Superman could SO beat up the Hulk.

[Selkie]

To: Walt Griffith
From the article:
Evolutionary theory has big problems when attempting to explain the existence and complexity of the Bombardier Beetle. Each state in the evolution of its special chemicals would have led to its destruction.

So now the creationists have alleged two critters as "proof" of their "Six days of magical creation, Snake in the Garden, Noah's Ark, etc." portfolio of miracles. First the platypus. and now the Bombardier Beetle. The platypus "miracle" seems to have dribbled away. We are left with this beetle. Interestingly, the fact that this unique insect plays around with such dangerous chemicals is probably a good argument for evolution. If it were all that easy for mutations to develop such a system, it would be far more common. One can well imagine all the blind alleys that evolution has taken, which never worked out. In hundreds of millions of years, and untold billions of mutations, it seems that only one managed to thread the needle. Like all other examples of the "fallacy of retrospective astonishment," this one fails to convince.

If God wants to announce his existence with indisputable evidence, He can surely do better.

13 Posted on 08/24/2001 12:36:09 PDT by PatrickHenry
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[Selkie]

WildTurkey has decided you believe in God after all.

[Rockingham]

The problem for atheism, whether in hard or soft form, is not so much an unwillingness to join organizations as that atheism seldom endures, either in individuals or from one generation to the next. In evolutionary terms, atheism is a cultural dead end, lacking the fitness necessary for longterm direct propagation. It recurs though, like some recurrent defect or pathogenic illness that reduces fertility but persists through new recruitment instead of direct propagation.

Saying that faithful rural communities are "more cohesive" is another way of saying the same thing. Calling that "apples to oranges" is a recognition of my point, not a refutation. Thoroughgoing atheists tend to move to large urban areas and not have kids, while the faithful tend to have them and seek the safety and ease of large backyards and lower crime rates.

[WildTurkey]

I looked at your second post. I see your problem. These are not "Anti-God" posts. You have a problem thinking that anyone that doesn't think or speak like you is "anti-God". That is not true.

[WildTurkey]

And your point is?

[bobhoskins]

In evolutionary terms, atheism is a cultural dead end, lacking the fitness necessary for longterm direct propagation.

You are limiting this statement to humans, right? :)

[Selkie]

Nope