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, now I know what you problem is! Bearing false witness is just second nature in your zealotry.
Yup, and that is where I part company with Creationists, being the old line Catholic that I am. Creationism often seems to insist that science, as they understand it, proves the existence of God. Nonsense. Revelation and faith are required, and God has constructed the world to make that so.
"Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology."
This guy is such a phony.
Elegant and bedrock, my foot! It's all pseudo science and the author is it's peddler.
I looked up the last link:
"If God were truly omniscient (and I'm not saying He's not),"
Can't really say that leading statement is "Godless" ...
LOL
"I usually like Krauthammer, but he's out of his element here."
The guy is a propagandist ideologue of the worst kind. Never to be trusted.
This isn't about God. It's about the physics and the particulars of biochemistry and biology that depend on the physics. It's about what folks can see "is".
"People come to believe in God and/or evolutionary theory on their own."
That's impossible, their lifespans aren't nearly long enough. It takes the work and communication of many to create the sum of knowledge held as truth. Also, if God doesn't introduce Himself, there's no reason, or cause to know He exists.
Yes. That is what you have posted that you have seen too many posts on but none of your examples show that. I think you are just here to continue the same old divide while pretending to want true discussion.
I checked out your above #148. Let me post what that same person posted earlier in that thread and THEN you tell me he is a "Godless" person ...
"Do you understand the import of looking or not looking in the quantum experiment? How about the EPR paradox? What is the future to God? He was, is and will be forevermore. To God there is no future or past, only is. I'm sorry it is out of your ken, but God is not hemmed in by your inability to comprehend that God is both omniscient and omnipotent. "
My point precisely -- with Justice Holmes, Margaret Sanger, and Charles Darwin worthy of design credit from Hitler and the Nazis.
You don't seem to understand that some of the 'evolutionists posting here are Christians. The beef is not with Christians but with the fake Christians that are willing to bear false witness with their lies about evolution and the positions of posters on this board.
Darwin Among the Believers (theory of evolution crucial for many fields) ^ Posted by Junior to El Laton Caliente On Bloggers & Personal ^ 07/22/2005 1:41:10 PM EDT · 118 of 400 ^ I have a hard time understanding why some Christians feel so threatened by these concepts. > Their faith is extremely brittle, and subconsciouly they realize this.
How original.
Your sarcasm is very appropriate. You provided a list of links referring to those posters as Godless. And you didn't even ping them.
What next, earth popped up in the solar system just a thousand years ago ??
A lot of science teachers think that Dawkins is speaking science when he is actually speaking scientism. The problem is that they accept they idea that the only "science" that is knowable is that contained in the categories explored by the scientific method. That is a dubious proposition. Huge chunks of human experience cannot be dealt with by the scientific method.
A lot of science teachers think that Dawkins is speaking science when he is actually speaking scientism. The problem is that they accept they idea that the only "science" that is knowable is that contained in the categories explored by the scientific method. That is a dubious proposition. Huge chunks of human experience cannot be dealt with by the scientific method.
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.