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.
Can't absolve the Bible from the impulse that gave rise to the witch trials. "Suffer not a witch to live" and all...
Poppycock. Astronomical evolution suggests that very thing. I'm not arguing with you Dementio. End of story.
So you don't have an example of a scientist teaching some kind of faith as science. From the look of it, it does not appear you have actually attended a science class. As I said before, "macro evolution" is not a scientific term, and genuine scientists don't use it. The fact that anti-science creationists keep using that term means two things to me: 1) that the creation pushers who are making tons of money selling books and so forth are counting on the fact that most of their customers are scientifically illiterate, and 2) that while they are pushing creationism, they personally ABSOLUTELY ACCEPT the theory of evolution. Because, if you look at the term "micro evolution," again, not a scientific term, it not only embraces the tenets of evolutionary theory, but proposes that evolution proceeds at a lightning fast pace, far faster than evolutionary theory posits.
Oh, and I should say something about faith. I don't have faith in math and science. (Although I recommend periodic sacrifices to the gods of PCR, but that is another matter.) They are merely the disciplines I have learned in order to make myself marketable to employers, much like people learn carpentry or accounting and so forth. Faith is what I exercise when I, for instance, pray to God that the particularly fussy cell line I am growing right now works out for the experiments I have in mind.
I didn't insult you. What the hell are you talking about?
I disagree with the premise of A...I like B.
Nice contribution on post #675 & #681. I agree with that.
When a thread like this is started too often people jump in thinking its a "fight". With that attitude what else can happen?
Later...
The trouble with Darwin is that it's a relatively easy theory to understand. If the creationists ever got wind of what's happening at the edge of science in quantum physics, etc. -- where the concepts are significantly more complex -- they'd blow a fuse.
Actually, I would prefer a genuinely Catholic hospital. I am sure that "cutting edge" medical treatment would be available, and more than that, it would be a good place to be if that is when my life goes terminal, as all life does.Well, I was commenting on the non-sequitur in your post, comparing the door-to-door receptions in evolution- friendly areas and evolution-hostile areas. Further, if you would choose the best hospital in Guatemala over Johns Hopkins University, then all I can say is that I think you are foolish. The level of care in a place like Johns Hopkins makes the best hospital in Guatemala look like witch-doctors operating in a mud hut with a butter knife.
Of course they are - vehemently.
Denton and Behe would disagree, as would a number of others.
Shemp 9:14, "Mee-mee-mee-mee"
Thank you for providing an example of what I was refering to.
By the way, there are a number of scientists who would disagree with you. But I'm sure you'd call them some sort of name rather than dealing with the questions they raise.
They've stopped railing against a LOT of things. Too bad.
Wikipedia!
Nyuk nyuk nyuk
You said a dirty word...
I thinks.....
funny...the Bible is easy enough for a child to understand yet complex enough for scholars to disagree about forever too.
How LONG have I slept!?!?!?
Sorry folks; but I DO have to get on work around this house!
Of course. And then, instead of dealing with the questions, the name calling begins.
One thing I have discovered. The primary tool of 'education' regarding evolution are the same as those used by the left to 're-educate' the masses. Shrill vitriole.
By that I mean, up-front, that the unimpeachable eyewitness testimony of Scripture as to how the universe was assembled by God -- the specific, infinite-personal God revealed in Scripture -- simply is inconsistent with any of the many macro-evolutionary constructs bandied about. One cannot consistently affirm that "Jesus is Lord," and affirm that the present cosmos arose over hundreds of millions of years, as one species arises from another.
But I'd go further than that. Observe the behavior of the high priests of the current dogma, at even the bland, vanilla suggestion -- to my mind rationally inescapable -- that there was some sort of organizing intelligence behind the beginning and ordering of all things. Look at the arrogance, venom, the fear, the vitriol in these threads. Something far beyond dispassionate consideration of the evidence is at work.
One major difference is that I openly admit that my framework for understanding the physical universe is religious. Those on the other side do not.
Their premises are just as religious as anyone else's. They're just in denial about it.
Just a small number, most likely lead by Behe.
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