Yeah, like anyone who believes in God is going to get their theology from San Francisco.
The San Francesspool has a problem with God. Breaking news.
Faith and Science Ping.
Yup, already the writer is being tendentious, in the second paragraph. The ID folks (whether or not they're right) acknowledge deep geological time, and some of them also acknowledge descent from a common ancestor. They're not young Earth creationists; they're not wedded to a literal reading of Genesis.
Anyway, you see this kind of argument regularly. The NY Times indulged in this just the other day in an editorial that suggested that ID proponents just don't appreciate deep geological time.
I don't think this writer understands either religion or science. Evidently he got his reverendship from some sort of mail order divinity school.
ID Theory in a nutshell....There is order in the universe so there must be an Intelligent Designer.
Likewise, the theory of evolution doesn't detract from our sense of awe and divine humility in the face of the miracle that is life. On the contrary. It's even more awesome, even more humbling, even more divinely majestic to consider that all this living diversity emerged from something akin to random trial and error. To consider that a rose is a result of such a prosaic process: what a marvel! And to think that trial and error, survival of the fittest, led to the human experience of awe ... this, too, is divine. I associate God with my experience of holy wonder, rather than thinking of God as an "intelligent designer" who exists apart from the universe, tinkering with it from afar. Evolution just gives me one more reason to be awestruck.
He "Get's It."
Great post. Thanks.
Less so than the opposite.
...And as broadly defined as the author described, it is merely a debate of context.
Doesn't ID generally include a more specific idea than that? If not, then it is a stupid argument to engage in until one has decided whether there A) is a God, and B) said God is interactive.
This leads me to believe that the author starts off by misstating the argument and goes off into the wild blue yonder from there.
The Dawrwin fish is an antiChristian symbol. The Jesus fish does not represent creationism. It was historically used to identify Christians. To mock it is to mock all Christians.
Warning rough language ahead...
On the "survival of the fittest":
Who survives? The fit. Who are the fit? Those who survive.
Hmmm.
Don't you mean, "Evolution is Bad Theory?"
YEC INTREP - Location, Location, Location - consider the source!
"Can be reached..."
Clearly this is wrong. Evidence can be brought forth to eitehr confirm or deny the original proposition.
In the case of ID, mathematical modeling and information theory have been used to buttress the claim of this major criticism of the evolutionary model.
Beyond this, we should look at Rev. Buurko, the author of this piece. He is a presbyterian pastor in California whose church also offers some informative insights: Burklo Link Clearly, Burklo is a liberal theologian whose rejection of the bible also has him deviating from historic Christianity is very, soul-damning ways worse than his deviation on this thread.
By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who:proclaim Jesus Christ as our Gate to the realm of God
recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the gateway to God's realm;
understand our sharing of bread and wine in Jesus's name to be a representation of God's feast for all peoples
invite all sorts and conditions of people to join in our worship and in our common life as full partners, including (but not limited to):
believers and agnostics
conventional Christians and questioning skeptics
homosexuals and heterosexuals
females and males
the despairing and the hopeful
those of all races and cultures
those of all classes and abilities,without imposing on them the necessity of becoming like us
think that the way we treat one another and other people is more important than the way we express our beliefs;
find more grace in the search for meaning than in absolute certainty, in the questions than in the answers;
see ourselves as a spiritual community in which we discover the resources required for our work in the world: striving for justice and peace among all people, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers;
recognize that our faith entails costly discipleship, renunciation of privilege, and conscientious resistance to evil -- as has always been the tradition of the church.
I was not surprised that rejection in one place indicated rejection in many others.
I don't understand why so many "scientists" are so afraid of the idea of "intelligent design"? The paranoia doesn't make any sense at all. There are very real questions concerning exactly how life began on earth and very real questions to how macro-evolution occurred and why life is able to diversify so quickly in huge bursts and I think that the putting forth of make believe stories in science books whether they be pro-evolution or anti-evolution seems to be counterproductive. I don't know how many times I've read evo-speak stories that are not in the least backed up by the evidence at hand.
I read a story the other day about a study where men were asked to watch other men having sex and found that the sperm of the men who were watching became more active. The conclusion was that that response had "evolved" so that the men who were watching might have a better chance of impregnating a women who had just been copulated with by another man. This may be so but the conclusion was in no way arrived at by the facts established by the study nor was that the only possible interpretation of the data.
I don't think the existence of God necessarily requires "intelligent design" because a creator could certainly design a world that was built to unfold however "he" wished.
I do think that the increasing level of complexity that is being discovered as we dig deeper into the nature of biological systems suggests that natural selection as proposed by Darwin is just not enough and that we have by far oversimplified the creative capability of complex systems in the universe.
What we have with even the simplest cells is more complex than any bit of nanotechnology that we have yet created, they are not simple blobs with rudimentary respiration systems. Evolution as it stands has some critical problems, one is the ancestor problem, just because one group differentiates into a separate species does not necessarily mean that the source species is doomed to extinction. One could go on and on, what we need are more questions being asked rather than the crude attempt to shoehorn all thinking into a box called "natural selection" by people who are barely removed from the religiousness of those creationists they scorn.
ANOTHER REVEREND RELEVENT WHO DESPARATELY WANTS TO BE NOTICED AND ACCEPTED BY THE SECULAR WORLD.
Note to the above apostate:
Jesus accepted and taught the account of Genesis as being literally true [such as Creation ex nihilo, Adam & Eve, Noah's ark, the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah, etc.]. If you don't believe what Christ believed, you're not even a Christian, much less a Christian minister.
Hi, curiosity! Well, at least the writer admits that, in his view, this science issue is a "front of the culture war." The rest is pure polemics, specializing in the attribution of motives to people holding viewpoints with which he disagrees. Put it all in the mouth of a "progressive" Presbyterian minister, and voila!!! We are to gather that the Truth Has Been Told.
Kinda reminds me of what Code Pink is doing on Friday nights at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. They say they are conducting "vigils." But it sure looks like hard left-wing political protest to me. I gather they feel -- as perhaps does the Rev. Burklo -- that to change the semantics is to change the reality.
This article is not ready for prime time, IMHO FWIW.
But thanks for posting it, curiosity!