Posted on 09/13/2005 4:15:07 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
So what would Charles Darwin have to say about the dust-up between today's evolutionists and intelligent designers?
Probably nothing.
[snip]
Even after he became one of the most famous and controversial men of his time, he was always content to let surrogates argue his case.
[snip]
From his university days Darwin would have been familiar with the case for intelligent design. In 1802, nearly 30 years before the Beagle set sail, William Paley, the reigning theologian of his time, published "Natural Theology" in which he laid out his "Argument from Design."
Paley contended that if a person discovered a pocket watch while taking a ramble across the heath, he would know instantly that this was a designed object, not something that had evolved by chance. Therefore, there must be a designer. Similarly, man -- a marvelously intricate piece of biological machinery -- also must have been designed by "Someone."
If this has a familiar ring to it, it's because this is pretty much the same argument that intelligent design advocates use today.
[snip]
The first great public debate took place on June 30, 1860, in a packed hall at Oxford University's new Zoological Museum.
Samuel Wilberforce, the learned bishop of Oxford, was champing at the bit to demolish Darwin's notion that man descended from apes. As always, Darwin stayed home. His case was argued by one of his admirers, biologist Thomas Huxley.
Wilberforce drew whoops of glee from the gallery when he sarcastically asked Huxley if he claimed descent from the apes on his grandmother's side or his grandfather's. Huxley retorted that he would rather be related to an ape than to a man of the church who used half-truths and nonsense to attack science.
The argument continues unabated ...
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
bluepistolero
This is certainly not a left wing source.
Doctrinal leaders (notably Rushdoony, North, and Bahnsen) call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, ''sodomy or homosexuality,'' incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, ''unchastity before marriage.''
According to Gary North, women who have abortions should be publicly executed, ''along with those who advised them to abort their children.'' Rushdoony concludes: ''God's government prevails, and His alternatives are clear-cut: either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them.'' Reconstructionists insist that ''the death penalty is the maximum, not necessarily the mandatory penalty.'' However, such judgments may depend less on Biblical Principles than on which faction gains power in the theocratic republic. The potential for bloodthirsty episodes on the order of the Salem witchcraft trials or the Spanish Inquisition is inadvertently revealed by Reconstructionist theologian Rev. Ray Sutton, who claims that the Reconstructed Biblical theocracies would be ''happy'' places, to which people would flock because ''capital punishment is one of the best evangelistic tools of a society.''
Gary deMar, leading Christian Reconstructionist writer, in his own words:
GONZALES: Oh, so what you are saying Gary, is, if you catch homosexuals in the act, then the Bible says to execute them.
DEMAR: The Bible lays forth the severest penalty, which would be capital punishment for two men who publicly engage in sodomy.
GONZALES: Does it say "publicly" in the Bible?
DEMAR: You've got to have at least two witnesses who would come forth and testify against the two people who had engaged in sodomy. The severest punishment would be capital punishment. It doesn't mean that has to be the punishment.
PORTEOUS: Now, there was a case a couple of years ago, and I believe it was Georgia....
DEMAR: It was Georgia.
PORTEOUS: Two men were seen by the police, because the police came in the house for a different reason, and saw them having sex, engaging in homosexual activity in bed.
DEMAR: Sodomy.
PORTEOUS: They were arrested. So you're saying that these two men, according to the Bible, could receive the death penalty?
DEMAR: Well...
PORTEOUS: Is that what you're saying?
DEMAR: First of all, remember, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia's law. Second, yes I agree that the Bible lays the death penalty for two men who are engaged in sodomy in public.
Our very own Taliban and Reverend Farrakhan.
If you're going to refer to me, ping me. And stop telling lies.
Because the nation won't be led by God. It will be led by men who claim to speak on behalf of the Almighty. Power corrupts, but when it's mixed with the belief that God is backing one up, then it becomes especially corrupting -- even more so if those in power begin believing their own press releases.
bluepistolero
I didn't accuse you of anything, unless you are a Christian Reconstructionist. If you aren't then my comment isn't addressed to you.
bluepistolero
Fair point, but let's be honest, we are talking about a group of utter fantasists with delusions of self-importance and daydreams of world domination. Thoughts, however delusion al, aren't a crime.
Actions can be. No need to point out that some Islamic jihadists also have fantasies of world domination and imagine that someday the United States will follow sharia law--and have acted on those delusions. They cannot win (if only because there will always be enough of us to take the oath or affirmation to defend our freedoms, as you pointed out). But it is genuinely frightening to me that our home-grown theocrats use a perverse 'logic' that seems to me indistinguishable from Communism; it is certainly a tyrannical vision, at odds (in my view, at least) with our freedoms.
In other words, even true, Bible-believing Christians have to accept man's innate knowledge of right and wrong.
That wasn't the question.
bluepistolero
Did I bat 1000?
That's certainly the way it seems from Junior High School history.
The Puritains of New England were about 150 years before the Revolution.
These big numbers we have to deal in...
Stuff my wife shows me from her classroom work. I suppose I could go and do a Google search and see what I can find there for your edification.
LOL. Yeah, I'm going to take the word of that site which lists CR under "Cults, Sects and Movements."
bluepistolero
bluepistolero
No.
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