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 ...
Oh, now, I'm not the one promoting a sect that advocates stoning for disobedient children.
Ireland is finding peace at last, thank God and the Bush administration.
Yes it is, although W had little to do with it. Mostly I think people just got fed up, and started wondering why they were fighting for scraps while just across the border they were getting rich.
Hey, get your own refrigerator! My wife pushes the six-pack way in the back, and I have to use warp drive to get a brew?
How can you, a mere man, describe anothers refrigerator?
They need to package this and send it to Gaza!
I'm just saying it's a big refrigerator! There should be enough room for everyone's elephants.
That's what my liberal friends say about the Soviet Union. But I don't believe things "just happen."
That's not what you've been asking. You've been asking what would be so bad if God ran the show. The two are not synonymous.
Alas, Islam seems to immunize them against those sorts of considerations.
Amen. Romans 9 is about as perfect a statement of God's will as any ever written.
This is great stuff. Classic comedy gold. Thanks for finding it.
Always glad to be of service.
The effort was worth it for me anyway, I got to laugh at it all over again.
IF there exists a God who created heaven and earth (one that we would agree on at some future date, considering the supposition here is that there IS such a God), would it be a bad thing for all the world to acknowledge that specific God?
That's the same question I've asked for hours.
PH, these are definitely keepers.
This cultural war debate has been going on since the late Roman (Byzantine) era.. witness the following:
"Knowing Pythagoras and Aristotle and Plato a person can grasp the truth".
---Barlaam the Calabrian
VS
"...a classical education helps the natural knowledge of man about created things, but it can never become itself intellectual knowledge, unless it joins with faith and the Agape of God and, even more, unless it regenerates itself from this Agape and from the Grace that emanates from this Agape, and unless it becomes different from what it was before; that is new, Godlike, pure, peaceful, tolerant, amenable, full of words that enlighten those that listen to them and bearing good fruit, knowledge which is also called the wisdom of God..."
---St. Gregory Palamas
Fortunately back then Barlaam and his infectious ideology lost the battle then and the secularists will lose again.
http://www.orthodoxwiki.org/Gregory_Palamas
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