Harriet and Dr. Evil.
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 ...
ROTFL :)
I give up. I've been beaten by a better man.
It's also a little know fact that 98.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Knock yourselves out. I can up the ante if needs be.
[Late night thread filler. Got to do something to catch up to PH's 25,000 posts.]
"Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ." -- John Calvin
Reading this thread late, b-sharp, and I honestly mistook the above (where you are in fact quoting Elsie) as another contribution to RightWingProfessor's ennumeration of Kent Hovind's attributes :-)
"Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ." -- John Calvin
Calvin had no choice but but to say that junk; what is your excuse? :) It's a good thing Galileo and Newton didn't think like Calvin. Or you. They believed that the study of nature was the study of God's Creation.
What, by the way, are you a Doctor of? You've shown precious little understanding of science so far. In fact, you have not even tried to provide any argument against evolution other than spouting bible quotes. Please say your doctorate isn't medical related. Or that it is just the literary pretension it appears to be.
Well, i can not really agree..The best action would be;
- To keep the food for the parents of both family, and then to
reproduce in a better enviorment.
- The reason is the chance the children will survive by themselves, is much more less than the chance the parents will survive..
Well, i can not really agree..The best action would be;
- To keep the food for the parents of both family, and then to
reproduce in a better enviorment.
- The reason is the chance the children will survive by themselves, is much more less than the chance the parents will survive..
Thank you for this quote (which I did not know before) which wonderfully helps underline the points I was endeavouring to make earlier in this thread.
Fundamentalist formulations of religion (not all religions necessarily have 'fundamentalist' formulations, but that is another topic--for our purposes here, it is enough that Christianity and Islam will serve for illustration as religions which have some 'fundamentalist' or 'literalist' adherents) are by definition contrary and antithetical to science. Science commences with questions about the properties of the natural world and, through a well-established and self-correcting methodology, approximates towards answers of increasing accuracy. Religious fundamentalism commences with what it believes to be God-given and absolute answers, not questions. If you think you already know the answer before you even pose the question--well, whatever you are doing, it sure ain't science. And wherever objective science develops answers that are contrary to your pre-defined, 'God-given' answers (because observations in the natural world refuse to conform with your demands), you've got a problem.
Religious fundamentalists have historically attempted to deal with this problem with different strategies:
[1] Insist science is wrong and blasphemous in its answers. Thus, Galilleo was forced to recant the dreadful heresy, utterly contrary to a literal reading of the Bible, that the earth circled the sun. The Inquistion, which sentenced him to life imprisonment for this heinous claim, did so using justifications indistinguishable from those used by some Christian fundamentalists alarmed by the 'heresy' of evolution. The Church of Galilleo's time sought to limit science to whatever was compatible with a literal reading of the Bible--and they tied their brains into pretzels doing it.
[2] Or: a different, and perhaps more direct, solution adopted by religious fundamentalists, such as the Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan, is to simply ban science altogether, you just can't trust it to not keep coming up with answers grounded in observations of the natural world that are contrary to the answers found in the pages of religious texts.
[3] Or: there is always the tactic of the Creationists/IDer's, which appears to be an attempt to dress up unchallengable religious answers with an artificial gloss and try to pass them off as 'scientific.' When the scientific community spots this pathetic ruse (it's awfully easy to do, in any event), then the attempt is made to sell to the general public the claim to entitlement to 'equal time.' In any event, the results of Creationism are manifest: falsifications, distortions, and intellectual dishonesty.
Now, freedom of religious belief and worship is absolute under our Constitution--it is one of our invaluable and hard-won freedoms, we will always defend that, I hope you know that we are in raging agreement on that score. But do you think that the Calvin you quote would similarly defend that freedom? However noble Calvin's intentions may have been (and I am willing to grant they may have been very noble indeed), look at the monstrous results of his theocratic state! Please tell me, would you honestly prefer to live under the Consistory of Geneva or the United States Constitution? The "so much smoke" associated with Calvin, I am afraid, is the smoke from Michael Servetus--burned at the stake, at Calvin's personal wish, in 1553 for refusing to change his 'heretical' view of the Christian trinity.
I don't doubt that you and I would agree on most other topics, I regret (but am unrepentent) that we disagree here. Please do accept that, for me, Christianity is not the issue--but theocratic agendas by religious fundamentalists most certainly are. I would no more want Christian fundamentalists setting the curriculum in science classrooms than I would want Islamic jihadists to force sharia law upon us.
There is clear evidence against intelligent design.
What intelligent designer would put a recreation center next to a waste disposal facility?
DK
I was writing post #570 while you were posting the above; I agree with you, Calvin is an awfully dubious advocate for the religiously minded.
Here's some idle speculation: imagine Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, John Adams, Ben Franklin &c. living in Calvin's Geneva. I think there is a good chance they would have organised a Revolution to overthrow that tyranny even faster than they got it together to dump George III!
ROFLMHO
And couldn't some protective cladding been built around the the dangling annex to the recreation center, the better to protect it from accidental knocks?
"You're either with us, or you're with the dinosaurs ... and you know where they are."
-- sayings of the Grand Master
Harriet and Dr. Evil.
Pretty much what I'd expect from a ruthless and brutal theocratic dictator. The fact that you quote such a creature with approval is adequate explanation for why so many of us fear an American theocracy.
Pretty much what I'd expect from a ruthless and brutal theocratic dictator. The fact that you quote such a creature with approval is adequate explanation for why so many of us fear an American theocracy.
Worth repeating.
A first?
Almost a miracle!!
;^)
I just KNEW you could... ;^)
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