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 ...
Agreed, but I do believe that before deciding on what manner to engage someone in conversation/debate regarding these matters it's important to know whether the person is a believer of bad science or a deliberate purveyor of bad science with an agenda. I try to be polite with the former but I have no qualms about being harsh with the latter - in fact, it seems to be the only way one can deal with the latter.
Junk science isn't confined to creation science either; there's plenty to go around in other areas (i.e. con-men like John Edward who has people actually believing he talks to dead people).
Creation science isn't the most dangerous abuse of science either (though considering the vast range of scientific fields it attempts to contaminate, it is up there) - I think a far more common and dangerous tool of misinformation is the abuse of statistics; one that we see all over the media almost every day (and in creation science, too, come to think of it...)
Thanks for the compliment - much appreciated (though I really must stop writing posts and actually get some work done here...)
Feel good does not equal feel virtuous. there are hormones involved.
Momma cat gets an urge to nurse, she nurses. Abscess or no.
The hurricane scenario doesn't work as a comparison to nursing cats.
Sorry about the duplicated (also edited) post. I got called away abruptly and forgot I had clicked "post".
Since you asked...
If you knew your history as well as you know science, you'd know the United States is based on the Genevan principles of government. This country was founded on the Calvinist Presbyterian model of law, by Calvinists, for all. As in you and me.
I generally stay off these evo threads. The vitriol here makes the religion forum look almost quaint.
I am not a Biblical literalist. But I believe every word of the Bible as ordained by God for His glory and our joy.
Science serves God, like everything else serves God. Science just forgets that more often than it should.
Servetus
As far as Servetus goes, Calvin's opponents, the Libertine party, held the majority in Geneva at that time, and issued Servetus' death warrant, which had originally been demanded by the Pope for Servetus' subversion by his denial of the Trinity, an offense punishable by death throughout Europe.
More from Boettner's book, "Calvinism in America" --
"This striking similarity between the principles set forth in the Form of Government of the Presbyterian Church and those set forth in the Constitution of the United States has caused much comment. "When the fathers of our Republic sat down to frame a system of representative and popular government," says Dr. E. W. Smith, "their task was not so difficult as some have imagined. They had a model to work by."
"If the average American citizen were asked, who was the founder of America, the true author of our great Republic, he might be puzzled to answer. We can imagine his amazement at hearing the answer given to this question by the famous German historian, Ranke, one of the profoundest scholars of modern times. Says Ranke, 'John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.'"
D'Aubigne, whose history of the Reformation is a classic, writes: "Calvin was the founder of the greatest of republics. The Pilgrims who left their country in the reign of James I, and landing on the barren soil of New England, founded populous and mighty colonies, were his sons, his direct and legitimate sons; and that American nation which we have seen growing so rapidly boasts as its father the humble Reformer on the shore of Lake Leman."
Dr. E. W. Smith says, "These revolutionary principles of republican liberty and self-government, taught and embodied in the system of Calvin, were brought to America, and in this new land where they have borne so mighty a harvest were planted, by whose hands? — the hands of the Calvinists. The vital relation of Calvin and Calvinism to the founding of the free institutions of America, however strange in some ears the statement of Ranke may have sounded, is recognized and affirmed by historians of all lands and creeds."
All this has been thoroughly understood and candidly acknowledged by such penetrating and philosophic historians as Bancroft, who far though he was from being Calvinistic in his own personal convictions, simply calls Calvin "the father of America," and adds: "He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty."
When we remember that two-thirds of the population at the time of the Revolution had been trained in the school of Calvin, and when we remember how unitedly and enthusiastically the Calvinists labored for the cause of independence, we readily see how true are the above testimonies..."
And as extra credit, keeping in mind the vast majority of signers of the Declaration of Independence were Calvinists, along with over two-thirds of all Americans at the time of the Revolution...
Thus I repeat...
"Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ." -- John Calvin
We are what we presuppose. If we are led by God alone, we presuppose His hand everywhere and have no recourse but to follow it.
If we presuppose we are autonomous specks of lint in the arid drier vent of the cosmos, that is what we become.
And if we think He's left us on our own to make that distinction for ourselves, we are little better off than the latter.
Big Daddy overturns the entire scientific enterprise in one fell swoop.
I'm deliberately not including people.
Also, there can be competing motivations as well as strength of motivation.
No question it can be complex, but I just don't buy the sick nursing cat as an example of any kind of virtue or self-sacrifice.
Bioogical attachment to children seems to be lower in at least some H. sap. compared with, say, bears.
Nope, no one saw it! It didnt happen!
Real science has to be actually witnessed by someone in real time, filmed with a video camera and later translated into little comic books to be left at laudromats and gas stations.
Hey I get MY science from comic books I read at the car wash.
Textbooks, journals and conferences are for godless atheists.
LOL. Yeah they wore out the bottom of the barrel. There is nothing but wood shavings. I mean Dr. Kent Hovind PhD is being cited around here as if he was Francis Crick.
These sets of "given assumptions" have made it possible for you to use a computer and send messages over the internet (among a great many other things).
I think the Grand Master needs to lighten up just a bit. And stop with the false dilemmas already. Sheesh.
Is that the kind of nonsense you evolutionists believe? How can that possibly be correct, when I have Holy Scripture that is absolute and unchallengable proof of the existence of immaculate conception?
Can you prove that sex causes babies? Don't you know of all the recent research showing problems with your Conceptional concepts?
If sex causes babies, why don't homosexuals have babies?
That's stumped you, hasn't it!
My daughter just about married someone like that.
He doesn't work (refuses to really), doesn't bathe and worst of all doesn't keep his promises with my grandson. I wish he would return to the tree he came from.
Why would you think I doubt that?
Has everyone who kneels to the name of Christ now been labeled an Amish or an ascetic?
I bet you at least thought of laughing.
I'm not sure what we are arguing about, or even if we are. I stated what I stated very carefully. The original question, in one of its incarnations, implied that evolution would produce or require unmitigated personal self-interest and would rule out "virtuous" behavior.
If this isn't your position, then I have been posting to the wrong person. There are plenty of people on these threads who claim that belief in evolution would cause a complete lapse of morality. They seem to miss the fact that our moral impulses have survival value, and are indeed rather common in mammals. They certainly aren't rare.
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