Posted on 11/01/2005 6:27:26 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
A president who consults religious lunatics about who should be on the Supreme Court... Judges who want prayer in school and the "ten commandments" in the courtroom… Born-Again fanatics who bomb abortion clinics… bible thumpers who condemn homosexuality as "sin"... and all the other Christian fascists who want a U.S. theocracy….
This is the force behind the assault on evolution going on right now in a courtroom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Last year, the Dover city school board instituted a policy that requires high school biology teachers to read a statement to students that says Darwin's theory of evolution is "not a fact" and then notes that intelligent design offers an alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life--namely, that life in all of its complexity could not have arisen without the help of an "intelligent hand." Some teachers refused to read the statement, citing the Pennsylvania teacher code of ethics, which says, "I will never knowingly present false information to a student." Eleven parents who brought this case to court contend that the directive amounted to an attempt to inject religion into the curriculum in violation of the First Amendment. Their case has been joined by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The school board is being defended pro bono by the Thomas More Law Center, a Christian law firm in Ann Arbor, Mich. The case is being heard without a jury in Harrisburg by U.S. District Judge John Jones III, whom George W. Bush appointed to the bench in 2002.
In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not teach the biblical account of creation instead of evolution, because doing so would violate the constitutional ban on establishment of an official religion. Since then Intelligent Design has been promoted by Christian fundamentalists as the way to get the Bible and creationism into the schools.
"This clever tactical repackaging of creationism does not merit consideration," Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer for the parents, told U.S. District Judge John E. Jones in opening arguments. "Intelligent design admits that it is not science unless science is redefined to include the supernatural." This is, he added, "a 21st-century version of creationism."
This is the first time a federal court has been asked to rule on the question of whether Intelligent Design is religion or science. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, which opposes challenges to the standard model of teaching evolution in the schools, said the Pennsylvania case "is probably the most important legal situation of creation and evolution in the last 18 years," and that "it will have quite a significant impact on what happens in American public school education."
Proponents of Intelligent Design don’t say in the courtroom that they want to replace science with religion. But their strategy papers, speeches, and discussions with each other make it clear this is their agenda.
Intelligent Design (ID) is basically a re-packaged version of creationism--the view that the world can be explained, not by science, but by a strict, literal reading of the Bible. ID doesn’t bring up ridiculous biblical claims like the earth is only a few thousand years old or that the world was created in seven days. Instead it claims to be scientific--it acknowledges the complexity and diversity of life, but then says this all comes from some "intelligent" force. ID advocates don’t always openly argue this "intelligent force" is GOD--they even say it could be some alien from outer space! But Christian fundamentalists are the driving force behind the whole Intelligent Design movement and it’s clear… these people aren’t praying every night to little green men from another planet.
Phillip Johnson, considered the father and guiding light behind Intelligent Design, is the architect of the "wedge strategy" which focuses on attacking evolution and promoting intelligent design to ultimately, as Johnson says, "affirm the reality of God." Johnson has made it clear that the whole point of "shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God" is to get people "introduced to the truth of the Bible," then "the question of sin" and finally "introduced to Jesus."
Intelligent Design and its theocratic program has been openly endorsed by George W. Bush. Earlier this year W stated that Intelligent Design should be taught in the schools. When he was governor of Texas, Bush said students should be exposed to both creationism and evolution. And he has made the incredibly unscientific, untrue statement that "the jury is still out" on evolution.
For the Christian fascists, the fight around evolution and teaching Intelligent Design is part of a whole agenda that encompasses reconfiguring all kinds of cultural, social, and political "norms" in society. This is a movement that is fueled by a religious vision which varies among its members but is predicated on the shared conviction that the United States is in need of drastic changes--which can only be accomplished by instituting religion as its cultural foundation.
The Christian fascists really do want--and are working for--a society where everything is run according to the Bible. They have been working for decades to infiltrate school boards to be in a position to mandate things like school prayer. Now, in the schools, they might not be able to impose a literal reading of the Bible’s explanation for how the universe was created. But Intelligent Design, thinly disguised as some kind of "science," is getting a lot more than just a foot in the door.
The strategy for promoting intelligent design includes an aggressive and systematic agenda of promoting the whole religious worldview that is the basis for ID. And this assault on evolution is linked up with other questions in how society should be run.
Marc Looy of the creationist group Answers in Genesis has said that evolution being taught in the schools,
"creates a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness, which I think leads to things like pain, murder, and suicide."
Ken Cumming, dean of the Institute for Creation Research's (ICR) graduate school, who believes the earth is only thousands of years old, attacked a PBS special seven-part series on evolution, suggesting that the series had "much in common" with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. He said,
"[W]hile the public now understands from President Bush that 'we're at war' with religious fanatics around the world, they don't have a clue that America is being attacked from within through its public schools by a militant religious movement called Darwinists...."
After the 1999 school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, Tom DeLay, Christian fascist representative from Texas, gave a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, blaming the incident in part on the teaching of evolution. He said,
"Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud."
The ID movement attacks the very notion of science itself and the philosophical concept of materialism--the very idea that there is a material world that human beings can examine, learn about, and change.
Johnson says in his "The Wedge Strategy" paper,
"The social consequences of materialism have been devastating…we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist world view, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."
Dr. Eugenie C. Scott, the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, points out:
"Evolution is a concept that applies to all sciences, from astronomy to chemistry to geology to biology to anthropology. Attacking evolution means attacking much of what we know of the natural world, that we have amassed through the application of scientific principles and methods. Second, creationist attacks on evolution are attacks on science itself, because the creationist approach does violence to how we conduct science: science as a way of knowing."
The Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (another Christian think tank) says that it "seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies."
Teaching Intelligent Design in the schools is part of a whole Christian Fascist movement in the United States that has power and prominence in the government, from the Bush regime on down. And if anyone isn’t clear about what "cultural legacies" the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture wants to overthrow--take a look at the larger Christian fascist agenda that the intelligent design movement is part of: asserting patriarchy in the home, condemning homosexuality, taking away the right to abortion, banning sex education, enforcing the death penalty with the biblical vengeance of an "eye for an eye," and launching a war because "God told me [Bush] to invade Iraq."
Infinity, which is boundarylessness, is a sometimes helpful construct in mathematics but it doesn't translate well in physics:
Thus cosmology is stuck with a beginning; it must recognize the void, not simply appeal to infinity.
To visualize the issue, consider the number zero v. null. One could meditate about a line of all possible numbers. Zero would be at the center. Negative numbers would proceed in one direction –1, -2, -3 on to infinity. Positive numbers would proceed in the other direction 1, 2, 3 on to infinity. But if one were to reverse direction by decimal extensions counting from 1 and –1 towards zero, reducing by half (or any percentage less than 100) each time - the number would continually be smaller but the process would never arrive at zero.
The same may be said of decimal extensions in other scenarios (such as the extension of 1/3) but zero is unique because it serves as a placemarker, e.g. 201 means there are no tens. Not that “tens” don’t exist, but for this particular number there are no tens.
But null is much more than a placemarker – it is more like the zero we can identify but not approach. To use the 201 example, if we were to state 2_1 we would be saying that tens do not exist at all.
With regard to physical reality, null is infinite non-existence – empty, void. This is the context of a beginning, of Creation – not merely zero spatial and/or temporal dimensions but null itself – no physical laws, no physical constants, no causality, no energy/matter, no physical object or event. Consequently, no phenomenon, no mathematics, no logic, no reason, no qualia, no autonomy, no language, no universals. When everything else is removed, in the void, “all that there is” is God Himself, the only possible uncaused cause. Thus the beginning and existence is an act of His will.
Jewish mystics use a Hebrew term for this state to describe God as creator: Ayn Sof. The term basically means “no-thing” - One without end from which all being emerges and into which all being dissolves.
All cosmologies – whether big bang, multi-verse, multi-world, ekpyrotic, cyclic, chaotic inflation, imaginary time – require a beginning (uncaused cause in the void) - because all of them require geometry for physical causation.
Quite an intricate expression of logic to arrive at this end above.. I'm impressed.. and it lead me to this thought..
Useing God in the Painter metaphor..
Supposition: In the begining God decided to paint a Universe and ultimately to paint mankinds portrait.. into that landscape.. Well there is no reason God could have Not Done this many times and in many ways before this event.. He might have many paintings.. probably does..
Diagnosis: Maybe here was no big bang.. this Universe is merely a painting by God.. and it came about as a painting comes about.. No banging at all.. it just seems so to 20th century physics "eyes".. A frog in a well surveying the heavens AND the WELL, forgeting hes merely a frog.. How?.. let there be light or let there be a Universe and it was so.. After all what does a painter do.. He sees it in his mind and makes it happen, quite 3rd dimensionally..
Notes**..
Humans paint in one way; paint, canvas(medium), brushes, like that.. God paints in another.. How does God paint.?. Who knows, but speculateing could be fun.. And art especially creative arts starts with the desire to do it and various steps to complete the task.. If God is not an artist then what is he.?..
Even engineering is an art.. Among humans we have 2 dimensional art and arts and 3 dimensional art and arts.. Gods art must surely be 4th dimensional art.. Not mimicing matter(2D art ), not shapeing matter(3D art) but creating matter(4D art).. NOW thats what I call a dimension.. Because literally every thing I know in the 3rd dimension (this world and Universe) is 3 dimensional.. even the 1st and 2nd dimensions in this world are 3D.. The 1st and 2nd dimensions are merely mental constructs they don't actually exist.. only the 3rd dimension exists.. that we can PROVE.. A 2 dimensional painting is not 2 dimensional at all, its 3 dimensional cause it has depth.. the depth of the paint and canvas..
The human spirit if "thingly"(thanks to Boop) might be 4th dimensional even now.. but linked/limited to these bodies for a purpose.. What purpose, read your bible.. We have time in the 3rd dimension so how can it be the 4th dimension.. How ever the fourth dimension (if there is even one) might take 3rd dimensional things up a notch and add something else.. What?... LoL.. read my book.. the Universal Canvas.. (rhetorical comment)..
Again, I shall resist the urge to go into a discussion of geometric physics and focus instead on one point, your diagnosis:
Such hypotheses can neither be evidenced nor falsified. If God created an old-looking universe it would also be logical, intelligible and deceptive.
Most commonly around here, the scientist-correspondents who are atheist reject the Gosse Omphalos hypothesis because it would make deception a property of God which they aver is an insult. I find this strange since on the one hand atheists don't believe He exists and other the other, they appeal to an absolute moral code (which can't exist without God) to use the pejorative, "insult".
If or when the intelligent design question comes before the Supreme Court, IMHO, the decision may turn on whether atheism has been established as the State religion.
Not sure this is the case. I believe the naturalist paradigm in science (biological sciences in particular) has very little to do with "evangelical" atheism on the part of scientists. If a sort of passive atheism is the norm where scientific research and pedagogy are concerned, this is merely for practical reasons. For science, a general skepticism regarding ALL ideas, explanations, conclusions, is not only useful but, in my opinion, indispensable to progress. I imagine there would be little difficulty making this case before the SCOTUS - then again, I'm hardly an expert in case law.
One who is living in a Second Reality does not permit any outside information to enter his world - he has sealed himself off from anything that would conflict with his imagination... We who live in the First Reality are open to such information - whether by our own reasoning, the counsel of other mortals, other sensory perceptions or most importantly, Spiritual revelation.
Thanks for pointing out this important distinction. The key here seems to be "one who... does not permit": rather different, as you are right to note, from simply "one whose knowledge is limited." Spiritual revelation, however, seems terribly tricky to me in this context, as it would seem, in those who claim to have experienced it, to prohibit the incursion of outside (i.e. observed) information (reason, counsel, sensory perception) in favor of, if not the imagination (though I do not know where else revelation might take place), whatever has supposedly been revealed. In other words: if, when the two come into conflict, revelation always trumps perception (and it must), then we will always have trouble (and for this reason we have always had trouble) separating the "pathological" from the "divinely inspired." Or can one live in the First Reality, having experienced an authentic spiritual revelation (and I am happy to assume the possibility of authenticity here), and still remain open to information that might contradict it?
I could not agree more.
The concept of limit in intentionality is entirely different from the meaning of illusion.
Another good point that we would do well to keep in mind.
Very good analysis, straight forward and RARE, to me.. Rare in the sense I have never had anyone before that would response to the concept(my concepts) as legitimate before.. Not that I even KNOW anyone that could even approach this subject.. Can't say that tomorrow, LoL.. Thanks, I really mean that..
Deceptive?.. Well actually a painting IS deceptive in a sense.. it fools your eye into a three dimensional reality when its a two dimensional representation of tricky tricks.. Thats what a painting "IS".. Tricks to fool the eye.. I know I paint.. Who would say we humans are the looser because of artistic talent.?.. By the same token mathematics can fool the brain into thinking everything could be conceivably quantified, measured, or reduced to an algorithm.. The very makeup of the human eye is deception.. Our eyes deceive us into seeing.. There many bandwidths/ frequency's of light but we can only see a few of them.. i.e there is more goin on than we can see.. is that deception?..
Interesting questions you brought.. but I still feel that I didn't make my point.. if the point(s) is/are even makable.. Its a "heady" business looking for the true makeup God's Universe from a frogs well.. Arrogant gremlins bite at your heels, and Pedantic gargoyles speak insults, and Sneaky Philosophical Genius's pee in your intellectual pool.. I'm only talking about what goes on in my WELL.. Hopefully your well is not so dangerous.. d;-)
I tend to agree with Stultis (post 595)that this may not be so crucial. Even "the reality of human nature" being an illusion may not be so crucial. As you point out, "we need a system of coherence" - not only to choose rightly but to do anything at all. To the extent, I think, that we seem to have free will, we do have free will. And if agency has never been truly, articulately pinned down, we have - to varying degrees - always understood it more or less in this way. Whether we are "puppets of some divinity" or atoms in the void, neither of these possibilities describes our general experience of existence in the world (where if we are sometimes both we are more often neither). For this reason I am inclined to privilege concrete experience (where I feel more agent than puppet) over abstract postulation (where I am equally "free" to be automaton or God Himself).
Oooooppppsss! My bad. (My apology, cornelis.)
Thank you so much for your offer to host my graphic, Alamo-Girl. If there is any interest in it, we can put it up.
And thank you so much for posting "My Credo!"
You want to say it isn't crucial, you say it isn't crucial, and still you face the crux: you choose to privilege concrete experience--and even then you couldn't help but put it in parenthesis as "seeming"--and all the while this sweet and sour mistress called Nature has been carrying you along its own merry way to the grave. Nature is no abstract postulation. Whose concrete experience anyway? I smell the ghost of Descartes, who shrunk his world in the dryer of common reason all for the sake of practical certainty.
Either we resist, resign, or we play illusory games of seeming. The last is chocolate fudge. It's language is sweet and soft.
To the contrary we have Thucydides and Isaiah, who recognize how this weakness becomes useful in the exchange of meaning for meaningless. The good is called bad, the bad is called good. In short, these ancient fuddy duddies are asking us to spell E-V-I-L. And they speak in this way because they appeal not to abstract postulation, but through experience. They say it through the denial of neutrality. Even Heidegger knew technology isn't neutral. And half the dopes on the big court still dream their chocolate fudge of content neutrality. Ignorance is bliss, especially when we privilege a shrunken concrete experience.
Whoa.. heavy concept there.. but not if the "revelation" is to you for you... Any Epiphany is pathological(abnormal in that sense).. and must be taken on/in faith.. Else, God is just a big database or the "Gnosis".. Some could say an epiphany is one thing, a revelation another.. Whos right.?.. I say its both.. An epiphany mixed with faith is revelation.. Whos the agent of revelation.?.
" How bout the guy that drowned waiting for the lord to help him.. Upon quizzing "the Lord" about his death.. the Lord said I sent a helicopter and you rejected it, Then I sent a boat and you rejected that.. Then I floated a rubber raft by and you stuck your nose up at that.. THEN you drowned.. "..
Just so, I say revelation can be.. even when given personally and direct, faith is need to accept it as what it is.. Any good teacher knows how to fool or trick his students into educating themselves.. Teaching is a rare talent maybe a gift from God.. Is God a fool.?...
Seems to me that the atheists and some scientists may be “playing into” the theists’ legal hands by not being cautious how they argue against intelligent design – or treat those who support intelligent design - while in their official capacity as agents of the universities, public schools, etc.
And there are many who have experienced Spiritual revelation and simply don’t care about any other information which might contradict what they know to be Truth. And certainly there are others – who are less sure-footed in their Spiritual revelation – who don’t want to look and thus are not open to any information which might contradict the revelation.
But then there are also those of us who eagerly explore information without regard for whether or not a contradiction to the Spiritual revelation might rear its head. We expect every such contradiction to be reconciled because God is not only the author of Creation but also of Scripture and is the indwelling Spirit. We’ve never been disappointed either.
Take the age of the universe v Scripture which is often cited as just such a contradiction. The issue among Christians does not stem – as many suppose – as much from Genesis as from Romans 5:12–14 and I Corinthians 15:42–48. The issue is whether Adam was the first mortal man or the first ensouled man which is a matter of mortal doctrine (musings) beyond Spiritual revelation – often catch-phrased as “interpretation of Scripture”. Nevertheless, the Spiritual revelation of Jesus Christ is the same with all Christians regardless of such “doctrines of men” .
One group muses that Adam was the first mortal man and asserts that the physical evidence must support a 6,000 year old universe. To these “young earth creationists” it is a matter of doctrine, so contradictory evidence would be trumped anyway. There is no point in arguing with them.
Likewise, those whose musings are based on the Gosse Omphalos hypothesis (God created an old looking universe) also may have as a point of doctrine that Adam was the first mortal man. There can be no contradictory evidence in this musing, it is a “no bones about it” statement of faith, they don’t expect the physical evidence to comport with it – so there is no point in arguing with them either.
The Catholics – and perhaps the majority of Christians – accept that the universe is some 15 billion years old and muse that Adam was not the first mortal man, but the first ensouled man. There is no contradiction to be argued with this group.
My group of musers is probably the tiniest. We assert that God was the only observer of creation week and the author of Scripture. And therefore, the six days of creation must be viewed from the inception (beginning) space/time coordinates using inflationary theory and relativity. As Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder has shown, using that formula, six equivalent earth days at the inception space/time coordinates is equal to approximately 15 billion years viewed retrospectively from our space/time coordinates. For those who wish to calculate it for themselves, Schroeder provides this tip:
As a final point, the Spiritual revelation concerning contradictory information is this:
LoL.....
I defer to my original claim: reality is God's will and unknowable in its fullness. Thus, although I get a lot of "tongues in cheeks" from the atheists and agnostics - I am not in danger of losing a place at the table of discussion. After all, most people in the U.S. and on this forum are theists – predominantly Christian, but some other faiths or deists. Moreover even atheists and agnostics can reason that mortals are incapable of fully comprehending God (or they would be God).
Concerning those who have received the Spiritual revelation but are unsettled by unreconciled or apparent contradictions from outside information: doubting Thomas was an apostle, too.
Very interesting post. I too am of the mind that many things for which we lack understanding may be one day explained by God's perspective with regard to the dimension of time. Time as a dimension fascinates me, for that and other reasons.
Genesis has captured my, no demanded, my attention because of the metaphorical content of it.. Most christians(I know of) and for sure atheists and agnostics seem to have largely missed the lovely and extremely deep metaphorical lessons there.. like its a metaphor a.k.a. a myth.. or worse literal..
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has my attention.. thats where the all problems started.. many metaphorical images there in Genesis but this one stands out to me.. as extremely important for me to grasp and understand.. Good vs Evil, accuracy vs inaccurancy, right vs wrong, true vs false, lie vs falsehood, legal vs illegal, etc. so many iterations you can almost say all of human life is about these things.. I mean all that human life BECAME.. and is NOW..
Lead me to prognosticate, what would human life be when these things are obsolete.. or not relevant.. What then would life be about.. THATS WHEN IT STARTED... LoL.. Even considering this can grab your mind like cat throwin a mouse around for sport.. DO NOT DO IT.. I'm Warning you.. You might end up in a padded cell next to mine..
(where ARE those meds)...
Lurkers interested in exploring the literal v mechanical v poetic translation of Genesis 1 from the ancient Hebrew, might enjoy this link.
I also focus on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as I am drawn in the Spirit to the word “knowledge” in the metaphor. To use yet another metaphor, by knowing good and evil it became a part of Adam and Eve – much like adding red to white changes the color. And no matter how much white you add to it, it’ll never be more than a shade of pink. The only way for it to be white again is to be made, or born, anew (John 3)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.