Posted on 12/13/2005 8:47:24 AM PST by Dichroic
Evangelical Christians aren't the only ones making evolution and intelligent design a cause célèbre: Leading Orthodox Jews have the topic in their sights as well -- some of them gathering for a three-day conference this week in South Florida.
At least two area Jewish groups have booked heavy hitters to discuss the issues this month. And, they say, Jews have a stake in the outcome.
Intelligent design holds that some structures of life -- such as blood clotting or the flagella of some microbes -- are so complex, they could not have developed without a purposeful designer.
"This is one of the cutting-edge issues of the culture wars," said religion professor Nathan Katz of Florida International University, a co-organizer of the conference. "The basic question is: Is God there?"
......... Starting Tuesday at FIU's North Miami campus, the International Conference on Torah & Science will muster 30 experts from the United States, Israel, Canada and South Africa. Their specialties are as varied as Kabbalah and solar research. They'll cover topics as diverse as food production and religious law.
.......
Ask Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, one of the conference organizers, about the topic, and he sounds much like a conservative Christian.
"The moral and ethical morass today -- hate among nations, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, family breakdown -- comes from people not believing there is a higher authority that owns and directs the world," said Lipskar, of The Shul of Bal Harbour. "But when we look to purpose and meaning, a superior authority, things fall into place, socially and spiritually."
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
Thanks for the ping!
"The moral and ethical morass today -- hate among nations, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, family breakdown -- comes from people not believing there is a higher authority that owns and directs the world," said Lipskar.Well, that proves he's a bit dim. I suspect that *many* of the "hate between nations" crowd are quite convinced that their god (often goes by the name Allah, but not always) is on their side. And the rest of these are hardly either new or limitted to "secularists."
You beat me to it.
One must also wonder what caused "hate among nations" before the Theory of Evolution.
"I believe firmly in God, and I believe that evolution is a fact. And I don't find anything contradictory in that."
This is an excellent point, and I'd be willing to wager this the exact position of most religious people who work in the science and engineering disciplines, if not the position of most educated people in general. There is no conflict between science and faith, because they answer to separate questions. Science is only about the 'how' while faith attempts to answer 'why.' I believe the only conflict between science is faith is that which people make, and to push religion into science does a disservice to both science and faith.
It's pertinent to point out that even Orthodox Judaism isn't unanimous on the point. For example, the famuous British Orthodox Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz (1872-1946) wrote on this subject:
God the Creator and Lord of the Universe, which is the work of his goodness and wisdom; and Man, made in His image, who is to hallow his week-day labors by the blessedness of Sabbath-rest -- such are the teachings of the Creation chapter. It's purpose is to reveal these teachings to the children of man -- and not to serve as a text book of astronomy, geology, or anthropology. Its object is not to teach scientific facts; but to proclaim highest religious truths respecting God, Man, and the Universe. The "conflict" between the fundamental realities of Religion and the established facts of Science, is seen to be unreal as the soon as Religion and Science each recognizes the true border of its domain.
Nicely argued. ;)
Exactly. So why the frantic effort over preventing intelligent design from being taught? If it really is such a bad theory it will be shot down. And if evolutionary theory is not a decree, as Intelligent Designers say that it is, then it should stand up quite easily.My high school science teachers never demanded that my Sunday school teachers present biochemistry on Sunday morning, and at the moment, I am wishing the good rabbi would resist the urge to meddle in the biology curriculum.
There are plenty of people of faith who are also highly-credentialed scientists and their contributions to the dialogue need to be taken seriously. Why deny them the ability to speak in the public square?
Science deals with explaining observable facts. The standard theory of evolution has problems explaining some of those facts. That doesn't mean that we should toss away the idea of evolution entirely but it does mean that those unexplainable facts need to be looked at from the perspective of other theories.
For the record, I am not a young-earth creationist. I believe that evolution is a fact, that it has occurred throughout history, and that it is the best explanation of many observable facts. There are some facts though which cannot be explained by evolution without a lot of hand-waving and faith. I have degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering and thus tend to be more concerned with the chemistry end of things. Evolution is not so good at explaining things at this level. Behe's discussions of irreducible complexity should be taken seriously.
Does it go both ways?
Codswallop!
The thread is about Orthodox Jews. The people you have cited do not fit this category.
I doubt that said biology teacher even knows that "natural selection" was discarded long ago. Charles Darwin's theory and evolution have been identified, but Erasmas Drawin and Lamarck contributed more, since any "selection" is genetic rather than environmental. Darwin himself admitted as much by the time he died.
> One must also wonder what caused "hate among nations" before the Theory of Evolution.
Or what causes evalgelicals to drink and divorce and what makes preachers kids go wild.
Must be the pernicious effect of Darwin, filtering both up and down the timeline.
No copy. Genesis has a very different take on creation than Babylonian/Egyptian mythology, because it is montheistic.
They were quoted in the article. The article was heavily excerpted. I agreed with their position and so posted the quotes. What's the problem with that?
As a creationist, I simply don't understand the big argument between theistic evolution and ID. The ID'ers aren't saying that the world was created in six 24-hour days but that "there is a designer." Anti-ID theistic evolutionists say exactly the same thing. I'll never understand what they're arguing about. PS: Rabbi Hertz was not only a theistic evolutionist (though he insisted on the Divine dictation of the Torah), but he accepted "scientific" critical theories of the Bible outside the Torah itself, which is even further out of the mainstream.
No problem. I merely mentioned this fact for others skimming the thread.
And again, what is the big chasm that pro-ID and anti-ID theistic evolutionists are arguing over again?
The article is interesting:
But the main focus will come Wednesday with a keynote address by William A. Dembski, a champion of intelligent design and the first evangelical Christian ever to address the conference. Dembski, of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, will share the dais with three Jewish experts who will look at various facets of evolution.We've seen some odd inter-faith connections before:
Science Research Foundation. Inspired by the books and writings of Harun Yahya (see next link).
Harun Yahya International. Islamic creationism
Islamic Scientific Creationism: A New Challenge in Turkey. Links between Harun Yahya and ICR's Gish and Morris.
SRF (Science Research Foundation) Conferences US and Islamic creationists working together.
Mustafa Akyol (Turkish creationist) testifies in Kansas "Monkey Trial". See the next link.
Why Muslims Should Support Intelligent Design, By Mustafa Akyol. He supports Harun Yahya.
"Now it wasn't"
That should be *No it wasn't*
Despite his popularity among Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, he was a typical orthodox high church Anglican and not only accepted evolution and Biblical "scholarship" but was apparently quite willing to throw out belief in angels and demons if "science" ever disproved their existence.
The liturgical churches are very into allegorical, non-factual "truth," which means they probably believe in Santa Claus.
And the Torah was dictated to Moses letter for letter. It's really too bad most chr*stians know so little about this.
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