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 ...
Cool!
What do you think? Ping worthy?
Ah the vaunted evolutionists may be required to face the results of animal behavior established via that theory of common descent!!!!
Rabbi Anthony Fratello of Temple Shaarei Shalom in Boynton Beach agrees. "Everybody knows that this debate is about injecting religion into the study of science," he said. "And I don't believe they belong together. Science is about the hows of things. Philosophy and religion are about the whys.
Yup! ===> Placemarker <===
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
"Lipskar met head-on the suggestions by some that intelligent design is meant as a "back door" to putting religion in schools. "It's not a back door, it's a front door!" he said. "But the objective is not to make people religious. It's to make them understand that the world was put into place by an intelligent being. We are not random chemical reactions."
But decree is antithetical to scientific understanding.
The fact remains that intelligent design is not a scientific theory. At best it is set of criticisms of debatable legitimacy. At worst, well, I won't go there.
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.
Ah but you are being deceptive. Your high school science teachers did insert themselves into your Sunday School class by claiming that Genesis is false. At minimum those who believe Genesis should have the opportunity to defend themselves in the environment where the false charge is made.
"Ask Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, one of the conference organizers, about the topic, and he sounds much like a conservative Christian."
Well, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the same God - sounds pretty reasonable to me.
I keep hearing that ID is not a scientific theory. That's right, but evolution isn't either. Like ID, it can't be disproved and it doesn't predict anything.
> "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."
> Like ID, it can't be disproved and it doesn't predict anything.
Wrong to both. Evolution could be fairly easily disproved *if* it were untrue (human and tyranosaur fossils together, a snake giving birth to a goat, humans and chimps turnign out to have very different DNA, cats more closely genetically linked to fish than to dogs, etc.), and it is regularly used to make predictions (that have generally been borne out).
I donno. Lemme read the article again and mull it over.
|
“Ah but you are being deceptive. Your high school science teachers did insert themselves into your Sunday School class by claiming that Genesis is false.”
Well my biology didn’t stand there serving up a point by point rebuttal of Genesis. I doubt many others do either.
"Your high school science teachers did insert themselves into your Sunday School class by claiming that Genesis is false. "
My high school biology teacher was a nun. She taught us evolution. In fact, she even played an episode of *The Cosmos* with Carl Sagan where he spoke of evolution.
You don't have to travel that far. Even C. S. Lewis is on record saying that Genesis is copied from earlier mythology.
My teachers in high school or college never claimed Genesis was false. Your insecurities are showing as fabricated accusations.
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.