Posted on 12/31/2005 12:41:23 PM PST by streetpreacher
| Darwin's Pyrrhic victory Posted: December 28, 2005
By Patrick J. Buchanan © 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc.
"Intelligent Design Derailed," exulted the headline. "By now, the Christian conservatives who once dominated the school board in Dover, Pa., ought to rue their recklessness in forcing biology classes to hear about 'intelligent design' as an alternative to the theory of evolution," declared the New York Times, which added its own caning to the Christians who dared challenge the revealed truths of Darwinian scripture. Noting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is a Bush appointee, the Washington Post called his decision "a scathing opinion that criticized local school board members for lying under oath and for their 'breathtaking inanity' in trying to inject religion into science classes." But is it really game, set, match, Darwin? Have these fellows forgotten that John Scopes, the teacher in that 1925 "Monkey Trial," lost in court, and was convicted of violating Tennessee law against the teaching of evolution and fined $100? Yet Darwin went on to conquer public education, and American Civil Liberties Union atheists went on to purge Christianity and the Bible from our public schools.
The Dover defeat notwithstanding, the pendulum is clearly swinging back. Darwinism is on the defensive. For, as Tom Bethell, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science," reminds us, there is no better way to make kids curious about "intelligent design" than to have some Neanderthal forbid its being mentioned in biology class. In ideological politics, winning by losing is textbook stuff. The Goldwater defeat of 1964, which a triumphant left said would bury the right forever, turned out to be liberalism's last hurrah. Like Marxism and Freudianism, Darwinism appears destined for the graveyard of discredited ideas, no matter the breathtaking inanity of the trial judge. In his opinion, Judge Jones the Third declared:
But if intelligent design is creationism or fundamentalism in drag, how does Judge Jones explain how that greatest of ancient thinkers, Aristotle, who died 300 years before Christ, concluded that the physical universe points directly to an unmoved First Mover? As Aristotle wrote in his "Physics": "Since everything that is in motion must be moved by something, let us suppose there is a thing in motion which was moved by something else in motion, and that by something else, and so on. But this series cannot go on to infinity, so there must be some First Mover." A man of science and reason, Aristotle used his observations of the physical universe to reach conclusions about how it came about. Where is the evidence he channeled the Torah and creation story of Genesis before positing his theory about a prime mover? Darwinism is in trouble today for the reason creationism was in trouble 80 years ago. It makes claims that are beyond the capacity of science to prove. Darwinism claims, for example, that matter evolved from non-matter – i.e., something from nothing – that life evolved from non-life; that, through natural selection, rudimentary forms evolved into more complex forms; and that men are descended from animals or apes. Now, all of this is unproven theory. And as the Darwinists have never been able to create matter out of non-matter or life out of non-life, or extract from the fossil record the "missing links" between species, what they are asking is that we accept it all on faith. And the response they are getting in the classroom and public forum is: "Prove it," and, "Where is your evidence?" And while Darwinism suggests our physical universe and its operations happened by chance and accident, intelligent design seems to comport more with what men can observe and reason to.
If, for example, we are all atop the Grand Canyon being told by a tour guide that nature, in the form of a surging river over eons of time, carved out the canyon, we might all nod in agreement. But if we ask how "Kilroy was here!" got painted on the opposite wall of the canyon, and the tour guide says the river did it, we would all howl. A retreating glacier may have created the mountain, but the glacier didn't build the cabin on top of it. Reason tells us the cabin came about through intelligent design. Darwinism is headed for the compost pile of discarded ideas because it cannot back up its claims. It must be taken on faith. It contains dogmas men may believe, but cannot stand the burden of proof, the acid of attack or the demands of science. Where science says, "No miracles allowed," Darwinism asks us to believe in miracles.
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Same goes for Christians and ID theory. Darwinists point to the fact that Christians use it to their advantage, and then claim that therefore ID itself is Christianity, and that any introduction of it into public schools is an unconstitutional "establishment" of Christianity.
You are wrong. Drawing attention to falae analogies by giving further examples to illustrate the original absurdity has been long practised.
You're right; ID is used as a tool to get Christianity into government schools, and there are those who object.
He was identifying Aritotle's time the way historians have four thousands of years identified historic time, either BC or AD, Before Christ or Anno Domini, after Christ. I don't think Buchanan intended anything more than that.
Oh yeah? Well it was Christianity that built the car. My computer is Christian, too. In fact, anywhere matter has been crafted into a human implement, it is by definition a "fundamentalist Christian" entity.
It crafted a few nuts too.
Ante pasta placemark
It is a shame that you were so insulted. A dispassionate discussion is the desirable way to change minds, or at least to inform.
Would that it were so, that Buchanan's description was merely a result of his ignorance. I guess you are not familiar with Lee Smolin's 'Darwinian' cosmology.
The desire for the Darwinian paradigm to be a 'universal solvent' to destroy all religious dogma or speculation is so strong that a reasonably respectable physicist has proposed to overcome the problem of anthropic cosmology (the fact that even tiny changes in the values of certain physical constants would make anything like life impossible) by proposing the following scheme:
Black holes create a new universe in which the physical constants have slightly changed (randomly by an unspecified mechanism). 'Fit universes' produce lots of black holes, and thus lots of similar universes. There is a further argument as to why universes which support life also produce lots of black holes, but it is not imporant here.
Notice that another universe is by definition unobservable, and what happens in a black hole is likewise unobservable (by definition, also--a black hole must be massive enough that no signal can escape it). The proposal is thus completely unscientific, however naturalistic it may be. Quite as untestable as a Divine fiat (which seems to win over infinitely many universes and an unspecifiable 'mechanism' of variation if Occam's Razor is applied).
This phenomenon (of extending the Darwinian paradigm--also represented by 'evolutionary psychology' with its usually untestable just-so stories) is the reason why the word 'Darwinist' has a useful meaning as distinct from 'evolutionary biologist'.
It is a shame that you were so insulted. A dispassionate discussion is the desirable way to change minds, or at least to inform.
Not insulted, as I expect no less from many creationists.
But I agree that a good discussion is desirable and informative. I prefer to keep things on that level, which is why I responded with a little humor [perhaps very little].
Alas not so. (cf. my comments on Smolin's 'Darwinian' cosmology in post #130)
These threads might go better if 'Darwinist' was restricted to and taken as meaning those who expand the Darwinian paradigm to matters other than biological diversity.
It would not bother me much if you were. What I mean in saying "I don't have any friends" is that I am fully capable of offending everybody on any side of an issue. WRT the issue at hand, Christians who think it is necessary to establish their faith in public schools and atheists who think it is their duty to do the same can take a hike.
Both enjoy, or at least should enjoy, the protections of our Constitution. Therefore both should enjoy a hearing in the public forum. Of all nations of people, we're the ones who should "get it." Judge Jones apparently doesn't, and if there is an overzealous Christian version of this guy, he won't get it either.
Too bad you can't point out a false analogy. Attempting to outlaw the teaching of trigonometry on the grounds of its allegedly heretical nature would definitely increase interest in it. It might not increase proficiency in the sciences based on it, but that's not the point.
No more than evolution is a tool to get atheism into schools, as you illustrated at #114.
What !!!! Peaceably defining words BEFORE flame-wars? Not on these threads!
...oh, and Happy New Year.
Happy New Year inquest.
And once we have (inevitably) triumphed over this caricature, then what? Personally, my guess is that we then declare victory over "Darwinism" in any form.
No, thanks. Me, I can kind of see that one coming a mile away ;)
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