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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Hey, it's not like any creationist or IDer made Smolin come up with his untestable hogwash.
By the way, regarding the use of the term "Darwinist", I can't speak for anyone else, but the only reason I use it from time to time is that "evolutionist" is a very open-ended term that can apply to all sorts of naturalistic and non-naturalistic processes. Darwinism simply refers to a specific process that's invoked. I never intend it as a way of insulting people or putting them on the defensive. If they feel like they're being attacked, I'm sorry they feel that way, but they shouldn't have to. It's just a neutral descriptive term.
Actually, that's not the way I view it. The only people who I ever see using the term "Darwinist" are those attacking the theory of evolution.
I did a number of courses in human evolution, problems in human evolution, human osteology, and human races, and spent half of my Ph.D. exams on those subjects, and in six years of graduate school, not once do I recall the term "Darwinist" being used.
Here on FR, it is an everyday occurrence from one half of our spectrum.
But its better than what I usually see in these threads!
REASON does prevail, and REASON proclaims that God exists. It is so self-evident that to deny the evidence of God requires a greater leap of faith than not believing. Perhaps God is science writ on such a large scale that feeble human minds can not yet comprehend. A better use of reason would be to first try to understand the creator, and only then attempt to unravel the secrets of His creation using the keys He has provided.
Well, yes and no. My main quarrel with things Darwinian is their misapplication to extra-scientific arguments (as Dawkins perpetual attacks on organized religion). In that regard Smolin is actually representative of the baleful trend which makes the defense of honest evolutionary biology against religious obscurantism more difficult because it genuinely lends supports the view that evolutionary theory is a stalking horse for atheism.
If I had to guess the reason, I'd say it's because it wasn't being seriously compared to anything else, such as Lamarckism or Lysenkoism, let alone some form of intelligently guided evolution. In other words, the premise was considered a given, so it wasn't a subject of debate. Here on FR, the premise is a subject of debate.
Lysenkoism? I should hope not!
What makes you think I haven't spent time with Russell, my good man? B.R. was incontrovertibly a mathematical genius, and well-known as a logical positivist in his day, but there's a reason he's not widely known as a "great" philosopher today: his dogged adherence to scientism, the idea that the scientific method is the only means by which truth -- any truth, moral or physical -- can be determined. As for his criticism of Descartes, Russell's assertion that "thoughts exist" is simple sophistry, not philosophy; to say that self-awareness does not infer self makes no logical sense, since awareness is a property of self. Awareness can no more exist without self than temperature can exist without matter. One might as well say "temperature exists". The truth, of course, is that temperature infers matter; no matter, no temperature; no self, no self-awareness. Thus Russell's denial of the "I" in Descartes' dictum is tantamount to saying that "nothing exists", a statement which renders any discussion impossible and is, frankly, sophomoric bullshit. (Pardon my French.)
Any questions?
Yeah... you're a monarchist??
I like your posts...
But lately thinking makes my brain hurt...
So I'm considering just buying a "used" Playstation 2.
People who don't want God mentioned in public school are also free to send their kids to private schools or homeschool. Why is it that only the believers are told to take it or leave it like they are some kind of second class citizens? While the US has no offical religion, Christianity in it's various forms is practised virtually everywhere in this country. Since the majority of the citizenship is Christian there should be no problem if the schools reflect that in the public school system. If atheists don't like it, they are free to go elsewhere and stop forcing THEIR belief system on others. Lack of belief in God or a god is not the neutral position that many would have us believe.
Duly pardoned ;)
But I must disagree with your reading - Russell is simply stating that "cogito, ergo sum" does not do what it purports to do, by virtue of the smuggled premise therein. That does not seem to me to be a denial of existence per se, merely a denial that Descartes was quite as sharp as it might seem at first blush.
Unfortunately, science won't accept any evidence for the supernatural because it claims that it only deals with the natural, therefore; anything that is discovered is automatically presumed to be natural in origin. So science as defined by scientists today precludes any chance of evidence for a creator.
Ping to post 154.
"So science as defined by scientists today precludes any chance of evidence for a creator."
How would you define science instead?
Yeah that secularist who calls himself the Pope is really doing a good job of concealing his anti-God, anti-religious, pompous, self-absorbed, arrogant, self-deluded zealotry </sarc>
Either does naturalism the new religious orthodoxy that does not have anything to do with real science. Its just religious philosophy posing as science.
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