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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I'm afraid you lost me there...
Exactly. Same holds true of a lot of other things as well.
It seems like such a long time since I agreed with Pat.
What does that have to do with anything?
If you take the Biblical version of creation literally, the universe was created a long time before Christ got on the scene as well. What point is the author trying to make by pointing out that Aristotle was around before Christ?
He's not just pointing out that Aristotle was "around" before Christ, but that he was advocating a type of intelligent design theory well before Christianity even existed, let alone became dominant in the West. The reason he's pointing it out is to show that teaching ID does not confer state establishment on the biblical Genesis account, as the judge claimed.
1. Mutations are random.
2. Mutations are primarily lethal to the host.
3. A single mutation confers no cellular advantage to the cell or over other cells. There can be no pressure to "select" this mutational aberration over other normal cells.
4. Random events do not and cannot predict an endpoint.
5. Darwinists are stuck on stupid arguing incomplete fossil records and homologous appendages. Cell change occurs at a molecular biochemical level.
6. Darwinists are secularists. The abstraction called "Nature" is there God. They are anti-God, anti-religious, pompous, self-absorbed, arrogant, self-deluded zealots who quiver in fear that anyone should discover the flaws of their beloved Theory, the Theory they genuflect to.
Intelligent Design is not exclusive to Christianity. The Biblical version of creation is found in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was around before Aristotle.
YOU tha Hamm-ER, Prodigal Son!
You left out that we don't bathe and that we kick little kittens.
I don't know. Don't care either to be honest.
Gotta go. Party's starting out there on Princes St. Got on my kilt and money in my sporran. Got my boots laced up and my socks rolled down. Time to go ring in that New Year!
Happy New Year to everyone.
for later perusal
Why should a public school, open to ALL, be explicitly Christian?
If you want your children to go to a "Christian School" there are many options for you. Don't send them to public school.
God has no place in science class. If you don't like the fact that monotheism is not pushed in public schools, put your kids in a Christian school.
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