Posted on 04/15/2006 11:44:16 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Posted: April 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
I suggested here last week that the established authorities of every age act consistently. They become vigilantly militant against non-conforming dissidents who challenge their assumptions.
Thus when the dissident Galileo challenged the assumptions of the 17th century papacy, it shut him up. Now when the advocates of "intelligent design" challenge the scientific establishment's assumptions about "natural selection," it moves aggressively to shut them up. So the I.D. people have this in common with Galileo.
I received a dozen letters on this, three in mild agreement, the rest in scorn and outrage. This calls for a response.
Where, one reader demanded, did I get the information that 10 percent of scientists accept intelligent design? I got it from a National Post (newspaper) article published two years ago, which said that 90 percent of the members of the National Academy of Science "consider themselves atheists." Since if you're not an atheist, you allow for the possibility of a Mind or Intelligence behind nature, this puts 10 percent in the I.D. camp.
I could have gone further. A survey last year by Rice University, financed by the Templeton Foundation, found that about two-thirds of scientists believed in God. A poll published by Gallup in 1997 asked: Do you believe that "man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation?" essentially the I.D. position. Just under 40 percent of scientists said yes. So perhaps my 10 percent was far too low.
Two readers called my attention to a discovery last week on an Arctic island of something which may be the fossil remains of the mysteriously missing "transitional species." Or then maybe it isn't transitional. Maybe it's a hitherto undetected species on its own.
But the very exuberance with which such a discovery is announced argues the I.D. case. If Darwin was right, and the change from one species to another through natural selection occurred constantly in millions of instances over millions of years, then the fossil record should be teaming with transitional species. It isn't. That's why even one possibility, after many years of searching, becomes front-page news.
Another letter complains that I.D. cannot be advanced as even a theory unless evidence of the nature of this "Divine" element is presented. But the evidence is in nature itself. The single cell shows such extraordinary complexity that to suggest it came about by sheer accident taxes credulity. If you see a footprint in the sand, that surely evidences human activity. The demand "Yes, but whose footprint is it?" does not disqualify the contention that somebody was there. "Nope," says the establishment, "not until you can tell us who it was will we let you raise this question in schools."
Another reader argues that Galileo stood for freedom of inquiry, whereas I.D. advocates want to suppress inquiry. This writer apparently did not notice what caused me to write the column. It was the rejection by a government agency for a $40,000 grant to a McGill University anti-I.D. lobby to suppress the presentation and discussion of I.D. theory in the Canadian schools. Suppressing discussion is an odd way of encouraging "freedom of inquiry." Anyway, the I.D. movement doesn't want to suppress evolution. It merely wants it presented as a theory, alongside the I.D. theory.
Why, asked another reader, did I not identify the gutsy woman who stated the reason for the rejection, bringing upon herself the scorn of scientific authority. That's fair. Her name is Janet Halliwell, a chemist and executive vice president of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. She said that evolution is a theory, not a fact, and the McGill application offered no evidence to support it.
The McGill applicant was furious. Evolution, he said, needs no evidence. It's fact. Apparently Harvard University doesn't quite agree with him. The Boston Globe reports that Harvard has begun an expensive project to discover how life emerged from the chemical soup of early earth. In the 150 years since Darwin, says the Globe, "scientists cannot explain how the process began."
The most sensible letter came from a research scientist. "I think that the current paradigm of evolution by natural selection acting on random variation will change," he writes. "I think that evidence will accumulate to suggest that much of the genetic variation leading to the evolution of life on earth was not random, but was generated by biochemical processes that exhibit intelligent behavior."
Then he urges me not to disclose his identity. Saying this publicly would threaten his getting tenure, he fears. Galileo would understand.
So, and I am now serious as can be, if you believe that Jesus has risen from the dead with the power of God's holy spirit, how could you not believe that same power animated Adam and Eve? Why would you take away from God's glory in creation by saying we descended from Apes? You believe, then, that Christ himself was descended from an Ape?
All I am really asking you is, if God is really God, and can perform all miracles, why would He lie to us and give us the Adam and Eve story and skip over the "we descended from Apes" story? He is not cruel. Nor is He a liar or a big torturer in the sky.
"So, and I am now serious as can be, if you believe that Jesus has risen from the dead with the power of God's holy spirit, how could you not believe that same power animated Adam and Eve?"
Because Adam and Eve are an allegory.
"Why would you take away from God's glory in creation by saying we descended from Apes? "
Why would you deny the physical evidence of the world around you?
"All I am really asking you is, if God is really God, and can perform all miracles, why would He lie to us and give us the Adam and Eve story and skip over the "we descended from Apes" story?"
It's an allegorical tale told by men.
" He is not cruel. Nor is He a liar or a big torturer in the sky."
Then He won't punish people for accepting the evidence from the physical Creation that shows we share a common ancestor with apes.
So, if there is a "religious" "authority" who promotes EvoThink, he or she does not know the Bible and therefore, has no authority except, perhaps, over the religious spirit that is behind all tyranny.
Maybe you should take it up with them then since you think you understand what the Bible says better than they do.
Why would a good God fake us out with allegory?
Why would a good God fake us out with allegory?
Maybe he didn't want to try to explain evolution to a bunch of primitive, superstitious, ignorant 3rd millenia BC goat headers.
headers = herders
Do you acknowledge that if Jesus was a man, his DNA was approximately 99% similar to that of a chimpanzee?
All I am really asking you is, if God is really God, and can perform all miracles, why would He lie to us and give us the Adam and Eve story and skip over the "we descended from Apes" story?
Which apes would the ancient Israelites have been familiar with? Chimps and gorillas live in central Africa, orang-utans in South East Asia. So the Hebrew creation myth should have read, well there are these things called anthropoid apes, whcih we've never seen, but which we share a common ancestor 6 million years ago?
"Why would a good God fake us out with allegory?"
Because God didn't directly write the book?
If He was willing to die on the cross for you and not hold the deeds of thieves and adulterers against them, I suspect a lot of slack is available to be cut.
Anyway, Scripture says liars will be condemned. If believe in a common ancestor but say you don't for fear of some punishment, what does that make you?
How can a liar be saved?
Happy Easter :-)
" How can a liar be saved?"
Good question, but I am not the one making the claim.
ID is not infallible.
It is an idea that may or not be true.
Evolution does not contradict ID.
In fact, ID can easily encompass evolution as the designed process by which life evolved on the planet.
A life form has never to-date been created from non-life, and therefore may require other ideas like ID to explain it.
Panspermia is an example of the logical dead-end of evolution.
If life evolved, which is highly probable, how did it begin?
And if an Intelligent Designer, a God, was involved in creating the first life, why would this entity be somehow limited in the ability to extend life forms?
Panspermia posits that life came from somewhere else. Great.
Evolutionists are too close-minded to understand that they are just discussing the equivalent of programming, and ID'ers are discussing both the construction of a computer and the design of its communication languages.
Lake of fire placemarker.
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