Posted on 09/20/2001 8:46:10 AM PDT by aculeus
The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism
by Phillip E. Johnson
InterVarsity Press, 192 pp., $17.99
Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong
by Jonathan Wells
Regnery, 338 pp., $27.95
Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
by Michael J. Behe
Touchstone, 307 pp., $13.00 (paper)
Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design
edited by William A. Dembski
InterVarsity Press, 475 pp., $24.99 (paper)
Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
by William A. Dembski
InterVarsity Press, 312 pp., $21.99
Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism
by Robert T. Pennock
Bradford/MIT Press, 429 pp., $18.95 (paper)
Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution
by Kenneth R. Miller
Cliff Street Books/HarperCollins,338 pp., $14.00 (paper)
1. It is no secret that science and religion, once allied in homage to divinely crafted harmonies, have long been growing apart. As the scientific worldview has become more authoritative and self-sufficient, it has loosed a cascade of appalling fears: that the human soul, insofar as it can be said to exist, may be a mortal and broadly comprehensible product of material forces; that the immanent, caring God of the Western monotheisms may never have been more than a fiction devised by members of a species that self-indulgently denies its continuity with the rest of nature; and that our universe may lack any discernible purpose, moral character, or special relation to ourselves. But as those intimations have spread, the retrenchment known as creationism has also gained in strength and has widened its appeal, acquiring recruits and sympathizers among intellectual sophisticates, hard-headed pragmatists, and even some scientists. And so formidable a political influence is this wave of resistance that some Darwinian thinkers who stand quite apart from it nevertheless feel obliged to placate it with tactful sophistries, lest the cause of evolutionism itself be swept away.
As everyone knows, it was the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 that set off the counterrevolution that eventually congealed into creationism. It isn't immediately obvious, however, why Darwin and not, say, Copernicus, Galileo, or Newton should have been judged the most menacing of would-be deicides. After all, the subsiding of faith might have been foreseeable as soon as the newly remapped sky left no plausible site for heaven. But people are good at living with contradictions, just so long as their self-importance isn't directly insulted. That shock was delivered when Darwin dropped his hint that, as the natural selection of every other species gradually proves its cogency, "much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history."
By rendering force and motion deducible from laws of physics without reference to the exercise of will, leading scientists of the Renaissance and Enlightenment started to force the activist lord of the universe into early retirement. They did so, however, with reverence for his initial wisdom and benevolence as an engineer. Not so Darwin, who saw at close range the cruelty, the flawed designs, and the prodigal wastefulness of life, capped for him by the death of his daughter Annie. He decided that he would rather forsake his Christian faith than lay all that carnage at God's door. That is why he could apply Charles Lyell's geological uniformitarianism more consistently than did Lyell himself, who still wanted to reserve some scope for intervention from above. And it is also why he was quick to extrapolate fruitfully from Malthus's theory of human population dynamics, for he was already determined to regard all species as subject to the same implacable laws. Indeed, one of his criteria for a sound hypothesis was that it must leave no room for the supernatural. As he wrote to Lyell in 1859, "I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent."
Darwin's contemporaries saw at once what a heavy blow he was striking against piety. His theory entailed the inference that we are here today not because God reciprocates our love, forgives our sins, and attends to our entreaties but because each of our oceanic and terrestrial foremothers was lucky enough to elude its predators long enough to reproduce. The undignified emergence of humanity from primordial ooze and from a line of apes could hardly be reconciled with the unique creation of man, a fall from grace, and redemption by a person of the godhead dispatched to Earth for that end. If Darwin was right, revealed truth of every kind must be unsanctioned. "With me the horrid doubt always arises," he confessed in a letter, "whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind...?"
[snipped. Go to site for the balance.]
How would you know?
Have you no decency. You criticise others for using guilt by association and now you use the atrocities committed on the innocent in an unrelated argument, or are you saying they are related and that Darwin is the cause?
Interesting.. Thanks for the link. I found this..
Richard Weikart is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Stanislaus. He completed his Ph.D. in modern European history at the University of Iowa in 1994, where he received the Forum for History of Human Sciences' annual prize for best dissertation in this field. With an extensive background in modern German history, he has published articles in journals such as Isis, History of European Ideas, Journal of the History of Ideas and Fides et Historia. One such article received the Selma V. Forkosch Prize for the best article in the Journal of the History of Ideas, 1993. He has recently published a book entitled The Myth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Is His Theology Evangelical? (International Scholars Press 1997). His research on evolutionary ethics and social Darwinism in Germany documents the influence of evolutionary naturalism on the rise of National Socialism.
Taliban, Nazi, Darwin,... what is the difference(according to PH)?
I use your link, in light of the evidence given by others and with similar credence.
Indeed I do.
... and now you use the atrocities committed on the innocent in an unrelated argument, or are you saying they are related and that Darwin is the cause?
You just don't get it. Perhaps you never will.
Yeaaaaa! A crevo thread! Question for everyone: What do the Taliban think of Darwin? I'm inclined to think they agree with the creationists.I'm sure they agree with "Harun Yahya" and the ICR, who has supplied Harun Yahya with much support:
The aftermath of a military coup in 1980 presented new opportunities for Islamist politics and for creationism. Concerned that secular government allowed too much space for left-wing dissent, risking national fragmentation and social unrest, the military junta and subsequent governments promoted a more religious ideology. This naturally affected education policy. While compulsory religion courses and the teaching of a conservative view of history were its most visible results, natural science did not escape untouched. The 1980s saw the state-sponsored translation and distribution of ICR material, explicitly creationist high-school textbooks, and a general anti-evolutionary climate in secondary education (Edis 1994). In 1992, ICR´s Duane Gish and John D Morris appeared at a creationist conference held in Istanbul.
Recent years have brought important political changes that affect the creation-evolution conflict in Turkey. Islamists have grown stronger, even tasting power on their own instead of through factions within more moderate conservative parties. Although the Islamist Party lost some support to a more nationalist ultra-right party in the elections of April 1999, there is still a powerful constituency that objects to "polluting young minds" with Darwinian biology. However, the Turkish military has emerged as a counterbalancing force. Freed from the need to promote religious conservatism for anticommunist purposes, in the past few years the military has once again acted in defense of the secularist ideals of the early republic. This has extended to applying pressure to remove an Islamist-led government from power in 1997 and insisting upon educational reforms aimed at undercutting the base of Islamist politics.
In this highly charged environment, 1998 brought a new wave of creationism to Turkey. Unlike previous efforts directly aimed at public education, this wave is much more an exercise in popular propaganda through the media. By producing a series of scientific-appearing meetings and books, creationists organized in the Bilim Arastirma Vakfi (BAV; the Science Research Foundation) caught the public eye — not only through the extensive Islamist media which cheered them on and secularist newspapers which expressed concern, but also through the wider commercial media with a nose for controversy. As John Morris observes, BAV has considerable media clout: "As a group, they have access to more than adequate financial resources, as well as to the media, and are able to blanket the country with creation information. They choose to invite international creationists for their publicity value, but especially welcome Christian creationists in the ICR mold rather than those who hold merely an anti-Darwinian stance" (Morris 1998).
In April and July 1998, BAV held 3 "international conferences" in the major cities of Turkey, with a theme of "The Collapse of the Theory of Evolution: The Fact of Creation" [see sidebar, p xxx]. Joining Duane Gish and John Morris to support Turkish creationist academics were creationist luminaries Michael P Girouard, Edward Boudreaux, Carl Fliermans, and David Menton. These meetings were well-attended and well-publicized, producing successful, organized media events for creationism.
This media-savvy attention to production details is apparent in the creationist books distributed by BAV as well. Most representative is Harun Yahya´s text The Evolution Deceit. The book comes in 2 versions — a large, attractive 370-page volume notable for its many full-color illustrations and slick appearance (Yahya 1997) and an abridged 128-page booklet with fewer illustrations, which was widely distributed free of charge to the public (Yahya 1998). Especially in light of the sorry state of popular science publishing in an underdeveloped country like Turkey, these lavish productions are very impressive and demonstrate the considerable finances BAV commands.
The arguments presented both in the conferences and the books are very similar to ICR´s; indeed, ICR remains the most important source of material for Turkish creationists. ...
In as much as PH has already posted material that indicates the Taliban rejects Evolution, it would seem clear that the ICR and the Taliban (along with other fundamentalist groups) share common goals.
How revealing. How very, very revealing, indeed.
Really? I didn't catch that. PH?
It matters not.
From this thread, we have this statement from Saudi authorities:
"It also said the game contradicted Islamic teachings by promoting Darwin's theory of evolution [snip]"
Given that the Saudi's are LESS strict in their fundamentalist fervor, as evidenced by their throwing Osama bin Laden out of the country, than the Taliban, who welcomed bin Laden to Afghanistan, it is axiomatic that if the Saudi's say Darwin contradicts Islamic teaching, the Taliban certainly isn't going to embrace old Charlie and his ideas.
Ah, the old you're an idiot ploy. Well, that is par for the course.
He [Darwin] decided that he would rather forsake his Christian faith than lay all that carnage at God's door. That is why he could apply Charles Lyell's geological uniformitarianism more consistently than did Lyell himself, who still wanted to reserve some scope for intervention from above. And it is also why he was quick to extrapolate fruitfully from Malthus's theory of human population dynamics, for he was already determined to regard all species as subject to the same implacable laws. Indeed, one of his criteria for a sound hypothesis was that it must leave no room for the supernatural. As he wrote to Lyell in 1859, "I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent."
Not at all, that is why none of them have been able to refute his statements.
Your statements about his theories are also an evolutionist lie. We do indeed know exactly what the chances of a single gene arising are. It is based on scientific experiments comparing the differences in genes with the same functions from different species and also on tests showing what amino acid codes are absolutely necessary to attain the intended function. He explains this quite clearly in one of his articles and in his book - and there has been absolutely no refutation by the Darwinists of it.
Your statement would be true except for one thing - evolution and materialism are deterministic and the Christian religion specifically states that man has free will, so you have it absolutely backwards, like most of what the Darwinists say.
What more necessity can you have than "survival of the fittest" - the central proposition of Darwinism, the Deux ex Machina which allows evolution to replace God as the creator of all things?
Aaah but what is consciousness? What is conscience? What is the materialistic explanation for either? Quick answer - materialism cannot answer either question. How can matter make non-deterministic decisions? Matter can only act through necessity, through being acted upon by forces beyond its control. Indeed matter cannot control anything, it is controlled by so called "natural forces".
Fossil finds whales related to early pigs.
``With these new discoveries the whale fossil record is now so complete,''
Amazing! You call it proof of evolution when you yourself show that the idiot evolutionists cannot decide from what species whales came from! You folk are really so full of your ideology that you do not even realize that you cannot give as proof two contradictory explanations. But then ideologies do not rely on science or logic, they only rely on faith or more exactly in the case of evolution on hatred of religion.
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