[Libertarianize the GOP]

bump

[jlogajan]

Phillip E. Johnson is Professor of Law

Professor of Law? Geez, you creationists are really scraping the bottom of the barrel!!!!!!!

[jlogajan]

Berkeley no less. Surely these are the end times when creationists quote Berkeley professors of law!!!

[Exnihilo]

For feedback from First Things readers, and a response by Dr. Johnson, click here

[T'wit]

> "RESOLVED, that the theory of evolution is as proved as is the fact that the earth goes around the sun."

Nobody has ever proved that the earth goes around the sun.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.

There was a newspaper article I read a few years ago (and I wish I had clipped it or could find it on-line). A neurologist at a major convention of a professional organization, reported that, in a group of people he studied, a certain part of the brain had become active, whenever they thought about religion. He referred to it as the "god node."

Now, several reasonable, possible material causes for this "god node" were put forth -- ranging for the idea that religious belief held off despair, so that people who had such beliefs would last longer in desperate situations to the fact that the people being studied had a neurological disorder and this may have been an effect of the disorder.

All well and good. But one possible cause went unmentioned: That God (or some deity or deities) exists and that the development of such a node would be beneficial to survival as it brought people closer to deity. Such could even be a natural, materialist development in response to the existence of something divine.

Maybe it was discussed and just not mentioned in the newspaper report. But its absence was glaring.

[RightWhale]

Lewontin and Sagan attributed the vote to the audience’s prejudice in favor of creationism

If I had been there I would have voted against whatever Sagan was defending. Sagan had a small view of mankind's potential. It's no way to live.

[185JHP]

Thanks for blasting some nastiness into smithereens. And you did it with style AND substance. You're right - Gould made up the new hoax - p.e. - because he saw how the old hoax was being exposed. It's great for you and the other truth-tellers to blast this hoax - 'cause there are "young skulls full of mush" who read these threads, and might be influenced by "psuedoscience spoken fluently." Didn't take you long, either. FReegards

[mugwump62]

you can't explain faith with science... enough said.

[aquawrench]

Believe what you want, the truth is what will remain.
To presume that there is no creator in order to perform objective science is to short change what the scientist sets out to do in the first place, right? If this is not true, then the 'scientist' is actually so sort of propagandist.

[Varda]

Catholic evolutionist bump for later

[Nebullis]

It might be helpful to realize that science is in the business of modeling natural events. As such, it can't use mystical or spiritual explanations unless they lead to a viable model. We already have a reasonable model of the historical development of life. Any useful contributions from mystics are welcome. Detracting from the current model is not a useful contribution.

[Aurelius]

BUMP

[Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy]

This article illuminates the real problem unintentionally, by citing Marxist defenders of evolutionary science(Lewontin, Gould), who have absorbed essentially religiously based moral imperitives about "equality" and "humanity" which distorts their interpretation of science for political and ethnic purposes, whilst these very same "scientists" trash real scientists like E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Lewis Thomas, and others, who, whatever their faults, do not try to deny religion on the one hand and then try to slip religion (disguised as politics or philosophy) back in via the backdoor of "Marxism" or "humanism". Gould in particular is an egregious example of cultural bolshevism maskerading as objective science, and yet he gets uncritical reverence for his every utterance from the mainstream liberal media.