Posted on 09/18/2006 1:51:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
According to a 2005 Pew Research Center poll, 70 percent of evangelical Christians believe that living beings have always existed in their present form, compared with 32 percent of Protestants and 31 percent of Catholics. Politically, 60 percent of Republicans are creationists, whereas only 11 percent accept evolution, compared with 29 percent of Democrats who are creationists and 44 percent who accept evolution. A 2005 Harris Poll found that 63 percent of liberals but only 37 percent of conservatives believe that humans and apes have a common ancestry. What these figures confirm for us is that there are religious and political reasons for rejecting evolution. Can one be a conservative Christian and a Darwinian? Yes. Here's how.
1. Evolution fits well with good theology. Christians believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God. What difference does it make when God created the universe--10,000 years ago or 10,000,000,000 years ago? The glory of the creation commands reverence regardless of how many zeroes in the date. And what difference does it make how God created life--spoken word or natural forces? The grandeur of life's complexity elicits awe regardless of what creative processes were employed. Christians (indeed, all faiths) should embrace modern science for what it has done to reveal the magnificence of the divine in a depth and detail unmatched by ancient texts.
2. Creationism is bad theology. The watchmaker God of intelligent-design creationism is delimited to being a garage tinkerer piecing together life out of available parts. This God is just a genetic engineer slightly more advanced than we are. An omniscient and omnipotent God must be above such humanlike constraints. As Protestant theologian Langdon Gilkey wrote, "The Christian idea, far from merely representing a primitive anthropomorphic projection of human art upon the cosmos, systematically repudiates all direct analogy from human art." Calling God a watchmaker is belittling.
3. Evolution explains original sin and the Christian model of human nature. As a social primate, we evolved within-group amity and between-group enmity. By nature, then, we are cooperative and competitive, altruistic and selfish, greedy and generous, peaceful and bellicose; in short, good and evil. Moral codes and a society based on the rule of law are necessary to accentuate the positive and attenuate the negative sides of our evolved nature.
4. Evolution explains family values. The following characteristics are the foundation of families and societies and are shared by humans and other social mammals: attachment and bonding, cooperation and reciprocity, sympathy and empathy, conflict resolution, community concern and reputation anxiety, and response to group social norms. As a social primate species, we evolved morality to enhance the survival of both family and community. Subsequently, religions designed moral codes based on our evolved moral natures.
5. Evolution accounts for specific Christian moral precepts. Much of Christian morality has to do with human relationships, most notably truth telling and marital fidelity, because the violation of these principles causes a severe breakdown in trust, which is the foundation of family and community. Evolution describes how we developed into pair-bonded primates and how adultery violates trust. Likewise, truth telling is vital for trust in our society, so lying is a sin.
6. Evolution explains conservative free-market economics. Charles Darwin's "natural selection" is precisely parallel to Adam Smith's "invisible hand." Darwin showed how complex design and ecological balance were unintended consequences of competition among individual organisms. Smith showed how national wealth and social harmony were unintended consequences of competition among individual people. Nature's economy mirrors society's economy. Both are designed from the bottom up, not the top down.
Because the theory of evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, it should be embraced. The senseless conflict between science and religion must end now, or else, as the Book of Proverbs (11:29) warned: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."
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In today's world, we've got bigger fish to fry than the argument about evolution.
Why Christians and conservatives should NOT accept evolution.
If they accept macroevolution they believe God is a liar.
There is no conflict between Christianity and evolution.
There is a conflict between biblical literalists and evolution. Not much doubt about that.
This is actually a contradiction in conservative thought that I've been thinking about quite a bit. Conservatives normally have no problem accepting systemic logic, especially when it comes to economics. As far as I can tell, evolution versus ID is the sole exception to this. Of course, this explains why the evolution versus ID "debate" (I know that there are several who are opposed to even calling it a "debate") rages as fiercely as it does even at the epicenter of conservative thought on the Internet.
Yeah, I've been reading a lot of Thomas Sowell lately.
Oh, man this should be good....1-2-3 GO!
Be nice? Wonder why he didn't give us background on himself... From wikipedia
Michael Shermer made a guest appearance in a 2004 episode of Penn&Teller's: Bullshit!, in which he argued that the Christian sacred text was "mythic storytelling" and that literal interpretation of events described therein would be "to miss the point of the Bible."[1] His stance was supported by the show's hosts, whose fierce atheist positions are renowned. The episode in question, The Bible: Fact or Fiction?, sought to debunk the notion that the Holy Bible is an empirically reliable historical record. Opposing Shermer was Dr. Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University.
"Honey, have you seen my razor?"
-- Occam
This should have been posted earlier.
Umm, although I think a case could be made for Christianity and evolution co-existing and perhaps even being consistent, this certainly isn't it.
Popcorn Placemarker
Not true, power = work/time.
Last I checked, despite having tossed Second Maccabees, the only explicit Scriptural support for creation ex nihilo, out of their canon, protestants don't believe in the eternal existence of matter, much less of living being in their present form.
If evolution is false then God is at best a practical joker, given all the evidence he had to fake.
Can any Christian who believes in evolution please explain one thing to me...at what point between apes and humans did God decide to give humans a soul? Was it a specific generation, ie. a mother and father weren't given souls, but their children were? Or did the soul evolve along with the ape-men?
"There is no conflict between Christianity and evolution."
.....here's a good place to start the debate.......
That's a classic example of begging the qwestion.
Creationism is bad theology.
This is not only begging the question, but the author proceeds to bait-and-switch:
The watchmaker God of intelligent-design creationism is delimited to being a garage tinkerer piecing together life out of available parts.
The "watchmaker" God is a deist notion. And creationism does not believe in "available parts" but that God created everything ex nihilo
Evolution explains original sin and the Christian model of human nature.
No it does not. The author is completely unaware of what the doctrine of Original Sin is.
Evolution explains family values.
So does creationism.
Evolution accounts for specific Christian moral precepts.
And excludes others.
Evolution explains conservative free-market economics.
It also explains complete despotism as well. Evolutionism, unlike Christianity, does not inherently favor liberty - in fact, it undermines the concept.
I'm a Southern Baptist, but I don't believe that evolution is inconsistent with the Bible. It's only inconsistent with some folk's INTERPRETATION of the Bible.
But I would point out that the Priests claimed that Jesus could not be the Christ because he was from Nazareth, and the Messiah was supposed to come from Bethlehem.
There are lots of places in the Bible where people misinterpreted what was said in the scriptures. In order to be a Christian, you don't need to disbelieve evolution. You only need to believe that Christ is God, that He died on the cross for our sins, and that He rose again.
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