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."
And I certainly do not wish to encourage anyone to hate anyone. I'd much rather encourage everyone to love one another despite the utterly incompatible worldviews.
I think that forum etiquette is something that our culture needs to take up seriously. This new medium has some serious weaknesses. It's up to the mature to keep a steady keel. More often than not the better ones turn to their own blogs, having run out of patience, and setting up a sort of microphone that rarely engages dialogue.
FR has dialogue going. But for this it must be an open forum and it has to suffer the weaker imputs. Those of us who are steady keep our eyes on the goal. My goal, and I hope we are together in this much, is to forge ahead with the issue. This is super hard at times.
And I certainly do not wish to encourage anyone to hate anyone.
I would rather more people discourage such notions.
GEE BELIEVERS, indeed... All they need is/are some academic robes, a Pope.. and some Cardinals.. The dogma(s) is/are certainly there.. That clergy plays musical chairs with each other.. or Mother may I.. or even hide and seek.. Like; primates in a maze running the channels(of the maze) into a matrix of dead ends.. toward a questionable future..
Is God COOL or WHAT?.. Life is about the future which starts right now in the moment.. The moment is eternal.. Boopie has a way with words don't she..
And I'm enjoying every minute of it.
And so am I! Dear 'pipe does indeed have a genius for metaphor!
Moreover, "life can only come from life" is the "Law of Biogenesis." The phrase is the definition of the theory.
Incidentally, the alternative to biogenesis, abiogenesis, which provides for life arising from non-life is an origin theory only. After the bootstrap, the law of "life can only come from life" applies according to The Nature of Evolution
Darwin's theory of evolution was about speciation only. He did not address abiogenesis in that theory. Life was taken as a given.
Nor did he ask or answer the far more important question, "what is life v non-life/death in nature?"
Without asking that question, he could not assert a serious theory of abiogenesis. His musings about a warm little pond were not a theory and were not part of the theory of evolution.
you err: testimony is NOT evidence.
but I suppose those who like to go all "Roswell" consider it a distinction without a difference.
Simplicio answered himself. key word: "objects"
In the same year that Darwin published his Origin of the Species, Louis Pasteur's expirements gave evidence that life arises only from pre-existent life.
Only in the sense that he demonstrated that maggots do not form spontaneously from dead meat. He said absolutely nothing about biogenesis.
That is true, as we frequently point out.
But he never said or implied, "life can only come from life". This is a factual error that needs correcting.
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