Apparently not. I will endeavor to remember that I may attest to how things seem to be without running afoul of that rule, but that I may not testify as to how they are.
Or do you feel that my interpretation is in error?
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."
What isn't happening?
Apparently not. I will endeavor to remember that I may attest to how things seem to be without running afoul of that rule, but that I may not testify as to how they are.
Or do you feel that my interpretation is in error?
I also went through a phase of having real issues getting along with the Marthas, but like you, in the end determined that the family needs the Marthas too. Ah, but the Marys! What a peaceful and joyful life they enjoy!
Are you the new Religion Forum moderator? I ask because some of RM's posts in this thread could have been penned by your hand.
Also, if you are going to accuse Senator Bedfellow of being a retread, you must be aware that medved is back under a new nick but the moderators have done nothing about it.
That whole bit about not assigning motives was always the most completely unworkable bit of the whole agreement of the willing, which should be tolerably obvious by the fact that we can say exactly the same thing in both instances by simply adding a little "seems to be" fig leaf to the second. It is completely unenforceable, as a posting rule. I am, in fact, rather surprised that you chose to resurrect it here in this forum, given how easy it is to evade.
If this is the kind of moderating that all the fundamentalists are used to seeing, day in and day out, I can see why all the old ALS-stinkers thought they were trapping the rational posters with the "Agreement of the Willing".
Of course, nobody was agreeing to Religion Forum "rules" ...
IOW, when we are playing around in the sandboxes of philosophy and theology (and crevo in this case) - the players are mostly all sincere although many are irreconcilably different in their worldviews. So we should be as respectful as we possibly can be.
There are also fewer posters. And even fewer posters that care.
Use the word "appear" so it won't be appear so hypocritical.
RM, is AG's post #1787 a fair rendering of what you understand the desired behavior to be here?
Click on my profile page for more on the guidelines.
I'm beginning to believe Ted Holden belongs on this website and I don't.
(nothing personal)
I never have a problem with Alamo-Girl - that's probably why our posts are similar.
Hello Alamo-Girl! For goodness sake this is getting tiresome. I have already explained that the offending quote was not a direct quote from Darwin, but my translation of the Latin omne vivum ex vivo -- which being "my" translation (and probably not a very good one at that; I expected cornelis would have stepped in!!!), I put it in quotation marks.
I'd only add that the phrase omne vivum ex vivo is perfectly consistent with Darwin's position, as is evident to me from his published works, and also evident to Hubert Yockey: It was he who used the phrase omne vivum ex vivo in his Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life (2005) to describe Darwin's position.
Darwin's position evididently is that the origin of life is either unknowable or undecideable. That is also Bohr's position, and Yockey's. The theory of evolution does not need an origin of life to be a theory of the evolution of life.
I'm in agreement with VadeRetro's observation that if Darwin had put a whole lot of stock to the "warm little pond" scenario, he would have put it in his published work. If a person wants to share a speculation with a friend in a private letter in 1878, he's certainly entitled. It would have had to be more than a whimsical speculation for a careful scholar/scientist like Darwin to make it public. Which he did not do. BTW, that's exactly the same way that Yockey sees it.
FWIW.
Thanks so much for the ping, Alamo-Girl!
medved is not welcome on Free Republic - including the Religion Forum.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!
Thanks, RM!
Yockey really does have a razor-like sense of humor. :^)
Thank you so much Alamo-Girl for posting Yockey's remarks to the Chowder Society, and for the great link!
And thank you for a wonderful essay/post!
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