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."
Oh, I so agree!
Here's Darwin's "warm little pond scenario" from his 1871 [correcting date] letter to his friend Sir Joseph Hooker:
It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c., present, that a proteine [sic] compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were found.Yockey's remarks regarding this statement:
The passage (obviously not having been subjected to an editor's blue pencil) was not indexed and remained unnoticed until 1950....Snoopers!!! LOLOL!It is irresponsible and dishonest to reference this "warm little pond" quotation ... from Darwin's private correspondence as representing his view of the origin of life.... Everyone has the right to float tentative ideas and even nonsense to friends in his or her personal correspondence without responsibility being assumed by snoopers. [Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, p. 119]
Oops! He got to Velikovsky already. Also, when he mentioned Sansbury, it was on an Electric Universe thread started by somebody else. Hard to keep up with all the shoes dropping.
As has been pointed out already, Darwin saw this obvious point way back in the day. And yet even now, creationists use "Why doesn't this a happen all the time now?" as a snare for the unwary (the REALLY unwary). You could hardly ask for a better illustration that the purveyors of anti-E nonsense are selectively blind, ineducable, and incorrigible.
I'm not sure why you pinged me on this. I never said Darwin put the warm pond out as the answer to biogenesis.
What I said, and have always said, is that Darwin proposed two (at least two) scenarios for the origin of life. The later of the two implies natural processes. Since Darwin was concerned throughout his marriage about his wife's fear that they would be apart in the afterlife, one can assume Darwin was inclined toward natural processes in biogenesis, as he was in the origin of diversity. He was consistently inclined toward natural processes in every aspect of his work.
For Darwin, and indeed, for anyone with a scientific imagination, the warm pond scenario would be a starting point for research, rather than a declaration of fact.
Yes. From there, it's only a short hop into the lake of fire.
</creationism mode>
Well Jeepers Vade, some people just can't read. (This is directed a class of people who consistently misinterpret the words of others. It is absolutely not directed toward any particular individual.)
I'm not aware of anyone on this thread who ever said or implied that Darwin belived he had the answer to the origin of life. I can't imagine why anyone would think this is a topic of discussion.
No, hot springs and thermal vents are under investigation again.
But my point is that Darwin proposed multiple scenarios for biogenesis and saw no difference between them in their implications for evolution.
The Chemical SoupNazis of today have taken Darwin's musings and brewed an entree in many threads like this one.. Carrying "survival of the fittest" back to its ultimate inception requires a chemical soup to explain it all..
I know, I know.... NO SOUP FOR ME TODAY!....
As I understand it, there are at least two possible scenarios in pinpointing the causative properties that may have led to the origin of life. (a) identification through experiment (b) identification through discovery.
As far as the implications of laboratory experiments go, it is hard to tell what will or will not happen there. But it is certain that progress only belongs to those with an idea that something will happen and that causative properties will continue to be discovered. It is another piece of logic (solid or not) that assumes laboratory experiments identify or simulate conditions 4.5 billion years ago. This kind of thinking moves toward (b).
I do want to be careful about accepting Darwin's suggestion that the laboratory is the only place that such conditions will be recognized. He certainly wanted to hold that position--I'm still thinking through the logic.
No soup for you either.
Discovery ( as opposed to laboratory replication) of the origins of life is extremely unlikely, for reasons outlined by Darwin in 1870.
What we may be able to demonstrate is a series of natural processes that can lead to life. The possibility that what we discover in the laboratory is the actual path taken in our history is both remote and unimportant.
Worrying about the one and only history of life is like worrying about the Brownian paths taken by each and every molecule of the air you breathe.
Your "prediction" is about as impressive as predicting the sunrise.
If you support evolution, someone will call you a Nazi.
The timing is cool, however.
I'm not resting on laurels here. Last week was last week.
Darwin's reasons are cryptic, brief. He was more interested in natural selection and so on.
So we must look elsewhere in the consideration of origins. I don't think questions of origins are unimportant. For example, I think it is an profound conclusion to say certain aspects are unkowable. But this much is clear to me: the study of biological processes can proceed without a theory of origins; but this is no reason to say that life originated independent of biological processes.
I've analogized it to worrying about whether the Vikings got here before Columbus, and if any other Europeans did it too, and if so, precisely what routes they took. Interesting to think about, but it doesn't matter, really. Columbus is the one who made all the difference.
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