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."
Durnit, I left my vorpal blade at home. :-p
You are far more advanced in the Way of Wisdom than I; I see you living out Proverbs 16:21, and I praise Jesus, the Word and Spirit in you!
Oh goodie, I must not be a fool, 'cause I don't really hate anyone.
Proverbs 16 has been with me all day particularly verse 3.
Hey, you really should have worded this post differently. You directly insulted me and js1138, you know. You should have said "in response to a certain group of people whom I think quite silly, which might contain individuals with screennames starting with a and ending with y and starting with j and ending with 8--naming no names, wink wink, nudge nudge." Just to keep things impersonal.
? Your post said that the words "lapdog" and "nameless" were referring to you and Betty Boop when a cursory read revealed that they weren't. I was correcting an error in your post. Aren't you happy people weren't calling you names??
Sure is a whole lot of cackling and braying going on over at the Darwin Central barnyard these days!
It is disappointing to see some of the names involved. Oh, well....
As you wrote in your e-mail to me,
And I agree with you that reason itself seems to be under attack. People everywhere seem to want a talking points response to the deep questions – don’t think, parrot. That doesn’t surprise me in the U.S. because students have been conditioned to do precisely that from their earliest years through post-grad....[Ooooppppsss! Please forgive me, Alamo-Girl, I'm selectively quoting/quote mining you. I left out all the Plato and Aristotle. Plato especially is held in contempt over at Darwin Central. No reason given, just "politically correct" abuse.][The evolutionists] routinely accuse their opponents of lying, plagiarizing and any other slur or smear they can muster. Those are spit-wads. If they had a good rational comeback they would use it – they do when they have one....
I don’t think any of them read your posts – they just have a knee jerk reaction especially to quotes of any kind from “our side” of what they perceive to be war.
Anyhoot, thank you for this excellent essay/post. And I'm with you, kiddo:
"If anyone would care to lay aside his talking points and pick up his thinking cap – then, bring it on – and we’ll let the readers judge for themselves if we are boobs (ignorant and foolish) --- who is reasoning and who is parroting --- and which is more valuable."Seems eminently reasonable to me....
Thank you again for illustrating my points!
Go back and read the entire webpage at the link. The conversation about lapdog and nameless is in reference to posts around 9/21/2006 on this thread and then compare the posting history of the two posters you linked above.
Ahem...
Are you sure?? I see they have almost 27,000 posts there, have you read all of them? Wouldn't want to make a knee-jerk assumption, you know.
I'm afraid I'm simply not getting whatever you are attempting to imply. Are you persisting in saying that lapdog and nameless were terms used to denote you and betty boop? Because I've noticed in our discussions the ground topics tend to slip and slide about a bit and I want to make sure we're on the same footing we started with.
Plato especially is held in contempt over at Darwin Central. No reason given, just "politically correct" abuse.
Nobody has objected to this statement at of yet. That's why I inferred it must be "politically correct" to hold Plato in contempt over at DC.
Some foks are interested in an exchange of views, even with people they disagree with, and some just like sharpening their skills with the ad hominem.
You're wasting your time with the latter.
By the way, I agree with the "chemical soup" view of the origins of life, just as I believe in the "lump of iron" view of the origin of diesel engines. You start with a lump of iron, and inject energy and information (technology, plans, intelligent directed effort) and voila', an engine.
The chemical soup works the same. Its more than just the zap of electricity, because even single cell organisms are actually small single-cell machines, with moving parts. Pretty interesting, really. With an internal transmission of information and control.
Another placemarker
But why aren't we being pinged when they talk about us?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.