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."
I think it was in reference to an insult that I didn't read. I skip over the moronic posts.
Must save a lot of time reading!
All your sources on the Cambrian Explosion are older than Methuselah.
A Summary of the Problems with Creationist Cambrian Arguments.
China fossils contradict explosion-of-species theory. "Deep roots and tiny prototypes" 40-55 million years before the "explosion."
Just in general then, you have retreated from "the links are not there" to "the links are not there at the start of the Cambrian" and even that isn't true.
Awaiting the next round ...
Take a Breather Placemarker
There are always people who will think otherwise no matter what. It's just the nature of the position :)
no, kiddo - lapdog and nameless are not you and boop. a pity you didn't read that exchange in detail, as an earlier post made it clear that the Twins are nothing but cheerleaders, and a later post makes it clear that Twins does not refer to you two.
go ahead and look.
then, either admit the error, or passively reinforce an uttered falsehood.
well, you are mistaken. as the public record shows.
It is, by the way, Plato's similar contempt for close examination of the facts on the ground which makes of him such a butt of our jokes at DC.
Somehow, I missed this in your post.
What I actually said was that if he thought the question--never mind how much stock he put into a particular answer--was at all important he would have addressed it in his published work. He didn't address it because HIS THEORY WASN'T ABOUT THAT.
But that's almost the same thing, so if I don't hear from you I'll assume we're still in agreement.
I am curious as to who the "butch" might be though you would have to respond 'over there' due to posting guidelines.
To the contrary notwithstanding, my observation remains. There is altogether too much "parroting" - too many knee-jerk group reactions. That one "side" has done it does not not justify the conduct in return.
It must end or we are all wasting our time.
as to "it must end or we are all wasting our time" - well, when one side bases argument on empiricism, facts, and reason while the other side deals almost exclusively from one particular mythos, inherited bias, invective, and a total sneering disrespect for empiricism, facts, and reason... one could justify the belief that the argument has been a waste of time between the two groups ab initio.
An argument can be made that the empiricists serve the interests of the lurkers, and that the empiricists are doing what they can to counter the well-established and unfortunately well-justified perception that the GOP and political conservatism are the exclusive bailiwick of Luddites and religious bigots. That is certainly the ONLY reason some of the empiricists put forth for continuing the discussion.
I hesitate to speculate on what the Luddites serve, save to say that if they believe it is God, they serve Him rather poorly... to the extent of doing far more harm than good. But that is just my opinion, humble or not. Not being among the ranks of Luddism, I cannot speak for those who are.
The links are not there.
Well then, are you going to withdraw your "You illustrate my point! LOLOL!" posts?
We're still in agreement. :^)
No, not me; others have done so.
I gather that combinatorial probability anticipates that the actual occurrence of an infinite number of possibilities is equiprobable, given enough time. Yet it actually appears that unless there is an infinite amount of time, this expectation cannot be met. The simple combination model of probability is seemingly incapable of describing the complexity of living systems that we readily observe, let alone accounting for an origin of life from material causes alone.
For instance, Gerald Schroeder points out that a single typical protein is a chain of 300 amino acids, and that there are 20 common amino acids in life, which means that the number of possible combinations that would lead to the actualization of the protein would be 20300 or 10390. He summed up the problem this way: “It would be as if nature reached into a grab bag containing a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion proteins and pulled out the one that worked and then repeated this trick a million million times.” [Gerald Schroeder, “Evolution: Rationality vs. Randomness,” 2000.]
Seems like kinda long odds to me.....
Thanks for writing!
Post 1875 is a mindless knee-jerk reaction to 1873. Moreover, it is a non-responsive false dichotomy. Post 1873 holds up a mirror (pot-kettle-black) to your statement at 1872 …
And the chuckles at 1891 are not diminished for you offered two completely unrelated Freepers at 1884 who happen to have handles which are the very pejoratives used on the other website which I wrongly assumed were meant for betty boop and me. The ” Blavatsky twins” pejorative was indeed meant for us .
But neither of the posters at 1884 replied on this thread, the second is banned. Thus reasoning (the missing and much sought-after trait in 1873) should have eliminated them entirely as ‘candidate’ targets of the pejoratives, lapdog and nameless.
Thus my point was and is illustrated.
Moreover, ahayes, two wrongs not make a right. And that truism applies to this mindless, knee-jerk, back and forth - scriptable - parroting of “talking points.” It tars both sides, but more so the side which eschews altogether the concept of accepting anything by faith and further holds itself up to be the master of Aristotlean reasoning.
So again I challenge:
Makes me want to start all over with my first post to you. What a tight little circle that would make! I've given you two posts full of examples where they're there.
But don't feel bad. You're doing creation/ID about right. It's just Whack-a-Mole.
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.