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."
it would be well to remove the inaccuracies to which Coyoteman responded.
they ARE inaccuracies.
they have been decisively corrected.
MANY, MANY TIMES.
Posting uncorrected inaccuracy may be considered ignorance or a statement of faith.
Posting thoroughly debunked inaccuracy is mendacity.
Leaving thoroughly debunked inaccuracy on the board while removing links to its debunking at best bears the appearance of tacit approval/support of mendacity.
Protecting blatent stupidity because it is based in faith demeans faith and equates religion with falsehood.
If Coyoteman would like to rephrase and repost without the personal remarks, I'll be glad to forward the removed posts to him via Freepmail.
Sorry.
Fair enough. My apologies as well.
YOU can see that...
I can see that...
The wonder of it all is just how many are (or seem to be) unable to see that.
And, really, doesn't such protectionism in the name of mere banal politesse just add that little extra sour to the whole puckerful experience?
Would you please do so? Thanks.
I would argue that repeated iterations of long-debunked falsehoods are themselves "precursor to a flame war" and are similarly worthy of extirpation.
But I'm not the Mod here.
Your call.
ah, well... the cat demands food, and to my chagrin my cupboard is bare.
it is off to the quickiemart I go.
good enough time to sign off, anyway.
'nite.
I am out of here as well.
Have a good evening.
Here are some links which may help the lurkers see where the accuracy of any statements on this subject lie:
ReligiousTolerance.org Carbon-14 Dating (C-14): Beliefs of New-Earth CreationistsThe American Scientific Affiliation: Science in Christian Perspective Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.
This site, BiblicalChronologist.org has a series of good articles on radiocarbon dating.
Are tree-ring chronologies reliable? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
Tree Ring and C14 DatingHow does the radiocarbon dating method work? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
How precise is radiocarbon dating?
Is radiocarbon dating based on assumptions?
Has radiocarbon dating been invalidated by unreasonable results?
Radiocarbon WEB-info Radiocarbon Laboratory, University of Waikato, New Zealand.
I have done quite a bit of radiocarbon dating, and I would be happy to answer any questions FRers have on the subject.
http://www.grisda.org/origins/51006.htm
W.
I took a look at the article.
The first third of it examines the ramifications for radiocarbon dating based on a global flood. There is absolutely no evidence for a global flood. There is a tremendous amount of evidence that there was no global flood.
The next major section deals with the absolute upper limits of the radiocarbon method. This is the area where contamination from any source will yield measurable results. I find this argument to be unconvincing. If you want radiometric results in that age span you use other methods than radiocarbon, and they work quite well. But the article ignores all other methods of radiometric dating.
In essence, the article is saying that at the extreme upper limits of the radiocarbon method you start to get flaky results, so we have evidence of a young earth. This is absolutely false. Any method has its limits, and trying to extend the radiocarbon method to 100,000-300,000 years is way beyond the limits any scientist would currently propose for radiocarbon.
This article conveniently ignores several other radiometric methods which work very well in that age range and provide evidence that the early really is billions of years old.
All in all, I find that this article contains dishonest research. It misinterprets several well established scientific methods, includes the entirely unsubstantiated global flood as a correction mechanism, and ignores evidence which disproves its main point. Thats about as dishonest as you can get. I suppose that is par for the course in apologetics, but it is not acceptable in science.
I have not studied the Turin Shroud articles so I have no clue yet on that one.
Please read the links I posted earlier.
I see that in citiing a link, you've resorted to the old bait and switch of the evolutionist: providing scientific proof of environmental adaptation by a species and attempting to claim that this somehow provides proof of the descent of all life from a single common ancestor over billions of years.
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.