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."
Astute observation...
thank you. we must all avoid vitriol as well as we may, after all.
There are lots of volcanoes an floods, earthquakes and hurricanes. In central America they even have a word for jaguars falling out of the sky. All this centuries before the NFL.
With things like this happening in an average person's lifetime, why do we need to suppose that cultural memories are likely to be passed on for tens of thousands of years.
Yes, indeed, vitriol avoidance is a virtue, which hopefully we can all adopt...
Still waiting for your proof on this statement...
crickets...
I expect you'll have to wait until the mid-Novembers of '06 and '08 for any reasonable chance of receiving the "proof" you demand
???
It's a matter of voter perception as much as anything. People in the science community have this perception, and the Luddites on FR feed the perception.
Take a look at the posts condemning empiricism, naturalism, funding of basic research. Take a look at the posts favoring abandoning the teaching of scientific reasoning and methodology. We have a guy, an intelligent, literate guy on FR, arguing geocentrism. None of the anti-evolutionists have the courage or the knowledge to confront him. This seems to be the new majority among Republicans.
just for braggin' rights
ooo! you stole my bragging right!
You can hold out for 6969
With things like this happening in an average person's lifetime, why do we need to suppose that cultural memories are likely to be passed on for tens of thousands of years.
Why should we suppose it was forgotten?
There are many myths in many cultures, but the flood story seems pervasive in almost every culture, with many similarities between cultures that are widely spread apart.
We have an apparent genetic bottleneck in the human race. We have an apparent megadisater that happened about the time of the bottleneck. We have widespread myth that seems that it could be a orally passed-on account of that disaster. Why not suppose that is what it is?
I believe evolution has been the primary mechanism for the development of life on Earth. I do not believe in a six-thousand year old world and universe. However, I don't feel any need to go out of my way to debunk the Genesis account, particularly when I think Genesis can be interpreted to be in general accord with science.
I simply don't have a need in either/or. I have a belief in both. I try to make them mesh. And when they don't I'm quite content to shrug my shoulders and live with the contradiction, until I can resolve it to my satisfaction.
that sounds... lewd.
Stick with Geritol.
I hope you do science better than you do political analysis.
No one is going to be around to remember a supervolcano. There is hardly any orally transmitted history of the year without a summer, or the little ice age, or the seven mile wide tornado that ripped through the American midwest last century.
On the other hand, there are lots of vague stories and legends of catastrophes. There are plenty of them in every generation.
Worse than 888?
that page's format makes my eyes hurt.
did I beat js1138?
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