Posted on 12/18/2004 5:56:30 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Professional danger comes in many flavors, and while Richard Colling doesn't jump into forest fires or test experimental jets for a living, he does do the academic's equivalent: He teaches biology and evolution at a fundamentalist Christian college.
At Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill., he says, "as soon as you mention evolution in anything louder than a whisper, you have people who aren't very happy." And within the larger conservative-Christian community, he adds, "I've been called some interesting names."
But those experiences haven't stopped Prof. Colling -- who received a Ph.D. in microbiology, chairs the biology department at Olivet Nazarene and is himself a devout conservative Christian -- from coming out swinging. In his new book, "Random Designer," he writes: "It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods" when they say evolutionary theory is "in crisis" and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. "Such statements are blatantly untrue," he argues; "evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny."
His is hardly the standard scientific defense of Darwin, however. His central claim is that both the origin of life from a primordial goo of nonliving chemicals, and the evolution of species according to the processes of random mutation and natural selection, are "fully compatible with the available scientific evidence and also contemporary religious beliefs." In addition, as he bluntly told me, "denying science makes us [Conservative Christians] look stupid."
Prof. Colling is one of a small number of conservative Christian scholars who are trying to convince biblical literalists that Darwin's theory of evolution is no more the work of the devil than is Newton's theory of gravity. They haven't picked an easy time to enter the fray. Evolution is under assault from Georgia to Pennsylvania and from Kansas to Wisconsin, with schools ordering science teachers to raise questions about its validity and, in some cases, teach "intelligent design," which asserts that only a supernatural tinkerer could have produced such coups as the human eye. According to a Gallup poll released last month, only one-third of Americans regard Darwin's theory of evolution as well supported by empirical evidence; 45% believe God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago.
Usually, the defense of evolution comes from scientists and those trying to maintain the separation of church and state. But Prof. Colling has another motivation. "People should not feel they have to deny reality in order to experience their faith," he says. He therefore offers a rendering of evolution fully compatible with faith, including his own. The Church of the Nazarene, which runs his university, "believes in the biblical account of creation," explains its manual. "We oppose a godless interpretation of the evolutionary hypothesis."
It's a small opening, but Prof. Colling took it. He finds a place for God in evolution by positing a "random designer" who harnesses the laws of nature he created. "What the designer designed is the random-design process," or Darwinian evolution, Prof. Colling says. "God devised these natural laws, and uses evolution to accomplish his goals." God is not in there with a divine screwdriver and spare parts every time a new species or a wondrous biological structure appears.
Unlike those who see evolution as an assault on faith, Prof. Colling finds it strengthens his own. "A God who can harness the laws of randomness and chaos, and create beauty and wonder and all of these marvelous structures, is a lot more creative than fundamentalists give him credit for," he told me. Creating the laws of physics and chemistry that, over the eons, coaxed life from nonliving molecules is something he finds just as awe inspiring as the idea that God instantly and supernaturally created life from nonlife.
Prof. Colling reserves some of his sharpest barbs for intelligent design, the idea that the intricate structures and processes in the living world -- from exquisitely engineered flagella that propel bacteria to the marvels of the human immune system -- can't be the work of random chance and natural selection. Intelligent-design advocates look at these sophisticated components of living things, can't imagine how evolution could have produced them, and conclude that only God could have.
That makes Prof. Colling see red. "When Christians insert God into the gaps that science cannot explain -- in this case how wondrous structures and forms of life came to be -- they set themselves up for failure and even ridicule," he told me. "Soon -- and it's already happening with the flagellum -- science is going to come along and explain" how a seemingly miraculous bit of biological engineering in fact could have evolved by Darwinian mechanisms. And that will leave intelligent design backed into an ever-shrinking corner.
It won't be easy to persuade conservative Christians of this; at least half of them believe that the six-day creation story of Genesis is the literal truth. But Prof. Colling intends to try.
I've had that happen before -- usually after a bout of heavy drinking.
I thought it was back around 6000 years ago in the Garden of Eden. Or perhaps a few hundred years later before the "Flood" or perhaps just after the flood at the time of the Tower of Babel, or perhaps sometime around the time of Jesus and the evil Roman Empire, or perhaps ...
Hey, Ignoramus! Have you ever seen the moon? What does it look like? It looks like what the Earth would look like if the Earth didn't have 1) a thick atmosphere, 2) wind and water erosion, 3) oceans, and 4) plate tectonics.
The moon is pock-marked with craters. Big craters. Little craters. Medium-sized craters. Medium-big craters. Medium-little craters. Overlapping craters. Craters overlapping the overlapped craters.
And then we have this asteroid belt thing. What's supposed to have happened there?
Then we have the moons of the gas giants. Some of them look like jigsaw puzzles. They LOOK LIKE something that's been blasted apart at least once and slowly accreted back together.
Shall I guess I'm not allowed to INFER anything from DATA if it makes a Havoc argument not only WRONG but STUUUUUUU-PIID?
</Sam_Kinnison_mode>
I'm not trying to prove my position if you're begging that I'm backing ID, etc. I'm specifically rebutting your contentions that you have anything that would qualify as proof or, for that matter - as science. That puts the burden back where it belongs - on you blokes to prove your case. And as we've seen, you can't. But you can tell us planets 'sploded and made asteroied belts after the big bang turned a whole lot of nothing into something that violates the law of conservation of angular momentum and the laws of thermodynamics at the same time. And I thought when I was a kid that this was actual science. It's crap. And it stinks so bad I'm offended that you can sit at a keyboard unapologetically and try to sell it as though it were gospel. It'd be one thing if it were your religious belief - I could chalk up the blindness to vain belief. But here you're actually trying to blame it on science. It just ain't gonna work.
Not at THE SAME TIME! Try agin, numnutz!
</Havoc_mode>
Eating one thing that gives you trouble is an ingestion problem.
Eating two things that give you trouble is an indigestion problem.
(Not the English Conspiracy to require an "s" in both singular and plural clauses.)
Right back at ya. And yes I have seen the moon. And no it doesn't support your assertion into fact any more than Easter would support your assertion that Rabbits poop out eggs full of mallowchicks and m&ms. Asteroids exist, that doesn't mean a planet exploded to bring them into existance.
Shall I guess I'm not allowed to INFER
You can infer whatever you wish, it's when you start stating your assumptions as set in stone facts that I have a problem given you've nothing to base it on but your assumption. That is not science. Somebody was murdered ten paces from you. You're beligerent, therefor from your beligerence I infer that you killed her. By your standard, that settles it. So lets get you into a jumpsuit, shave your head and prep you for a potassium injection - shall we. Oh, suddenly the requirement of proof is taller.. why is that; perhaps because a life is at stake. Gee - doo tell. Some of us here believe in spiritual life and that it is far more important where we spend eternity. That makes what you're doing of vastly greater importance than whether we inject you or not - and for a majority of Americans.. 80% claim christianity in one form or another. So your bs has ramifications for hundreds of millions of people. So, yes, you are required a standard commensurate with that and if you can't respect human life any further than you've demonstrated, you are the stupid party here, sir. Your inferrances being all that you have doesn't make you right. It just makes you imaginative. And imagination aint fact. You might actually try learning what is.
How do you know? We're loading up from the office toy drive here, and I see that someone brought in, honest to goodness, a real live Sit-N-Spin. Maybe I'll just put it on top of one of the stools here, sit on it, have someone spin the stool clockwise, and then spin myself counterclockwise with the Sit-N-Spin....
In other words, "No." I'm not allowed to make even the most obvious inference from however much data, including the accumulated knowledge of science from prehistory to this afternoon, if it supports the assertion that Havoc is bullsh*tting his way through another thread.
Thank you. That's all I wanted to show the lurkers for now.
Exactly, but the numnutz thing is inappropriate. Conservation of angular momentum does unfortunately for you mean that all the planetary bodies MUST spin in the same direction if the big bang caused their existance. And No, you can't spin nothing in multiple directions at the same time in a frictionless environment and end up with retrograde movement. Yes I did take physics and Yes I'm aware that you'll hang a whale by it's tale on sewing thread from the empire state building with theoretical physics. I also know that when you start dabbling with physical laws in a frictionless environment, you pretty much screwed yourself. We just got to watch.
Someone owes you a refund.
What's your scientific credentials?
An "obvious inference".. that a planet just up and exploded. Obvious. I would think it more obvious that if there was a big bang that created all this matter from nothing, you could work in some spare crap in the batter to just float about out there for no apparent reason and wreak havoc. But, since you don't even appear to believe it yourself enough for that to be MORE obvious... It has nothing to do with anyone's opinion of your inferrance. Your inference is not a fact just because you postulate it. Nor is it science.
You can show the lurkers what you will. They've been here for longer than it took you to come up with that lame excuse for begging and have seen the whole exchange. And yes, I'm sure they'd like to be convicted of murder on more than your inferences. I sure as heck would. What about you or should I just send someone over to collect and skewer you based on my inference? Do you suppose given the stakes that facts are a little tougher to establish than your inferences? Maybe? Possibly? Or only when your life is on the line. Pathetic and disgusting that you really expect people to submit themselves to believing anything on that low a standard. Most of these people wouldn't pay for laundry soap on as cheap a claim as you make. And you want to hinge their souls on it.
The configuration you propose will produce a relatively modest or even zero net spin, thus proving my point. Nah! Nah!
No. You have claimed this twice without showing any mathematical computations to back up the claim.
What is your model of Solar System formation, Professor? Why are we required to ignore the current mainstream models based upon--red flag word ALERT!--INFERENCE from data in favor of whatever you're frantically making up on the fly as we speak? Is your model also going to account for craters on the moon and other evidence of catastrophism and chaotic interactions in the early solar system? If not, why is your model better? If being there is a requirement for positing a model, why are you allowed to impose the predictions of a model if we are not?
Yep, they sure do - of any tax money I spent that went toward teaching evolution in a school classroom. But it's nice to see that you guys have no argument beyond ad hominem and are getting really riled up about it. LOL. I'm glad you're all tinkering in something you don't know enough about to be really harmful with. Can't imagine what day to day life would be like if you guys were cops. "Oh, your honor, we found this packet of crack two blocks from the defendant and the defendant was the only one in sight, so we just infered it was hers.. what, chain of custody, what's that? Oh you're just ignorant your honor. What do you mean was she near it.. I just told you she was two blocks away, do you not have a brain. Contempt of what; you're just blind and stupid - get a degree. What's yo credentials in, toilet paper."
An environment in which Jupiter is breaking up protoplanets and the Earth-moon system is being pelted with extinction-event asteroids is not "frictionless." Hello?
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