Posted on 08/01/2005 10:58:13 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.
But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."
Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.
In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Schönborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.
This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.
How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.
To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.
It's from Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy. Darwin and social Darwinism as proposed by Spencer was an intellectual shock to many in the 19th century. It challenged their vision of the world -- or that part of the world they wanted to partition off.
He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. -- from Moby Dick.
"I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it's been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has."
Malcolm Muggeridge (world famous journalist and philosopher), Pascal Lectures, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Fair enough.
Take care.
:-)
Nobel prize winner George Wald has said, 'Time is the hero of the plot. Given enough time anything can happen- the impossible becomes probable, the improbable becomes certain.'
Try and think.
I wonder what he would say if he looked at all the evidence uncovered in the last 50 years ...
You mean the Martin Luther referenced in Post 922?
The theory of evolution is taught as theory. What you really want is for it to be taught as supposition, which it is not. Why do you not also want geology, geophysics, astronomy, physics, cosmology and other sciences that say the universe is >15 billion years old and undirected taught as supposition?
The observation the ToE explains is considered fact. It is called evolution. That observation is the variance in allele frequencies within a population over time due to differential replication/reproduction. Why should other beliefs be taught in a science class? Theories are taught in science class.
Sounds like he was the missing link between Christianity and Hitler.
That is probably a quote mine, but it is definitely an 'appeal to authority'.
The green one. Down the hall, second left.
My evidence would be found here:
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8,9
"For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." John 3:16
"Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise"." Luke 23:43
"I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me." John 14:6
And several other passages throughout the New Testament.
What, exactly, are Malcolm Muggeridge's credentials in the field of biology?
Not even close.
Generally, I like to agree with Krauthammer, but I don't on this one.
Intelligent design does not undermine science.
Science means knowledge, and at it's root is about acquiring factual, actual knowledge.
Intelligent design is a mathematical model that demonstrates how improbable it is for inanimate objects to combine into animate ones. Its math says that it very nearly approaches zero, and that, in fact, you have a far better chance of winning the next 280,000,000 dollar Lotto. (And you know how good that chance is for YOU. :>)
One verification of this rarity would seem to be the lack of oodles of alien life forms from the billions upon billions of planets that must exist among the unimaginable number of stars. About the only place you see them are in George Lucas movies with Luke Skywalker & crew.
So...it's awesomely rare....zero for all practical purposes.
Fact. Adds to the body of KNOWLEDGE. Science.
Yes...I mean that Martin Luther.
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