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.
I had a similar background. And up to about age 20 intended to become a Southern Baptist missionary. I even attended Oklahoma Baptist University for a bit.
Zero, the energy barrier is too high and so are the spacial constraints.
I'm working on a paper that says just that, including some basic calculations. Do you know how difficult it is to calculate repeated Bernoulli trials with extremely large numbers?
Ohh, surely there are over 4 billion non christians of planet earth, who have been affected by slavery, inquisitions, crusades and other extremely immoral actions caused by your "impeccable Christianity based ethical system" who might have a problem with religion interfering with ethics in the first place.
You may be an "engineer" of sorts but your knowledge of history is way off.
Can I ask you a personal question?
What training or experience do you have in probability theory? I ask because what you think and what I think about the application of probability is so different.
No. And please spare me the details; I'm not qualified to handle it. But I wish you well with your work!
All I want is this: I dont come to your chapel and tell you how to pray and what to pray about.. You dont come to my science class and tell me what to learn/teach.
I reject most of the Council of Orange, starting with Canon 1. ie. there's no such thing as original sin. The proof is God's own words in John 9 and Ezek 18.
"Your list can just as well have come from the moon. They are orgs and institutions that support abortion, killing embryos for research, add nauseum.
The list contains sound science. Mr. Henry doesn't post bogus matl's. What any particular scientists do outside their work is irrelevant to the work. The work stands on it's own. Mr. Henry will remove anything that contains errors.
"Without a Christian based ethically supportive science, only dangers lie ahead."
The laws of nature are what they are and are sufficient to describe all that you see. You were told that in Matt 38-39.
When I was 10 or 11 I guess, I was such an incredible geek that instead of going out and playing sports with my friends I spent most of my time reading. (Except golf and baseball) At the time I was living with my grandparents who resided in a small town that did not receive TV broadcasts.
That time pretty much hooked me on science, mostly astronomy. Back in 1969 I did my main grade 8 literary assignment on quasars. The choices I gave myself were either that or Mars.
So, you really want to know? Good, then I'll tell you. The numbers got so large I had to stop calculating and start approximating. Eventually I just gave up and went to a bunch of monkeys typing a Shakespeare poem. The numbers are much easier to handle.
Ever wondered why the original statement used monkeys?
You dont come to my science class and tell me what to learn/teach.
Because the analogy is so old it started back when we were all monkeys?
My credentials? No I am not a biological scientist but I don't let Darwin or Marx or anyone else tell me how and what to think. The classoroom should allow the students that same freedom from conformity.
Chew on this:
"'...It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.'
Personal letter (written 10 April 1979) from Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London, to Luther D. Sunderland, Master Books, San Diego, USA, 1984, p.89 in 'Darwin's Enigma' by Luther D. Sunderland."
Because, of all the species capable of typing, only monkeys are stupid enough to sit there for 4 billion years.
But if gumlegs wants to repost his excellent rebuttal to the Patterson quote, that's fine.
"Personal letter (written 10 April 1979) from Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London, to Luther D. Sunderland, Master Books, San Diego, USA, 1984, p.89 in 'Darwin's Enigma' by Luther D. Sunderland."
Should we tell him?
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