Posted on 08/18/2005 5:17:34 PM PDT by curiosity
The appeal of "intelligent design" to the American right is obvious. For religious conservatives, the theory promises to uncover God's fingerprints on the building blocks of life. For conservative intellectuals in general, it offers hope that Darwinism will yet join Marxism and Freudianism in the dustbin of pseudoscience. And for politicians like George W. Bush, there's little to be lost in expressing a skepticism about evolution that's shared by millions.
In the long run, though, intelligent design will probably prove a political boon to liberals, and a poisoned chalice for conservatives. Like the evolution wars in the early part of the last century, the design debate offers liberals the opportunity to portray every scientific battle--today, stem-cell research, "therapeutic" cloning, and end-of-life issues; tomorrow, perhaps, large-scale genetic engineering--as a face-off between scientific rigor and religious fundamentalism. There's already a public perception, nurtured by the media and by scientists themselves, that conservatives oppose the "scientific" position on most bioethical issues. Once intelligent design runs out of steam, leaving its conservative defenders marooned in a dinner-theater version of Inherit the Wind, this liberal advantage is likely to swell considerably.
And intelligent design will run out of steam--a victim of its own grand ambitions. What began as a critique of Darwinian theory, pointing out aspects of biological life that modification-through-natural-selection has difficulty explaining, is now foolishly proposed as an alternative to Darwinism. On this front, intelligent design fails conspicuously--as even defenders like Rick Santorum are beginning to realize--because it can't offer a consistent, coherent, and testable story of how life developed. The "design inference" is a philosophical point, not a scientific theory: Even if the existence of a designer is a reasonable inference to draw from the complexity of, say, a bacterial flagellum, one would still need to explain how the flagellum moved from design to actuality.
And unless George W. Bush imposes intelligent design on American schools by fiat and orders the scientific establishment to recant its support for Darwin, intelligent design will eventually collapse--like other assaults on evolution that failed to offer an alternative--under the weight of its own overreaching.
If liberals play their cards right, this collapse could provide them with a powerful rhetorical bludgeon. Take the stem-cell debate, where the great questions are moral, not scientific--whether embryonic human life should be created and destroyed to prolong adult human life. Liberals might win that argument on the merits, but it's by no means a sure thing. The conservative embrace of intelligent design, however, reshapes the ideological battlefield. It helps liberals cast the debate as an argument about science, rather than morality, and paint their enemies as a collection of book-burning, Galileo-silencing fanatics.
This would be the liberal line of argument anyway, even without the controversy surrounding intelligent design. "The president is trapped between religion and science over stem cells," declared a Newsweek cover story last year; "Religion shouldn't undercut new science," the San Francisco Chronicle insisted; "Leadership in 'therapeutic cloning' has shifted abroad," the New York Times warned, because American scientists have been "hamstrung" by "religious opposition"--and so on and so forth. But liberalism's science-versus-religion rhetoric is only likely to grow more effective if conservatives continue to play into the stereotype by lining up to take potshots at Darwin.
Already, savvy liberal pundits are linking bioethics to the intelligent design debate. "In a world where Koreans are cloning dogs," Slate's Jacob Weisberg wrote last week, "can the U.S. afford--ethically or economically--to raise our children on fraudulent biology?" (Message: If you're for Darwin, you're automatically for unfettered cloning research.) Or again, this week's TNR makes the pretty-much-airtight "case against intelligent design"; last week, the magazine called opponents of embryo-destroying stem cell research "flat-earthers." The suggested parallel is obvious: "Science" is on the side of evolution and on the side of embryo-killing.
Maureen Dowd, in her inimitable way, summed up the liberal argument earlier this year:
Exploiting God for political ends has set off powerful, scary forces in America: a retreat on teaching evolution, most recently in Kansas; fights over sex education . . . a demonizing of gays; and a fear of stem cell research, which could lead to more of a "culture of life" than keeping one vegetative woman hooked up to a feeding tube.
Terri Schiavo, sex education, stem cell research--on any issue that remotely touches on science, a GOP that's obsessed with downing Darwin will be easily tagged as medieval, reactionary, theocratic. And this formula can be applied to every new bioethical dilemma that comes down the pike. Earlier this year, for instance, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued ethical guidelines for research cloning, which blessed the creation of human-animal "chimeras"--animals seeded with human cells. New York Times reporter Nicholas Wade, writing on the guidelines, declared that popular repugnance at the idea of such creatures is based on "the pre-Darwinian notion that species are fixed and penalties [for cross-breeding] are severe." In other words, if you're opposed to creating pig-men--carefully, of course, with safeguards in place (the NAS guidelines suggested that chimeric animals be forbidden from mating)--you're probably stuck back in the pre-Darwinian ooze with Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
There's an odd reversal-of-roles at work here. In the past, it was often the right that tried to draw societal implications from Darwinism, and the left that stood against them. And for understandable reasons: When people draw political conclusions from Darwin's theory, they're nearly always inegalitarian conclusions. Hence social Darwinism, hence scientific racism, hence eugenics.
Which is why however useful intelligent design may be as a rhetorical ploy, liberals eager to claim the mantle of science in the bioethics battle should beware. The left often thinks of modern science as a child of liberalism, but if anything, the reverse is true. And what scientific thought helped to forge--the belief that all human beings are equal--scientific thought can undermine as well. Conservatives may be wrong about evolution, but they aren't necessarily wrong about the dangers of using Darwin, or the National Academy of Sciences, as a guide to political and moral order.
Intelligent design is not creationism. Rather it is an more open question.
Real IDers don't need no stinkin' lab. They already know all the answers!
First of all I didn't state that evolution addresses the creation of life, I merely corrected a statement made by a fellow poster. Second of all science does address the creation of life and there are numerous fields studying same. Some names given to these fields of study are Chemical Evolution, Abiogenesis and once upon a time Spontaneous Generation.
But thanks for the lecture.
Wrong?
The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion
Notice the word CERTAIN. I will let you figure out the rest.
Of course not...but God gave man free will...or else man would not be human but a robot and man choose his fate, in addtion because God KNEW what man would choose He KNEW that He would sacrifice His only Son and His Son offered His life freely to reestablish the relationship between God and his Creation
Why?
One word
Love
My Ford Explorer Sport Trac is made from metal, petroleum products and rubber. All these things were here before man arrived on the scene. How come cars weren't here waiting for us when man showed up on this planet? A car is nowhere near as complex and complicated as the human body. If human beings can evolve from "cosmic dust," it seems it wouldn't have been a big thing to have cars here waiting for us when we showed up. Maybe the wind wasn't blowing from the right direction.
In my mind, both the "Sponeaneous combustion" crowd and the folks who believe that Genesis is the absolute literal definitive true fact of how it happened are wrong........
or maybe they're both a little bit right:
EXTRATERRESTRIALS? THE VATICAN SAID 'YES'
The death of Pope John Paul II has occasioned widespread discussions about his own stand and the Vatican's position regarding a variety of subjects, from purely theological to social issues. Completely lacking has been any reference to an issue of concern to many, and especially to those interested in the subjects of UFO's, Life on other planets, and Extraterrestrials in general, and in Zecharia Sitchin's writings in particular.
As it happened, it was exactly five years ago, in April 2000, that Zecharia engaged in a public discussion of those very issues with a leading theologian of the Vatican, Monsignor Corrado Balducci, during an international conference held in Bellaria (Bimini) in Italy. The historic dialogue was reported at the time on this official website of Zecharia Sitchin; hereunder is the full text of that report which speaks for itself.
Dialogue in Bellaria
SITCHIN AND VATICAN THEOLOGIAN DISCUSS UFO's,
EXTRATERRESTRIALS, ANGELS, CREATION OF MAN
Report by Zecharia Sitchin
In what must be a historic first, a high official of the Vatican and a Hebrew scholar discussed the issue of Extraterrestrials and the Creation of Man, and though different from each other in upbringing, background, religion and methodology, nevertheless arrived at common conclusions:
* Yes, Extraterrestrials can and do exist on other planets
* Yes, they can be more advanced than us
* Yes, materially, Man could have been fashioned from a pre-existing sentient being.
The Participants
The high Vatican official was Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a Catholic theologian with impressive credentials: A member of the Curia of the Roman Catholic Church, a Prelate of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Propagation of the Faith, leading exorcist of the Archdiocese of Rome, a member of the Vatican's Beatification Committee, an expert on Demonology and the author of several books. Appointed in the Vatican to deal with the issue of UFO's and Extraterrestrials, he has made in recent years pronouncements indicating a tolerance of the subjects; but he has never before met and had a dialogue with a Hebrew scholar, and gone beyond prescribed formulations to include the touchy issue of the Creation of Man.
The Hebrew scholar was me -- Zecharia Sitchin: A researcher of ancient civilizations, a biblical archaeologist, a descendant of Abraham…
The Monsignor and I almost met for such a dialogue last December, but it did not come about. This time we were scheduled to meet in Bellaria, Italy, at a conference whose theme was “The Mystery of Human Existence.” I arrived there with my wife and a score of fans from the USA, on March 31st, scheduled to address the audience of over a thousand the next day. The Monsignor was nowhere in sight; but he was there the next morning to hear my presentation. “I drove the whole night from Rome to hear you,” he said.
Sitchin’s Presentation
My talk, ably translated by my Italian editor Tuvia Fogel, included a slide presentation that added a pictorial dimension to the evidence from ancient times in support of Sumerian texts, on which my eight books based the following conclusions:
We are not alone -- not just in the vast universe, but in our own solar system; There is one more planet in our solar system, orbiting beyond Pluto but nearing Earth periodically; Advanced "Extraterrestrials” -- the Sumerians called them Anunnaki, the Bible Nefilim -- started to visit our planet some 450,000 years ago; And, some 300,000 years ago, they engaged in genetic engineering to upgrade Earth's hominids and fashion Homo sapiens, the Adam. In that, they acted as Emissaries for the Universal Creator -- God.
The Dialogue
"We have much to talk about,” Msgr. Balducci said to me as he came forward to congratulate me on my presentation; "I have great esteem for your scholarship," he said.
We returned to the hotel for lunch. Our table was surrounded in a semi-circle by my American fans, intent on not missing a word of the forthcoming dialogue. In the hours-long session, Msgr. Balducci outlined the positions he was going to state, from a prepared text, in his talk the next day. While my approach was based on physical evidence, his was a purely Roman Catholic theological-philosophical one, seeking the spiritual aspects. Yet, our conclusions converged.
Msgr. Balducci's Positions
ON UFO's. "There must be something in it." The hundreds and thousands of eyewitness reports leave no room for denying that there is a measure of truth in them, even allowing for optical illusions, atmospheric phenomena and so on. As a Catholic theologian such witnessing cannot be dismissed. "Witnessing is one way of transmitting truth, and in the case of the Christian religion, we are talking about a Divine Revelation in which witnessing is crucial to the credibility of our faith.”
ON LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS: “That life may exist on other planets is certainly possible... The Bible does not rule out that possibility. On the basis of scripture and on the basis of our knowledge of God's omnipotence, His wisdom being limitless, we must affirm that life on other planets is possible." Moreover, this is not only possible, but also credible and even probable. '"Cardinal Nicolo Cusano (1401-1464) wrote that there is not a single star in the sky about which we can rule out the existence of life, even if different from ours.”
ON INTELLIGENT EXTRATERRESTRIALS: "When I talk about Extraterrestrials, we must think of beings who are like us -- more probably, beings more advanced than us, in that their nature is an association of a material part and a spiritual part, a body and a soul, although in different proportions than human beings on Earth." Angels are beings who are purely spiritual, devoid of bodies, while we are made up of spirit and matter but still at a low level. "It is entirely credible that in the enormous distance between Angels and humans, there could be found some middle stage, that is beings with a body like ours but more elevated spiritually. If such intelligent beings really exist on other planets, only science will be able to prove; but in spite of what some people think, we would be in a position to reconcile their existence with the Redemption that Christ has brought us.”
The Anunnaki and the Creation of Man
Well then, I asked Msgr. Balducci, does it mean that my presentation was no great revelation to you? We appear to agree, I said, that more advanced extraterrestrials can exist, and I use science to evidence their coming to Earth ...I then quote the Sumerian texts that say that the Anunnaki (“Those who from heaven to Earth came”) genetically improved an existing being on Earth to create the being that the Bible calls Adam.
My conclusion regarding your presentation, Msgr. Balducci answered, is that more than anything else your whole approach is based on physical evidence, it concerns itself with matter, not with spirit. This is an important distinction, "because if this distinction is made, I can bring up the view of the great theologian, Professor Father Marakoff, who is still alive and is greatly respected by the Church. He formulated the hypothesis that when God created Man and put the soul into him, perhaps what is meant is not that Man was created from mud or lime, but from something pre-existing, even from a sentient being capable of feeling and perception. So the idea of taking a pre-man or hominid and creating someone who is aware of himself is something that Christianity is coming around to…The key is the distinction between the material body and the soul granted by God."
From Anunnaki to God
Yes, I responded to the Vatican theologian, in my writings I deal with the physical evidence; but already in my first book (The 12th Planet), the very last sentence of the last paragraph raises the question: If the Extraterrestrials "created" us, who created them on their planet?
From this my own thinking and the contents of my subsequent books evolved toward the spiritual or "divine" aspects. The Anunnaki, I have explained, were just emissaries (and that is what the Hebrew word Malachim, translated Angels, means). They thought that it was their decision to come here for selfish reasons and to fashion us because they needed workers; but in truth they only carried out the Almighty God's wishes and plans.
If such Extraterrestrials were so involved, Msgr. Balducci said, even by your own interpretation they had to do with Man's physics, body and rationality: but God alone had to do with the Soul!
My second book, that deals with Man's aspiration to ascend the heavens, is titled The Stairway to Heaven, I told Msgr, Balducci, "it seems to me that we are ascending the same stairway to heaven, though from different steps," I said.
We ended the dialogue as friends, determined to stay in touch and continue.
That extremely bad theology. Also known as "God of the gaps." If God can only hide in the "crevices of missing knowledge", then the amount of space allocated to him is going to decline exponetially over time. Science has a tendency of filling those "crevices," you know. Right now, those crevices are very few in number. In a few years, they will be even fewer.
What happens if one day scientists are able to create a simple life form in the lab? It may happen. There is no a priori reason to think it won't happen. What would happen to your faith if it did? It would not shake mine.
Is your Ford Explorer Sport Trac -- or any Ford Explorer Sprot Trac -- capable of making an imperfect copy of itself, either on its own or with the aid of another Ford Explorer Sport Trac?
None has been found. In fact there is so much evidence to the contrary, that this point is no longer a consideration. Now the mechanisms are known well enough, that this statement has been relegated to the "proof of a negative" catagory.
Mine hasn't evolved that far yet but I'll check with the Ford on how these things come about.
He might have called it "Eden."
No, it's the boron.
Type IIb: These diamonds contain no nitrogen - but they contain boron, which absorbs red, orange and yellow light. These diamonds therefore usually appear to be blue, although they can also be grey or nearly colorless. All naturally blue diamonds belong to Type IIb, which makes up 0.1% of all diamonds.
My F350 spits on your Ford Explorer Sport Trac.
Besides this argument shows you are very ignorant of science, evolution, and other closely related subjects. Analogies should relate!
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