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It's more like the other way around. Ever since the Enlightenment - heck, ever since Galileo - the Church has been trying to keep the faith intellectually respectable as new scientific discoveries have kept threatening specific literalist interpretations of the Bible.
Some scientific theories are so well-supported that it would be foolish for the Church to try to deny them in order to save a particular piece of dogma. So they re-interpret the Biblical passage or the dogma instead, thus protecting the faith.
Other sects have chosen to d@mn the science, full speed ahead (to varying degrees). It's a very open marketplace of ideas.
(In the opinion of this former Catholic, long-since atheist.)
nope, there is no conflict between theism and Darwin's theory. There is also no conflict with disagreeing either, but the idea that it is one or another is just stupid IMO.
So what? The test for every theory is its explanatory and predictive powers, not its relationship with any theology. So far, Darwinism successfully supported the development of major fields [biology, medicine, biotech industry]. These developments [like genetic manipulation, for example] continue, for Darwinism is working there.
Only a small percentage of Creationists aren't idiotic enough to figure out that evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life.
Unfortunately, the author of this piece isn't one of them.
Yes, strict Darwinism dogmatizes that there is no qualitative difference between humanity and other animals, that there is no fixity of species, that humanity can evolve into something else, that life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. All of these are either contradictory or at least problematic for Jewish and Christian theology. However, many of these positions trespass into the fields of ontology and metaphysics, and I think it's possible to retrieve Darwinism and its followers from its philosophical overreach.
I'm told Etienne Gilson's "From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again" quite admirably rescues Darwinism from its philosophical incoherence.
Any time self proclaimed scientists makes the assumption that there is no God, because it appears unguided evolution is possible, they are no longer following deductive reasoning or the scientific process. They are philosophers, adhering to Materialism...purely on faith.
It is poisoned reasoning.
Buttressing his argument that Darwinism is a godless account of nature, Wilson reminds readers that Darwin rejected Christianity, and that this "shedding of blind faith gave him the intellectual fearlessness to explore human evolution wherever logic and evidence took him."
BS. Darwind abandond tetology due to his work, he abondond faith only after the tragic death of his daughter (who could blame him?). He NEVER was an athiest. He was, by his own words, agnositic before he died.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
For anyone to take Darwin and translate that into "proof" that there is no God is nothing but supposition and not based on empirical evidence or any verifiable claim of science just as the belief in God can not be based on empirical evidence. There is no scientific evidence that proves either view.
What we have here is two opposing "faiths", one pro-God, and one anti-God, throwing rocks at each other with poor Mr. Darwin and the rest of us who can accept both God and evolution, stuck in the middle. It's nonsense.
There are a number of different concepts that can be used when talking about evolution. Unfortunately, many people do not stop to define the terms they are using when getting into discussions on evolution and teaching "evolution" in the classroom. Because of this, educators and parents and students can easily misunderstand one another. Below are some general terms often involved in discussions about evolutionary theory. Sorting these out can help one keep definitions straight when discussing origins and the value of "evolutionary" education in the classroom.
Change over time: The most basic definition of evolution is simply "the process of change or development over a period of time". Hence, music, cultures, sports teams all "evolve". In biology, classes of animals and plants have experienced marked change over dozens or hundreds or thousands of years. At one time, beavers were as big as today's bears, and ancient ground sloths once grew to be the size of oxen. There were once little three-toed horses and large cats with monstrous saber-like fangs. Over time, groups of animals diversify, as shown by the fossil record and common observation. This definition is extremely broad, and says nothing about what caused the change or where the beavers or sloths came from in the first place.
Descent with Modification: This term that Darwin used basically means that living creatures have the ability to create offspring like themselves, but with the potential for variation. Today, descent with modification is explained through the field of genetics and studies involving DNA, the coding mechanism of life. Through the code of DNA, creatures can produce offspring like themselves, yet with room for variation. Brown-eyed parents who have recessive gene coding for blue eyes can produce blue-eyed children. Cats can give birth to kittens with a range of characteristics, all in one litter, depending on the specific DNA coding passed on to each kitten by its mother and its father.
Adaptation: Sometimes an offspring receives certain traits or characteristics from its parents that allow it to survive in certain situations better than in others. Large-beaked finches adapt better to eating hard, large seeds, because their beaks are strong enough to crush them. Finches with long, thin beaks adapt better to getting food out of hard-to-reach places.
Survival of the Fittest: This basic concept promoted by Darwin argues that those organisms that are best able to adapt to a particular environment will live to produce more offspring. For instance, when there is plenty of food, all the finches on an island can do well. However, during times of drought, only the finches with the strongest beaks will be able to eat the hardest seeds, enabling them to survive and reproduce. If other finches with longer, thinner beaks can get seeds from places the rest of the finches can't, these will survive and reproduce. The other finches that can't compete for the food supply will die out. Soon, the "specialized" finches are reproducing more "specialized" offspring like themselves, so that obvious variations start showing up between the different groups of finches.
Natural Selection: Adaptation and Survival of the Fittest work together to create success among certain groups of creatures with certain genetic variations. "Nature" selects which ones survive based on which ones are best adapted to their environment and best able to overcome the competition. Natural Selection includes both ecological selection (overcoming competition for food, safety, shelter) and sexual selection.
Genetic Drift: This refers to the way small populations of creatures end up reproducing and passing on their genetic information and becoming specialized even if they are not the best adapted to an environment. If all the competition got killed by a lightening storm or flood or avalanche, those left behind would continue to reproduce and survive, whether or not they were the best suited to survive otherwise.
Most of the above concepts can be seen regularly in nature and are largely beyond dispute. However, the following ideas start creating heavy debate:
Speciation: This term refers to the formation of new "species" over time, generally through the mechanisms of natural selection and survival of the fittest. When many people talk about "evolution", they often mean "speciation", arguing that through natural selection, entirely new species have been formed.
Whether this can be proven actually depends on the definition of the term "species" (there is still a great deal of arguing among scientists on this subject). Usually, a species is considered to be a group that does not reproduce with other groups. Finches may become so specialized that they no longer mate with other kinds of finches. These can be considered a new "species" of finch.
Yet, evolutionists often extrapolate to argue that through these processes thousands or millions of years ago, finches evolved from some more generic form of bird, which evolved from some more generic form of vertebrate. The line should be drawn at the DNA evidence. What does the DNA allow for? How much genetic variation was originally available in the DNA of the earliest finches, and how can we determine it? Natural Selection can only work with the DNA code already present, and cannot create new DNA coding that did not previously exist. The specialized finches are still finches, and are not turning into some other kind of bird.
Mutation: To deal with this obvious problem of DNA coding, some evolutionary scientists have argued that through small mutations, new information can be added to the genetic code.
However, there is much debate over this issue. Mutations are naturally destructive and cause damage, and evolutionary scientists have been hard pressed to find "beneficial mutations". On rare occasion, a mutation can help a creature survive when it would otherwise not be able to, but only because the mutation has caused a malfunction. For instance, children with sickle-cell anemia are more resistant to malaria, but this is because their red blood cells are not functioning properly, (and large numbers still die from the sickle-cell anemia). Many "super bugs" in hospitals are immune to antibiotics -because they are actually mutated, sickly bacteria and can't function properly to take in the antibiotics. When put in competition with normal bacteria outside of a hospital setting, these "super bugs" can die off quickly.
The General Theory of Evolution: This is the popular but controversial idea that all life on earth started in a primordial soup, and that all the variation of life on earth arose through gradual evolution by way of mutation, adaptation, and survival of the fittest.
This is where the heavy argumentation over "evolution" is often focused. The general theory that all life on earth evolved from primordial microbes is based on philosophical beliefs about the nature of nature, on models, on extrapolations, and on guesswork – because it deals with theories about things that cannot be directly observed or reproduced. The best scientists can do is create models and work to fit the observable evidence to their models. In this sense, evolutionary theory is absolutely a "work in progress".
While many concepts in "evolutionary" science are useful in understanding genetics and the variations between species, it is important to recognize where observation ends, and where extrapolation and theorizing begin. Those in the information sciences recognize the vital importance of focusing on information and the genetic code, and of determining where the DNA code originated in the first place. Without a mechanism for adding information to the genetic code, natural selection and adaptation can only produce more specialized finches or dogs or horses, but they cannot tell us how finch or dog or horse DNA was programmed in the first place.
Related Links:
• Who's really pushing 'bad science'? - Answers in Genesis>
• Definitions of "evolution" - SIU Department of Zoology
• Evolution and Creation Resources - Koinonia House
• Intelligent design evolving into hot issue - Indy Star
• 'Intelligent design' backers lose in Pennsylvania - USA Today
Reprinted from
Why is this a conservative issue?
Is there any correlation between those who favor ID and those who fear Bird Flu?
I've always had a problem with people who say that it's "not necesary" that there be a God for this or that to have happened, as though they were saying something significant.
Suppose you got one of them there domino extravaganzas, where somebody has taken weeks to set up millions of dominos. One push sets the whole thing in motion, and with that first push the fall of the last domino becomes inevitable.
After they fall, you can look at the tumbled dominos and say, “It’s not necessary that there was a first pusher. Given the time span involved, that first domino had to fall sooner or later. Or it could have been an earthquake, or a vagrant breeze, or maybe lightening struck it.”
And you can keep saying that as long as you never have to ask the question, “Why was all them dominos set up so that one push would knock them all down, one right after the other?” Or worse yet, “Where did all them dad-gum dominos come from, anyway?”
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So inability to use randomness is a limitation of George Neumayr's God. It's always amusing to see how the religious limit their deities.
read later.