Posted on 02/19/2011 12:01:04 PM PST by Jim Robinson
Dear Darwin Central,
Thank you very much for the nifty Darwin Central coffee mug we received in the mail from you. Sheila uses it every morning for her tea. She loves evolution. Says it's one of our awesome God's greatest creations. It's kinda like his autopilot.
I don't know about that, but do believe that God works in mysterious ways.
Isaiah 55:8 (KJV)
55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
55:10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
55:11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
55:12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
55:13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Keep the Faith!
May God bless you always,
Jim & Sheila
In Isaiah 55 the prophet speaks to Israel of Christ and the word (the word in 55:11), which is the Bible. Isaiah 55 draws an analogy between rain and snow on the the one hand and the Bible on the other. As Christ would come and speak the word of God, i.e., the good news of the Gospel, Isaiah 55 declares that like the rain and snow do not fall to no effect, but they bring forth life from the earth, so to the word of God would not just be spoken and disappear, but would also have it’s promised effects, which for 2,000 years we have seen.
Look up the phrase “sense of humor” in the dictionary. Stop by “irony” on your way. Then, even if you don’t appreciate them, at least you’ll know what they mean.
I have no use for a site that regards global warming as sacrosanct. DC completely discredits itself with their embrace of this pseudoreligion.
Why would God resort to “evolution” if He was able to see the end result before He started?
Gottlieb Daimler made a crude, topless motor buggy because he didn’t know what a Maybach 62 looked like. He couldn’t see into the future.
Get my point?
And whom would that be?
We're having a very lively discussion at this moment over there about the House cutting NASA's global warming science budget.
That group is about as agreeable as you might imagine they are, but some of us like a lively discussion.
“yeah, brilliant idea..Our loving, caring God using a process of death and agony of billions of beings/creatures over supposed billions of years......(insert sarcastic eye-roll here)” ~ raygunfan
Poor thing. Let’s see if any of this will enable you to re-think your “sarcasm”:
Why Darwinists Reject Evolution
http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-darwinists-reject-evolution.html
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The Fractured Fairy Tale of ___Darwinian___ Evolution
http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2010/02/fairy-tale-of-darwinian-evolution.html
Realism, n., an accurate representation of human nature, as seen by toads. —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Or blind lizards, as the case may be.
As we have discussed in the past, the irony is that evolution is strictly impossible if one accepts the materialistic presuppositions of metaphysical Darwinism.
Again, the idea of evolution was around long prior to Darwin, and in fact, in the first five editions of The Origin of Species, he didn’t even mention the word. Rather, he only slipped it into the sixth edition in 1872, apparently hoping that no one would notice that he was 1) redefining the plain definition of a word, in order to 2) take his theory well beyond science, and into the world of religion and metaphysics.
It is this novel fantasy of evolution-without-divinity that is so insane and destructive, not the mere science of natural selection, with which we have no problems at all. Only after Darwin was the word “evolution” widely imposed on his theory, a word that had previously referred to the idea that things unfold or “evolve” toward their prototype, like acorn to oak tree.
Thus, in point of fact, “Nothing is less like Darwin’s doctrine than the idea that new species should already be present in their ancestors, from which they only have to evolve in the course of time.”
As Gilson points out, when Darwin inserted the word “evolution” into later editions of the Origin, he was purloining a term “already in use to signify something completely different from what he himself had in mind,” i.e., “the inverse movement of in-volution, the un-rolling of the in-rolled, the de-velopment of the en-veloped.”
One might say that Darwin’s thinking devolved (in terms of philosophical sophistication) as he came to be increasingly dominated by his theory: “The more one comes to know Darwin, the more one is persuaded that, from the day when he conceived the idea of transformation of species, he felt charged with the scientific mission of revealing to men a truth which was in his eyes indubitable; but this scientific truth was at the same time the reverse of a religious certitude which he himself had lost. The antireligious always has a bit of the religious in it” (Gilson).
The reason for the latter well-documented phenomenon is that the person who has lost his faith in reality has an inner need to “proselytize” and convert others in order to not feel alone in his cosmic meaninglessness. This is the work of mind parasites. You might say that the kryptonite of mind parasites is that they must always induct others into their fantasy in order to go on being. They have no energy of their own, but must be “fed” by certain types of relationships with projected parts of the psyche — even if the relationships are frustrating, self-defeating, and growth-stifling.
This is the only way to account for the obnoxious proselytizing energy of the materialists, for if the psyche is just an illusory byproduct of matter, why should they of all animals care what others think? In contrast, if truth exists, human beings naturally wish to radiate it to others, in imitation of their Creator. That’s my position: I love truth, and just get a joy out of sharing it with other folks. But I fail to see how materialism can account for truth, love, and a passionate love of truth that has no immediate relevance whatsoever to genetic survival.
As Cardinal Schönborn points out in his foreword to Gilson’s From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution, “reductionist accounts of evolution” are only “the visible parts of an intellectual iceberg,” so that “the issues that lie under the surface of the current evolution debate are ultimately far larger and more important.”
That is, in case it’s not obvious, our contemporary zeitgeistberg goes much deeper than the often unedifying debates about intelligent design, or creationism, or separation of church and state, for ultimately it has to do with the preservation of man qua man, and the very possibility of truly human civilization.
Clearly, an unprecedented amount of change has occurred over the past three or four centuries. But change is obviously not synonymous with progress. And it is an absurdity to suggest that conservatives are somehow “opposed” to change.
Rather, what the conservative specifically wishes to conserve are the tried-and-true mechanisms that lead to progressive change, not just change for the sake of changing. Every conservative should know that a complex and dynamic system only preserves itself through change, and only changes through preservation (think of your body).
Something unique and unprecedented in human history occurred with the American founding. Somehow, Americans stumbled upon the very means to unleash human potential through liberty, individual initiative, free markets and representative democracy, to become the unrivaled economic, scientific, and political leader of the world. How did they do it?
I just recently read What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, and there is an instructive passage about the American intellectual consensus of the early 19th century, at the very time we began our ass-kicking world-historical ascent (and bear in mind that this is a secular scholar with no religious agenda whatsoever):
“As this chapter is written in the early twenty-first century, the hypothesis that the universe reflects intelligent design has provoked a bitter debate in the United States. How very different was the intellectual world of the early nineteenth century! Then, virtually everyone believed in intelligent design. Faith in the rational design of the universe underlay the worldview of the Enlightenment, shared by Isaac Newton, John Locke, and the American Founding Fathers....
“The commonly used expression ‘the book of nature’ referred to the universal practice of viewing nature as a revelation of God’s power and wisdom. Christians were fond of saying that they accepted two divine revelations: the Bible and the book of nature.” (Raccoons, of course, accept three, including the mirrorcle of the human subject.)
Howe goes on to say that the belief that nature revealed the divine power and wisdom “constituted one of the principal motivations for scientific activity in the early republic, along with national pride, the hope for useful applications, and the joy of science itself.... The perceived harmony between religion and science worked to their mutual advantage with the public” (emphasis mine).
So, the very roots of America’s scientific dominance reflect precisely what we were saying yesterday about the balance and harmony of idealism/rationalism and empiricism, and the relevance of that balance to the progress of science. Do I wish to conserve this harmony? Indeed I do — not in order to prevent the further evolution of human potential, but to make it possible! Perhaps the radical materialists have failed to notice that it has only been with the ascent of secular fundamentalism and the stranglehold of liberals on our public schools that America’s educational decline commenced.
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The Children of Light vs. the Communist Maninfestation
http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2006/10/children-of-light-vs-communist.html
“...You might say that God first created “horizontal man,” who is capable only of organic or biological growth. But he then corrected this deficiency by creating “vertical man” who is capable of spiritual evolution. This new kind of man, who had had a living soul breathed into him, “possessed in a latent state a potential that the purely animal world does not possess, that of passing on to the human and even superhuman stages of development.” ...
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Creation Myths of the Tenured
http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2010/08/creation-myths-of-tenured.html
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And for the atheists:
On the Probability of God’s Certainty http://tinyurl.com/ykdvdcq
“...People who pretend to not understand the link between Darwinism or atheism and nazism or communism are just willfully obtuse, for the great mystery of the cosmos is not why evil, or falsehood, or oppression, or ugliness, exist.
Rather, as always, the question is how truth, or goodness, or beauty, can exist in a wholly naturalistic cosmos. Not why there are sinners, but why there are saints. Not why there is despair, but why there is hope and joy. Not why there are liars who take advantage, but why there is Truth to which a good person naturally wishes to conform his being. ....... “
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Tone Deaf Factsimians and Their Haudible Godlessness
http://tinyurl.com/24buzh
“...there is no reason to take anyone seriously who believes existence to be absurd, since anything they can say will be equally absurd. And no one is more proudly absurd than the atheist.
They sent you a mug? Too funny! Regards to Sheila from me, I’m glad she’s enjoying the mug.
Jim, I just wanted you to know that somebody has gone and started preaching all over your nice thank-you note.
Good things never last long, do they?
“I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if Evolution is true.” ~ C. S. Lewis
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John Paul II:
“...What is the significance of such a theory? To address this question is to enter the field of epistemology. A theory is a metascientific elaboration distinct from the results of observation, but consistent with them. By means of it a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation. A theory’s validity depends on whether or not it can be verified; it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought. Furthermore, while the formulation of a theory like that of evolution complies with the need for consistency with the observed data, it borrows certain notions from natural philosophy.
And, to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution.
On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based. Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist, and spiritualist interpretations. What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology. Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person. ...” - John Paul II October 22, 1996 Excerpted from: Theories of Evolution http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9703/articles/johnpaul.html
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“No science is ever frightening to Christians. Religious people don’t need the science to come out any particular way on IQ or AIDS or sex differences any more than they need the science to come out any particular way on evolution...If evolution is true, then God created evolution.” ~ Ann Coulter — P.277 Godless http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1657102/posts?page=45#45
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Chris Matthews’ question to Rush:: “You want to educate the American peep about science and its relevance. Do you believe in evolution?”
“Yeah. I believe in evolution.”
“Oh, you do? We got a Republican believes in evolution!”
“Yeah, wait, Chris! Wait, though! It can’t explain creation. I mean, we’ve got both. Where did it come from, Chris? Don’t give me the Big Bang. Don’t give me evolution for the Big Bang. Where did this all come from, what was it before it was what it is? Certainly things evolve. There’s no question. There’s no denying it. But evolution does not explain creation.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2245676/posts?page=23#23
Now, don’t be bad-mouthing C.S.Lewis, the Pope, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, now.:)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2676523/posts?page=30#30
Have you written a book?
Placemark
Thanks, Jim and Sheila -- and Amen!
Is that a whiff of ozone in the air?
Since I post on DC as well as FR I have been asked by a moderator there to reply with a very cordial thank you from all of us at Darwin Central.
For some reason my first link in post #26 doesn’t work. Let’s try that again:
Why Darwinists Reject Evolution
http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-darwinists-reject-evolution.html
Please comment on matchett’s essay at #26. thanks to all of you.
thanks for the info
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