Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)
In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,
"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."
John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.
Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.
Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).
According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:
“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)
Falling Stars and Damnable Heresy
Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.
Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:
"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)
In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.
As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.
Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:
“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,
“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)
The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.
With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)
This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.
Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.
Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:
“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:
“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)
Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)
Pouring more contempt on them he asked,
“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)
Concerning Matthew 19:5:
“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)
And concerning Cor. 15:21-22:
“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)
After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,
“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)
The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.
From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,
“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
You might chalk it up as just a mistake, since debates about religion would normally appear in a religion forum.
But the problem is that FR religion threads are held to very high standards of personal conduct -- no insults, no hint of profanity, etc. -- and anyone willing to defend the science of evolution is not likely to visit a religion forum where they are condemned as promoting a:
By contrast, "news-activism" forums usually allow more free-wheeling discourse, with blunter, rougher language -- language which might even approach in its mocking, insulting tone that of the article above.
And just in case we don't use such language here, then YHAOS has prepared a list of alleged insults against Christians from FOUR YEARS AGO to "prove" the point.
So, my guess is they classified it as News/Activism for the purpose of inviting folks like you and me to defend science, in the hopes of provoking us into language that is as insulting to them as their article above is to us.
Somehow, this makes them happier.
Having already considered those two possibilites, it seemed polite to pose the question and provide the opportunity for clarification if it was a simple mistake.
Defend Science? ... Bwahahahaha ... thanks, I needed a good laugh this morning!
Clearly, you do not. Or, perhaps more accurately, you choose not to.
“And in the FOUR YEARS since, you can produce no new quotes?”
In the above, you allege no new quotes, and you set the standard to be less than “FOUR YEARS.” Prove what you allege.
In the meantime, typical of the propagandist, you evade the serious remarks of Miz boop’s (in her post #175, this thread) to focus on the trivial. Let us see if you can address yourself to the remarks of Miz boop’s that you’ve left unanswered:
* Do you object to the “Universe” being portrayed as “the Creation,” and being characterized as a process that unfolds in space and time, from a beginning, progressively developing its potentialities as it “evolves.” Why?
* The Theory of Evolution is a biological theory. Do you object to the word “evolve” (in any of its derivations) being used in some other context? Why?
* Do you disagree with the proposition that randomness cannot serve as an organizational principle governing the evolutionary process?
* Do you disagree with the proposition that randomness cannot cease to be “random,” and actually evolve into “something”?
* Can you state, without equivocation, that the purpose of “Evolution” is to achieve “reproductive fitness”?
* Can you state, without equivocation, that Man is a “vicious predatory animal”? Why?
* It is at this point that Miz boop observes that “dogmatic, bitter-ender, materialist” Darwinists and “thoughtful” Christians cannot see “eye-to-eye” because they do not even stand on the same “ground of Being.” Do you agree or disagree?
* Miz boop goes on to observe that Christians (and I would add Judeo-Christians) do not believe the universe is a random development. Do you agree? Disagree?
* She states further that, “What I find truly fascinating is that recent findings in scientific physical cosmology seem to corroborate God's statements in Genesis 1.” Agree or disagree? Why?
Other than that, you’re doing great!
But you're not "anti-science", right?
I look forward to reading the answers to betty boop’s questions, dear YHAOS!
Don’t hold your breath.
“But you’re not “anti-science”, right?”
Spirited: There was a time when science was properly seen as a systematic search and acquisition of testable explanations concerning how things work here in this world. No one worshipped science, they did not make an idol of it, thus they would never consider an accusation against someone on the grounds of being “anti-science” as rational, certainly not sane.
Was that a “Yes”, or a “No”?
Indeed, I wandered into an evolution thread in the Religion forum a few days ago. I didn't realize where I was and violated the standards with my second post, as the mod was quick to point out. I usually look to see before I wade in.
Absolutely not! In fact I applaud Science for discovering the vagaries of God’s Creation! It’s an amazing piece of work for less than seven days in the making, don’tchathink?
Indeed. Which makes finding the idea of defending science being laughable at once seem very odd.
Which reminds me of something one of our departed evolution supporters was fond of posting: "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord." This is, I believe, the position of most "theistic evolutionists"--that evolution has proceeded throughout history more or less the way science has discovered, but none of it was any surprise to God, who knew exactly what to do to get the results He wanted.
I suspect that even atheistic evolutionists wouldn't object to substituting "unpredictable" for "random" (so long as it was understood that "unpredictable" doesn't mean "whimsical"). Another word I've heard used is "stochastic." The point being that there are some constraints on output imposed by input conditions, but nevertheless the specific output is unpredictable.
But it also seems to me that that offers an answer of sorts to betty's concern that randomness cannot produce its own organizational laws. If evolution is not truly random--if it has unpredictable but probabilistic outcomes, outcomes in fact that may be highly determined if we knew as much as God does, then perhaps the organizational laws can arise "on their own."
Obviously, both are true, and were recognized as such as early as St. Thomas Aquinas, who has been quoted several times on this thread.
But Aquinas insisted, and in his time it was true, that the two could not contradict each other -- that truth discovered by the senses must support truth revealed by the Bible.
But within a few hundred years that claim was challenged on several specifics, most famously by Galileo, and since then on many more specifics.
One of those specifics is evolution theory, for which the Catholic Church, at least, has made the obvious accommodation, choosing to accept what's called "theistic evolutionism" meaning: whatever science may claim about "random" mutations, it's obvious that G*d directs the entire process, from alpha to omega.
This seems to me entirely reasonable and faithful to both the Bible's account of Creation, and the various theories (i.e., Big Bang, evolution, radiometric dating, etc.) advanced by science.
So, what exactly is your problem with it?
Sorry, I intended to address you all in my previous post, so feel free to respond... ;-)
I couldn't find a word in your post #170 to disagree with, FRiend.
That is also how I see it, FRiend.
FRiend, I have no idea, merely quoted from the article above.
I share your admiration for CS Lewis, but have not by any means read all his works, and so assume he may have said some things I'm not familiar with.
So I would invite you to contemplate both sides of the question: first, what if the article's quote is more-or-less accurate and Lewis did intend to mean what it says?
And second, what if the quote is highly distortive of Lewis' real outlook on science in general and evolution theory in specific?
If the quote is accurate (which I rather doubt) then it means Lewis blamed science for problems which I think have other roots.
But if the quote is inaccurate, then what does that tell us about the article's author?
betty boop: "Would you kindly give me the cite for the above statement?"
I simply copied and pasted those words from the above article, 5th paragraph from the bottom.
betty boop: "The Darwinian claim that Christians find objectionable is that evolution is fundamentally a random process.
This is not to say Christians deny that there is a certain amount of randomness in nature."
Exactly, and I refer you to "chaos theory" with its "butterfly effects" and "strange attractors".
What these tell us is that even scientifically, what appear to be "random" events are in fact, not so "random" after all.
But that's all science itself can say.
Theologically of course, we believe that even in those cases where it seems that "G*d plays dice", G*d's "dice" are always loaded to produce the results He intends.
betty boop: "Darwin's theory is not a theory of the origin of biological beings (i.e., the origin of life); it is a theory about how existent beings change morphologically, or speciate, over time."
Darwin's book is titled, "Origin of Species", not "Origin of Life", and indeed, so far as I can tell, we are not really any closer to unraveling the origin of life today than was Darwin himself 150 years ago -- lots of interesting hypotheses, no confirmed theories.
betty boop: "Thus we are left with the squishy proposition that the natural environment, which is itself ever changing, acts on a random flux of biological possibilities, for the purpose of — selecting for reproductive fitness.
How banal a final cause could there be than that?"
But, really, that is all that science itself can tell us, because once you begin positing that G*d intends this or that, now you have left the lowly realm of science and climbed up to the upper reaches of theology.
And that's the point I've been hoping to make here all along: by definition of the term, "science" is restricted to natural causes for natural processes, period.
Once you climb above that, it's not "science" any more, but theology, philosophy or one of those other big words. ;-)
betty boop: " 'Survival of the fittest' is a final cause, though a rather puny, paltry one.
I doubt many Darwinists would ever admit this, of course.
Just as they reject out of hand the idea there could possibly be "design" in nature, even if it very much looks like there IS design in nature."
First, I'm sure you know that Darwin himself did not coin the term "survival of the fittest", and when he finally did use it, it was as a synonym for "natural selection".
Second, any scientist worth his or her salt should be both humble enough and informed enough to know precisely where the scientific enterprise ends, and theological (philosophical, religious, etc.) beliefs begin.
To see a purpose in nature is simply beyond the scope of science, and I have argued and will argue: that's the way it should be!
If you doubt me, then just imagine for a moment that somehow or other science comes up with "proof of G*d", but it's not our G*d, it's Thor or Zeus or Zarathustra!
Obviously, that cannot happen, it will not happen, and that's just one reason why science must stay the h*ck out of religion.
betty boop: "So they say this is just "apparent" design.
Which is like saying that nature is engaged in a full-time job of fooling us; and yet Darwinists still place their faith in natural selection, even though nature itself has no lawful principle to stand on that Darwin's theory bothers to elucidate; and which seems to play the jokester in this "apparent design" business."
Once again, you must imagine that there are strict boundaries to "science", and indeed picture a cage all around science, and now make it a small cage, and now imagine that cage ever day is getting smaller and smaller.
And the scientists cannot get out of it!
But you can, and I can, and really so can they, if and only if they abandon the word "science".
That's the deal.
betty boop: "Notwithstanding all of the above, a whole lot of people out there think Darwin's theory is the sine qua non biological theory!
Worse than that, they believe it is a theory of man."
Sorry, but the simple fact is that evolution theory is absolutely, positively essential to biology, and is confirmed by findings in virtually every other branch of science.
In short, if evolution (and all it implies scientifically) is wrong, then all of science is "junk science", and I doubt highly that is the case.
And sorry again, but I've never heard of a scientific "theory of man".
Yes, in history we have a "great man theory", but that's as close as I've ever seen.
betty boop: "Contrast the characterization of man as a "vicious predatory animal"
The fact is that our ancient ancestors were quite proud and sang long songs about their prowess in both hunting and warfare.
They needed no excuses beyond hunger to go hunting and very little more for war: Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships.
Sure they could be tender and gentle, as wrathful Achilles doubtless was to his war-trophy Briseis -- he considered her his wife and she regarded Achilles as her husband, even though she had no doubt been originally abducted and raped.
betty boop: "It is just on that point that I aver that Darwin's theory is a very great lie, in that it falsifies not only the order of nature, but the order of man and society."
But that's the point you must grasp: it's not a "lie", but simply the working assumption of the scientific enterprise, which assumption strictly defines the dividing line between what is and what is not "science".
Of course, anyone including scientists are perfectly free to ask and answer questions beyond the limits of science, just don't pretend those are science.
betty boop: "Generally, Christians do not believe the universe is a random development."
"Generally?" No, no... absolutely.
If you cannot bring yourself to believe that G*d created the Universe, seriously, how can you call yourself "Christian".
I'd call that a first principle.
betty boop: "I could wish that modern-day biologists were so "open-minded."
As I've pointed out now many times, many scientists are also devout Christians, Jews or other religions which accept a Creator.
They don't have the problems you identify here.
BroJoeK: If the quote is accurate (which I rather doubt) then it means Lewis blamed science for problems which I think have other roots.
But if the quote is inaccurate, then what does that tell us about the article’s author?
Spirited: If evolution is the gradual linear and cumulative change of one kind of organism into another kind (macroevolution), the fossil record itself illustrates that evolution has not occurred. Nor has anyone ever observed it happening. Thus it is not difficult to see that evolution has achieved the status of a religion in western society.
The British moral philosopher Mary Midgely agrees. She described Evolution as a powerfully seductive creation myth, a religious experience on an escalator that begins at the bottom and smoothly progresses ever upward to Teilhard’s Hindu-pantheist Omega conception. Midgely asserts that the theory of evolution is not just an inert piece of theoretical science but is also a powerful folk tale about human origins.
Charles Darwin received this folk tale—the idea of evolution—from his grandfather Dr. Erasmus Darwin, a pantheist known to attend séances. As master of the famous Masonic Canongate lodge in Edinburgh he had close ties with both the Jacobin Masons, the organizers of the bloody revolution in France, and with the infamous Illuminati, whose diabolical cause was overthrow of the Church and destruction of Christendom. Thus Erasmus Darwin was an important name in European Masonic anti-religious organizations (where Lucifer was called the seething energy of evolution) engaged in revolutionary activism. Erasmus Darwin mentored his grandson Charles:
“Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was the first man in England to suggest those ideas which were later to be embodied in the Darwinian theory by his grandson, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) who wrote in 1859 Origin of Species.” (Scarlet and the Beast, Vol. II, John Daniel, p. 34)
It is more than obvious BroJoeK, that the essay under discussion not only offends your sensibilities but deeply disturbs them as well. So desperate are you to persuade yourself and betty that CS Lewis surely did not mean what he said that you are trying to cast aspersions onto the author and lead betty into joining with you in your unholy enterprise.
But why stop at Lewis, BroJoeK? Why not persuade yourself and others that Jonathan Tennenbaum, T. Rosazak, Henry Osborn, Michael Ruse and Mary Midgely didn’t mean what they said either?
LOLOL!
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