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
“I was referring to the entire pagan/secular “western” ideology, including that of the American Founding”
Spirited: Though most if not all of the Founders embraced the so-called “age of reason,” and a handful embraced Deism, most were for the most part Christian, at least in terms of the following: the unique definition of man as the spiritual image-bearer of God from Whom man’s unalienable rights obtain beginning with the right to life; man’s sinful nature necessitating separation of powers; and the absolute need for training all children in the unchanging, higher Truth and Moral Law of God.
But proud men abhor the idea of human equality, even though it does not mean that we are equals here in this world but equals in terms of our souls, our spiritual being.
Pride being what it is, by 1820 America’s ‘educated’ class was challenging the notion of human equality. ‘Science’ made this possible; Darwinism in 1853 popularized and actualized it, as Prof. Angelo Codevilla reports in his profoundly insightful essay, “America’s Ruling Class:”
“The notion of human equality was always a hard sell, because experience teaches us that we are so unequal in so many ways, and because making one’s self superior is so tempting that Lincoln called it “the old serpent, you work I’ll eat.” But human equality made sense to our Founding generation because they believed that all men are made in the image and likeness of God, because they were yearning for equal treatment under British law, or because they had read John Locke.
It did not take long for their paradigm to be challenged by interest and by “science.” By the 1820s, as J. C. Calhoun was reading in the best London journals that different breeds of animals and plants produce inferior or superior results, slave owners were citing the Negroes’ deficiencies to argue that they should remain slaves indefinitely. Lots of others were reading Ludwig Feuerbach’s rendition of Hegelian philosophy, according to which biblical injunctions reflect the fantasies of alienated human beings or, in the young Karl Marx’s formulation, that ethical thought is “superstructural” to material reality. By 1853, when Sen. John Pettit of Ohio called “all men are created equal” “a self-evident lie,” much of America’s educated class had already absorbed the “scientific” notion (which Darwin only popularized) that man is the product of chance mutation and natural selection of the fittest. Accordingly, by nature, superior men subdue inferior ones as they subdue lower beings or try to improve them as they please. Hence while it pleased the abolitionists to believe in freeing Negroes and improving them, it also pleased them to believe that Southerners had to be punished and reconstructed by force. As the 19th century ended, the educated class’s religious fervor turned to social reform: they were sure that because man is a mere part of evolutionary nature, man could be improved, and that they, the most highly evolved of all, were the improvers.
Thus began the Progressive Era. When Woodrow Wilson in 1914 was asked “can’t you let anything alone?” he answered with, “I let everything alone that you can show me is not itself moving in the wrong direction, but I am not going to let those things alone that I see are going down-hill.” Wilson spoke for the thousands of well-off Americans who patronized the spas at places like Chautauqua and Lake Mohonk. By such upper-middle-class waters, progressives who imagined themselves the world’s examples and the world’s reformers dreamt big dreams of establishing order, justice, and peace at home and abroad. Neither were they shy about their desire for power. Wilson was the first American statesman to argue that the Founders had done badly by depriving the U.S. government of the power to reshape American society. Nor was Wilson the last to invade a foreign country (Mexico) to “teach [them] to elect good men.”
Continue reading: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
By "these men", you are referring to whom?
Again, I'll post this listing of well-known Christian scientific thinkers throughout history.
The list is hundreds long, and includes over a dozen evolutionists.
It does not include our more deistic Founders, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, but it does include names like Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur.
The list confirms that neither all scientists nor all evolutionists are effectively atheists.
Nor does that list include hundreds of historical Jewish scientists, who were/are also not atheists.
As for those scientist who were/are atheists, I can't defend them, except to point out that any broad generalizations are likely to be inaccurate.
spirited irish: "Of course none of these men were atheists with respect to their religiously held belief in the ‘nature’ philosophies and/or nature religions (i.e., Epicurean Materialism, Neo-Platonic or Eastern Pantheism) they embraced."
Since your term "these men" refers to nobody specific, I'll have to take it as a broad generalization, likely to be inaccurate.
spirited irish: "All nature religions/philosophical systems are monist by nature."
Perhaps if you could name some of these alleged monistically oriented scientists, we could test your hypothesis to see if it holds up?
spirited irish: "But as Crick has honestly admitted, pan spermia merely moves the problem of life out into deep space."
The fact is that as of today, there is no serious evidence to confirm any "origin of life" hypothesis.
It's all just educated guess-work.
What is known for certain is that some simple organic chemicals (not life!) are found in comets, and doubtless also arrived on earth.
It's also known for certain that under certain conditions, very simple organic chemistry can become more and more complex.
But nobody (so far as I know) has yet found or demonstrated how naturally created complex chemistry began to take on characteristics we today might call "lifelike".
Until that happens, all the various hypotheses are just that: educated guesswork.
Again, I'm afraid you're missing the point. It's not just evolution or even Renaissance humanism . . . it's the revolution that began long ago and of which chrstianity is actually a part. There is one G-d and one religion, and there are not "rights" apart from this. Furthermore G-d's Law rests on His authority alone and not on any utilitarian function in sustaining anybody's "civilization." Theocracy and Theocratic positivism. That's what I'm saying.
The west, with it's roots in Greco-Roman paganism and philosophy, was doomed from the beginning. Let's let it fall in its rottenness and accept the Laws of G-d.
“By “these men”, you are referring to whom?”
Spirited: Certainly not the Christians, but rather Max Planck and Einstein, whose god was akin to Spinoza’s pantheist conception:
“In a letter to Hans Muehsam (30 March 1954), Einstein said: “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever... This is a somewhat new kind of religion.” [Einstein Archive 38-434]
In a letter to a child who asked if scientists pray (24 January 1936), said: “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man... In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.” [Einstein Archive 42-601]
In a letter to M. Berkowitz (25 October 1950), Einstein said: “My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.” [Einstein Archive 59-215] http://www.adherents.com/people/pe/Albert_Einstein.html
“Planck’s God, it seemed, was nothing more than an “ideal Sprit.” His beliefs could be described as pantheist, but certainly not Christian. His idea of faith was akin to having a working hypothesis. Planck did not believe in a future life. http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=2011
First of all, we should not be so surprised if G*d appears to a scientist more like a Super-Scientific working hypothesis than the Suffering Servant from Second Isaiah.
Plank was not the only scientist to feel that way.
Second, there are circa two billion Christians in around 40,000 denomination spread amongst five general groups, and none teaching precisely all the same doctrines.
So you have to allow for some slack in doctrinal uniformity amongst different denominations.
Finally, here is a summary of Max Plank:
"He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics and is considered the founder of Quantum mechanics.
He had been raised an observant Lutheran and was an elder in his church from 1920 to his death (1947).
In 1937 he delivered the lecture, "Religion and Natural Science", stating that both religion and science require a belief in God."
So I'd say, if you are going to claim that an elder in a Lutheran Church is "not Christian" enough for you, then really that is a problem of your own making having little to do with reality as most people understand it, FRiend.
“that never happens on Free Republic, right? ;-)”
For which I am to blame because . . . ? Or, are you indulging in the typical 3rd grade logic that, “Everyone else is doing it” (pout, sniffle)?
“First, just so we're clear: today's word "science" refers to the classical term . . . ”
Creating sidetracks to send me galloping down. Old naval tactic; when out-gunned make much smoke; great billowing clouds. The term “Science,” as it is modernly applied and understood, did not come into use until the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. Its roots, of course, can be traced back, at least, to the time of Aristotle and Plato. But I will agree with you that Thomas Aquinas is one of the greatest:
“Since therefore falsehood alone is contrary to truth, it is impossible for the truth of faith to be contrary to principles known by natural reason.”
And again,
“. . . no opinion or belief is sent to man from God contrary to natural knowledge.”
. . . . . T. Aquinas, Of God and His Creatures, Book I, Chap. 7
Science, I think, is always an effort to explain 'reality' without reference to a Creator (even by scientists who, after some fashion or another, believe in a Creator), creating a kind of certainty that generates, in turn, a very comforting security (which I must assume is the generating motive behind the effort).
“. . . liberals expressing their opinions on religion are not speaking “scientifically”.”
I think that’s correct. But I also note that they and Scientists, particularly of an Atheist persuasion, misrepresent themselves as speaking authoritatively, not personally. It is to this that I object. And, when Liberals and their science lackeys are called on their deceit, their howls of anger and anguish are a dead giveaway that their distress is directed against those who give prominence to their duplicitous guile, and not to their so obvious intellectual failure.
“Don't blame “science” or “Darwinism” for liberal political agendas.”
Oh, but I do. Not for dreaming up the strategy, but for the passivity with which the Liberal agenda has be allowed to hijack Science. It’s not as though it‘s only in the past year that Liberals have been pirating Science, especially Evolution (Darwinism). It began with Marx 165 years ago (some would argue a much earlier date, but let's go with Marx and 1848), so Scientists have had ample indication of what was in store for them. Their behavior would indicate that many actually welcomed the Liberal agenda’s assault on and occupation of Science for its own purposes.
“I confess that in all these years I've never read, posted on or sent money to any site other than Free Republic, and why should I?”
You shouldn’t. Or, at least you needn’t. However, being an avid reader of FR posts, you must be keenly aware that many posts of glaring Scientific heresy have appeared on FR threads. So my question, Has anyone on his (Dawkins’) side of the issue ever declared that his opinions are simply that, and cannot be represented, in any fashion, as scientific valid? remains unanswered.
“They suppose that because a scientist said it, then it must be scientific.”
Whom is this “they” Pilgrim? If you mean moi, then again you misrepresent my opinion (with malice, I must think). It is scientists like Dawkins who represent their “opinions” (as you choose to call them) as scientific “fact.” I insist the opinions are not scientific facts and you choose to attack me rather than Dawkins.
Really? You wear shin guards I hope.
When I need to protect my shins from anonymous internet posters, I'll consider it. Hasn't happened yet.
It looks like spirited irish doesn’t know what makes an idea “scientific”. But then, the progressives don’t know what science is either.
Your supposed inability to discern my political position should be sufficient reason for you to wear shin guards. Anyone that blind needs them.
You haven’t said specificlly what it is, and “discerning” is likely to cause no end of wailing about “making assumptions”. I’ll pass, thanks.
No, go back and re-read the original exchange.
Your complaint was that "Obamatrons do not rise above the pyramid's 4th level...", to which I responded, "Fortunately, that never happens on Free Republic, right?"
For the obvious reason that we don't get a lot of "Obamatrons" posting here, and the rest of us generally try our best to be civil, even under the most trying circumstances.
Point is: your complaint seems a little out of touch with what's actually happening here.
YHAOS: "Creating sidetracks to send me galloping down. Old naval tactic; when out-gunned make much smoke; great billowing clouds."
Not at all, just thought it important to be certain we understand certain word definitions.
For something to be "scientific" it must meet certain criteria, especially: natural explanations for natural processes.
When a scientist speaks of his/her religious or metaphysical opinions, those are not, by definition, "scientific".
YHAOS quoting Aquinas: "Since therefore falsehood alone is contrary to truth, it is impossible for the truth of faith to be contrary to principles known by natural reason."
Thanks for that excellent quote.
It makes my point that a study of alleged conflicts between religion and science should begin with Aquinas, since he believed the two are in harmony and compliment each other.
So far as I know, Aquinas never addressed the question: what if science appears to tell us something in conflict with the Bible?
But that is the question since at least the Renaissance and Galileo.
YHAOS: "Science, I think, is always an effort to explain 'reality' without reference to a Creator (even by scientists who, after some fashion or another, believe in a Creator), creating a kind of certainty that generates, in turn, a very comforting security (which I must assume is the generating motive behind the effort)."
Yes, from the time of Aquinas, "science" (aka "natural-science" & "natural-philosophy") is precisely that effort to search out natural explanations for natural processes.
Any other explanations are not, by definition, "scientific".
And indeed, it has nothing whatever to do with certitude, just the opposite.
Nothing in science is ontologically certain.
No theory (outside mathematics) is ever "proved".
Every hypothesis is "confirmed" only by failures to disprove it.
Every theory is only accepted as "confirmed" until some future test succeeds in disproving it.
So science is the opposite of certainty.
Science is all about "question everything", and the questioning on one subject only ends when people grow tired and move on to something else.
YHAOS: "But I also note that they and Scientists, particularly of an Atheist persuasion, misrepresent themselves as speaking authoritatively, not personally.
It is to this that I object."
Of course, you need all the same skepticism you'd bring to a used car lot in listening to their sales pitches.
And by that, I don't mean to insult used car salesmen!
YHAOS: "It’s not as though it‘s only in the past year that Liberals have been pirating Science, especially Evolution (Darwinism).
It began with Marx 165 years ago..."
Of course, since science is generally morally "neutral", anybody can pirate it, and many have.
And I couldn't say who's done more harm with it -- the international socialists, the national socialists, the democrat socialists or now the Muslim terror socialists.
Unfortunately, scientists like anyone else know who signs their pay-checks, and take care to protect them.
Since many are paid by government, we might not be so surprised at their politics.
And in the particular case of, say, "global warming" we can see how political influence corrupted a scientific process.
But so far as I can tell, that is not true of anything to do with evolution theory.
YHAOS: "...being an avid reader of FR posts, you must be keenly aware that many posts of glaring Scientific heresy have appeared on FR threads."
"glaring Scientific heresy" refers to what, exactly?
YHAOS: "I insist the opinions are not scientific facts and you choose to attack me rather than Dawkins."
You are mistaken if you think I defend anything about Dawkins except his right to express opinions on whatever he wishes.
If people like YHAOS misinterpret those opinions as somehow authoritatively scientific, then I'm here to tell you: you'll need a raincoat and galoshes to wade out in that... ah, mess.
Actually, I suspect we do get some “Obamatrons”, but always as false flaggers posting some outrageous nonsense, just to make the rest of us look bad.
Present company excluded, of course. :-D
It looks like spirited irish doesn’t know what makes an idea “scientific”.
Spirited: Ideas, theories, conceptions, presuppositions, assumptions and opinions for example, are not things we can ‘sense,’ they do not belong to the sensory dimension but to the unseen realm, the spiritual dimension of mind, metaphysics and philosophy. This being the case, please explain exactly what, in your “opinion” makes an “idea” scientific.
Finally, here is a summary of Max Plank:
“He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics and is considered the founder of Quantum mechanics.
In the first place, God is not impressed by the things men are impressed by and second, it is not up to any man to decide if another man is Christian enough. God is the Judge of all such matters.
But you claim that Plank was not Christian enough to satisfy your own criteria.
I merely pointed out that Plank was a lifelong Lutheran, and church elder for the last 27 years of his life.
So how many Christians do you know could say the same — one in ten? one in a hundred?
You also mentioned Einstein, a Jew of course, and not devout by all accounts I’ve seen.
But neither was he a committed atheist, which is what’s required for metaphysical or ontological naturalism.
Again, my point is that science itself does not require atheistic religious or philosophical beliefs.
BroJoek answered your question to me on “what makes an idea ‘scientific’?” on post 72.
I don’t know if you read that post. He said, “And indeed, it has nothing whatever to do with certitude, just the opposite.
Nothing in science is ontologically certain.
No theory (outside mathematics) is ever “proved”.
Every hypothesis is “confirmed” only by failures to disprove it.
Every theory is only accepted as “confirmed” until some future test succeeds in disproving it.”
In order for an idea to be a scientific hypothesis, it has to have a specific mechanism that can potentially be falsifiable by testing or forensic observation.
Examples of specific testable mechanisms:
-evolution by natural selection
-law of gravity
-the gas laws
-cell theory
Examples of untestable ideas
-climate chaos (no specific mechanism trotted out, vague pronouncements)
-precautionary principle (the threat is never specified because it is unknown)
-God (impossible to measure or define)
When Richard Dawkins says that “science” “disproves” God, he is talking nonsense. Just because the Cathedral gave him a science credential doesn’t mean everything he says is science. Many people have already pointed this out to you.
I don’t think you’re well equipped to confront the Eco-fascists or other toxic forces of the Cathedral. There’s a reason the public school system minimizes the teaching of the actual scientific method in favor of just having kids regurgitate “facts”. And unfortunately, many of the Christian homeschoolers aren’t doing it either. This of course results in a neutered opposition against the progressives in power in the Cathedral.
Nothing in science is ontologically certain.
No theory (outside mathematics) is ever “proved”.
Every hypothesis is “confirmed” only by failures to disprove it.
Every theory is only accepted as “confirmed” until some future test succeeds in disproving it.”
In order for an idea to be a scientific hypothesis, it has to have a specific mechanism that can potentially be falsifiable by testing or forensic observation.
Examples of specific testable mechanisms:
-evolution by natural selection
Spirited: In summary of the first paragraph: the underlying foundation of modern natural science and evolution is metaphysical nihilism which means that as evolution is always in motion there is nothing we can ever know with the slightest degree of certainty. C.S. Lewis understood this, thus he described natural science and evolution as magic science-—a very apt description.
As for the claim that evolution by natural selection is a testable mechanism: wrong.
Karl Popper (1902-1994) was a British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. Because he is regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century, what Popper had to say about Darwinism is of importance to all truth-seekers.
Though Popper esteemed evolutionary theory and natural selection, he also honestly admitted that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but rather a metaphysical research program. By this he means that not only is Darwinism of the spiritual dimension, but so are its’ two most important foundations, classical empiricism and the observationalist philosophy of science that grew out of it.
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that immediately contradicts itself by asserting that human knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience rather than the mind (soul/spirit/ghost in the machine)while observationalism asserts that human knowledge and theories must be based on empirical observations....instead of the mind. Due to this major disconnect from reality, Popper argued strongly against empiricism and observationalism, saying that scientific theories and human knowledge generally, is conjectural or hypothetical and is generated by the creative imagination (mind).
In Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828, soul and imagination are respectively defined as:
1. Soul: “The spiritual, rational and immortal substance in man, which distinguishes him from brutes; that part of man which enables him to think and reason.”
2. Imagination: “...the power or faculty of the mind by which it conceives and forms ideas of things communicated to it by the senses....The business of conception (and the) power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones so as to form new wholes of our own creation...(imagination) selects the parts of different conceptions, or objects of memory, to form a whole more pleasing, more terrible, or more awful, than has ever been presented in the ordinary course of nature.”
In conclusion, all three theories originated in the mind (spirit). As mind is a power of soul, then Darwinism, empiricism, and observationalism are spiritual. In short, all three theories are frauds. They claim to be what they are not in order to obtain an advantage over the Genesis account of creation by imposition of immoral means.
Well, since we're not "anti-science" here, I guess that makes us all "pro-fraud".
First of all, he was only talking about natural selection, not all of "Darwinism." His concern was that it's hard to know what organisms are most suited for selection except by seeing which ones get selected, which makes the theory somewhat tautological. Even so, he wrote, "It raises detailed problems in many fields, and it tells us what we would expect of an acceptable solution of these problems."
And second, he later changed his mind about even that much, writing, " I have changed my mind about the testability and the logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation."
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