The problem is that the abusers of science – those who do theology and philosophy under the color of science – hold positions of great power and influence. For instance,
Peter Singer – Princeton Professor of Bioethics, promotes animal liberation and infanticide
Richard Lewontin – Harvard Professor until 1998, Marxist evolution biologist and geneticist who admits his political views affects his science.
Richard Dawkins – Oxford Professor, ethologist and evolution biologist, atheist activist who obviously does atheism and anti-Christianity/anti-Judaism under the color of science. Notably, the atheist activists have not attacked Islam...
And presently, those very abusers of science and their minions in academia, media, peer review, judiciary and politics suppress virtually all discussion of intelligent cause.
Truly, the statement that “things change over time” is just as obvious and trivial as the intelligent design hypothesis which simply states:
And since God alone is the only candidate for uncaused caused, He remains the only explanation for the origin of space/time, inertia, anisotropy, information (successful communication, Shannon), autonomy, function and of course, life.
So far, scientists can only offer explanation for the present earth or universe by moving the goalpost to prior universes or life forms. For instance, both Dawkins and Crick accept panspermia as a possible explanation of the origin of life on earth though they can neither explain the rise of life in the universe. And all physical cosmologies - other than Tegmark’s level IV parallel universe which posits that 4D is a manifestation of mathematical structures which actually do exist outside of space and time – are open, meaning that they likewise cannot explain physical origin ex nihilo (e.g. multi-verse, multi-world, ekpyrotic, cyclic, hesitating, imaginary time.)
Bottom line, this is a fight over the conscience of men – particularly the young and impressionable.
We will continue to engage in this debate, wrestling the dictionary away from the abusers and pursuing clarity because God’s Name is I AM.
"GENESIS: A scientist looks at the first four verses..."
And -- I'm gradually beginning to resume output toward that end...
Which makes think me think back to preceding the Nov 6th, 2012 election.... and the now known obviously massive voter fraud in places... mostly blue but also in a few red States..
AND HOW.. in the republican primarys right after the 2010 upset elections by republicans...
A KNOWN democrat appeaser(collaborator) was chosen in the republican primary's OVER several well known and respected conservative candidates.. AND ALL conservative candidates were REJECTED... some very harshly.. AND if that was not mysterious enough HOW the present day republicans IGNORE ( all that ) and can believe 2014 will be any different.. or 2016.... I would think ALL republicans would remember those happenings.. BUT DO NOT..
Makes me think even republican primarys are "SCEWED" even as elections at large are.. How else could a "Vichy" republican (romney) even get chosen except in Massachusetts..
MY THOUGHTS.;.. (YOU) my dear are ON TO SOMETHING...
Magnificently put, dearest sister in Christ!
I've been away from the forum the past 2 days or so — out bopping about with my dear Mom (who will celebrate her 96th birthday two weeks from today!). I'm just getting back, and am overwhelmed by the sheer volume of discussion that went on here while I was absent.
Where to begin? It seems that what C. S. Lewis thought about Darwin's theory, and whether or not he was misquoted, was vigorously debated. So I'll begin there.
I thought BroJoeK's remark — "This concatenation of views is clearly intended to suggest that Lewis agreed with Clarke" — was astute, not to mention just. (I wondered about the same thing myself. Not having seen the actual source, I don't think I have enough evidence to draw a conclusion yet.)
Dearest sister in Christ, I think that C. S. Lewis would have put Pinker, Lewontin, Dawkins, Singer, et al., into the category of "the Conditioners." And clearly, they are all metaphysical naturalists. I consulted his The Abolition of Man for further information.
Here is a "random selection" :^) from that work that reveals Lewis' thinking about the "scientific method" and how it deals with Nature. Presently, there are two modes: metaphysical naturalism, a/k/a "philosophy conducted under the guise of science"; and methodological naturalism, which our dear brothers BroJoeK, tacticalogic, R7 Rocket, et al., find so reasonable and for which it is so much to be admired. We're "jumping in mid-stream" here:
...When all that says 'it is good" has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains.... My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.And thus to my way of thinking, we find in the conduct of even methodological naturalist science — leaving out of consideration here the egregious abuse of science typified by the metaphysical naturalists — an outstanding example of A. N. Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness: First we remove various aspects or sectors of reality that characterize Nature in its fullness to the human mind and experience, but which are superfluous to our scientific method. The result is the creation of an abstraction from Nature; and then we use this abstraction as a proxy for Nature. Nature is not only "shrunk" to the size of our method as a result; it is fundamentally falsified by this transformation.
We may legitimately hope that among the impulses which arise in minds thus emptied of all 'rational' or 'spiritual' motives, some will be benevolent. I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently. I am inclined to think that the Conditioners will hate the conditioned.... [O]ur hope even of a 'conditioned' happiness rests on what is ordinarily called 'chance'.... And Chance here means Nature....
My point may be clearer to some if it is put in a different form. Nature is a word of varying meanings, which can best be understood if we consider its various opposites. The Natural is the opposite of the Artificial, the Civil, the Human, the Spiritual, and the Supernatural. The Artificial does not now concern us. If we take the rest of the list of opposites, however, I think we can get a rough idea of what men have meant by Nature and what it is they oppose to her. Nature seems to be the spatial and temporal, as distinct from what is less fully so or not so at all. She seems to be a world of quantity, as against the world of quality; of objects against consciousness; of the bound, as against the wholly or partially autonomous; of that which knows no values as against that which both has and perceives value; of efficient causes (or, in some modern systems, of no causality at all) as against final causes. Now I take it that when we understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience, we reduce it to the level of 'Nature' in the sense that we suspend our judgements of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any), and treat it in terms of quantity. This repression of elements in what would otherwise be our total reaction to it is sometimes very noticeable and even painful: something has to be overcome before we can cut up a dead man or a live animal in a dissecting room. These objects resist the movement of the mind whereby we thrust them into the world of mere Nature....
It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.
The modern scientific method dates back to Sir Francis Bacon, who famously wanted to banish all "metaphysics" from science, in order to place science on a firm empirical basis based on direct observation and meticulous measurement. That was pretty revolutionary!
It seems today that, for many people, Bacon's method was a rebuke to all of philosophy as a legitimate means of accessing truthful knowledge.
But I would like to know how science can even function without philosophy. Science's main operational premises rest on the philosophical insights of such great philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. It was Plato who first "isolated" the human psyche and nous — reason — rendering them proper objects of study and analysis. Aristotle systematized logic; he sought to find the causes of natural things as located in the natural things themselves (unlike Plato, who, like Max Tegmark, located formal cause in a transcendent realm "beyond" Nature); and developed universal laws of causation that operate in Nature. For these reasons, Aristotle is widely considered the father of science itself.
Not to mention that the doctrine of materialism is first and foremost a philosophical doctrine of very ancient lineage. It is very popular nowadays; though likely few people would recognize it as "philosophy." It's just "the way things are."
But it seems to me that all you have to do to falsify, to "denature Nature," is to say that physical and moral law are somehow mutually exclusive. Which to me is a ludicrous proposition: They are, rather, complementarities (in the epistemological sense articulated by Niels Bohr), in constant dynamic relation....
IMHO, one of C. S. Lewis' most striking observations was that bodies do not "have" souls; rather, souls "have" bodies. That is, "soul" has primacy with respect to the body; body is secondary; it is the temporal materialization of the soul, considered as eternal. It is "epiphenomenal" to the phenomenon, soul....
I'll just leave it there for now.
Dearest sister in Christ, thank you oh so very much for your splendid, lapidary observations in this magnificent essay/post!
Might I suggest, a simple "inoculation" against such philosophizing in the name of science is to do what I've been saying all along: teach the strict definition of the word "science" as: natural explanations for natural processes.
Make certain that people (especially children) understand that whenever a scientist (or teacher, professor, etc.) begins to talk about his/her theological beliefs -- or non-beliefs -- that's not "science" and doesn't belong in science classes.
Alamo-Girl: "The potential consequence in political terms can be visualized as bodies stacked liked cordwood in the Nazi and Marxist genocides and presently in the slaughter of the unborn."
Sadly, throughout history human beings have practiced mass murders and exterminations under any number of flags, banners and ideologies.
Some are even recorded in the Bible, and others in the name of Christian orthodoxy (Cathars come to mind, and 30 Years War).
So, I don't blame the Bible or Christianity for mass exterminations committed by their followers, nor do I blame Darwin for Nazi insanities.
Alamo-Girl: "Truly, the statement that “things change over time” is just as obvious and trivial as the intelligent design hypothesis which simply states:
It's not clear to me where that leads you, but allow me to state strongly: as a believer, I take total offense and "condemn" anybody who asserts that there is even a single atom, a single sub-atomic particle or multi-dimensional "string" vibrating anywhere in the Universe which was not first "intelligently designed" by our Creator, and second put where it is when it is to do what it is the Creator intends.
No, I'm not talking about "predestination", since the Universe is chock full of unpredictable, apparently random, seemingly chaotic features, which allow huge numbers of choices for the human soul.
I'm simply saying that G*d designed the Universe with His purposes in mind, and in the end, G*d's will, will be done.
Is that not clear?
Alamo-Girl: "So far, scientists can only offer explanation for the present earth or universe by moving the goalpost to prior universes or life forms.
For instance, both Dawkins and Crick accept panspermia as a possible explanation of the origin of life on earth though they can neither explain the rise of life in the universe."
Again and again I'm telling you: do not fantasize that science can answer every question.
It can only provide natural explanations for natural processes.
The moment, the instant, you leave the natural realm, it ain't science anymore.
So as of today, scientist have no theories -- zero, zip, nada -- about how life on earth began.
All they have is many different hypotheses, among which are abiogenesis and panspermia, but no confirming evidence for any of them.
Sure, maybe someday they'll find life on some comet which originated "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...".
Or maybe somebody will eventually work out the hundred (or 10,000) critical steps by which "interesting organic chemistry" slowly became "primitive life-like forms" on earth.
But all any of that does is confirm the belief that G*d created the Universe with life and us in His plan.
Alamo-Girl: "Remember how easily the Germans bought into the term untermenschen and thereby could slaughter Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Serbs and Russians as not actually being human..."
Some people have argued that historical precedents for mass exterminations in Germany, and ideological groundwork for excluding Jews from the family of mankind, were both actually set in the Middle Ages' burnings of heretics and Reformation religious wars of depopulation.
They also say that we Americans set precedents in our treatment of Native Americans over several centuries.
I would say: all those accusations are no more accurate than blaming Darwin for the Holocaust.
Alamo-Girl: "We will continue to engage in this debate, wrestling the dictionary away from the abusers and pursuing clarity because God’s Name is I AM."
Amen.