No, because we are children of the Enlightenment.
Founders like Franklin, Jefferson & Madison were among its greatest minds, George Washington was its greatest leader, our Declaration and Constitution among its greatest political documents.
The Enlightenment was a shining moment in history, when minds had finally escaped the clutches of a highly restrictive Church and before they soon-enough slid under the controls of even more destructive secular ideologies, i.e., Marxism, totalitarianism, etc.
The Enlightenment corresponded to the beginnings of the scientific and industrial revolutions.
We are here to defend our Founders' ideals, which are the Enlightenment ideals, and they include all the traditional Western philosophical concepts, including God, nature and mankind.
The Age of Enlightenment ended far too soon in what we call the "Romantic Era", Age of Revolutions and Modern Era beginning just as our Founders were passing, in the early to mid 1800s.
I gather from your posts that Kalamata has a problem with Enlightenment leaders and thinking, but I can't figure out just why...
Kalamata on Enlightenment religious beliefs: "That is what they claimed; but every "good" politician has a tool called "name-dropping" in his bag of tricks."
Sure, anybody can cynically mock the values of others and point out their failures to match ideals with actions.
But there's no hint during the Enlightenment that men like our Founders didn't take their own ideals very seriously.
Kalamata: "You are greatly deceived. The "Separation of Science and the Bible" sham reinstalled the type of scientific orthodoxy that threatened Galileo, which now hinders the advancement of science, world-wide, while suppressing those who oppose their worldview."
Sorry, but that's pure propaganda.
In fact, Galileo was a scientist suppressed by the Church because his ideas didn't match their interpretations of the Bible -- just as you and Tour would suppress modern science because it doesn't match your own interpretations of the Bible.
Your claim to be the "real science" is pure unadulterated bunk, because you are, in fact, theology masquerading as science.
Kalamata on St. Augustine of Hippo: "He was not a scientist; but if you insist on using him as a reference, you should first know that he was a young earth creationist:"
St. Augustine was the greatest of the early Church theologians, one of the first to be called Doctor of the Church.
He made no pretense of being a scientist, as we understand that word, and he had no reason to think the Bible didn't correspond to scientific evidence.
But he did fully understand that some people could take the Bible's words out of context, misunderstand their intentions and present them to the world as if the Bible were talking nonsense.
Augustine opposed that.
Kalamata: "He denounced old-earthism, calling those who embraced it, "deceived":"
In your quote, Augustine opposed "mendacious documents", he knew nothing of scientific evidence.
But Augustine's views are absolutely correct in this respect, from your quotes:
- "If it offends them that the time that has elapsed since the creation of man is so short, and his years so few according to our authorities, let them take this into consideration, that nothing that has a limit is long, and that all the ages of time being finite, are very little, or indeed nothing at all, when compared to the interminable eternity." [Augustine, City of God,"
- "A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night."
Kalamata: "Theologians routinely claim to be real scientists.
A few examples are, Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, and Richard Lewontin."
And that is pure propaganda, Denier Rule #2.
Kalamata: "Many scientists were and are young earth creationists."
Every scientist regardless is entitled to his or her religious & theological beliefs, but those, by definition, are not science.
Kalamata: "No matter how much you try to attach your religion of evolutionism to the coattails of the Founding Fathers, it is going to be a hard sell.
We are already back in the "Dark Ages" as a society, in part because of evolutionism."
No, no, I'm not trying to "sell" attaching evolution to our Founders -- whatever real burdens they do carry (i.e., slavery), evolution is not one of them.
I am "selling" the traditional idea that, what our Founders called "natural philosophy" or "natural science" has its roots in ancient philosophy (i.e., Aristotle) and theology (i.e., St. Augustine of Hippo) and is the beginnings of modern science.
I'm also telling you, factually, that Charles Darwin was a child of the Enlightenment and was raised in its traditions, including the study of natural science.
Of course, you may claim Darwin went astray from those traditions, which were at the very least Deistic, but Darwin himself never admitted to being atheistic and did life-long support his family's church.
Kalamata: "Are you saying you do not believe in the Darwinist roots of the holocaust?
If you had actually read that book of Shermer's – the one you keep name-dropping -- you would know that Shermer explains the role of Darwinism in the holocaust:"
So now, after first attacking Shermer mercilessly and very unfairly, suddenly Shermer is your hero?
How did that happen?
- "The racial theories of social Darwinism gave the Nazis and others the scientific sanction they needed to make their racist ideology seem wholly rational..."
- "While most scholars recognize some historical links between the popularisation of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, they also maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution.
Scholars debate the extent to which the various social Darwinist ideologies reflect Charles Darwin's own views on human social and economic issues."
As important, whatever "Social Darwinism" Nazis employed against Jews was just one ideological weapon among many.
So, in my previous analogy: blaming Darwin for the Holocaust is like blaming 9/11 on the breakfast those terrorists ate.
Kalamata: "Shermer quoted a significant chunk of Mein Kampf to justify that statement."
But nowhere in Mein Kampf does Hitler mention Darwin, natural selection or evolution in the context of natural selection.
Instead, Hitler tells us his violent anti-Semitism began from his experiences in the Christian Social Party.
Shermer well knows that violent anti-Semitism in Europe generally and Germany specifically did not begin with 20th century Nazis, but dates back many centuries.
Kalamata quoting himself: ""There is nothing more natural than our creator, and his creation."
The words "more natural" are NOT the same as "merely natural", nor will they ever be."
Sorry, but if you'd said "God is more than natural," you'd be correct, but now you're just piling one more lie atop the others.
Stop it!
Back away from it, it's deadly heresy regardless of how much you try to qualify & sugar coat it, it's simply false.
You're trying to make a point which is impossible and ultimately insane.
The theological truth is, by ancient Biblical exegesis and traditional Western philosophy, God is super-natural, not "natural".
God is not "Gaia" (Mother Earth), God is not Pele (Hawaiian volcano).
God existed before the Universe and outside the Universe, the Universe is His Creation and a home.
Nature's scientific "laws" and processes are God's, but they are not Him.
Again my analogy of the architect and builder of a home.
We can study a home to learn the "mind of the Architect", but the home itself is not His mind.
So you need to abandon the idea that God is less than supernatural.
Kalamata: "For the record, that was in response to your dismissal of God and his church and their role in the advancement of Western Civilization, while promoting pagan philosophers, in your never-ending quest to redefine God's creation as "natural processes", which is a clever way of saying "godless". "
Total lies, not a word of that true.
Obviously, you're hoping to lie your way out of your own ridiculous heresies.
Kalamata: "BTW, angels have nature. God, rather than taking on the nature of angels, took on the nature of a man.
That sounds pretty natural to me:"
Sure, but no Biblical scholar I've heard of, not even heretics, claimed Christ was only natural.
The Bible clearly demonstrates His super-natural powers, even while in human form.
Kalamata: "As you can see, you don't get to define God.
He can do as he pleases, and be anything he pleases, including being "natural." "
I've never "defined" God and you don't get to redefine Him.
I simply take understandings of Him from the Bible and Church Fathers.
Even as a "natural" man, Christ had supernatural powers.
No believer I know of has ever claimed otherwise.
Kalamata: "Gobbledygook."
Here's your problem -- what I've posted is totally consistent with traditional Western & Christian theology.
What you're suggesting is something quite different and alien.
Kalamata: "That should be called "The Darkening" since the days of Charlie & Charlie, perhaps before."
Darwin was a child of the Enlightenment, born at its tail end, in 1808.
Darwin grew up in the "Romantic Era" which followed.
Kalamata: "Besides, the Renaissance played a greater role in the origin of modern science; and those men rejected "enlightenment" type arguments against political and religious traditions."
The Renaissance was an age of scientific inquiry and conflict with traditional Church theology.
Scientists like Galileo were persecuted by Church authorities who couldn't reconcile Galileo's findings with their understanding of the Bible.
Authorities who believed like Kalamata today.
Kalamata: "You have been exaggerating the influence of the enlightenment figures on the Founding Fathers.
The founders secured the idea of "due process" from a 15th century pre-enlightenment document, which included both personal liberty and the rights to property.
In general, the protections in the Bill of Rights are pre-enlightenment."
The word "Enlightenment" is largely defined by the contributions of our Founders.
So you cannot trash the Enlightenment without trashing them too.
And if your intention, consciously or subconsciously, is to trash our Founders, then you don't belong posting on Free Republic, FRiend.
Kalamata: "The "Enlightenment" crowd these days seem to be Marxists and other anti-nationalists, though they seem to be as least as driven toward destroying our traditional morality as they are our national borders."
I can't speak for, or defend, our Leftists, Democrats, Progressives, Socialists or any of those who "wrote the book" from which my brief summary of Denier Rules is derived.
Whatever their notion of "woke" means, it is not our Founders' ideas & ideals.
Conservatives such as Free Republic are keepers of our Founders flame and original intentions -- all of which help define the word "Enlightenment".
Kalamata: "That is why I am here. One way to promote our Constitution and Christian faith is to get evolution and the ACLU out of our classrooms."
Two of my four grandparents were school teachers in the early 1900s, small one-room school houses, began each day with a Bible reading and prayer.
Local schools should be, and generally are, controlled by local governments and so teach children what their voters want children to learn.
So I have no problem if they wish to teach evolution in science classes, but I think they should also have classes where they are not afraid to begin with a Bible reading and prayer.