Posted on 11/13/2002 5:27:59 PM PST by ckilmer
Edited on 06/29/2004 7:09:30 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The ancient covenant is in pieces: Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance." So pronounced the Nobel Prize-winning French biologist Jacques Monod in his 1970 treatise Chance and Necessity, which maintained that God had been utterly refuted by science. The divine is fiction, faith is hokum, existence is a matter of heartless probability
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
Of course. It's my opinion of their opinion, based on my own opinion of the evidence - I don't take the position simply to be contrary. ;)
We may certainly presume that God could use any method he liked, but the question of which method He did use is best resolved by examining the evidence. YEC is dead right out of the gate, as soon as you start asking questions like "how old is this rock?" ID has yet to rigorously define its own propositions, e.g., specified complexity. Someday some theory superior to evolution via natural selection may be formulated, but for now, it's the best of the lot ;)
Helpful as Numbers is with such explanations, however, even more might have been said. Numbers' own account makes abundantly clear that the last thing creationism is concerned with is empirical observation of the natural world. Creationism is rather the deductive extrapolation from a particular pre-understanding of how the Bible should be read onto the metaphysical issues posed by modern theories of evolution. In fact, one of the most persistent themes in Numbers' study is how relatively unimportant the actual looking at the earth or the carrying out of experiments has been for the creationists. There is research, and there are experiments, but usually it is because the creationists are checking out something they have discovered in scientific literature that seems to pose problems for large-scale evolutionary theories. Creationism is, at root, religion. It has become politics because of the overweening metaphysical pretensions of elitist pundits exploiting the prestige of "science."
I think that explains it more than any specific scientific data.
You betcha, as long as no questions are met with hostile resistance to the status quo.
YEC is dead right out of the gate, as soon as you start asking questions like "how old is this rock?"
From what I've read here YEC are not uniformitarianists and don't make so many assumptions. The earth has to be old for evolution, whether gradual or PE and any inquiry into the age of the earth has been met with hostility, name calling, etc.
ID has yet to rigorously define its own propositions, e.g., specified complexity.
To what level?
Someday some theory superior to evolution via natural selection may be formulated, but for now, it's the best of the lot ;)
I guess you're right - it's "the best of the lot" from a group whose hostile resistance to inquiry pulls a number of "dirty tricks" to stifle new theories. Some of which are defined here. Of course and before you say it, that's *my opinion*. :-) Gone for awhile.
I don't see science and religion (or at least my religion) as being in conflict. I believe--based on faith--that God created the heavens and the earth, and that humanity was created in God's (spiritual) image. I also believe--based on reason and observation-- that the universe works according to strict physical laws, and appears to have done so since the Big Bang.
I conclude that, at the moment God caused the Big Bang ("Let there be light"), he set up the physical laws of the universe, knowing and intending that those laws would cause the results he intended to achieve-- the formation of stars and planets, the rise of life on one or more of those planets, and the eventual development of that life into beings capable of moral discernment.
This conclusion is not, of course, original with me. The Rabbis of the Talmud wrote that kol hanissim b'derach hatevah, "all miracles happen in a natural way."
All propositions against the status quo are met with hostile resistance - it's a crucible that discards things rightly judged to be worthless. Not to suggest that you mean it that way, but abandoning "resistance" often sounds suspiciously like "check your brain at the door".
The earth has to be old for evolution, whether gradual or PE and any inquiry into the age of the earth has been met with hostility, name calling, etc.
Inquire away, but nobody will check their brains at the door simply because skepticism proves inconvenient to one theory or another ;)
ID has yet to rigorously define its own propositions, e.g., specified complexity.
To what level?
Such that it can be objectively measured, for example. Right now, it's just a fudge factor, plain and simple.
guess you're right - it's "the best of the lot" from a group whose hostile resistance to inquiry pulls a number of "dirty tricks" to stifle new theories.
Good theories survive, regardless. If it's a better theory, sooner or later, the scientific world will adjust to the new reality. The fact that it is greeted skeptically or with hostility does not absolve proponents of a particular theory from the responsibility to make it work.
I beg to differ. Sets that contain themselves are intractable to comprehensive theories about sets. The essence of a theory is that it boils down the essence of a thing, it cannot, therefore, somehow contain, or be contained by the thing itself. As the information theorists like to say, "you can't prove a 20 pound theorem with a 10 pound system of proof".
Nothing "impersonal" about it; merely saying that God went to the trouble of creating natural forces (gravity, atomic attraction, etc.) so that He could use them to accomplish His will.
And if you think that the Rabbis of the Talmud were "atheists," you are seriously misinformed.
I submit that some form of ID has seemed inevitable for some time now, to most serious researchers (who, if asked, will also respond in virtual unison that there is, at present, no ID science worthy of the appelation). The story of evolution cannot account for the appearance of the basic machinery of reproduction on earth--a point that was conceded by Darwin,--and the theory that self-reproducing cells sprung into existence spontaneously is just giving up and declaring a miracle--why should I prefer your miracle over my local priest's?
Just because Darwinism can't account for everything, doesn't refute modern biology; but the fact is, Darwinism addresses what it addressed--ID addresses something else which isn't a science yet, but will very likely evolve one someday, as I assume we'd like to understand why the basic building blocks of life got here, and we are not without material evidence to draw on, however difficult and expensive the drawing may be.
Dear Friend,
‘I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.’ (Matthew 12:6).
"The Pharisees had confronted Jesus, accusing his disciples of desecrating the Sabbath by plucking grain. While purporting to keep faith alive, these serious-minded people had begun to destroy it with sterile practices, and routine procedures."
"To them, Jesus said," ‘One greater than the temple is here.’
"It was a shocking thing to say to ardent religionists. It was an offensive thing to say to people whose life revolved around the temple with its elaborate rituals and laws. There is no way around the sharpness of Jesus' critique. He was castigating the contraptions by which men and women seek to gain control of God; to secure his services, and guarantee his favor."
"The temple of pious practices and sophisticated symbols must be seen for what it is-a mere shadow of something far greater. God can not be contained by our religious forms, nor can he be managed by them. If we think so, we have repeated an age-old mistake. That temple must be... torn down---to make way for Jesus Christ."
"Contrary to what many have thought, faith does not come through doctrines, creeds, institutions and forms. Its origins are more mundane. It is born in the fact that men and women must live. They have to live in a universe that drives them to ask questions. What am I? Who is this person that I call me? Am I the sum of these wild impulses within myself, or am I really the noble creature I sometimes aspire to be? Why do I do things I despise, and why do I seek the destruction of those who offend me? Why am I here at this time, in this particular place, and not here at some other time and place? Can I be free of the many things that bind me, spirit and body?-guilt , fear, despair? Why is there so much pain?"
"Questions like these are the furnace out of which the golden treasure of faith is forged. The one who wrote: ‘In the beginning God,’ would not have done so if he had not first pondered why there was life. The Psalmist would not have sung, ‘The Lord is my shepherd,’ unless he had struggled with fear and futility. Job affirmed, ‘I know that my redeemer lives,’ after he struggled with the miseries of pain and injustice. Faith comes as men and women encounter God, in the questions raised by existence itself."
"When Jesus said, ‘One greater than the temple is here,’ he was drawing attention to himself as a surpassing religious center; a personal worship place, to which men and women might repair with their questions and longings. No other figure more thoroughly bespeaks human experience, than Jesus-especially on his cross. Naked, shamed, wounded in body, and tortured in spirit, he cries out: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Down into the abyss he goes, but in three days, he rises."
"This is why Jesus is greater than all other holy places, holy people and holy things. In him, questions, pain, even death become shining portals in the gloom. Utter calamity is transformed into utter blessing. The moment of despair is the birthplace of faith."
"May Jesus Christ, be Lord."
Yours in service,
Ron J. Allen.
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