Posted on 04/20/2003 10:36:35 AM PDT by JHL
On Easter of all days, Gary Trudeau uses his Doonesbury cartoon to insult Christians in general, and George Bush's faith in particular. How quick the liberals are to condemn someone else's faith and belief system, but just let a Christian say anything negative about another's belief system and how quick they are to invoke an injunction against "judgementalism."
You can read the cartoon for yourself at the following link CLICK HERE for cartoon
And yet, that's the direction the evidence points.
The world is full of incredible things (in the literal sense of the word) which nonetheless are real.
Comic strip submission deadlines are usually weeks in advance of their publication date. He may have not consulted a calendar. If his life doesn't revolve around religious holidays (and it most likely doesn't), he might not have been aware that that strip's publication date was going to fall on a religious holiday. I don't see any overt signs in the strip that it was knowingly intended to be an "Easter" strip -- no colored eggs or chocolate bunnies, for example, which even non-Christians tend to indulge in on Easter.
He didn't say that they were. You have his point backwards. He says that the evidences for evolution are dependent upon *those* fields -- not vice versa. For just one example, creationists often choose to reject the well-established field of radiometric dating because it gives results that tend to disprove classic creationism, and confirm evolution.
They are all stand-alone fields of scientific endeavor with fundamental underpinnings in the scientific method.
No field is truly "standalone" -- they all rely findings from at least some other fields. Try understanding geology without physics (of floods and erosion and plate tectonics, etc.), for example.
In my life, as an active researcher in Chemistry and Physics, science is just man's effort to understand what God hath wrought. The only people I see rejecting God in favor of what they call 'science' are those whose ego cannot stand the thought of a being superior to themselves.
You don't have to "reject God" to note that evidence points heavily towards evolution. The old canard that a rejection of God drives any significant amount of evolutionary belief is a cheap shot, and untrue.
But it's something that creationists often try to console themselves with -- it's more comfortable to believe that the widespread acceptance of evolution in the scientific community is based on some sort of idealist blindness than that it's based on the wealth of the evidence.
Note that the only *actual* Bush quotes do *not* support the lead-in sentence. Saying the "jury is still out" and that he "doesn't really care about that kind of thing" is *not* an admission that he "does not accept evolution". That's the claim of the *website* writer, not Bush or the New York Times.
At most, Bush has simply deftly sidestepped addressing the issue either way.
The act of rejecting evolution is not in itself tantamount to rejecting the scientific method. Unfortunately, in practice it usually is. That is, the person rejecting evolution almost always does so by throwing a great deal of science and the scientific method out the window.
One of the more classic examples is the "young Earth Creationists", who reject a huge amount of science, from many, many fields, that indicates the Earth/Universe is much more than just a few thousand years old. But other flavors of creationists have their own list of what parts of science and the scientific method they want to jettison in order to bolster their beliefs.
Anyway, I clicked on the Doonsbury strip. This Garry Trudeau evidently hasn't had a new idea since Watergate. You got the same characters sitting around feeling so intellectually superior to everybody else. Yet they never seem to do anything with their lives.
True enough. But then then, it's also not possible to "wholly believe the Bible, *literally*", and believe a lot of other things that most people accept the truth of. For example, that the Earth is round, and moves around the Sun, not vice versa. There are Biblical verses that, read *literally*, deny these things.
Oh, but you say, some of those things are not literal, they're figurative -- figures of speech. Fine, but then who's to decide which is which? That's where things get sticky, since fallible men are the ones who decide what's meant to be read literally and what's not.
The Bible can not be read 100% literally, or it becomes nonsense.
For starters, just so you know, I saw the reference to the BC comic so I searched for it. I found the Good Friday pic first, then I found the Easter publication.
Then I posted without editorializing. I think.
It's a disservice to evolution to call its results "an accident". There in some randomness involved, but that's not *all* there is. There are directing forces involved also. It's as incorrect and misleading to call the outcome of evolution an "accident" as it is to call, for example, volcano formation an "accident", even though volcano formation is due to many randomizing factors as well.
Say what?
This demonstrates a great misunderstanding of evolution.
Just because evolutionary processes are demonstrably at work now, and for millions of years in the past, and are capable of producing new species, etc., that hardly implies that one must necessarily believe that every instance of competition among populations is "good" and not to be interfered with.
Evolution is a natural process. As such, it can at times be as beneficial as a spring rain on the crops, or as pitiless as a hurricane.
Belief in the process of evolution is no different from a belief in the process of erosion, lightning formation, or gravity. That hardly requires us to approve and/or look the other way when the results are contrary to human compassion or concerns. Erosion is a natural process, but I'm not going to allow a landslide to happen and bury a town. Gravity is a natural process, but I'm not going to let a child fall off a cliff.
Famine is a natural way that populations tend to limit themselves to more sustainable levels, but that doesn't mean we should allow them to take their course.
Please try to think things through a bit more.
Here's something that former corporate criminal Michael Milken discovered about ten years ago, after Trudeau spent a week trashing him: Trudeau hasn't drawn his own strips in years. It's done by -- to the best of my memory -- a pro illustrator in Colorado who is faxed scripts and who sends roughs back to Trudeau for approval and eventual delivery to the syndicate. This fact is obvious to anyone who checks the earliest Doonesbury strips.
This kind of "Bush is dumb" schtuff is irritating to be sure, but think of it this way: This is what Trudeau is reduced to nowadays because the economy isn't going as badly as he, as a Bush-basher, would hope, there aren't yet any scandals to hang on Bush or his cabinet, and W has come out smelling like an American Beauty Rose thusfar after the war.
It appears the inspiration for this attack is the Baylor University med professor who said that he would not give a recommendation on behalf of any student that would not affirm belief in evolution. Trudeau probably got that from the internet, the same place he got -- and was duped by -- that legend about Bush's IQ being 91 as opposed to Clinton's 182.
So you've said (usually a lot less coherently than you've done so this time), but so far I haven't seen you make an actual case for your labelling.
The central point of science is the discovery of causes and effects
Correct.
and materialist evolution denies it.
Complete and utter nonsense. Please learn more about what the field of evolution actually says before you attempt to critique it. Here is a good starting point.
It proposes random events as the engine of the transformation of species.
This is a gross oversimplification. Random events provide grist for the mill, but the actual "engine" of transformation involves reproduction, competition, and natural selection, among many other interacting processes.
But don't knock "random events" -- they're found at the root of many indisputable fields of science, including meteorology, geology, chemistry, the gas laws, nuclear physics, and quantum physics, among others. Randomness, far from being directed towards chaos, is a very "creative" thing.
This is totally unscientific, it is an attack on science which in order to expand human knowledge and human health and living standards needs to find the causes and effects of how our Universe functions.
Be sure you understand both evolution and science in general before you make more comments like this one.
Randomness answers nothing and leads to no discoveries.
By itself? Fine. But you've "forgotten" to mention the many processes by which sheer randomness is shaped and channelled.
No matter how much you try to argue away its workability on philosophical principles, evolution *works*. Check the most recent issue of "Discover" magazine, for example. By harnessing classical evolution as a creative force, researchers evolved (from random beginnings) electronic circuits that performed various functions -- including advanced abilities that equaled several circuits that had been only discovered and patented in the past few years by human electronic engineers.
Evolution works -- it produces novel, complex, creative results when put to the test, when you say that it is impossible for it to do so. You might want to go back and re-examine your presumptions.
In fact it opposes scientific inquiry and is a philosophical know-nothingism.
Ooookay.
That is why evolution has been popular with the masses and virtually ignored by scientists.
AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Do you really believe this, or are you being disingenuous hoping that no one will notice?
On the contrary, evolution is an extremely active field, and is accepted by the vast majority of scientists. It's only among the "masses" that there is widespread scepticism about it, thanks to both simple lack of familiarity, and the constant work of creationists who keep trying to inaccurately describe it as some sort of unsupportable cult belief.
It is ... pseudo-science --- for morons.
...as I was saying...
With a few words such as 'survival of the fittest' and 'natural selection' it seeks to make idiots think they are knowledgeable.
Yeah, a "few words", and enormous amounts of evidence discovered over the past century and a half, and countless thousands of research projects, and abundant confirmation from DNA analysis and field studies, and the success of harnessing evolution as a process for producing novel results for research, and...
You know, the Lord frowns on those who bear false witness. So please cut it out.
We see the idiocy of evolution and evolutionists daily on these threads. That is why they all repeat the same stock phrases, throw a few links (because they cannot even understand the concepts being discussed),
This is just sheer dishonesty on your part. You've posted to enough evolution/creationism debates to know full well that "evolutionists" provide far more information than just "stock phrases and a few links". Shame on you.
but never give any facts showing their theory to be what they claim it is - the center of science.
Now you're bearing false witness again. I have yet to see anyone claim that evolution is "the center of science", for of course it isn't. No field of study is (albeit perhaps mathematics). It is, however, true that evolution is the central core of the *biological* sciences.
For a quick taste, read "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" by Theodosius Dobzhansky.
The theory of evolution is just that - a theory.
So is gravity, the theory that matter is made of atoms, etc. etc.
You use the layman's definition of the word "theory" to mislead people about the scientific meaning of the term
It may be a theory, but it is not a scientifically supported theory which is what evolutionists claim it to be.
Your simple hand-waving declaration does not make it so. Evolution is as firmly grounded and "scientifically supported" field as any other sound field of science.
Anybody can have a theory about anything.
Sure. But unlike the creationists, the theory of evolution is firmly supported by 150 years of evidence and research.
It is whether a theory is valid that is the point.
Exactly. And evolution has been shown to be, over and over again, countless times.
So you have not given any evidence for your side.
Finish this sentence: "There are none so blind..."
evolution cannot in fact be science because of its central proposition that 'evolution just happens'.
If that's your actual understanding of evolution's "central proposition", then it's time for you to go back to school.
Such is not science.
Your straw man version of it isn't, surely, but as soon as you think you have good evidence against what the field of evolution *actually* deals with, feel free to get back to us.
Sigh...
This is exactly analogous to asking, "If I descended from my grandfather, why is my grandfather still here?"
Species generally don't evolve in their entirety, they usually spin off subpopulations which evolve in a different direction from the "parent" population. Thus the parent species is quite often still around when the new species has evolved into something different.
Think of species splitting as they evolve into two or more resulting species, not just changing en masse into something else. That's why life on Earth resembles a family *tree*. It's always branching from a long-ago original "trunk", or more recently from a local "branch".
Because...?
It's easier to fling insults than to make a case for your position, eh?
And yet, the evidence points towards the conclusion that evolution has taken place. So despite whatever "logic" (i.e. common sense) might dictate, evolution seems to be the case after all.
Plus you're engaging in a false dichotomy fallacy -- it's not an either-or situation. It's possible for there to be a "Creator" *and* for evolution to have given rise to life on Earth as we know it.
The evolution dogma—it's not science—is so filled with lies and deception that it boggles the mind.
Feel free to boggle my mind -- name some of the alleged "lies and deception" that "evolution dogma" is "filled" with. I've seen claims like yours countless times. When pressed for examples, though, the examples invariably end up being either a) mistaken, b) one of a literal handful of known hoaxes out of 150 years of otherwise good conduct, or c) a better example of outright lies and propaganda from *creationist* sources seeking to dishonestly smear evolution.
Go for it.
If you think it lets people say this, then you greatly misunderstand evolution.
Oh, puh-leaze...
Darwinian evolution bears little if any resemblance to the Hindu notion of changing incarnations.
If that's your best shot at demonstrating that the scientific field of evolution is a "religious doctrine", don't waste our time.
Surely you mean, "either you believe one of the several books compiled from the words (often Nth-hand words) of people who *claimed* that they were God's mouthpieces (while leaving out the tales of other people who claimed the same thing), or you don't".
Let's not pretend that any of us have indisputably heard "what God says" directly from the source.
All too often someone's claims about "what God said" sounds a little too much like the story of Hank
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