It’s God or Darwin

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/klinghoffer200512210814.asp ^ | David Klinghoffer

[DieHard the Hunter]

God and Darwin are not necessarily in conflict. And if you'd like to be bored out of your Gourd, I'd be quite willing to explain how this can be...

[atomicpossum]

Dawkins observed that Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

Which accounts for a significant amount of the zealotry on the part of evangelical athiesm.

[truthfinder9]

I know people try to reconcile the two, but the point of the article is that many Darwinists are trying to use evolution to stamp out God altogether.

[Oztrich Boy]

Already posted http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1544948/posts

[weegee]

Freedom of religion is not freedom from religion.

Don't allow Atheism to become the state religion (and it is a faith, it asserts that there absolutely is no god).

[Roccus]

I believe in God. I also believe in evolution. There are those who say that my beliefs condemn me to eternal damnation.

I don't think so.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Darwinists are trying to use evolution to stamp out God altogether.

Darwinists are a tiresome bunch and their strident dogma will ultimately be their doom. Which is why God invented the Darwin Awards. This -- all of this -- did not happen by chance. Life on Earth is not and never was a crap-shoot.

Equally, those who believe in six literal days of creation should give pause to reflect. Travel DownUnder: I can show you things that will cause you to believe that this earth is a very ancient place, and that life on this planet evolved over a long period of time, many millions of years ago. But I believe it evolved in accordance with a Divine Purpose.

We have living dinosaurs here, such as the Tuatara: looks like a lizard, but it ain't! It's provably something much more ancient, with three eyes, not two! Flightless birds, like the Kiwi. Pre-historic bugs, like the Weta.

There is No Way in Texas that all these things happened only six thousand years ago. These things EVOLVED. And they took their sweet time in doing so.

(I am a devout -- but deeply flawed -- Christian, unashamedly so.)

[Buck W.]

Exactly.

[Buck W.]

Exactly.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> I believe in God. I also believe in evolution. There are those who say that my beliefs condemn me to eternal damnation.

> I don't think so.

You have succinctly summarized my personal Statement of Faith. Thanks!

[Knitting A Conundrum]

And that is the wrongness of it...What Darwin and the othes who preceded him and followed him describe is a process...deciding the process is something to make declarations of faith on is stepping beyond science into the philosophical/religious field.

[Antonello]

I don't see where it is the responsibility of evolutionists to appease religion by 'proving' compatibility on anything other than an individual level for their own personal beliefs.

Whether you or anyone else feels the two are compatible or not doesn't affect the evidence evolution is based upon. It merely affects how each person chooses to treat that evidence.

[Mad Dawg]

To a great extent I agree. In public schools, however, I would add that teachers of so-called Darwinism ought to avoid suggesting that it disproves theism. And the unfortunate tendency to use the term "evolution" to describe or characterize any sequence of events which meets with the speaker's approval ought to be identified and eschewed.

I once heard an idiot (now that I think of it, more than once, and one of the idiots got a Doctorate!) suggest that Einstein's Theory of Relativity disproved the notion of ethical absolutes!

I do wonder how important it is that the average high school graduate believe or disbelieve Darwinism. I would like to think that it would be not only safe but good to lay out (necessarily in broad strokes) the evidence and arguments and difficulties with two or three notions of evolution. I think it more important that high school graduates have a clue about what the scientific process is than that they believe the current conclusions of that process.

I'd like to suggest the proposition that "Random" is sometimes a scientific term and sometimes a philosophical or theological term. Except in limited circumstances, the term "improvement" is scarcely scientific.

"But that would be putting the clock back," gasped the Governor. "Have you no idea of progress, of development?"

"I have seen them both in an egg," said Caspian. "We call it Going bad in Narnia. ..."

[Antonello]

I loathe those who would misuse their position as representatives of science to preach their personal religious beliefs as much as you do. I have no qualms in seeing them challenged on their actions; they have no right to do so under the guise of educators in public schools.

As for the importance of a high school graduate's belief in evolution, I don't want that so much as them having the opportunity to learn the basics of it, and those that find it interesting can then take it upon themselves to pursue it as their own desires dictate.

[RonF]

wrote Judge John E. Jones III in his decision, Kitzmiller v. Dover, which rules that disparaging Darwin's theory in biology class is unconstitutional.

This is a lie. Lying about what someone has said is a sign of dishonesty and is a sure sign that you have a losing argument.

The judge's opinion doesn't say that disparaging Darwin's theory is unconstitutional. It says that teaching religion in science class is unconstitutional. If you can come up with a scientific theory (i.e., an idea that is in conformance with all known observations and from which testable hypotheses can be developed) that opposes evolutionary theory, then this ruling doesn't affect it at all and you could teach it in Science class. But if you try to advance an allegation as science that is in fact philosophical in nature, with no scientific underpinning, then that's not legal.

I realize that calling someone a liar is a serious charge. Show me where the judge said in his opinion that presenting an alternative scientific theory to evolutionary theory was illegal. What he said was that teaching of one particular set of allegations (Intelligent Design) as science when they were not science was illegal, but he made no blanket statement such as you have made. If you disagree, quote from his decision to support your claim.

[RonF]

Oops. You have a typo here.

And if you'd like to be bored out of your Gourd Gould

There. Fixed it ;-)

[Tax-chick]

bttt

[ALWAYSWELDING]

Disagree. The scriptures are unabashedly opposed to anything but a 6 day creation.

The scriptures are God's word. Do not let the world and it's man made conceptions of any particular age lead you to see the scriptures through a grid.

Let God be God and every man a liar.

Today it's evolution, tomorrow something else, The Scriptures never change.

Besides evolution is a miserable excuse for science. You and all here can do better.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Disagree. The scriptures are unabashedly opposed to anything but a 6 day creation.

I understand your point but respectfully differ. The Scriptures allow for a six-epoch Creation (ie not literal days, but figurative stretches of time).

Mate, I have agonized over the Genesis record for years now, trying to reconcile what I believe to be true to what the evidence before my own eyes suggests. The missing element in the Genesis record is time -- lots of it. Lots and lots of it.

There is No Way in Texas that New Zealand is only six thousand years old. No Way.

For example, drive from Auckland to Rotorua. Just before you get there, you will go thru an other-worldly place. A place of violent volcanic activity. Columns of basalt poke out of the ground heavenward: these are volcanic plugs. The rest of the volcano has eroded away over a timreframe of many thousands, probably millions of years: you can see their remains. You can count the sedimentary lines, over millions of years, many, many thousands of volcanic eruptions.

These could not have happened overnight, or even over the period of recorded History. It's just impossible.

It is then that it hits, right between the eyes and undeniably (or at least it did for me): this earth is an ancient place, much older than six thousand literal years.

I know I'll be unlikely to change your viewpoint, and I certainly do not wish to upset your Faith. I'm merely explaining the world as I see it...