Come back, Shame! Come back!
Posted on 09/18/2006 1:51:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
According to a 2005 Pew Research Center poll, 70 percent of evangelical Christians believe that living beings have always existed in their present form, compared with 32 percent of Protestants and 31 percent of Catholics. Politically, 60 percent of Republicans are creationists, whereas only 11 percent accept evolution, compared with 29 percent of Democrats who are creationists and 44 percent who accept evolution. A 2005 Harris Poll found that 63 percent of liberals but only 37 percent of conservatives believe that humans and apes have a common ancestry. What these figures confirm for us is that there are religious and political reasons for rejecting evolution. Can one be a conservative Christian and a Darwinian? Yes. Here's how.
1. Evolution fits well with good theology. Christians believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God. What difference does it make when God created the universe--10,000 years ago or 10,000,000,000 years ago? The glory of the creation commands reverence regardless of how many zeroes in the date. And what difference does it make how God created life--spoken word or natural forces? The grandeur of life's complexity elicits awe regardless of what creative processes were employed. Christians (indeed, all faiths) should embrace modern science for what it has done to reveal the magnificence of the divine in a depth and detail unmatched by ancient texts.
2. Creationism is bad theology. The watchmaker God of intelligent-design creationism is delimited to being a garage tinkerer piecing together life out of available parts. This God is just a genetic engineer slightly more advanced than we are. An omniscient and omnipotent God must be above such humanlike constraints. As Protestant theologian Langdon Gilkey wrote, "The Christian idea, far from merely representing a primitive anthropomorphic projection of human art upon the cosmos, systematically repudiates all direct analogy from human art." Calling God a watchmaker is belittling.
3. Evolution explains original sin and the Christian model of human nature. As a social primate, we evolved within-group amity and between-group enmity. By nature, then, we are cooperative and competitive, altruistic and selfish, greedy and generous, peaceful and bellicose; in short, good and evil. Moral codes and a society based on the rule of law are necessary to accentuate the positive and attenuate the negative sides of our evolved nature.
4. Evolution explains family values. The following characteristics are the foundation of families and societies and are shared by humans and other social mammals: attachment and bonding, cooperation and reciprocity, sympathy and empathy, conflict resolution, community concern and reputation anxiety, and response to group social norms. As a social primate species, we evolved morality to enhance the survival of both family and community. Subsequently, religions designed moral codes based on our evolved moral natures.
5. Evolution accounts for specific Christian moral precepts. Much of Christian morality has to do with human relationships, most notably truth telling and marital fidelity, because the violation of these principles causes a severe breakdown in trust, which is the foundation of family and community. Evolution describes how we developed into pair-bonded primates and how adultery violates trust. Likewise, truth telling is vital for trust in our society, so lying is a sin.
6. Evolution explains conservative free-market economics. Charles Darwin's "natural selection" is precisely parallel to Adam Smith's "invisible hand." Darwin showed how complex design and ecological balance were unintended consequences of competition among individual organisms. Smith showed how national wealth and social harmony were unintended consequences of competition among individual people. Nature's economy mirrors society's economy. Both are designed from the bottom up, not the top down.
Because the theory of evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, it should be embraced. The senseless conflict between science and religion must end now, or else, as the Book of Proverbs (11:29) warned: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."
Actually following Crick's suggestion of panspermia, he did a lot of research in the RNA world theory.
Given the concept that we must ACCEPT all theories, we would still believe in Spontaneous Generation instead of Biogenesis.
That's a hypothesis that hasn't been confirmed. You might get away with saying, "matters not to how evolution is chosen to be observed"
Think Koch's principles.
"Pet the kittens gently!" Placemarker
Very good. what we have here are attempts to conflate a dynamic process (evolution) with a specific history (biogenesis, common descent).
The specific history of life on earth seems to be common descent from a population of single celled organisms.
Evolution is a dynamic process, and does not require or demand common descent. It could very well be that millions of abiogenic events occurred, and all but one lineage was killed off or consumed by the victorious lineage.
Lineage in single celled organisms is a dubious concept. These guys can acquire DNA from individuals of different types. There are no species as we think of species in sexually reproducing organisms. You catch a cold, you've been laid.
A description of a chain reaction is not an automatic implication that said reaction has always existed, or that some component of the reaction could only come from another component. Chain reactions can and do have a beginning; The ToE can and does explain the "speciation" reaction without addressing what started it.
We hammered out an agreement, but the creationist side felt I had betrayed them...
This fact should tell us something. Why should these people feel that you are a traitor when the purpose of the Agreement of the Willing was to reduce attacks and innuendo? Shouldn't this tell us something about the character of those people? I believe it does.
I've said in this thread that the topic is toxic, but topics aren't living things. Actually, it is the people who are poisonous, not the subject of discussion.
Let the moderators and individual posters take care of the behavior problems.
I find this answer to be unsatisfactory. We must take responsibility for the ideas expressed on this forum. Are we not our brothers' keeper? Having my previous post yanked gives me the opportunity to look up the quote attributed to Edmund Burke. "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
There is a common rhetorical trick called the broad brush, with which I am sure you are familiar. It is a sweepingly unfair statement that tars many people. It is a way of breaking the spirit of the rules without breaking the letter of the rules. Saying that "evolutions worship Darwin" is just a clever way of saying that I am an idolater. Saying that I am "more religious than those I despise the most" suggests two things: one, that I am an idolater and two, that I despise people.
These comments are intended to be attacks, but they are phrased circumspectly. They are, in fact, lies about spoken about us to other people. The statements these people make go far beyond simple gossip. They are in fact bearing false witness about me and others.
Imagine my consternation when people such as yourself, people who cultivate a reputation for reason, fairness, and a commitment to the truth, do not simply ignore these comments. Instead encouragement is given the posters who made them and thanks are given to them for their words -- words that bear false witness against me! Do we not have a moral obligation to stand up against falsehood?
This is why I said the things I did. I am sorry if I made them too "personal" and I ask forgiveness of you. However, I trying to remind the readership and you that not exposing error and wrongdoing is itself wrongdoing. There is such a thing as a lie by ommission. I am not trying to attack you. Saying that someone ought to be ashamed of themselves is not a personal attack. I am trying to be your conscience. Shame is our conscience's way of telling us we may have done something wrong.
You may not like the idea that there is such a thing called the law of biogenesis and wish to reserve an exclusive use for the term law. That's fine, but all observation in the universe of real time shows that it is necessary and regular that life begets life. We can theorize or hypothesize otherwise. Until it is disproven, it holds. I'm happy to call it the principle of biogenesis. mware makes an appropriate point: "Given the concept that we must ACCEPT all theories, we would still believe in Spontaneous Generation instead of Biogenesis." This problem is somewhat inevitable, given the scientific style handed down from Descartes dictating that we must have certainty through the microscope of doubt.
In a court of law, laws don't always hold forever. That means, its necessity is subject to conditions. Many other kinds of similar principles have restrictive application.
Science, from earliest times, has endeavored to seek out those laws that are unconditional and unrestrictive. The term used to decribe such principles is "universal." It is logically questionable whether any science has for itself an "unrestricted universal domain." Obviously what Pasteur demonstrated has a restrictive application. I hope nobody doubts that.
Actually, it takes a second step to sever the process from the causative agent. You don't mean to say that the properties of matter are independent of the matter that exhibits these properties?
Dude, its called science.
That's fine, but similarly, all observations in the universe of real time shows that all things have a beginning. How do you reconcile this with ad infinitum application of "life begets life", unless you believe that life has always existed?
The fossil record suggest a biotic beginning. It is assumed that something caused this. What did?
In one scenario, the logical conclusion is that principles of life always existed because the characteristics of biotic life are caused by prebiotic life. The causes are homogeneous and the nomenclature of life/nonlife is merely practical. (Even in a world consisting exclusively of uniform homogeneous natural causes there is differentiation; everything is not everything). This view suggests that a laboratory in the future will generate life from nonliving matter, or that such an even will be discovered outside of the laboratory. We can say that the transition from nonlife to life is not time-specific and has unrestrictive application. Life is a function of nonlife. This leads to a very difficult problem: why does the fossil record suggest a beginning which suggests that life had an absolute beginning. The easy answer is, because conditions were not favorable. I think this question pushes the search in a new direction.
If this scenario is rejected because matter does not hold the causative agent for generating living matter, that means there is a heterogeneous causative agent which would at least have to be immaterial.
One of the suppositions, as I understand, in Behe's theory of irreducible complexity is that "favorable conditions" are logically inconsistent with a linear or homogeneous explanation.
Great question! I give the beginning of answer and I hope some of it is clear enough to make sense. If I revise it again and again, I may never post anything.
Is this another "Darwin quote," or do you take personal responsibility for it?
I'm not aware of any biologist at any time in history who has said the fossil record says anything about the beginning of life. Perhaps you could share a citation with us.
I wouldn't call it deception, I just have no interest in it at all. I do not embrace Young Earth Creationism.
In sum, my view is like that of Jewish physicist Schroeder - that Genesis must be viewed from the inception space/time coordinates because God alone was the observer of His own creation and the author of Scripture. And when we do that, 6 days from the inception space/time coordinates applying inflationary theory and relativity is equal to roughly 15 billion years from earth's space/time coordinates.
Perhaps Darwin actually said life only comes from life in some other dimension.
Over and over, I keep saying that Darwin’s theory does not address abiogenesis v biogenesis. And yet, over and over, you insist that I do.
The irony is quite simple and should be readily apparent to anyone: “Life from life” is the necessary presupposition for Darwin’s entire theory and it also happens to be the Law of Biogenesis.”.
What makes it an irony is the unexpected fact that the issue he chose not to tackle (abiogenesis v biogenesis) - is itself raised by his own presupposition, that life begets life. The irony does not change the fact that Darwin did not posit a theory to address abiogenesis v. biogenesis.
You made an observation which I found particularly telling. You said:
As a final point, your first scenario removes three of the four Aristotlean causes from the table (one more than methodological naturalism). The four causes are: formal, material, efficient and final. Your first scenario considers only the material cause.
If you would like to delve into abiogenesis v biogenesis, I'm game! But the first step must be a definition of life v. non-life/death in nature.
But don't tell me your mama don't let you surf!
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