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."
Bats are birds. Rabbits chew their cud. Locusts have four legs.
All these things would be appropriate to a book written by men during the early Iron Age, but an omniscient god would've not made these simple mistakes.
And, see, you quote Scripture to support Scripture. Ironically, the term "circular reasoning" probably never crossed your mind. You simply accept the validity of the Bible as a first principle, and never subject any of it to any form of scrutiny.
"Begging the question" is not a question that answers itself. It is when the proposition to be proved is already assumed in the premises.
I'll converse with you when you learn some manners.
I'll be the first to admit I don't understand what passes for manners in the Religion forum. It's copasetic to tell someone they're going to hell but it's impolite to note that someone seems argumentative. I've tried to be polite, but I've gotten nothing but pointed comments for my efforts. Count me out.
I summarized and dumbed it down a little to prove I wasn't quoting a Googled source. It boils down to the same thing.
I'll converse with you when you learn some manners.
I was very respectful. But I can wait until you catch up with the rest of us.
Crikey!
I got sucked in to coming back -- abandon this thread!
Trust me, you don't want to discuss this in the "Religion" forum!
Am I remembering incorrectly when I say that a creationist once claimed here on FR to know of either a geologist or a geological firm that had successfully employed principles of young-earth creationism for locating sources of petrol?
I've often requested that YEC inform me of any such. Answer... chirping crickets.
I hope I didn't suggest this!
I feel that you can either believe in E or not, and STILL be a Christian.
I merely state that you have to DISBELIEVE (or explain it away)parts of the Book if you accept E.
Once THIS occurs, then ther places in the Book are subject to the same treatment.
The "best guess" of an expert is worth considerably more than the uninformed opinions of a layman.
Not in the PC world of creationism, where emotions are considered just as valid as physical evidence....
Yes, I agree with that. Once you start "interpreting" the Bible, you open the door to mischief. On the other hand, there are clearly parts that are subject to interpretation.
Abel would disagree!
Actually, the rest of the Book shows we CAN'T 'use our brain' properly; thus the need for a Savior.
"Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."
http://www.bcpl.net/~lmoskowi/HolmesQuotes/q.detection.html
An omniscient god did not translate the Greek and Hebrew into 1611 English; either.
You need to get up to date.
Thanks for the thoughtful, lucid response.
In my commitment to truth I try and fit everything I can into a unified circle of knowledge, understanding my limitations as a finite being. This is the classical meaning of having a philisophical viewpoint. Of course there are things I don't understand and ambiguities I have not reconciled. But I have to maintain integrity, or I am a hypocrite.
I believe Jesus is the truth, and He has definitely changed my life in a positive way (a subjective experience that does not make it necessarily invalid). However, if Jesus is the truth and speaks the truth I have to consider the world I live in, including the scientific realm and somehow fit it into my philosophical viewpoint, or "universal".
I think there is room to be a Bible believing Christian without rejecting "science" or the scientific method as a means of understanding the temporary phenomena of the world in which we live. If the Bible is true, the world as we know it will undergo a radical change at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (hence the word phenomena as opposed to "laws".). I think many in the "scientific realm" including the "founders" or "fathers" of science (Pascal, Newton, and others) who were/are men/women of faith were comfortable with a supernatural, transcendent God who could and did act above/beyond the "laws" of nature. However, they could study the creation of an orderly God and use this understanding of the laws/rules of creation in a way beneficial to mankind (theough creature comforts, medicine, etc.).
I do not think these individuals were/are comfortable with a "science" that contradicts or supplants the supernatural (God...and His revelation, which is how we know Him). The statements of "science" that cannot be reconciled with the statements of God (if truth is truth and if God speaks the truth) must be rejected, or God must be rejected (if truth is truth and science speaks the truth).
You wrote:
"I suspect that you are as satisfied with your choice as I am with mine, though I admit it amuses me to see so many people like the author of this article try to do a balancing act between the two philosophies, wanting to have the best of both worlds. I'll probably make some enemies by saying so, but I don't think they're doing anything useful."
I do respect your choice, and again, I appreciate your clarifications.
I agree that if two philosophies are incompatible, one or both of them must be wrong. I have not personally abandoned (as I think many "modern" men have) the search for a universal, or in my case growth in my understanding of what I believe to be the universal: The God of the Bible and His creation.
I saw the claim in 1966 that we'd doubled our scientific knowledge in the previous 20 years. (That is, since 1946.) That sounds believable to me. Feedback effects, that kind of thing. Success breeds success and you get an exponential runaway going, eventually.
In 1900, we had just noticed various forms of radiation and knew nothing of the atom. We were 11 years away from knowing how densely packed an atomic nucleus is and how much empty space surrounds it.
We had anesthetic, sterile surgery but no blood banks or antibiotics. We had deduced by indirect observation the existence of genes and could guess they were hiding in cellular chromosomes somewhere, but not everyone took the idea seriously.
We didn't know for sure what galaxies are and regularly confused them with the glowing dust clouds called nebulae. We didn't know the universe is expanding.
We had telegraph and even telephone links but no voice radio or even radio telegraph. We didn't know satellites were possible. We knew something was wrong with our ideas of light, space, and time but had no idea what. We knew something was wrong with our classical ideas of light, energy, and heat but had no idea what. IOW, no relativity, no QM.
We had no powered flight. The automobile was an interesting gimmick but it was unclear if it would ever replace the horse. The best way to get around on land was by train. On water, steamships were still common.
It starts really slow, yes. For a long time, people didn't realize that change ever happened. You see medieval European artists rendering scenes in ancient times and it's abundantly clear they don't realize that their peculiar armor, women's fashions, and gothic architecture hadn't been around forever.
But it builds on itself. The industrial revolution brought unmistakable change to people's lives. They didn't always like it. That era gave us the term "Luddite."
Someone born in the powdered wig world of the US founding fathers, say 1798, could have lived to see the Civil War in his middling-old age, and maybe the telephone and electric light before his own light winked out.
I'm already living in a very different world than the one I was born into in late 1949. Computers (better known as "electronic brains") were strange things that filled warehouse-sized space with vacuum tubes and wire patch panels. No one knew much about what they were or what you would ever do with one, not to mention that only a tiny few existed, all custom-built.
Moon landings? We're already in a different world from the one (1969) the moon landing happened in. Perhaps I wouldn't have laughed if you'd told me then that I'd have a surpassingly powerful computer on a table at home, or that an array of devices including my car and some of the stuff in my kitchen would have computers in them, but I wouldn't have guessed it on my own. I didn't have a calculator then. It was still the Age of the Slide Rule, although in a year or two my Dad would spend about $100 for a four-function TI.
So, big whoop. How does all that help you? BTW, recognizeably shaped stone tools go back to Homo habilis, which is why he was "handy."
Huh?
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