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."
From when the tops of mountains were underwater, before tectonic shifts pushed them up. And from when the deserts were the floor of oceans.
- I have PERSONALLY found fossils of sea-creatures on MOUNTAIN TOPS and IN DESERTS, apart from a global flood HOW did they get there?
Here ya go:
I never suggested that. Did you read my post? Here it is again:
No the trend I am trying to get you to see is not that there are more reports on scientific fraud than on religious fraud. It is that there are numerous reports of fraud on all sides. There are just too many people that are willing to further their cause by any means.
You seem to have a preconceived notion that scientific thought is of a higher standard or more virtuous than others. We are all human and we are all fallible. There are honest and dishonest men in all camps.
That's when it was found, not when he died.
You are mispeaking.
Also, lava at the top of one of Hawaii's volcanos was dated by carbon dating to be MILLIONS of YEARS old when the HISTORICAL record PROVED it to be from the 19th century!
A. Carbon dating is not used on in-organics.
B. Carbon dating can indicate dates to maybe 50,000 years; Not the "MILLIONS of YEARS" that you claim.
C. The Potassium-Argon dating that was used on the Hualalei lava flow showed dates on unmelted basalts rocks dating from 140 million years to 2.9 billion years. (See "Deep-Ocean Basalts: Inert Gas Content and Uncertainties in Age Dating, Science 162:11 Oct 1968 pp 265-266).
You are mispeaking. (again)
- This same carbon dating was used on a LIVE, i.e. LIVING mullusk and the mullusk was dated to have been DEAD OVER 100,000 years!!!
A. 100,000? see point B above.
B. Actually it was 27,000 years.
C. It is the well known reservoir effect of aquatic animals that otherwise take up limestone or other sources of "old carbon". Radiocarbon dating of marine animals is rarely, if ever, used unless there is a known calibration curve for that particular spot of water.
You are mispeaking. (once again).
geologic uplift, upheaval, and subsidence
plate tectonics
rifts
you can't be a real creationist - none of them are quite so full of *every* cliche and debunked creationist fallacy.
I suspect you are an alternate/retread, here to deliberately make creationists look insipid by apeing their worst lunacies at high volume.
a poorly-kept secret: they don't need that much help in appearing insipid.
nicely done.
do you share my suspicion about this poster?
Some would be a more accurate word.
Mispeaking placemarker
It's not human history when there is no humans there. Heck, at first there isn't even a sun or planets to mark the passage of time.
Therefore, it is 12-24 hours as God experiences it.
Random yes. Accidental no. How can it happen? Because God created the system to work that way.
Isn't pride a sin?
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