Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin: Growing Majority of Americans Support Teaching Both Sides of Evolution Debate

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StAnastasia said:
Leela, a designer is unnecessary, but a Creator is necessary for a Christian. And your two options are not exhaustive. A third would say that the creator has instantiated an open universe with mathematical properties conducive to increasingly complex physical, chemical, biochemical, biological, genetic, and neurological capacities. Such a universe would lead to the evolution of life wherever conditions were suitable, and particularly to morally responsible and spiritually sensitive life. I don’t think one needs to maintain it is “inevitable” to claim that such increasing complexity seems integral to the Creator’s plan.

StAnastasia
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Hi StAnastasia,

What you say above is all that I meant by something like humanity as we know it being inevitable.

Have you read Kenneth Miller or Karl Giberson and found their arguments convincing?

Best,
Leela
 
Leela said:
No, I really don’t believe in any gods. I was just characterizing the debate on evolution that occurs within the Christian community. The Christian Creationists/ID proponents pretty much reject science while the Christian evolutionists like Kenneth Miller try to reconcile the two. My point is that to reconcile the two, somehow they need to maintain a priveledged place for humanity while simultaneously holding that humanity evolved through a process of impersonal natural selection. To do so, they need to argue that the evolution of a human-like lifeform was inevitable. This is what Kenneth Miller and Karl Giberson have attempted in their books. But I don’t agree that hukanity was inevitable. I think that in their arguments, they pretty much regress to the sorts of claims made by the creationists whom they oppose.

Best,
Leela
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Yeah, but, you have a little doubt, don’t you? Maybe just a speck, otherwise, I should think that our discussion of this “dualism” would not be of any interest to you either?

jd
 
Jennifer_J said:
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

wow, you’ve taken a WHOLE class on Darwinian Revolution? And ONE class in stats? I’ll let my husband (a Ph.D. in Biology, btw) know that the next time he needs a peer reviewed paper, he should contact you :rolleyes:
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On the whole I have found that, short of showing a radical Muslim a cartoon of Mohammed, nothing has the capacity to bring out unpleasantness in people as fast as expressing doubt in Darwinism.

Ender
 
Ender said:
On the whole I have found that, short of showing a radical Muslim a cartoon of Mohammed, nothing has the capacity to bring out unpleasantness in people as fast as expressing doubt in Darwinism.

Ender
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You ought to try having your faith questioned on a frequent basis because those pleasant people who deny science can’t believe that anyone of faith would accept science. Not very pleasant. Amazing, though, considering it is only the dreaded darwinists that are unpleasant.:rolleyes:

Peace

Tim
 
Thanks ReggieM - I was delighted to see your comment on my first attempt at joining a ´´chat`` also that you too feel the truth, and the beauty of the John´s language. And to think that he actually saw it published himself!
  • I wonder if you could help me with a definition of a much-used expression you also used - ´´science cannot…know such thìngs``.
Reading this and lots of other´´threads I am amazed at the arrogance and violent speech of many of those who write against the idea of a First Origin. Many say they speak for ´´science but as a design engineer, I cannot see much that is scientific going on nowadays. The very useful and advanced work being done on things like the Human Genome, DNA etc.does not seem to me to be much more than reverse engineering - that is taking something that works apart to see how it was made by someone else. Should not real ´´Science`` be more than that? Like maybe designing from scratch people to live on Jupitor or Mars - or using a bit more of the brains our Constructor gave us to try to understand Him/Her?
James
 
StAnastasia said:
Leela, a designer is unnecessary, but a Creator is necessary for a Christian. And your two options are not exhaustive. A third would say that the creator has instantiated an open universe with mathematical properties conducive to increasingly complex physical, chemical, biochemical, biological, genetic, and neurological capacities. Such a universe would lead to the evolution of life wherever conditions were suitable, and particularly to morally responsible and spiritually sensitive life. I don’t think one needs to maintain it is “inevitable” to claim that such increasing complexity seems integral to the Creator’s plan.

StAnastasia
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This is basically a denial of Divine Providence. It’s the Deist model, with God as the “instantiator” of “capacities” unknown and unwilled by Him.
This reduces God to an imaginary presence.
No sign of the intelligence of God could be perceived in nature or the universe since everything is the product of natural laws.
This model is perfectly compatible with atheism as well as with the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion or the sky-fairy religion, etc.
This is God, not even as the clock-winder but as a distant “force” which does not have an Idea for the universe and humanity at all. One therefore cannot detect the presence of a supreme intelligence as the origin of nature, or any aspects of design or purpose.
In this view, those who observe design and purpose (overwhelming evidence of which is asserted by Cardinal Schoenborn) are being deceived by God who accidentally made it appear that there was design, but in reality it is merely the accidental, unplanned development of life (wherever conditions happened to be suitable – if any actually were).
 
The good thing is that I do not deny science…science is a very noble thing in my eyes. I just disagree with mainstream scientists who are proponents of this claim that we share common ancestry with apes. Even scientists disagree among themselves. 🙂 As I’m sure you are aware, theories can be accepted only to be later disproven…and then possibly later accepted as having been accurate in relating a particular phenomenon.
 
walsh said:
Reading this and lots of other´´threads`` I am amazed at the arrogance and violent speech of many of those who write against the idea of a First Origin.
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Good point, James. I’m glad you’re sensitive and alert to such incredible arrogance of the part of those who claim that science is capable of revealing the origin and development of life and the universe.

Supposedly, natural selection is capable of creating sophisticated design and functionality. But we tend to prefer to use human intelligence when we want to innovate or design new and useful things.
 
ready said:
Even scientists disagree among themselves. 🙂
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You have written this a couple of times. Would you do us a favor and list those scientists who reject the idea of common ancestry based on scientific evidence and not on their religious beliefs?

Peace

Tim
 
reggieM said:
This is basically a denial of Divine Providence.
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Not at all, Reggie. I can’t imagine a more providential model than one in which God lovingly provides Creation with what it needs to develop on its own.

Imagine this analogy: the God of evolution is like parents who give birth to a child, which over the course of decades grows and develops to maturity. Your God – the God of Intelligent Design – is like a parent who has to intervene periodically, with injections and operations to give the baby a heart, brain, and kidneys, or to turn on hormones, or to cause testicles to descend or breasts to develop, etc. The God of ID is one who is not intelligent enough to have created a being with internal principles of development to begin with, but has to tinker with it, inserting parts and jump-starting processes along the way.

I and many Catholics worship the smarter God, not the amateur tinkerer God.

StAnastasia
 
Surely, some good scientist don’t accept common ancestry from apes as necessarily being something incontrovertibly true.
 
Orogeny said:
You ought to try having your faith questioned on a frequent basis because those pleasant people who deny science can’t believe that anyone of faith would accept science. Not very pleasant. Amazing, though, considering it is only the dreaded darwinists that are unpleasant.
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I am quite aware that unpleasantness is, regrettably, somewhat ubiquitous, nor can my comment be interpreted as implying otherwise - or that Darwinists, dreaded or otherwise, are its only practitioners - only that they seem more enthusiastic than most in employing it.

Ender
 
ready said:
Surely, some good scientist don’t accept common ancestry from apes as necessarily being something incontrovertibly true.
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Could you give us a couple of names of the ones who don’t accept common ancestry based on the scientific evidence and not because of their religious beliefs?

Peace

Tim
 
StAnastasia said:
Not at all, Reggie. I can’t imagine a more providential model than one in which God lovingly provides Creation with what it needs to develop on its own.

Imagine this analogy: the God of evolution is like parents who give birth to a child, which over the course of decades grows and develops to maturity. Your God – the God of Intelligent Design – is like a parent who has to intervene periodically, with injections and operations to give the baby a heart, brain, and kidneys, or to turn on hormones, or to cause testicles to descend or breasts to develop, etc. The God of ID is one who is not intelligent enough to have created a being with internal principles of development to begin with, but has to tinker with it, inserting parts and jump-starting processes along the way.

I and many Catholics worship the smarter God, not the amateur tinkerer God.

StAnastasia
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Like the liberal-permissive parent who does not provide care for the child. No guidance, no intervention when needed, no correction, no design, purpose or goal of life …

That is the model for liberalism and essentially is an atheistic model.

Christ referred to Himself as the Good Shepherd. He shepherds the flock – teaching, guiding, forming and directing them.

That is what Divine Providence is all about. Liberal theology would deny the concept. Denying also the concept of sublimation of the will (and thus religious orders were emptied by that heretical nonsense).

Again, ID is merely a modern version of the Teleological argument and the Cosmological argument.
 
StAnastasia said:
Not at all, Reggie. I can’t imagine a more providential model than one in which God lovingly provides Creation with what it needs to develop on its own.

Imagine this analogy: the God of evolution is like parents who give birth to a child, which over the course of decades grows and develops to maturity. Your God – the God of Intelligent Design – is like a parent who has to intervene periodically, with injections and operations to give the baby a heart, brain, and kidneys, or to turn on hormones, or to cause testicles to descend or breasts to develop, etc. The God of ID is one who is not intelligent enough to have created a being with internal principles of development to begin with, but has to tinker with it, inserting parts and jump-starting processes along the way.

I and many Catholics worship the smarter God, not the amateur tinkerer God.

StAnastasia
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In Kenneth Miller’s book, he makes the analogy of a pool player who sinks the balls one at a time to one who gets them all in in one shot.
 
ready said:
Surely, some good scientist don’t accept common ancestry from apes as necessarily being something incontrovertibly true.
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I suspect that these views are published somewhere. Controversies regarding divergence and genetics would be significant. I’m looking for that too.

Surely someone has a kid in an University science class who could locate reports. Or someone has access to a library…

Blessings,
granny

All human life owes existence to a loving Creator.
Refuse FOCA
 
Ender said:
On the whole I have found that, short of showing a radical Muslim a cartoon of Mohammed, nothing has the capacity to bring out unpleasantness in people as fast as expressing doubt in Darwinism.

Ender
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I find that to be true also. The Muslim analogy seems right also because it seems that people embrace evolutionary theory with an emotional committment that is very similar to religious devotion.
 
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