Vatican astronomer likens creationism to superstition

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I look at all of the arguments going on and almost want to laugh. Science cannot prove the existence of God. For those without faith, no proof is enough. For those with faith, no proof is necessary. All of this makes for interesting parlay, but that is all it is. No one will convince the other. Deacon Ed B
 
drpmjhess said:
Yes, not speaking to a colleague is not at all nice. But Behe and Marks hardly represent genius. In fact, what mystified Behe in Darwin’s Black Box is not at all mystifying to a competent graduate student. Saying “I have no idea how x happens” is not sufficient argument to seal it off from scientific investigation.
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The point at issue is the scandalous ways that Behe and others are being treated by the neo-Darwinist establishment. I have offered just one or two examples, but there are many more. You originally found fault with my contention that ID scientists are being persecuted. Now you are dismissing the evidence and changing the subject to the matter of Behe’s methodology.

History will decide whether Behe is a genius or not. In any case, even non-geniuses should be immune from persecution in higher education. While I don’t know him personally, I have to assume that his successful supervision of graduate studends in pursuit of a PhD, suggests a level of performance that would exceed your unflattering characterization of him. Also, ID is, by definition, a non-mechanistic approach. So, it makes little sense to criticize it on the grounds that it doesn’t propose a mechanism.
 
drpmjhess said:
Ricmat, biologists certainly see design in nature. A bird wing or a streamlined fish shape are designed to go more efficiently through water. Biologists explain this as adaptation that confers a survival advantage. A religious believer might lead you to faith, but the science does not lead ineluctably to a designer.

But Intelligent Design advocates ignore teleologies that are not as nice, and yet also show design. If all design is ascribed to a designer, dysteleologies have to be ascribed to the designer as well.

Take, for example, reproductive behavior in some Praying mantis species. The male is not capable of ejaculating his sperm into the female until she has chewed her mate’s head off completely. Partial chewing off of the head is not sufficient. An intelligent design advocate would have to agree that a wise and loving providence devised this ingenious method for delivery of the male Praying mantis’s genetic load!

Petrus
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I understand that you are a theistic evolutionist, but I don’t know whether you are attuned to Christian theology. According to the Catholic/Biblical world view, God’s designs were compromised by original sin. Under the circumstances, imperfect design is no reproach on a perfect, ominipotent God.
 
Stephen_LB said:
I understand that you are a theistic evolutionist, but I don’t know whether you are attuned to Christian theology. According to the Catholic/Biblical world view, God’s designs were compromised by original sin. Under the circumstances, imperfect design is no reproach on a perfect, ominipotent God.
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Well, I am a theologian, so yes, I am attuned. Tell me, what do you understand by “original sin”? If it is resultant upon some primordial action of an historical “Adam” and “Eve,” how did that action affect the mating behavior of Praying mantises? How did “original sin” compromise anything but the moral state of the “original sinner”? If you think it did, can you express that in a way that is intelligible to biological science? And please don’t trot out the second law of thermodynamics – that has long been discarded as a proof for Creationism –
talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/creationism.html
 
I have a speculation about Original Sin and Darwinism.

It seems to me that Man, Adam, was given power over creation to name it and be custodian of it. When he sinned, he paid the price, his generations paid the price and all things under his dominion paid the price. The Lion no longer laid down with the lamb and the soil had to be worked.

This sounds like the advent of Darwinism to me. Put aside chronology for a moment, if we assume Eden was of the earth but not in time like after the fall. Darwinism is like the chaos and sadness of sin: ME Centered: How do ***I ***struggle to survive. Darwinism is the world we live in, which is a fallen world. Christ came to redeem us. He acted in ways that surprise us who are enmeshed within the Darwinian process: Instead of fight or flight, Christ preached turn the other cheek and showed humility when he was spat upon. Instead of conquering for survival; Christ freely laid down His life. What could be more in opposition to Darwinism?

Christ who was like us in all things except sin, repudiated by His life I believe the idea inherent in darwinism, which is me first. God is Spirit and Love and Truth while Darwinian evolution is struggle and chaos and disease and death and the strong survive.

I don’t know where the garden of eden was within reality, but the affront to God affected us and maybe the past as well, as Christ redeemed those who had sinned in the past, e.g. Mary and opening the gates of Heaven as mediator for all men for all time as well as the future by reconciling us to God, so it is mete that the fall affected all reality under Adam’s dominion, past and future until Christ reigns in glory in a new world.

It’s just a speculation, but for my mind it seems to fit.
 
MichaelTDoyle said:
darwinism - definition from dictionary.die.netDarwinism n : a theory of organic evolution claiming that new species arise and are perpetuated by natural selection [syn: Darwinism]
dictionary.die.net/darwinism
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That’s really interesting. I taught comparative anatomy, histology and embryology at a major university in the US. I never encountered that term within the university.
 
Namesake said:
That’s really interesting. I taught comparative anatomy, histology and embryology at a major university in the US. I never encountered that term within the university.
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I haven’t encountered it either, Namesake. I believe it is a definition invented by Creationists who aren’t familiar with the progress made in support of evolution in the 150 years since *The Origins of Species *was published, including genetics. It is parallel to calling physics “Newtonism” or geology “Huttonism.”
 
drpmjhess said:
I haven’t encountered it either, Namesake.
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Well, someone had to be the last one to find out. 🙂

From M-W.com: Darwinism

1 : a theory of the origin and perpetuation of new species of animals and plants that offspring of a given organism vary, that natural selection favors the survival of some of these variations over others, that new species have arisen and may continue to arise by these processes, and that widely divergent groups of plants and animals have arisen from the same ancestors — compare evolution 4, neo-Darwinism 2 : a theory that inherent dynamic forces allow only the fittest persons or organizations to prosper in a competitive environment or situation

And wikipedia.com starts out this way:

Darwinism is a term for the underlying theory in those ideas of Charles Darwin concerning evolution and natural selection. Discussions of Darwinism usually focus on evolution by natural selection, but sometimes Darwinism is taken to mean evolution more broadly, or other ideas not directly associated with the work of Darwin.
 
Namesake said:
That’s really interesting. I taught comparative anatomy, histology and embryology at a major university in the US. I never encountered that term within the university.
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ID uses the term Darwinism to clarify not to denigrate. Darwin thought evolution was driven by a purposeless, mindless process, unplanned process call random variation and natural selection. He also believed that design in biology is an illusion. Most evolutionary biologists accept this account. Some evolutionists, on the other hand, accept the process but also believe that it was planned. Michael Behe, for example, has been abused, lampooned, and slandered by evolutionary biologists, even though he himself believes in evolution. The problem is that he allows for the possibility that God may have played a role and that some things are designed.

So, we need a term to differentiate between these two kinds of evolutionists. Darwinists, (or neo-Darwinists) represent the large number of evolutionary biologists, who argue that the process is unplanned and that all biological design is illusory. ID evolutionists argue that the process was planned and that some biological design in real and detectable. Theistic evolutionists, who are pro-Darwin and anti ID, represent a third group. So, the term “evolutionist” is too ambiguous to be helpful. It seems more prudent to chart out three distinct categories, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, and Theistic evolution. For sensitive Darwinists we use MET (modern evolutionary theory) as a way of paying tribute to the advances made in the early part of the twentieth century.
 
drpmjhess said:
Well, I am a theologian, so yes, I am attuned. Tell me, what do you understand by “original sin”? If it is resultant upon some primordial action of an historical “Adam” and “Eve,” how did that action affect the mating behavior of Praying mantises? How did “original sin” compromise anything but the moral state of the “original sinner”? If you think it did, can you express that in a way that is intelligible to biological science? And please don’t trot out the second law of thermodynamics – that has long been discarded as a proof for Creationism –
talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/creationism.html
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By original sin, I mean the classical notion that our first parents disobeyed God and compromised the harmonious relationship between man and God. Some have suggested that this break affected the relationship between man and universe, man with the animals, and the universe with itself. As one theologian put it, “there was a crack in the universe.” It seems reasonable that such an event could render a perfect design imperfect. If someone wrecks a perfectly designed automobile through a reckless abuse of free will, it makes little sense to blame the designer.

In any case, the current mating habits of a praying mantis may not necessarily represent a bad design. It may well be that “optimum design” is different that “perfect” design. Perhaps some animals behave exactly the way they do to enhance the ecology in ways that we don’t know about. Perhaps the “apparent” destructive behavior of some animals provides other animals with an advantage in order to maintain balance in nature or even to change the proportions of the animal population. Maybe some insects are designed to be self destructive because the environment does not weed them out quickly enough. Unless we know the big picture, we have no way of knowing whether or not the design has been optimally conceived.

In any case, the “bad design” argument is not an argument against teleology. It is a premature, and at times, a presumptuous judgment on the sensibilities of the designer. One might as well challenge the imperfect design in an ancient hunter’s spear and conclude that it was not the result of an intelligent agent. The real question is this: Is there evidence of design? Or, if you like, is a design inference possible? That is what “specified complexity” and “irreducible complexity” are all about. It’s ironic when you think about it. The critics who mistakenly claim that ID science is theologically driven, are the same ones who ignore the science and resort to theological concepts such as “bad design” to argue against it.
 
Stephen_LB said:
Some have suggested that this break affected the relationship between man and universe, man with the animals, and the universe with itself. \

That is what “specified complexity” and “irreducible complexity” are all about. It’s ironic when you think about it. .
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(1) How does eating a forbidden fruit by two members of one species “affect …the universe with itself”? Our galaxy alone is one hundred thousand light years across. By Fundie calculations Adam and Eve lived 6,000 years ago. How did their fruit lunch affect what goes on on the other side of our galaxy, much less in galactic superculsters clusters ten billion light years away, whose inhabitants have never heard of Adam and Eve?

(2) Can you explain “specified complexity” and “irreducible complexity” in a way that makes scientific sense? Will they have sessions on these theories at the AAAS that I might attend next year?
 
drpmjhess said:
(1) How does eating a forbidden fruit by two members of one species “affect …the universe with itself”? Our galaxy alone is one hundred thousand light years across. By Fundie calculations Adam and Eve lived 6,000 years ago. How did their fruit lunch affect what goes on on the other side of our galaxy, much less in galactic superculsters clusters ten billion light years away, whose inhabitants have never heard of Adam and Eve?

(2) Can you explain “specified complexity” and “irreducible complexity” in a way that makes scientific sense? Will they have sessions on these theories at the AAAS that I might attend next year?
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Who would want to dialogue with you with such a snarky tone? Refering to the initial disobedience as a “fruit lunch” and the condescending tone is why many simply opt out of dialoguing on the internet.
 
MichaelTDoyle said:
Who would want to dialogue with you with such a snarky tone? Refering to the initial disobedience as a “fruit lunch” and the condescending tone is why many simply opt out of dialoguing on the internet.
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It’s not condescending at all – I think the story of the forbidden fruit is wonderful, and I love hearing it during the Easter Vigil every year. Seeing that Stephen LB had commented on the Fall, I posed some important questions regarding how we might interpret the universality of the Fall in light of modern scientific understanding (as I will do in a sermon on Sunday).
 
drpmjhess said:
Seeing that Stephen LB had commented on the Fall, I posed some important questions regarding how we might interpret the universality of the Fall in light of modern scientific understanding (as I will do in a sermon on Sunday).
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Perhaps I’m confusing sermon and homily, but are you a Catholic Priest?
 
ricmat said:
Perhaps I’m confusing sermon and homily, but are you a Catholic Priest?
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Ricmat, I’m a Catholic layman; I was asked to deliver the sermon on evolution and religion at a Unitarian Universalist church service on Sunday, which should prove interesting, since UUs are notoriously reluctant to commit to any beliefs at all! I will simply try to represent a monotheistic (specifically Christian) perspective on religious belief in the context of modern science. I am not there to convert, but I won’t shy away either from briefly reviewing – in light of evolution – the contours of Catholic doctrines about God and creation, Christology, sin and soteriology, theological anthropology, theodicy, and eschatology. All in 25 minutes???..:eek:
 
drpmjhess said:
Ricmat, I’m a Catholic layman; I was asked to deliver the sermon on evolution and religion at a Unitarian Universalist church service on Sunday, which should prove interesting, since UUs are notoriously reluctant to commit to any beliefs at all! I will simply try to represent a monotheistic (specifically Christian) perspective on religious belief in the context of modern science. I am not there to convert, but I won’t shy away either from briefly reviewing – in light of evolution – the contours of Catholic doctrines about God and creation, Christology, sin and soteriology, theological anthropology, theodicy, and eschatology. All in 25 minutes???..:eek:
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Well, have fun. Just don’t attempt to bring up abortion :(.
nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher012003.asp
 
ricmat said:
Well, have fun. Just don’t attempt to bring up abortion :(.
nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher012003.asp
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It’s not in my sermon, and if it comes up at the social hour afterward I won’t shrink from it. The UUs I’ve met are generally very affable and respectful of other’s opinions; while that can turn them into moral wafflers it at least avoids confrontations.

And who knows – conversation can sometimes lead to conversion. my father once lectured on the Nicene controversy to a mixed audience. A Unitarian came up to him afterward and said, “If that’s what the Trinity is about, I could accept that and be Trinitarian.”
 
drpmjhess said:
(1) How does eating a forbidden fruit by two members of one species “affect …the universe with itself”? Our galaxy alone is one hundred thousand light years across. By Fundie calculations Adam and Eve lived 6,000 years ago. How did their fruit lunch affect what goes on on the other side of our galaxy, much less in galactic superculsters clusters ten billion light years away, whose inhabitants have never heard of Adam and Eve??
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Because Adam and Eve were not originally of a fallen nature and had an unfettered free will and still sinned against an infinitely good God. This was the original sin against an infinite being far beyond time and space and one can infer that in giving man dominion over creation when man fell, creation fell–all of it–and still all of creation, which fell for all space and all time, past present and future, can not make up for a sin against the eternal Creator, who is infinitely good. Only Jesus could suffice.

This is the spiritual dynamic that undergirds the me first nature of this fallen world that seems imprinted on reality. Why we recoil when we see for example the bear eat its own young and all the harshness of natural selection and in our heart we think: It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

I object again to the characterization of this aweful somber, most tragic, moment in human history as a “fruit lunch”.
 
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