Posted on 05/01/2011 7:24:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
The squabble between Darwin lobbyists who openly hate religion and those who only quietly disdain it grows ever more personal, bitter and pathetic. On one side, evangelizing New or "Gnu" (ha ha) Atheists like Jerry Coyne and his acolytes at Why Evolution Is True. Dr. Coyne is a biologist who teaches and ostensibly researches at the University of Chicago but has a heck of a lot of free time on his hands for blogging and posting pictures of cute cats.
On the other side, so-called accommodationists like the crowd at the National Center for Science Education, who attack the New Atheists for the political offense of being rude to religious believers and supposedly messing up the alliance between religious and irreligious Darwinists.
I say "supposedly" because there's no evidence any substantial body of opinion is actually being changed on religion or evolution by anything the open haters or the quiet disdainers say. Everyone seems to seriously think they're either going to defeat religion, or merely "creationism," or both by blogging for an audience of fellow Darwinists.
Want to see what I mean? This is all pretty strictly a battle of stinkbugs in a bottle. Try to follow it without getting a headache.
Coyne recently drew excited applause from fellow biologist-atheist-blogger PZ Myers for Coyne's "open letter" (published on his blog) to the NCSE and its British equivalent, the British Centre for Science Education. In the letter, Coyne took umbrage at criticism of the New Atheists, mostly on blogs, emanating from the two accommodationist organizations. He vowed that,
We will continue to answer the misguided attacks [on the New Atheists] by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks.Like the NCSE, the BCSE seeks to pump up Darwin in the public mind without scaring religious people. This guy called Stanyard at the BCSE complains of losing a night's sleep over the nastiness of the rhetoric on Coyne's blog. Coyne in turn complained that Stanyard complained that a blog commenter complained that Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE, is like "vermin." Coyne also hit out at blogger Jason Rosenhouse for an "epic"-length blog post complaining of New Atheist "incivility." In the blog, Rosenhouse, who teaches math at James Madison University, wrote an update about how he had revised an insulting comment about the NCSE's Josh Rosenau that he, Rosenhouse, made in a previous version of the post.
That last bit briefly confused me. In occasionally skimming the writings of Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau in the past, I realized now I had been assuming they were the same person. They are not!
It goes on and on. In the course of his own blog post, Professor Coyne disavowed name-calling and berated Stanyard (remember him? The British guy) for "glomming onto" the Matzke-vermin insult like "white on rice, or Kwok on a Leica." What's a Kwok? Not a what but a who -- John Kwok, presumably a pseudonym, one of the most tirelessly obsessive commenters on Darwinist blog sites. Besides lashing at intelligent design, he often writes of his interest in photographic gear such as a camera by Leica. I have the impression that Kwok irritates even fellow Darwinists.
There's no need to keep all the names straight in your head. I certainly can't. I'm only taking your time, recounting just a small part of one confused exchange, to illustrate the culture of these Darwinists who write so impassionedly about religion, whether for abolishing it or befriending it. Writes Coyne in reply to Stanyard,
I'd suggest, then, that you lay off telling us what to do until you've read about our goals. The fact is that we'll always be fighting creationism until religion goes away, and when it does the fight will be over, as it is in Scandinavia.A skeptic might suggest that turning America into Scandinavia, as far as religion goes, is an outsized goal, more like a delusion, for this group as they sit hunched over their computers shooting intemperate comments back and forth at each other all day. Or in poor Stanyard's case, all night.
There's a feverish, terrarium-like and oxygen-starved quality to this world of online Darwinists and atheists. It could only be sustained by the isolation of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that the public accepts Darwinism to the extent it does -- which is not much -- primarily because of what William James would call the sheer, simple "prestige" that the opinion grants. Arguments and evidence have little to do with it.
The prestige of Darwinism is not going to be affected by how the battle between Jerry Coyne and the NCSE turns out. New Atheist arguments are hobbled by the same isolation from what people think and feel. I have not yet read anything by any of these gentlemen or ladies, whether the open haters or the quiet disdainers, that conveys anything like a real comprehension of religious feeling or thought.
Even as they fight over the most effective way to relate to "religion," the open atheists and the accomodationists speak of an abstraction, a cartoon, that no actual religious person would recognize. No one is going to be persuaded if he doesn't already wish to be persuaded for other personal reasons. No faith is under threat from the likes of Jerry Coyne.
Beautiful.
ouch.......
What you said.
Luke 18:9-14
9He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10"Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' 14I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."
We CAN'T pay for our sin. The payment owed is death. The only option is forgiveness, forgiveness of the debt.
That entails essentially, throwing yourself on the mercy of the court.
I am SO stealing that one.
That's why he wrote this (see my link): "...Overall, the passage has the "distinct flavour of the second century" and appears to be a pastiche of material taken from other Gospels. ..."
Sometimes . . . the best thing to do with a bad taste in the mouth is to rinse with water well then have glass of OJ and forget it as thoroughly as one can.
Praise God for the relief, personally.
I hope everyone confesses, repents and makes Heaven home . . .
But God will certainly not force Heaven on anyone hell-bent in bitterness to live otherwise.
GREAT GIF.
Got it saved.
Thx.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
THX THX.
True.
True.
"In an analogous way, if someone asks for evidence of God, we might say "truth," or "beauty," or "virtue." For a soul of sufficient purity and depth, this will be an adequate argument, especially once the implications are fully appreciated and worked out in an ontologically consistent manner. However, materialists, Darwinists.. and other metaphysical yahoos imagine that they can reject the whole of religion based upon a single argument taken out of context, just as a savage could reject the big bang based upon the obvious empirical evidence that refutes it.
Thus... both types of primitives "want more than evidence; they want the whole science by which their mind could be moved by the evidence" .. They essentially want to see the tree that will prove the existence of the forest, when the forest is on a different ontological level than the tree. ...."
I do not understand what makes the particular verses in Mark have a second century "flavor". I do know logical inference. With the information contained in the Bible I cannot tell which statements came first. But I can say the verses are consistent with other verses in the Bible as statements of truth.
Me neither, but literature specialists can.
And I can conclude that since literature specialists determine it, the information is in the realm of wisdom of men.
Thanks, Matchett & Quix.
Since the Mister decided to watch racing (a/k/a “napping” in these parts), I have time to catch up on the thread. Never imagined that it would have taken on a life of its own. ;-)
Y’all have a great weekend.
SC
Well, I didn't see post 3,498 before it got pulled, so can't reply to it I guess.
I wonder what my putative lack of shame has to do with anything.
Looks like another "just change the subject by doing an ad hominum attack" maneuver on kosta's part.
He is a very slippery correspondent, to put it mildly. Not really worth talking to, for he'll give you the runaround every time.
JMHO FWIW.
Thanks for your kind words of support, dear sister in Christ!
What a testimony. Thank you for sharing that.
And until you’ve been there, there is simply know way of knowing how true and how real something like that is and can be. It is eerily similar to my own. Change some of the details, such as life circumstances, and the story is basically the same.
God’s love, His forgiveness, His peace, His restoration, are all facts and are all real and cannot be reduced to a formula or set of data points. They cannot be *proved* to anyone else, despite the fact that they are true and are real. It will only be experienced by someone who wants it.
God will not force Himself on anyone. People will get what they want, even though it isn’t necessarily what they expect.
It doesn't matter how many times you re-post the same unaccredited comment, it still makes no sense. Why not explain what you really mean to say? For example:
What do you mean by "the BA philosophy"?
What is that exactly in your thinking?
What exactly do you think is hollow or incomplete about using the term "born again" to describe our new birth in Jesus Christ?
How is the term born again an "adverse reaction" to Presbyterianism? Seeing as they have no problem with describing the regeneration of the soul come to faith in Jesus Chris, how is simply using that term in any way a rebellion against Calvinism?
Why do you assume Presbyterians would hold Christians who refer to themselves as born again would invoke a "damnable heretic" condemnation? What documentation from authorized sources describe them as such?
You say a "clear" problem with born again Christians is that they have no balance. Explain what in your eyes constitutes "balance".
Finally, where do you get the idea that born again believers - which if you were truly a Christian you would have no problem identifying with - "veer to the laugh-sing-dance and ignore oblivion model"? Do you actually have any idea what the original author of that silly diatribe meant by such a statement or do you just like how it sounded and used it to sling mud?
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I am so sorry, Claire. May God bless and protect you.
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