Bacterial Flagellum = Intelligent Design
Posted on 05/11/2003 4:38:14 PM PDT by Junior
Despite movements across the nation to teach creationism in public schools, a science historian said Monday that Christians haven't always used a literal interpretation of the Bible to explain the world's origins.
"For them, the Bible is mostly to teach a religious lesson," said Ernan McMullin of the earliest Christian scholars.
McMullin spoke to a crowd of about 60 people at Montana State University on "Evolution as a Christian theme."
McMullin, a professor at the University of Notre Dame and a Catholic priest, is recognized one of the world's leading science historians and philosophers, according to MSU.
He has written about Galileo, Issac Newton, the concept of matter and, of course, evolution.
It's a subject has been hotly debated ever since Charles Darwin first published "On the Origins of Species" in 1859.
Christian fundamentalists have long pushed the nation's public schools to teach creationism as an alternative, which in its strictest form claims that the world was created in six days, as stated in the Bible's Old Testament Book of Genesis.
But McMullin said creationism largely is an American phenomenon. Other countries simply don't have major creationist movements, leading him to ask: "What makes it in the U.S. ... such an issue (over) evolution and Christian belief?"
The answer probably lies in the nation's history, with the settlement by religious groups, he said. Also, public education and religion are more intertwined here than other countries.
McMullin discussed how Christians have tried to explain their origins over the past 2,000 years, using several examples to show that many viewed Genesis as more of a religious lesson than an exact record of what happened.
It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century that Genesis started to be taken literally. Then theologians started using nature - and its many complexities - as proof of creation.
Charles Darwin spoiled that through his theory of natural selection, and the battle lines have been drawn ever since.
"It replaced an older view that had sounded like a strong argument for the existence of God," McMullin said.
Exactly. I don't see what is so hard to understand about this.
Bacterial Flagellum = Intelligent Design
Schools can't cover science or history as it is. They'll never get thru this.
Yet many of the Church fathers disagree with you. Who is your source?
The Bible isn't wrong. It's just not science.
D'oh!
...If you are Jewish, your religion was founded by God through Abraham about 4,000 years ago.
...If you are Islamic, your religion was started by Mohammed in the area of what is now Saudi Arabia, about 600 A.D.
Unbiased??? If it's truly unbiased it should be more consistent. So the Islamic entry should read:
"If you are Islamic, your religion was started when the archangel Gabriel dictated the Koran from the original copy which is sitting in Heaven to Mohammed in the area of what is now Saudi Arabia, about 600 A.D."
Nonsense, Race. Your reply is full of non-sequiturs.
But, I'm not going to argue with you. We'll never agree.
God Bless.
= Very Inefficient Design, if you ask me. Where's the propeller? I mean really - it goes to all that trouble just to flail a whip around?
Absent the Sun (and the Moon), what do the terms "morning" and "evening" mean? Remember those were not created until IIRC the third day.
Even after the Sun and Moon were created, to what geographical region did the terms "morning", "evening", and "day" apply? Remember that, except during a solar eclipse, it's always "day" somewhere on the planet and "night" somewhere else.
How long is God's morning and evening? For that matter, how does time move in God's frame of reference, compared to ours?
The terms "day", "morning", and "evening" presuppose the existence of the Sun, and refer only to local, rather than global phenomena. As you read this, it is day somewhere and night somewhere else. In twelve hours time, most of the places that are now in "day" will be in "night", and vice versa, though some places' days and nights will last for months.
How can the term "day" have any modern meaning at all before the creation of the Sun? And even after the creation of the Sun, how can it have any global meaning?
What's wrong with questioning evolution? Saying life may not have been the result of a single abiogenesis instance, or that chance does not adequately explain the development of life?
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