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Teaching Darwin
Weekly Standars ^ | March 21, 2005 | Paul McHugh

Posted on 03/22/2005 6:56:35 AM PST by metacognative

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To: D Edmund Joaquin

Once more, you're not getting it. It has nothing to do with you or me or our particular readings of those passages, or whether we consider the passages interpretable. It has to do with the folks who lived centuries ago and how they considered those Scriptural passages.


1,161 posted on 04/01/2005 10:54:29 AM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: Junior
What scriptural passages? There are none to be considered. Again, you cant interpret something that isnt there. You guys are too used to positing missing links and jumping to erronous conclusions.

Please post the actual scripture that you think they are referring to

1,162 posted on 04/01/2005 10:58:19 AM PST by D Edmund Joaquin (Mayor of Jesusland)
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To: Junior; metacognative; bondserv; AndrewC; Dr. Eckleburg
Here, I'll help you out: do you mean this passage?

"For behold, the Lord shall curse the land with much heat, and the barrenness thereof shall go forth forever; and there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people

1,163 posted on 04/01/2005 11:03:50 AM PST by D Edmund Joaquin (Mayor of Jesusland)
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To: D Edmund Joaquin

Academic Extinction
More and More, Evolutionary Theory is Becoming Nothing More than Darwinian Mantra

BY David Berlinski
Friday, April 1, 2005
Wearing pink tasseled slippers and conical hats covered in polka dots, Darwinian biologists are persuaded that a plot is afoot to make them look silly. At Internet web sites such as The Panda's Thumb or Talk Reason, where various eminences repair to assure one another that all is well, it is considered clever beyond measure to attack critics of Darwin's theory such as William Dembski by misspelling his name as William Dumbski.

Publishing his work with the Cambridge University Press, hardly a venue known for its slack intellectual standards, Dembski has proposed that designed structures in nature might be detected by means of a rigorous analytical test. The idea of design is a staple of the social, anthropological and forensic sciences. It is the crucial metaphor in Noam Chomsky's minimalist theory. Dembski holds two PhD's, the first from the University of Chicago in mathematics, and the second from the University of Illinois in philosophy.

Dumbski indeed. Elsewhere, rhetoric is more measured, even if it conveys arguments no more compelling. After alluding to Intelligent Design at a faculty cocktail party—Je m'imagine cela—the dean of undergraduate education at the University of Calfornia at Berkeley was amazed and remarked “that colleagues indicated a great deal of sympathy for this alternative to ‘Darwinism.’”

His amazement notwithstanding, the dean's defense was a model of evasive circumspection.

“Although I told them that few, if any, reputable biologists in the country subscribe to intelligent design, I could tell that they were not persuaded. Somewhat dismayed, I turned to other, more congenial issues.”

Now these are remarkable words, if only because they reveal that a prominent academic regards it as quite natural to be dismayed on those occasions when his views are disputed. They are remarkable as well because they indicate that the dean is persuaded that dissent might in the case of Darwin's theory be ended by an appeal to what “reputable biologists believe.”

My dear dean. Allow me to set you straight. It is precisely the reputable biologists who are under attack. For the first time, they are being asked to defend the thesis that biological design is more apparent rather than real. The effort has left them breathless. They are, of course, not about to surrender their ideological allegiances. Their rhetoric fills the op-ed columns of every liberal newspaper and is conveyed additionally by academic allies whose welfare is contingent on theirs —analytic philosophers, pop psychologists, and even newspaper columnists eager beyond measure to do anything but attentively study the evidence.

But what is at issue, of course, is not what reputable biologists believe, but whether it is true.

A great many ordinary men and women are persuaded that it is not. And even at Berkeley. Their dissatisfaction has traveled as far a field as Paris. Expertise is hardly at issue. Darwin's theory of evolution is not protected by the twelve doors mentioned in Revelation 21:21. It is right there in plain sight.

The unfathomable complexity of living systems, Darwin's theory affirms, is the result of random variation and natural selection. Is it indeed? Of these concepts, the second is hopelessly confused and the first is of no intellectual interest. Darwin's theory, when the thing is plainly considered, is no more than a form of behaviorism written on the level of the species. Like those endless psychological experiments, all of them conducted apparently at Harvard, in which some undergraduates were trained to say ouch after being stuck with a pin, and others to say ooh, species, on Darwin's view, are trained to say ouch or ooh when stuck by the environment.

B.F. Skinner is long dead, and among the dinosaurs, behaviorism in psychology has been the first to descend, honking sadly, into the tar pits.

What reputable biologists believe is one thing; what they fear is there in plain sight.

“Everyone on the Berkeley campus should be exposed to the arguments supporting real science and to the fallacies of views based on guesswork and unfounded hypotheses.”

Ah, yes, Everyone should. Even at Berkeley.

David Berlinski


1,164 posted on 04/01/2005 11:11:38 AM PST by metacognative (eschew obfuscation)
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To: D Edmund Joaquin

What scriptural passages? There are none to be considered. Again, you cant interpret something that isnt there. You guys are too used to positing missing links and jumping to erronous conclusions.

Dear, dear, dear.  We were discussing Gen 9:22-27, which I posted back in 1116:

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid [it] upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces [were] backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed [be] Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. [Gen 9:22-27]

I've heard of short attention spans, before, but ...

1,165 posted on 04/01/2005 11:19:33 AM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: Junior

I allow as to how I aint too bright, like you fellers, but could you point out where, exactly, they turn black as a punishment?


1,166 posted on 04/01/2005 11:22:24 AM PST by D Edmund Joaquin (Mayor of Jesusland)
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To: Junior
God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. [Gen 9:22-27]

Not that you care, but even more remarkable, you have inadvertantly posted one of the most remarkable prophecies to ever come true

1,167 posted on 04/01/2005 11:25:19 AM PST by D Edmund Joaquin (Mayor of Jesusland)
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To: D Edmund Joaquin

Be not afraid....


1,168 posted on 04/02/2005 2:44:49 PM PST by metacognative (eschew obfuscation)
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To: metacognative

lol


1,169 posted on 04/03/2005 11:38:33 AM PDT by D Edmund Joaquin (Mayor of Jesusland)
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To: Junior
I argue against folks taking the first dozen or so chapters of Genesis literally because it leads to people thinking one race is superior to another.

Consider your stated reasoning. You reject something as truth because some people may misuse it? If something is true, it is true even if some people ignore other truths that would give it context, leading to misapplication.

Fortunately you have millions of examples of Christians who accept the first several chapters of Genesis mostly literally who also are against any racism. These same people go ahead and read the rest of the Bible and this leaves no room for a view that makes God a respecter of persons.

The Bible says all men are of the same blood, literally. That is why you have to read the entire Bible, not just a piece of it.

I suspect your stated reason is not the real reason you have a problem with the first several chapters of Genesis, but any premise to undermine them will do.

Your non-literal interpretation of this Bible story is what? I would like to hear what you have come up with.

1,170 posted on 04/03/2005 8:53:13 PM PDT by joe_broadway (The Democrat party is an ACLU cult.)
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