Posted on 12/12/2005 8:01:43 AM PST by PatrickHenry
That's because you relied on a few religious sources rather than scientific sources. Religion and science are two entirely different ways of looking at the universe. The Catholic church understands that, and they have chosen not to confront science, after their disaster of Galileo. Todays' crop of IDers haven't yet discovered how badly they are shooting themselves in the foot over this. But they will.
later read/maybe pingout.
You shouldn't rely on mental telepathy for your information. It's not very reliable, or scientific.
No clairvoyance required. I've seen your conclusion, so I know your sources.
Now that the cat is out of the bag on the illusion of morality and ethics, how do we avoid the inevitable nihilism described above? I don't see how. Any variation from it seems to reveal an inconsistency in position.
Given that, I will ask the question I asked a while ago. Why do the atheist/evos care what is taught? Or care about anything for that matter? In that world view, all is vanity and anything that seems to matter is nothing more than "an illusion fobbed on us by our genes to get us to cooperate".
Your first mistake is assuming that atheists and evolution proponents are one-and-the-same. Since you can't get that straight, I think it's a waste of time to comment on the rest.
My advice: Stay and fight for scientific truth. We need the help. Just hold your nose if you have to.
Publications and self-serving politicians have been pandering to the uneducated forever. ID is just the latest example.
No, he's not arguing that the Religiosity of the Conservative Movement should be dropped. He's argued that being taken in by the ID/Creationist whack-jobs will send the Conservative movement so far out into the 'Area-51/Build-a-Burger/Awaiting the Mothership/Scientology/Screwy Louie Nation of Islam' fringe that normal people will either leave or distance themselves from these psychotic Evil infiltrators, thus destroying the Conservative Movement.............Something I've been pounding the table about since I decided to take a stand against these drooling idjits.
As for myself, I'd prefer to stay and fight and NOT let these moronic/ignorant/clowns take over this valuable website.
BTW, remind me never to subscribe to HUMAN EVENTS for giving this clown any forum at all to spew his ignorance.
Because we live in this world and wish to be happy and effective and prosperous in it, and for this purpose, teaching scientific truth as best we understand it is MUCH better than teaching somebody's superstition.
Missed that whole "Theory" part in "Theory of Evolution", eh?
The Republican agenda makers need to understand that when religion takes on science, religion always loses. Always has. Always will.
Karl Rove and his minions need to stay away from this subject like the plague. It is a waste of time, a waste of political capital, and will only empower the Democrats.
The Republicans have done many things right for the last 15 years. I stay with them because they have been right. If Republicans take up the ID fight, they will be wrong. It goes against my craw to support people when they're dead wrong.
I used to believe that antievolutionists might be advancing some valid and valuable criticisms, until I took several antievolution tomes and spent several weeks in a good academic library chasing out the footnotes. (Francis Hitchings The Neck of the Giraffe, Duane Gish's Evolution? The Fossils Say No and Henry Morris' Scientific Creationism, as well as a number of other antievolution works caught up by incestuous footnoting.) The level of dishonesty, and the universal toleration of it within the antievolution movement, was, and remains, shocking.
The only gay thing that is important is lesbians (and only if both chicks are hawt). Tee-hee :)
My post is directed primarily at those who are both atheist and hold to the theory of evolution. I am guessing that the atheist/creation intersection is rather small and can be ignored. That leaves the theist/evolution intersection.
Whether atheist/evo or theist/evo, my question still applies. The only difference between the two will be the manner of gymanastics performed to answer the question.
And you missed the scientific definition of the word "theory".
Evolution is a fact, because it has been demonstrated in many many ways to have acually occured. But evolution is also a theory, in that it is a description of why species change over time.
Gravity is also a scientific "theory" too. And also a fact. My daughter took "Music theory" classes in college. You want to tell me that music is not a "fact"?
ID is very much compatible with the views of those who espouse an almighty Creator. If it is merely a scientific squabble then it should be all the more simple to allow both points of view within a politically conservative tent.
Intellectually (or perhaps psychologically) it's strikingly similar to the way the left clings to the dogma of socialism, long after the old leftist arguments have been refuted. It's the same kind of stubbornness -- "I've got my Truthtm and I'm sticking to it, so take your lousy data and you know where you can stick it."
Just as a point of fact, all liberals are not automatically evolutionists. At least not according to a survey done by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:
These differences of opinion carry over into politics as well (see detailed tables on pp. 22-23). Nearly six-in-ten conservative Republicans believe that living things have always existed in their present form, while just 11% say that evolution occurred through natural processes. Among liberal Democrats, by contrast, only 29% hold the creationist position, while a plurality (44%) accepts the natural selection theory of evolution. (emphasis mine)
Are these views compatible with your personal religion?
Michael Denton, author of "Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, has written a new book, "Nature's Destiny," on intelligent Design. In it he says this:
"it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes.This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law.
Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies."
Behe, the chief defence witness at Dover, has this to say about evolution:
I didn't intend to "dismiss" the fossil record--how could I "dismiss" it? In fact I mention it mostly to say that it can't tell us whether or not biochemical systems evolved by a Darwinian mechanism. My book concentrates entirely on Darwin's mechanism, and simply takes for granted common descent.
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