Posted on 01/26/2006 1:47:10 PM PST by jennyp
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Third, complexity does not imply “design.” One of Adam Smith’s most powerful insights, developed further by Friedrich Hayek, is that incredible complexity can emerge in society without a designer or planner, through “spontaneous order.” Hayek showed how in a free market the complex processes of producing and distributing goods and services to millions of individuals do not require socialist planners. Rather, individuals pursuing their own self-interest in a system governed by a few basic rules—property rights, voluntary exchange by contract—have produced all the vast riches of the Western world.
Many creationists who are on the political Right understand the logic of this insight with respect to economic complexity. Why, then, is it such a stretch for them to appreciate that the complexity we find in the physical world—the optic nerve, for example—can emerge over millions of years under the rule of natural laws that govern genetic mutations and the adaptability of life forms to changing environments? It is certainly curious that many conservative creationists do not appreciate that the same insights that show the futility of a state-designed economy also show the irrelevance of an “intelligently designed” universe.
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Evolution: A Communist Plot?
Yet another fear causes creationists to reject the findings of science.
Many early proponents of science and evolution were on the political Left. For example, the Humanist Manifesto of 1933 affirmed support for evolution and the scientific approach. But its article fourteen stated: “The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be instituted. A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible.”
Subsequent humanist manifestos in 1973 and 2000 went lighter on the explicit socialism but still endorsed, along with a critical approach to knowledge, the kind of welfare-state democracy and internationalism rejected by conservatives. The unfortunate historical association of science and socialism is based in part on the erroneous conviction that if humans can use scientific knowledge to design machines and technology, why not an entire economy?
Further, many supporters of evolution were or appeared to be value-relativists or subjectivists. For example, Clarence Darrow, who defended Scopes in the “monkey trial” eight decades ago, also defended Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. These two young amoralists pictured themselves as supermen above conventional morality; they decided to commit the perfect crime and killed a fourteen-year-old boy. Darrow offered the jury the standard liberal excuses for the atrocity. He argued that the killers were under the influence of Nietzschean philosophy, and that to give them the death penalty would hurt their surviving families. “I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all,” he said. “I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love.” This is the sort of abrogation of personal responsibility, denial of moral culpability, and rejection of the principle of justice that offends religious conservatives—in fact, every moral individual, religious or atheist.
In addition, nearly all agnostics and atheists accept the validity of evolution. Creationists, as religious fundamentalists, therefore see evolution and atheism tied together to destroy the basis of morality. For one thing, evolution seems to erase the distinction between humans and animals. Animals are driven by instincts; they are not responsible for their actions. So we don’t blame cats for killing mice, lions for killing antelope, or orca whales for killing seals. It’s what they do. They follow instincts to satisfy urges to eat and procreate. But if human beings evolved from lower animals, then we might be merely animals—and so there would be no basis for morality. In which case, anything goes.
To religious fundamentalists, then, agnostics and atheists must be value-relativists and subjectivists. Whether they accept evolution because they reject a belief in God, or reject a belief in God because they accept evolution, is immaterial: the two beliefs are associated, just as are creationism and theism. By this view, the only firm basis for morality is the divine edicts of a god.
This reflects the creationists’ fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of morality.
Morality from Man’s Nature
We humans are what we are today regardless of whether we evolved, were created, or were intelligently designed. We have certain characteristics that define our nature.
We are Homo sapiens. Unlike lower animals, we have a rational capacity, an ability to fully, conceptually understand the world around us. We are self-conscious. We are the animal that knows—and knows that he knows. We do not survive automatically, by instinct, but must exercise the virtue of rationality. We must think. We must discover how to acquire food—through hunting or planting—how to make shelters, how to invent medicines. And to acquire such knowledge, we must adopt a rational methodology: science.
Furthermore, our thinking does not occur automatically. We have free will and must choose to think, to focus our minds, to be honest rather than to evade facts that make us uncomfortable—evolution, for example—because reality is what it is, whether we like it or acknowledge it or not.
But we humans do not exercise our minds and our wills for mere physical survival. We have a capacity for a joy and flourishing far beyond the mere sensual pleasures experienced by lower animals. Such happiness comes from planning our long-term goals, challenging ourselves, calling on the best within us, and achieving those goals—whether we seek to nurture a business to profitability or a child to adulthood, whether we seek to create a poem or a business plan, whether we seek to design a building or to lay the bricks for its foundation.
But our most important creation is our moral character, the habits and attitudes that govern our actions. A good character helps us to be happy, a bad one guarantees us misery. And what guides us in creating such a character? What tells us how we should deal with our fellow humans?
A code of values, derived from our nature and requirements as rational, responsible creatures possessing free will.
We need not fear that with evolution, or without a god, there is no basis for ethics. There is an objective basis for ethics, but it does not reside in the heavens. It arises from our own human nature and its objective requirements.
Creationists and advocates of intelligent design come to their beliefs in part through honest errors and in part from evasions of facts and close-minded dogmatism. But we should appreciate that one of their motivations might be a proper rejection of value-relativism, and a mistaken belief that acceptance of divine revelation is the only moral alternative.
If we can demonstrate to them that the basis for ethics lies in our nature as rational, volitional creatures, then perhaps we can also reassure them that men can indeed have morality—yet never fear to use that wondrous capacity which allows us to understand our own origins, the world around us, and the moral nature within us.
Edward Hudgins is the Executive Director of The Objectivist Center.
Okaaay.
So only some, if any, of the laws of physics or chemistry existed pre-Noah.
That is stranger than I can deal with. Done for tonight.
Me too!
I don't know HOW He did it, but I think it's so.
Why should Moses Lie???
I don't know why the believers don't leave smokey backroom to the Atheist and Evos to eat each other!
and they are off the main land threads maybe let Jim Rob keep them in here!
Should you have a thread relegated here stay on the topics of your threads and try not to be tempted to rump with the depths of hell!
These fools are always going to be outrages they get their kicks that way!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1566570/posts?page=16#16
Now you did quote what I said accurately but I do not see in what you wrote that you understand the context of the remark.
This was not a doctrinal remark but it was a remark as to evolution because if I tag on 7 24 hour "yoms: and that is the word for day in hebrew or if I tag on 7000 years as Yoms --(For David Propphesied that a Yom with the Lord is as a thousand Years and who in scripture of men had Yoms with the Lord Adam.) the discussion with carbon dating as to evolution or with the proponants of the gap theory would not be altered on iota for either interpretation would not produce the millions and billions of years that both groups need for all their stuff to take place.
If I did not make it clear in this post rhere is one previous that I state that I am not a fan of the Gap theory in its various flavors and I state why and show it is refuted with a single verse
I do not think that the world is billions of years old. I do not think the world is hundreds of millions of years old, I think that in the garden in particular that scripture is saying that this naming process took some tim e and that in the garden sin and corruption were not so the flower of Adam's youth did not fade or wither -- aging is corruption I further believe from the text that the age of Adam and Eve did not begin until their sin and expulsion
But regardless of that this is no way allows for all the time for evolution to occur.
I further argued in these two posts that in the bible the word of God is rather specific that God created the individual animals and plants all after their own kind in other words each creature was unique. And created thusly -- that is not evolution or the Gap theory. When I grew up I started out as a Lutheran and they were cool with evolution and espoused a theory that the world was more or less this huge clock that God would up at creation and then let it go. -- this theology a experiance based one
for people that do not hear from God, in their walk they can not touch God, God no longer heals, God no longer delivers, all they have is a book -- and it is not very understandable for them either -- so in the words of elijah the prophet: "Maybe their God is away on a journey, or maybe their God is sleeping." So to explain this emptiness and absence of God these people need props to hold up their hollow beleifs. Over the course of time I have been in many church service of different denominations Catholic, Methodist, Baptist (various flavors)Church of the brethren, house meetings, non-denominational non-denominational churches, charismatic and pentecostal (assorted flavors)and even a jewish synagogue (That was eye opening) bible collage and I even pastored some.
I mention that to say I have heard a great many variations of in teachings and doctrine but it can still be divided into certain groups or camps Literalist -- tend to be from non-denominational churches or house meetings -- Gap theory proponants tend to be fundamentalists or pentecostals -- there are entire baptist denominations that stand by that doctrine and many pastors preach it - why becasue they fear evolution as much as mormonism and they fear all their young children who play with dinosaurs and watch movies will fall away. I repeat my statement about the Lutherans conderning these people -- they sand in a place of spiritual lack and they are fighting to hold together their base of beleivers in religions in which they teach that people can not hear from God for themselves, that in theri walks they can not touch God, G0od no longer heals, God no longer delivers, all they have is a book -- and it is not very understandable for them either ether because their teachers in general draw lines through large portions of scripture that they say are either not for today or not for Christians
I have fellowshipped these people and only after decades have I come to any understanding of why things are the way they are in the church, and why people beleive what they beleive.
I'm sorry I am going to have to end this here -- I have a problem I have to deal with (a Kid and not my own.)
Send me the defination and search for the other post to get a larger view and then we can talk later if you desire,
I can't remember how many times I've seen (not recently, though), a cartoon of a bull on a toilet, or Darwin's head on a monkey's body, or... from the CRIDer side.
There was even one DUmmy who posted a pic of President Bush kicking Charles Darwin!
Well, what do you expect? They couldn't come to a clear conclusion because Piltdown Man was real! The idea that Piltdown Man was a fake was the real hoax.
Piltdown Man was no "missing link". Piltdown Man was just a post-flood human, who if you dressed him up & put him on the street nobody'd notice anything wrong with him. So maybe he had a big jaw. So did Fred Gwynne!
Ah, but Piltdown Man didn't fit into the evolutionists' fictional storyline they were building at the time. The bones of Piltdown Man were there for all to see, so the only thing the evolutionists could do was to try to smear Piltdown Man as a hoax.
It took them almost 40 years to accomplish the Big Lie, but finally in 1953 someone came up with the scientific-sounding "fluorine absorption test", and presto-chango, Piltdown Man was "proved" to be a hoax.
Yeah right! The fluorine absorption test is based on uniformatarian, evolutionary presuppositions. Exactly like all the other flawed radiocarbonic dating methods. Just ask the mollusk that was dated at 40 million years old by those silly evolutionist & then squirted them in the eye!
But radiometrical dating is sooooo modern, soooo scientific, that the public bought the hoax. And so today, even good creationists like yourself have totally bought into the evolutionists' BIG LIE. Even you think Piltdown Man was a hoax, when he should have been the smoking gun that killed off godless evolution for good!
Piltdown Man proves that the evolutionist's story of monkeys walking upright, and their small brains staying small until right up until the end, is bogus. Piltdown Man proclaims the glory of God!
Please don't let yourself get hoaxed by these lying evolutionist. Piltdown Man is real!!!
You're getting good. : )
Keyser Soze placemark
Blah Blah Blah....
I don't think Moses lied, I think you misunderstand.
Describing A does not mean the absence of B.
Saying, for instance, that I had bacon for breakfast does not mean that I did not also have eggs.
I have never dismissed "The Christians" as "pie-eyed, knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers" so the rest of your post has no application. Indeed a significant majority of those who post in favour of the TOE on FR are Christians, so you are just setting up the usual fallacy of false dichotomy that creationists love so.
OTOH those who reject clear physical evidence, and argue almost entirely from the perceived (and unevidenced) social consequences were evolution to be true aren't behaving so as to gain any respect from me, or anyone else who is interested in reality rather than emotion. You just want affirmative action for your beliefs, because they make you feel comfortable.
No it isn't. Science is a method of acquiring knowledge about the world, that assumes that supernatural intervention doesn't occur, and that the universe behaves predictably. Using these assumptions human knowledge has increased exponentially over the last 350 years.
Knowledge does not equal wisdom.
I've already pointed out that your posts make quite clear that you have acquired neither knowledge nor wisdom thus far during your stay on earth. No knowledge of how science works, and not the wisdom to remain silent in your ignorance. Abe Lincoln said something about this, that you'd do well to take note of.
Before you spew untrue facts you should look up the words and understand there [sic] meaning.
Unintentionally hilarious, to be lecturing me about meaning, while making a grade-school grammatical error. Please point out an "untrue fact" that I have "spewed", if you can. In the meantime please stop telling lies about evolution, about which you quite clearly know nothing.
From your keyboard to the admin's eyes--how I wish there was an evo-chat section, so silly Rand Rants about "the fundies" could find a home of their own.
Oh, such wit.
Beware the Common Scold!
I don't intend to. Comedy of that class deserves the widest possible audience.
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