[gobucks]

In his “Guide of the Perplexed,” Maimonides wrote that combating the Darwinism equivalent of his day was the highest calling of a Jew..

An honest Darwinist should not say kiddush.

[gobucks]

a neat juxtaposition for you ...

[indcons]

"A sophisticated debate about Darwinian evolution is going on at the topmost levels of the Catholic Church."

Got to be kidding me...is this the same CAtholic Church that ruled recently that they were wrong about limbo. Looks like all that "sophisticated debate" didn't provide many answers there!

[muir_redwoods]

Could I get a copy of that list of discoveries the Discovery Institute has made? Anybody?

[Servant of the 9]

I believe God is a good enough creator that when he popped the primeval monobloc out of nothingness, he put enough 'english' on it to have everything unfold the way he wanted it to.

The idea of worshiping a God so incompetent that he has to keep nudging his creation to get it to perform up to specs is preposterous.

It makes him sound as incompetent as a pool player who has to hustle around the table nudging the ball to make a triple bank shot.

So9

[Tribune7]

I would welcome the Jews into this debate.

[muir_redwoods]

Could I get a copy of that list of discoveries the Discovery Institute has made? Anybody?

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

"So why should you care? Because Darwinism, if accepted, makes any meaningful Judaism intellectually untenable."

Oh BS. This is supposedly a new realization? Where was this guy and this objection for the past 100 years?

[narby]

Evolution is directed just like weather is directed. If you believe it, you believe it. If you don't, you don't. There's no objective evidence one way or another.

[Anti-Bubba182]

"In his “Guide of the Perplexed,” Maimonides wrote that combating the Darwinism equivalent of his day was the highest calling of a Jew.."

I don't think so:

Maimonides

"Moshe ben Maimon (March 30, 1135–December 13, 1204) was a Jewish rabbi, physician, and philosopher...."

[Radix]

 

"So why should you care? Because Darwinism, if accepted, makes any meaningful Judaism intellectually untenable."

 

The more I read, the more I was inclined to comment on phrases which I disagreed with, or felt were worthy of critique.

 

I might as well write my own column.

 

What a bunch of BS!

[jocon307]

self ping for later

[DallasMike]

In reality, ID theorists would hardly deny that the forms which complex life takes have changed or evolved over hundreds of millions of years. Rather, ID points to positive evidence of a designer’s guiding hand in that long history. More than 475 scientists, at places like Yale, MIT, Rice and the Smithsonian Institution, have affirmed in a signed statement that they doubt the power of Darwin’s selection/mutation mechanism to produce the splendor of life all around us. The Discovery Institute, where I work and which has led the ID movement, compiled the list of Darwin doubters. This is far from biblical literalism.

Excellent statement. The standard argument from the hardcore Darwinists is that no real scientist would ever question Darwinism. Unfortunately for them, there are plenty of real, highly educated, highly respected scientists who don't doubt that life changes and evolves, but who also don't swallow the Darwinism hook, line, and sinker.

[S0122017]

YOu are confusing orthodox judaism with liberal judaism.

Liberals already believe in evolution.
I was in a liberal jewish school and they a schoolbook with a picture of Adam and Eve as Africans!!

No way the Catholic church would accept that, they still portray Jezus as Caucasia blond with blue eyes.

[goldstategop]

You can read materialism into Darwin if you want. The problem religion has had since the Origin is natural processes seem blind, random, and arbitrary. There are no moral rules that guide Nature. So why are human beings different and why are they guided by moral laws? That is in itself an interesting question and a challenge to both science and religion.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[Ichneumon]

More than 475 scientists, at places like Yale, MIT, Rice and the Smithsonian Institution, have affirmed in a signed statement that they doubt the power of Darwin’s selection/mutation mechanism to produce the splendor of life all around us. The Discovery Institute, where I work and which has led the ID movement, compiled the list of Darwin doubters.

Oh, come on, not *that* goofy list again.

That's such a mildly-worded statement that even though I'm one of the staunchest defenders of evolutionary biology on this forum, even *I'd* consider signing that statement. It's hardly a statement of "rejection" of evolution that the folks who hand it around try to pass it off as.

The anti-evolutionists try to misrepresent that list so often that it has its own entry in this long list of incorrect/fallacious creationist claims.

Meanwhile:

I refer you to project Steve, "literally hundreds" (696 at current count) of actual scientists (two thirds of them biologists) JUST WITH THE NAME STEVE who have endorsed evolutionary biology and rejected "ID" and other forms of creationism via signing the following statement:

"Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools."

There are more scientists JUST NAMED STEVE who endorse evolutionary biology than GRAND TOTAL scientists who the creationists can find to express some form of skepticism (the "400+" list the Discovery Institute likes to wave around have only endorsed a *very* mild statement of skepticism, nothing like the "rejection" of evolution that many try to claim about it -- hell, it's so mild *I* might have signed it.)

Since about 1% of the population is named "Steve", 696 Steves supporting evolution represent roughly 70,000 scientists total (i.e., the number of signatures the statement would have garnered if the name restriction had been removed).

That alone makes the anti-evolution creationists' list of "skeptical scientists" look pretty foolish, but *this* one *really* blows their agenda out of the water:

The "Clergy Letter Project": An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science

"We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

[As of 29 January 2006, there are 10,230 signatures collected to date]

Click the links that follow to see the alphabetical lists of clergy members who have endorsed this letter

A to E  - F to J - K to O - P to S - T to Z

Listing by States

And then there are these pro-evolution statements by various scientific and scholarly groups:

Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada
Alabama Academy of Science
American Anthropological Association
American Anthropological Association (2000)*
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1923)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1972)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1982)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (Commission on Science Education)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (2002) *
American Association of Physical Anthropologists
American Astronomical Society (2000) *
American Geophysical Union
American Geophysical Union (1999)*
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Astronomical Society
American Society of Biological Chemists
American Chemical Society
American Geological Institute
American Psychological Association
American Physical Society
American Society of Parasitologists
Association of Southeastern Biologists (2004) *
Association for Women Geoscientists (1998) *
Australian Academy of Science *
Botanical Society of America *
California Academy of Sciences
Ecological Society of America (1999) *
Genetics Society of America *
Geological Society of America
Geological Society of America (2001) *
Geological Society of Australia (1995) *
Georgia Academy of Science (1980)
Georgia Academy of Science (1982)
Georgia Academy of Science (2003) *
History of Science Society *
Iowa Academy of Science (1982)
Statement of the Position of the Iowa Academy of Science on Pseudoscience (1986)
Iowa Academy of Science (2000) *
Kentucky Academy of Science
Kentucky Academy of Science (1999) *
Kentucky Paleontological Society Statement on the Teaching of Evolution (1999) *
Louisiana Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Sciences (1972)
National Academy of Sciences (1984)
National Academy of Sciences (1998) *
North American Benthological Society (2001) *
North Carolina Academy of Science
North Carolina Academy of Science (1997) *
New Orleans Geological Society
New York Academy of Sciences
Ohio Academy of Science
Ohio Academy of Science (2000) *
Ohio Math and Science Coalition (2002) *
Oklahoma Academy of Sciences
The Paleontological Society *
Sigma Xi, Louisiana State University Chapter, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Society for Amateur Scientists
Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (2001) *
Society for Neuroscience *
Society for Organic Petrology *
Society for the Study of Evolution
Society of Physics Students (1999) *
Society of Physics Students (2003) *
Society of Systematic Biologists (2001) *
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (1986)
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (1994)
Southern Anthropological Society
Virginia Academy of Science (1981) *
West Virginia Academy of Science

* statement added since second edition (1995)

How many more would you like?

If the best you anti-evolution folks can scrape up from the bottom of the barrel is 400 people who will sign a *very* mild statement of open-mindedness about evolution, equivalent to a "well, I'm not *completely* convinced it explains *everything*...", clearly you don't have much of a case when you try to claim that evolutionary biology is somehow undergoing some kind of crisis of confidence among scientists.

Do you really expect to make headway with such hilariously lame material?

[Tax Government]

Any holy book ought to be peer reviewed by the available other gods.

[JCEccles]

Many Darwinists know well what is at stake. Their leading biologist, Richard Dawkins of Oxford, forthrightly states that religious “faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.”

The implacable materialist and atheist Richard Dawkins once hatched a brilliant scheme to prove that random unguided means acting through a sort of "natural" selection could produce something complex and meaningful, a metaphor for intelligent life arising from inert unintelligent matter without assistance.

So the intrepid Dr. Dawkins used his intellectual powers to carefully design a computer program and algorithm. He thought about it further and selected a particular set of symbols, the western alphabet of 28 characters of specific design and meaning. Then to be extra clever, he selected an obscure line of Shakespearean prose and designed the program and algorithm so that with each successive iteration the program would retain letters that lines up in the place that he had preconceived in his mind that they MUST end up to make an intelligible line of prose. He designed the program to reject the remaining letters.

After allowing the program to locomote over several hundred interations--surprise, surprise--the program produced the exact line of Shakespearean prose he had DESIGNED it to produce! And how did he now that it had? Because it made sense within the context of the same intelligence that he had employed in designing and running the experiment.

Thus did the dear Dr. Dawkins prove to his complete and smug self-satisfaction there is no need to invoke the action of intelligence to produce a meaningful result, that intelligent "guided" design is a crock.

[Alouette]

Maimonides wrote that combating the Darwinism equivalent of his day was the highest calling of a Jew

This is specious. Rambam wrote nothing about Darwinism, no such thing as "Darwinism" existed during his time. He did discuss Aristotle and the Aristotelian view that the Universe was not created; but that it had always existed. That is not the same as Darwinism.

[Right Wing Professor]

An honest Darwinist should not say kiddush.

I had no idea you had taken up as a Rabbi, gobucks.

[Timmy]

Man, when I saw this article title, I thought it would be about how Darwinism encourages things like the Holocaust. After all, if men AREN'T created equal, isn't it likely that some races of men are superior? Surely, the point can be made that Jews are an evil race, that blacks are primitive and inferior, that Asians are despicable, etc. I guess the author had something else in mind.