Posted on 05/03/2006 8:23:06 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Indeed, this very same comic-book approach to biological development, diversification, and speciation is embedded in the "this-is-too-complicated-to-be-explained" core of ID.
It isn't that it is too complicated to explain, just that's it's too complicated to have just happened by random chance. Big difference.
Spare the prostitute?
The Scientologists have their own version of evolution. I don't think it fits with anything else, so I can't use it. Scientology History of Man. But it's no less scientific than ID, so perhaps their "theory" also belongs in science classes.
Exactly. This is what your side is. You don't recognize it because you say that science is incomplete without "art, philosophy, religion," etc. But what do you mean by "religion?" Obviously by including it in with art and philosophy you hold it to be speculative and subjective, with no claims to facticity whatsoever.
What you advocates of modernity refuse to recognize is that "religion" doesn't exist. There is only G-d, for Whom everything else in existence is only a garment. Jewish civilization knows nothing of a separate category called "religion" because all of life is regulated--to a totalitarian degree--by "religious" discipline whose ultimate source is HaShem Yitbarakh. The same "religion" that regulates business and forbids murder and theft also regulates the Temple service, prayer, forbids unkosher food, regulates sexual relations, etc. Life is a single seamless reality governed in entirety by G-d, which is why devout Jews recite special blessings for almost every occasion.
Orthodox Judaism is actually much like islam in its overall attitude. It's a shame the Jewish people over the past centuries of persecution have caught a bad case of "minority-itis." If they could confront the world with the actual contents of their religion (rather than its context as a minority faith absolutely dependent on modernity in order to survive) the world might look very different than it does now. It might even be redeemed!
BTW, "religion" in Judaism is statutory rather than voluntary and salvational, which means that Fundamentalist Protestants wanting to mandate school prayer and Jews opposing it is highly ironic. Too bad no body but me seems to notice this.
I'll concur with others that your post is good, but that doesn't mean I agree with everything in it! :-)
#####The GOP has been far smarter than the Dems, except perhaps Bill Clinton, in building coalitions. They are currently splintering, mostly because of the hubris of religious right.#####
Gotta disagree! The GOP is in trouble right now because of RINOs who support big spending, oppose protecting the borders, want to reward illegal aliens with amnesty, and a variety of other issues. Whenever the GOP moves leftward, it sinks. We could include the Harriet Miers nomination in this category had President Bush not corrected his mistake with Sam Alito. The religious right is the most loyal constituency the GOP has. That's why the GOP feels it can ignore them, even betray them, and still count on their loyalty. Secular, "moderate" Republicans are far less loyal. A lot is made here of the fact that the pro-ID Dover GOP school board was ousted in favor of leftist Democrats, but that's because secular Republicans sided with the Democrats over conservative Republicans. In contrast, liberal Republican Arlen Specter won re-election in Pennsylvania because conservatives limited their opposition to him to intra-party activities. They fought him in the primary, but when he won it, they backed him in the general election.
If a secularist Republican beats a Christian Republican in a primary, Christian voters will support the secularist in the general election because of party loyalty, but a Christian who beats a secularist in a GOP primary always has to worry about the secularist's backers defecting to the Democrat in the general election.
Even Barry Goldwater, when he became militantly secularist after marrying a leftist woman in his old age, caused the GOP to temporarily lose a U.S. House seat in Arizona. When a pro-life Republican beat a pro-abortion Republican in the primary in Goldwater's home district, he endorsed Karan English, a hardcore left-wing feminist Democrat. She won the election, using Goldwater's endorsement to tar her opponent as someone trying to impose a theocracy on America.
####BTW, intruding religious beliefs into science class is not a 'mild request' in the minds of scientists.####
If science is truly neutral on religion as claimed, the requests of critics of evolution wouldn't ruffle many feathers.
If science is clueless regarding God's existence or non-existence, then a few minutes of class time discussing this fact wouldn't hurt anything.
See my previous post to Stultis.
What if instead of compartmentalizing life and labelling it we treated it as the wholistic gift of HaShem, the Supreme Reality? What if instead of asking "is this faith or science" we simply asked "what actually happened?" If you don't believe the Torah tells us "what really happened" perhaps you should study it a little more and learn its origin and transmission (about which most people are entirely ignorant).
You called me two names and I only called you one. You win.
No scientist claims evolution happens by random chance. The spin of a roulette wheel produces random results, but the house always wins. This is easy enough to observe and document. There is no magic involved. The house does not have to cheat.
Play roulette long enough and the house will have all of everyone's money. Randomness does not preclude movement toward order.
"You called me two names and I only called you one. You win."
And who started with the attacks? Oh, that was you, in a fit of false pity and arrogant bile.
The biggest lie is the lie that the devil doesn't exist is a lie. (It's turtles all the way down.) Or perhaps the existence of the anti-anti-anti-anti-missle-missle-missle-missle-missle.
I've done something like this on my own by comparing my English Tanach with my King James Bible.
EXCELLENT!
I admit to the false pity but deny the arrogant bile.
"I admit to the false pity but deny the arrogant bile."
No doubt.
Climbing a cliff is more like it. Sigh.
#####But don't worry; ID still has plenty of support in the wide world of Islam.#####
This should make for some interesting adjudication somewhere down the line. Evolution is Politically Correct. So is Islam. As long as opposition to evolution can be given the "fundamentalist Christian" label, judges like Jones have no problem issuing a ruling. PC evolution = good. Non-PC "fundies" = bad. But when PC protected faiths start requesting that not only ID, but outright creationism be included in the curriculum, the unhittable baseball will encounter the unmissable baseball bat. Something will have to give once there are enough Muslims to have political clout equal to secularists.
Not to be lawyerly about this (he said, leaving himself wide open), I suppose that depends on your definition of "random." If by random, you mean "without cause," then I would agree entirely with you. Once you proceed beyond principal causation, however, the issue gets murky. Even by fairly basic Biblical precepts, God is not a necessary driver for the minutia of His creation to operate.
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