The Religious Cult of Evolution Fights Back

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[PatrickHenry]

But I'm starving for details about those other universes you've been to!

Well, let's just say that I'm a rambling man.

[puroresu]

Good post! I think it's important to remember that naturalism has political and social consequences. Would a society drenched in naturalism be healthy and conservative or dysfunctional and leftist? Individuals may be able to fit any of those categories but I expect a society in which God is so severed from our lives would become extremely self-serving and materialistic. Spiritual voids tend to be filled by the state.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply and for your encouragements!

Indeed, Leibnitz's two great questions are the most important and would lead to the answer to the question which I proposed for teenagers.

It seems to me that teenagers spend a lot of time of reflecting on themselves, trying to "stand on their own two feet". But truly a purpose in existence cannot make sense without faith in God.

[puroresu]

####But truly a purpose in existence cannot make sense without faith in God####


As someone who has much faith in God, I can still conceive of an individual who feels a purpose in existence without God. However, I doubt most people could, and worry deeply about the effects of secularism on our society. As a conservative I recognize that the other side understands this. The ACLU isn't involved in these battles (not just evolution, but the Boy Scouts, abortion, etc.) for nothing. They have societal ramifications.

[betty boop]

Spiritual voids tend to be filled by the state.

Amen! puroresu -- I couldn't agree with you more: History gives evidence of your observation in the most presuasive way. Thank you oh so much for writing!

[betty boop]

As someone who has much faith in God, I can still conceive of an individual who feels a purpose in existence without God.

Well of course you can conceive of such a person: you live in the modern age, do you not? And such individuals are legion. I imagine they are only such because they do not have a better alternative. But then, what do I know?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you both so much for your replies!

The ACLU isn't involved in these battles (not just evolution, but the Boy Scouts, abortion, etc.) for nothing. They have societal ramifications.

Indeed they do. It leads to all kinds of bizarre societal ramifications: equal rights for animals, euthanasia, infanticide, to name a few. There’s also that pesky issue of criminal culpability for if the mind is merely an epiphenomenon of the brain, then the culprit is only doing what he must and cannot be personally responsible

As someone who has much faith in God, I can still conceive of an individual who feels a purpose in existence without God.

I know some atheists who declare a purpose in life. IMHO, any such purpose must be essentially self-oriented. IOW, such a purpose cannot not make "sense" with regard to "the" greater purpose - if one denies the determiner for that purpose, God, exists.

[Thatcherite]

Gentry's work has been thoroughly refuted, it is his work that represents a series of stretches of the imagination, as the refutation made quite clear. If you want to disagree with the refutation you have to come up with more than an unsupported assertion that it is errant.

I agree that some christians aren't threatened by science, but those who espouse biblical inerrancy are threatened by all forms of rationality. If you sign up in advance to one interpretation as PH insists then you aren't conducting science.

I forgot Dini, but I don't want to be treated by modern medics who reject science either. (quite different from rejecting historical figures who either knew nothing of evolution, or who were not aware of the strength of its case.

What I illustrated was the poverty of the case for science suppressing anti-evolution evidence, something which is thin on the ground. Your best shot at that appeared to be Gentry's feeble assertions.

[js1138]

Good post! I think it's important to remember that naturalism has political and social consequences.

I'd be really curious to see a list of individual rights that have consistently been protected by theocracies.

[puroresu]

Not many individual rights are protected by theocracies, which is why I favor a constitutional republic along the lines of the one our founders gave us.

[grey_whiskers]

Anyway, the belief was that in Genesis where it says the earth was without form and void, a more correct translation would be that it BECAME without form and void. God created the earth billions of years ago and populated it with plants and animals. When Lucifer & his demons rebelled, they were cast down to earth and the resulting battle between God's angels and Lucifer's demons devastated the planet and much of the solar system.

YES! Grey_whiskers has returned from lurking over the holidays. (Y-a-a-a-w-w-w-n! As if anyone cares...)

Methinks I smell a resemblance to portions of The Silmarillion here. Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Always interesting to hear from people who take the literal interpretation of the Bible seriously.

You mean like Bill Clinton and the Ten Commandments?
"Thou shalt covet thy neighbors' ass!" ;-)

[grey_whiskers]

It all began with that atheist Newton and his laws of motion, which denied the God keep pushing the arrow continuously in flight.

I shouldn't have to point this out, but asserting that things behave in consistent ways over time does not deny God, even though it sometimes denies the need to assume miracles in everyday life.

One often gets into troubles when trying to keep an over-simplified model in the face on increasingly detailed evidence. Try accounting for more than the simplest atomic spectra (Rydberg transitions & the like) using a Bohr / Rutherford type atom. Very messy, very quickly.

If you assume miracle as the default explanation for an unknown phenomena, you cannot do science, because science has the opposite default assumption.

If you ever run into C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image let me know...

[attiladhun2]

Of course it is a loss. What else would you call it when the various species of a genus can no longer share DNA that can be transmitted to the entire genus as a legacy. Any way you try to slice it, still equals a loss .

[attiladhun2]

What does any of this have to do with evolution? The pseudoscience of Marxism produced the Soviet Union and Communist China. A number of brilliant thinkers came out of those societies, so what! That does not prove the pseudoscience of Marxism is true any more than a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry proves that the pseudoscience of Darwinism is true.
I guess all the screwball scifi and horror flicks based on some evolutionary premise I used see at the Sat. matinee when I was a kid are equally valid arguments against evolution? You are using at least two logical fallacies in your presentation--that of ad hominem and selective siding. Scientists who believed in creation have given humankind calculus, the laws of heredity, and germ theory. Thomas Edison was also a creationist, I believe.

[PatrickHenry]

Scientists who believed in creation have given humankind calculus, the laws of heredity, and germ theory. Thomas Edison was also a creationist, I believe.

This comes up all the time. One could respond with equal force that thinkers who believed in Zeus did some useful work too, but so what? We don't give credit to the Olympian gods because of the work of Greek philosophers, scientists and mathaticians.

The question is not whether someone was a creationist (prior to the general acceptance of Darwin's theory, virtually everyone was), but whether "creation science" itself has ever accomplished anything. I suggest that it hasn't.

[Dimensio]

What else would you call it when the various species of a genus can no longer share DNA that can be transmitted to the entire genus as a legacy.

And when a new genus is a result?

I've seen dishonest creationist arguments before, but never one that attempted to play with semantics so badly and so brazenly. Your entire argument is based upon semantics, with no basis in factual events whatsoever.

[Marysecretary]

It's fine as long as you teach AS a theory and not fact. Now, I don't know about gravity except that what goes up must come down. And be careful it doesn't land on your head.

[attiladhun2]

No one is arguing for polytheism. Why is it so difficult for darwinists to conclude, according to the evidence, that there is a Creator in back of the universe.