Tension Over Intelligent Design

International Herald Tribune ^ | 10/31/2005 | Joseph Rosenbloom

[Diamond]

BOSTON Michael Behe is a respected professor of biochemistry noted for his research into the structure of nucleic acid. He is also the author of "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution," a book, published in 1996, that put him squarely on the map in favor of an anti-evolution concept known as intelligent design, causing deep tensions between Behe and his fellow faculty members at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Two months ago Lehigh's Department of Biological Sciences, where the 53-year-old Behe has taught for 20 years, publicly repudiated his views in a notice on its Web site, saying that they had "no basis in science."

Read more at International Herald Tribune

[sr4402]

Quite frankly, Evolution is going to get more harder to justify each year IMHO. As we find out more and more about the intricacies of life itself and at the molecular level the theory that we all came into being just by chance is going to get harder and harder to maintain. It is like trying to plug a leak in a crumbling seawall dam.

If evolution was correct, we should have been making life from the basic elements long ago. No life is more complex than we think and it's locks and rules are often much harder and more complex than we think to pick.

[Diamond]

Welcome to FreeRepublic. If you do a search here you will find many old threads on the subject with more detail than you may be able to stomach. In short though, the materialism of Jefferson and Locke is the not same philosophical materialism that we think of today. Locke was a practicing Christian. And second, while there were a few Deists among the Founders, the overwhelming number were Christians of one Protestant denomination or another. The American historian Bancroft puts it this way:

"...He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty."
and
"... "The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster."

I think would be most difficult to sustain an accusation of empty propaganda devoid of substance or historic accuracy againt one of America's greatest historians, and one who was certainly no Calvinist himself.

Cordially,

[Diamond]

A Deist believes the world was created, but they are also not Creationists.

What??

You have provided no evidence that any of the Founding Fathers were Creationists.

You think that the Founders who were Christians did not believe that God created the universe? Even deists believed that God created the universe and then left it to run on it's own.

I think it is sufficient to show that the Founders were Christians to prove that they believed in creation, and t. A creationist is someone who believes in creation.

Cordially,

[betty boop]

Most IDers are religiously motivated.

We can exchange generalizations if you like, Ichneumon. I'd say that most neo-Darwinists are "religiously motivated," as well. Believe it or not, atheism is a recognized form of religious expression.

[USConstitutionBuff]

So when caught in a bare faced lie, you retreat and then attack a straw man argument?

I never denied that the majority of the Founding Fathers were Christians, or denied the influence of Calvin in specific or Christianity in general. That is a straw-man that you set up.

However I still take issue with your statement that the Founding Fathers were Creationists. Jefferson was a Materialist, and decried any hint of the supernatural as the product of a corrupt or ignorant mind. Deists believe the world was created (I am a Deist) but they are most certainly NOT Creationists by any stretch of the imagination. And being a Christian and being a Creationist is hardly synonymous; just as being an Atheist and subscribing to the theory of evolution through natural selection are not synonymous.

And I can stomach much; as evidenced by my tolerance for your incorrect generalizations, logical fallacies, and your straw man arguments.

Cordially,

[balrog666]

Hey, I found your real argument:

Unfortunately, it was too late!

[Coyoteman]

I'd say that most neo-Darwinists are "religiously motivated," as well. Believe it or not, atheism is a recognized form of religious expression.

So you are equating "neo-Darwinists" with "atheists" then?

[betty boop]

So when caught in a bare faced lie, you retreat and then attack a straw man argument?

Ah, I love polemics! :^)

Seems to me you and Diamond are defining key terms differently. Actually, USCB, Diamond has long-standing usage and understandings to back him up. There is no way that TJ was a "materialist" in the sense that word has acquired in recent times. And neither was Locke -- as Diamond has already pointed out.

Christians and Deists both believe that God created the Universe. The essential difference between them is that Christians believe that God's creative activity continues in the Universe, and Deists do not. Both, however, are creationists, for both believe that God created the world. (That is the definition of a creationist.) TJ believed this; Franklin believed this. Indeed, these men took divine creation so for granted that they referred to the Creator as their justification for separation from the British Crown, as we see in the DoI. For the Creator created men as having unalienable rights, which the British Crown was violating. Both TJ and Ben apparently believed that human nature itself is a gift of God that not even a king has the right or power to tamper with, limit, or infringe.

I think perhaps you simply regard the word "creationist" as a term of opprobrium -- which may be the reason why you refuse to apply it to yourself, a self-proclaimed deist. Perhaps you picked up this attitude or habit from the general Kultursmog that we are all breathing in today.... Just remember that it was Marx who first made it fashionable to hold "creationists" in contempt. And his "scientific materialism" was something never encountered by any of the Founders.

[DoctorMichael]

No need. However, you'd better use a bunch yourself!

[USConstitutionBuff]

Deists are not Creationists.

cre·a·tion·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kr-sh-nzm)
n.
Belief in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things related in the Bible.

And Thomas Jefferson was a materialist in the full meaning in which I use it; someone who eschews supernatural explanation and doesn't believe in supernatural accounts.

To disprove the generalization that 'the Founding Fathers were Creationists" I need only to show that one was not. No Creationist would say the following...

"But those facts in the bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from god. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c."

Thomas Jefferson

[betty boop]

So you are equating "neo-Darwinists" with "atheists" then?

Only in the same manner in which USConstitutionBuff was equating IDers with religiously-motivated creationists. Just giving a parallel example.

But since you ask do I equate all neo-Darwinists with atheist belief, let me just say that Richard Dawkins is, to me, the "poster child" of neo-Darwinism today. He is, as you know, a self-described "intellectually fulfilled atheist." He exemplifies a trend; but not all neo-Darwinists follow him in his atheism. Though I gather he considers his atheism a great selling tool of his neo-Darwinism.... go figure. :^)

[Diamond]

So when caught in a bare faced lie, you retreat and then attack a straw man argument?

What bare-faced lie? That Christians in the 18th Century believed in Biblical Creation?

And being a Christian and being a Creationist is hardly synonymous;

At the time of the Founding it most certainly was. For example, Webster's 1824 Dictionary defines CREATURE, n.

1. That which is created; every being besides the Creator, or every thing not self-existent. The sun, moon and stars; the earth, animals, plants, light, darkness, air, water, &c., are the creatures of God.

A current definition of Creationism:

cre·a·tion·ism
Belief in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things related in the Bible.

Now, if you have evidence that the vast majority of founders who were Christians did not believe exactly this, then please adduce it, and explain the difference between their literal belief in Biblical Creation and a literal belief in Biblical Creation of any modern Creationist. Otherwise, I would appreciate it if you would kindly refrain from accusing me of bald-faced lies and logical fallacies.

I think it is an anachronistic interpretation to import the modern meaning of the term materialism as it is today back to Jefferson and Locke. If that makes me a liar in your mind, so be it.

Cordially,

[DoctorMichael]

The Founding Fathers of this Country and their intellectual and spiritual predecessors were Creationists.

Not in the sense of the whack-job ID/Creationists. Did the Founding Fathers state that the Earth was ~6,000 years old? I must have missed that line in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Could you point it out to me?

I guess you mean that they, too, intended to destroy western civilization and their own Judeo-Christian institutions?

Not at all! The 'Scientific Method' is itself a part of Western Civilization along with a belief in a Deity from whom all things flow. What separates them from the evil ID/Creationists is the use of the Courts to force their uninformed and misguided views on others: They are tyrannical Totalitarians.

As for myself, I'll quote Jefferson: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Cordially

[betty boop]

cre·a·tion·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kr-sh-nzm)
n.
Belief in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things related in the Bible.

And Thomas Jefferson was a materialist in the full meaning in which I use it; someone who eschews supernatural explanation and doesn't believe in supernatural accounts.

_____________________________

I don't know what dictionary you're using, USCB. But my humble little Webster's gives the definition of creationism thusly:

creationism...n (1880): a doctrine or theory holding that matter, the various forms of life, and the world were created by God out of nothing.

In other words, the natural world had a supernatural beginning. It seems obvious to me that TJ did not eschew a supernatural explanation for the beginning of the Universe. Like many rationalists, perhaps he was not entirely comfortable with that understanding. On the other hand, I never heard him postulate a purely natural or material alternative explanation.

[Diamond]

I don't know what dictionary you're using, USCB. But my humble little Webster's gives the definition of creationism thusly:

Thank you, betty boop. I would be interested in the etymology of the word, "creationism". As you pointed out earlier, it has at some point taken on decidedly pejorative denotations.

Cordially,

[USConstitutionBuff]

What makes you a liar is the statement that "the Founding Fathers were Creationists"; this was a willful lie in that when I quoted Jefferson you responded "He is a DEIST". As if, by that, you meant that he didn't count. Deists don't believe in the Bible, so how could they be Biblical literalists in regard to Creation?

Your still beating a straw man. I stated that the majority of the founders were Christian, and the rest were most certainly influenced by Christian thought. You can let it go.

And it was Jefferson who referred to himself as a materialist. And I quoted it in the same sense that he meant it; someone who questioned supernatural accounts and equated Christian "miracles" with accounts of Greek "miracles" or Roman accounts of statues or beasts talking; i.e. he gave to them no credence.

Now if you want to say that someone who denies the supernatural, claims to be a materialist, and one that you refer to as a Deist; is a Creationist - than you have stretched the meaning of the word to embrace anyone who believes that the universe was created by any agency (including ID advocates)as Creationists. As such the word looses almost all meaning as according to this definition only atheists would not be Creationists.

[USConstitutionBuff]

Websters. Online.

[RightWingAtheist]

Reminds me of how the liberals bring in communists and other fringe radicals to help their cause, and then scream "McCarthyism" when you note who they're travelling with.

[betty boop]

Websters. Online.

Sounds like Webster's Online is rewriting the English language, USCB. The words are the same, but their meanings are different -- reflecting the shift in the Kultursmog, I'd say. Need I point out that a chief tactic of the Progressive Left is to (mis)appropriate words and symbols for the purpose of undermining their "traditional" meanings, and to substitute meanings that are more in line with totalist, ideological goals?

Of course, the added "side-benefit" to such a maneuver is that people find it increasingly difficult to communicate with each other... a shared language is fundamental for that purpose.

[USConstitutionBuff]

I think Websters definition is pretty sound. A Biblical literalist describes most people who describe themselves as Creationist. And Biblical literalists most certainly does not describe all of our Founding Fathers.

The term Creationist certainly doesn't describe everyone who believes that the world was created.