Churches urged to back evolution

"Astrology is a science? Interesting."

That is your assertion, apparently. Neither evolution nor astrology are science, but both have been relied upon by people of the same mindset.

Neither evolution nor astrology are science, but both have been relied upon by people of the same mindset.

So, which peer-reviewed scientific journal publishes my weekly horoscope?

I think the real issue has its roots in the fact that a great deal of the American religious landscape is dominated by various species of "sola scriptura" protestantism most of which arose not in the Western reformation, but in various post-'Englightenment' religious revivals.

This is a very interesting analysis, one which seems to me to support the view (about which I am undecided) that there is an element of American particularism evident here, arising from aspects of its singular history. I tend to resist this sort of view on the grounds that I believe the US is a compelling model for the world, that its strengths are grounded in its institutional forms (and thus can be replicated), and that its core values (freedom, democracy under the law, free enterprise, minimal government) are universally applicable.

My concern with "sola scriptura" Prostestantism --if I understand it aright--is that it cannot ultimately traffic with any other intellectual endeavour, least of all science. This, at least, appears to be part of the argument advanced by at least some scientists against ID, id est, it isn't science, it's an attempt to sabotage science. Yet the values I mentioned, and which I feel are essential to good governance, are above all else rational and pragmatic, should be intelligible to all on their own merit without reference to religious scripture or authority. But your posting has given me more to reflect on here; many thanks for that.

They made a similar analogy about Bill Clinton

Wolf

My concern with "sola scriptura" Prostestantism --if I understand it aright--is that it cannot ultimately traffic with any other intellectual endeavour, least of all science. This, at least, appears to be part of the argument advanced by at least some scientists against ID, id est, it isn't science, it's an attempt to sabotage science.

Your understanding is spot on.

Especially after ToryHeartland reststed the temptration to support the claim that the United States of America was built by a bunch of bums.

Ooooh! Do I detect a bit of arrogant Darwinistic superiority here?

And let me add---Spoken like a real bum.

In spite of Wahington's ummm shall we say "dental disorder"---he managed to become the leader of the greatest nation on earth. Poor, misguided Darwin, however, let his tooth decay lead him into darkness and despair....and lizard communion.

Something Pythonesque about it I can't quite put my finger on....

Well you keep fingering the dilemma.

I'd NEVER HEARD OF THE guy.

Okay, perhaps I should stop being so accusatory. You need to understand that there is significant evidence, not only to me but to others, that you have, in fact, made statements about the person but if you could explain the misunderstanding then perhaps we could end this hostility. My belief to the contrary lies in what appears to me to be a discrepancy in your posting history, but perhaps you could clear it up for me so that, better educated, I will stop lobbing (as you claim) false accusations..

To whom were you referring when you said "another one" in this post? In that same discussion, you used the pronoun "he" in this post with the phrase "he rejects it". To whom did the pronoun "he" refer? Note that I have to conclude that "he" refers specifically to someone in the linked article, as the pronoun is prefaced with "Read the article." While the linked article is no longer available, I can reference a copy of the article stored elsewhere if you need it for reference. Check here.

Note that the article to which the discussion pertained was about philospher Antony Flew. Now, I did not see you referencing any other names, and your first post, with the "another one" reference, was directly to the original article. As such, I assumed that you were referring to Antony Flew. If there was ambiguity such that I was mistaken, please explain to me to whom you were referring, exactly, and I will make a full apology for calling you a liar.

Screen, your posts seem to come to "You must believe the Bible."

Actually, his posts come to "You DO believe my specific interpretation of the Bible, and you're lying when you make claims that contradict it."

Once again, attempting to control the debate by defining terms to suit yourselves.

Why is it that when many a creationist gets a well-established scientific definition wrong, they frequently accuse those who point out the mistake of trying to redefine terms?

(Haeckel's drawings are more exaggerations, though you can add that if yo want; they were not nearly as important as anti-evos claim they were).

They were more than exaggerations. It was pretty much outright fraud. Still, the point remains that they were never widely accepted (and in fact rather quickly exposed by Haeckel's colleagues).

Without some admission that the poster never read the article before posting and just assumed it said something it did not, my verdict has to be guilty. If the poster subsequently read the article and didn't admit to this mistake, doubly guilty.

"The intelligent design movement belittles evolution. It makes God a designer - an engineer," said George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory.

Does God belittle himself? Job 38

4 “ Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.

5 Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?

6 To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,

7 When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors,
When it burst forth and issued from the womb;

9 When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band;

10 When I fixed My limit for it,
And set bars and doors;

11 When I said,

‘This far you may come, but no farther,
And here your proud waves must stop!’

12 “Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
And caused the dawn to know its place,

13 That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,
And the wicked be shaken out of it?

14 It takes on form like clay under a seal,
And stands out like a garment.

15 From the wicked their light is withheld,
And the upraised arm is broken.

16 “Have you entered the springs of the sea?
Or have you walked in search of the depths?

17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you?
Or have you seen the doors of the shadow of death?

18 Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?
Tell Me, if you know all this.

19 “ Where is the way to the dwelling of light?
And darkness, where is its place,

20 That you may take it to its territory,
That you may know the paths to its home?

21 Do you know it, because you were born then,
Or because the number of your days is great?

22 “Have you entered the treasury of snow,
Or have you seen the treasury of hail,

23 Which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
For the day of battle and war?

24 By what way is light diffused,
Or the east wind scattered over the earth?

25 “Who has divided a channel for the overflowing water,
Or a path for the thunderbolt,

26 To cause it to rain on a land where there is no one,
A wilderness in which there is no man;

27 To satisfy the desolate waste,
And cause to spring forth the growth of tender grass?

28 Has the rain a father?
Or who has begotten the drops of dew?

29 From whose womb comes the ice?
And the frost of heaven, who gives it birth?

30 The waters harden like stone,
And the surface of the deep is frozen.

31 “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades,
Or loose the belt of Orion?

32 Can you bring out Mazzaroth^[a] in its season?
Or can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs?

33 Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you set their dominion over the earth?

34 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
That an abundance of water may cover you?

35 Can you send out lightnings, that they may go,
And say to you, ‘Here we are!’?

36 Who has put wisdom in the mind?^[b]
Or who has given understanding to the heart?

37 Who can number the clouds by wisdom?
Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven,

38 When the dust hardens in clumps,
And the clods cling together?

39 “Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,

40 When they crouch in their dens,
Or lurk in their lairs to lie in wait?

41 Who provides food for the raven,
When its young ones cry to God,
And wander about for lack of food?

There is plenty of evidence that Darwin was in fact an atheist from both his own writings and from those who knew him. A simple google search can provide that.

In regards to his pushing aside the idea of a creator in favor of his own theory, you can read it in "Origins" when he discusses the eye.

To arrive, however, at a just conclusion regarding the
formation of the eye, with all its marvelous yet not absolutely
perfect characters, it is indispensable that the reason should conquer
the imagination; but I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be
surprised at others hesitating to extend the principle of natural
selection to so startling a length.

In living bodies, variation will
cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost
infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill
each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years; and
during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may
we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed
as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to
those of man?

Regards,
Boiler Plate

Are Jews who died without accepting Christ doomed to Hell?

Good science depends on the scientific method not adherence to a theory

Well evo then surely does not cult the mustard.

Wolf

"Astrology is a science? Interesting."

That is your assertion, apparently.

Apparently, you are mistaken. Apparently, that's not to hard a state to achieve. Evolutionary theory is accepted by virtually all biologists, and most scientists, as the most secure of all the scientific theories. The opinions of scientific crackpots with a painfully obvious theological ax to grind to the contrary notwithstanding. And scientists is whom we consult on the subject of what is and isn't science.

RudermanDidit placemark

I am assuming you are a creationist and that this is your argument. However, the evolutionist theory presented within this article is mighty convincing to me and obviously to many others:

Is the Human Embryo Essentially a Fish with Gills?
by David N. Menton, Ph.D.
Copyright © 1997 Missouri Association for Creation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Almost from the beginning, evolutionists have attempted to equate the process of evolution with the progressive development of the embryo. During the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925, for example, lawyers and expert witnesses defending teaching Darwinism in public schools, repeatedly confused evolution with embryology. The lawyers even insisted that evolution must be taught if physicians are to understand the development of babies in the womb! The very word "evolution" (which means "unfolding"), was taken from the name of an early theory of embryonic development which proposed that humans are completely preformed in miniature in the fertilized egg, simply "unfolding" during the development of the baby. Obviously, the blind-chance process of Darwinian "evolution" has nothing whatever to do with the exquisitely-controlled process of embryological development. Still, evolutionists have long attempted to relate embryology to evolution, presumably in an effort to extrapolate the readily-observable process of embryonic development into the unobservable process of macroevolution. Embryology continues to play a role in current evolutionary dogma. Generations of students have been told, for example, that the human embryo developing in the womb passes through stages of its evolutionary ancestry -- even at one point having gills like a fish!

Like most students of biology, I was required to memorize the "biogenetic law" which states that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." This means that the developing embryo (ontogeny) of each vertebrate species retraces (recapitulates) its evolutionary history (phylogeny). Specifically, each embryo in the course of its development, is said to pass through a progression of abbreviated stages that resemble the main evolutionary stages of its presumed ancestors. Thus, in the case of the human embryo, recapitulation scenario goes something like this: 1) The fertilized egg starts as a single cell (just like our first living evolutionary "ancestor"). 2) As the fertilized egg repeatedly divides it develops into an embryo with a segmented arrangement (the "worm" stage). 3) These segments develop into vertebrae, muscles and something that sort of looks like gills (the "fish" stage). 4) Limb buds develop with paddle-like hands and feet, and there appears to be a "tail" (the "amphibian" stage). 5) By about the eighth week of development, most organs are nearly complete, the limbs develop fingers and toes, and the "tail" disappears (the human stage). Now the mother can finally claim the baby as her own, or at least one of her own species. This ludicrous scenario has actually been used as a justification for abortion -- after all you are only killing lower animals!

The "biogenetic law" was first promulgated in the late 1800's by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel, a committed disciple of Darwin. Impressed by the general similarity among vertebrate embryos, Haeckel chose to ignore their differences. (Haeckel was a scientific charlatan who even stooped to publishing two copies of the same woodcut side by side to demonstrate the "remarkable similarity" between human and dog embryos!) Haeckel's "law" was shown to be unsound by many of the most distinguished embryologists of his own day, but its appeal to evolutionists was so great that it remained impervious to scientific criticism. In her book Essays in the History of Embryology and Biology (MIT Press, 1967 p. 150), Jane Oppenheimer said that the work of Haeckel "was the culmination of the extremes of exaggeration which followed Darwin." She lamented that "Haeckel's doctrines were blindly and uncritically accepted," and "delayed the course of embryological progress." Embryologist Erich Blechschmidt, considered Haeckel's biogenetic "law" to be one of the most serious errors in the history of biology. In his book The Beginnings of Human Life (Springer-Verlag Inc., 1977, p. 32), Blechschmidt minced no words in repudiating Haeckel's "law":

"The so-called basic law of biogenetics is wrong. No buts or ifs can mitigate this fact. It is not even a tiny bit correct or correct in a different form. It is totally wrong."

We could ignore this whole sorry chapter in the history of evolutionism, were it not for the fact that the biogenetic "law" is still being taught as a fact in our public schools! Of 15 high school biology textbooks being considered for adoption by the Indiana State Board of Education in 1980, nine offered embryological recapitulation as evidence for evolution.

Evolutionists themselves have conceded that the biogenetic "law" has become so deeply rooted in evolutionary dogma that it cannot be weeded out. For example, Paul Ehrlich said "it's shortcomings have been almost universally pointed out by modern authors, but the idea still has a prominent place in biological mythology" (The Process of Evolution, 1963, p. 66). Even Dr. Benjamin Spock saw fit to perpetuate Haeckel's recapitulation myth in his well-known book, Baby and Child Care (Cardinal Giant Edit 57 p. 223). Spock confidently assured expectant mothers that:

"each child as he develops is retracing the whole history of mankind, physically and spiritually [sic], step by step. A baby starts off in the womb as a single tiny cell, just the way the first living thing appeared in the ocean. Weeks later, as he lies in the amniotic fluid of the womb, he has gills like a fish."

It is a well-established fact that the human embryo (like all mammalian embryos) never has gills in any sense of the word. The fanciful notion of gills is based upon the presence of four alternating ridges and grooves in the neck region of the human embryo (called pharyngeal arches and pouches) that bear a superficial resemblance to gills. While similar arches do give rise to gills in certain aquatic vertebrates such as fish, their developmental fate in mammals has nothing to do with gills or even breathing. In man and other mammals, these arches and pouches develop into part of the face, muscles of mastication and facial expression, bones of the middle ear, and endocrine glands.

The embryological development of the heart has been another popular textbook example of embryonic recapitulation, and thus "proof" of evolution. Evolutionists argue that as the human heart develops, it goes from a two-chambered "fish heart," to a three-chambered "amphibian heart" and, finally, forms the four-chambered mammalian heart. In his book Comparative Anatomy and Embryology (Ronald Press, 1964, p. 509), William Ballard said "no false biological statement has had a longer or more popular life than the one about the ontogeny of the four-chambered heart." Ballard pointed out that "in real life, all vertebrate hearts are composed of the same four chambers at the pharyngula stage." As the heart develops, these four chambers become specialized in different ways which are uniquely suited to the demands of aquatic, amphibious or terrestrial life.

Embryologists are now aware that the embryos of each species of animal are unique and dynamically functional systems. The human embryo does not become human at some point during its development, rather it is uniquely human at every stage of its development.