Creation vs. Evolution

[Kingpatzer]

I could give you a couple of names of people that work in science fields that adhere to a Biblical account of creation, but they have no published documents.

Fr., Dr. Stanley L. Jaki, OSB, PhD, STD.

His book Genesis 1 Through the Ages should be required reading for anyone starting a debate on this topic.

How about Francis P. Filice, a priest and Proffeser Emeritus of Biology for 30 years?

Go look up the membership of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. I guess none of them count, eh?

Now if you mean an American Fundamentalist literalist account, then yeah, they're hard to find. But "stupidly" isn't the only way to read the Bible.

Go through the biology deparments of Catholic universities, and you'll find an aweful lot of priests and monastics working in the field. Just as you will find them in every field of science.

 

[Soggy]

Fr., Dr. Stanley L. Jaki, OSB, PhD, STD.

Thank you, I'll have to look him up.

 

[Sas]

You can read plenty about how Orthodox, Catholic and main-line Protestant churches think about non-Christian religions, but what it comes down to is that your statement above is lacking both any understanding of history and theology of at least 2 major religions.

You missed chilledmammel's point. He was just giving a list of religions and said there was many of them. I did not interpret his post as saying that Christianity and Islam believe in different Gods. Even if he did, you still ignored his point, which was largely about the lack of evidence for the supernatural and God. When it boils down to it, no one can disprove God's existence so therefore you cannot classify stuff like Creationism as science.

Or maybe you've built a straw-man argument based on ignorance of normative beliefs, historical development, and sound theology. But hey, why should the fundaholic believers have all the fun. Ferverent adherence to one's own arrogance doesn't happen just with those who are religious.

I believe you have been the one making straw man arguments actually with your insistence on thinking that the debate here has been about whether God actually exists or not, that is only a minor part of it. The debate has actually been about how fundamentalist Christians refute the facts and evidence of evolution, attempt to have things such as creationism and ID classified as science as well as attempt to impose their own world views on the rest of the population. So please stick to the topic.

 

[Kingpatzer]

The debate has actually been about how Christians refute the facts and evidence of evolution, attempt to have things such as creationism and ID classified as science as well as attempt to impose their own world views on the rest of the population. So please stick to the topic.

But Christians as a group do not do those things.

Fundamentalists comprise a very small percentage of Christians. Yes, they are vocal, annoying and politically active to the point of being damaging, but they are not normative of Christianity anymore than terrorists are normative of Islam (and yes, I do think that there are some similarities there ...)

I don't mind if people want to bash on fundamentalists and ID adherents. But too many seem to forego all semblance of accuracy and attention to detail in this debate and paint with a rather broad brush.

Fundamentalists are not Christianity writ large. Conflating the two actually does damage to those in the science community who wish to use this debate to improve science education and defeat the ID proponents in places like school board meetings. You don't build effective alliances with those who agree with you about the science issues by continually insulting them about their religious affiliations and beliefs -- against which you have no arguement as it relates to science education or research methodologies and conclussions!

 

[Sas]

But Christians as a group do not do those things.

Fundamentalists comprise a very small percentage of Christians. Yes, they are vocal, annoying and politically active to the point of being damaging, but they are not normative of Christianity anymore than terrorists are normative of Islam (and yes, I do think that there are some similarities there ...)

Sure. I added 'fundamentalist' to my post as per your request for more precision. I believe it was implied though, given what has been discussed in the last few thousand posts.

I don't mind if people want to bash on fundamentalists and ID adherents. But too many seem to forego all semblance of accuracy and attention to detail in this debate and paint with a rather broad brush.

Some examples? I believe there has been a lot of good science put forward in this debate, which has in no way been addressed by the supporters of creationism. How is that for attention to detail?

Fundamentalists are not Christianity writ large. Conflating the two actually does damage to those in the science community who wish to use this debate to improve science education and defeat the ID proponents in places like school board meetings. You don't build effective alliances with those who agree with you about the science issues by continually insulting them about their religious affiliations and beliefs -- against which you have no arguement as it relates to science education or research methodologies and conclussions!

I never conflated the two as you put it. My arguments have been against Christians who attempt to interfere in the lives of others. I do not go around insulting the beliefs of Christians who keep it to themselves, only those beliefs that are directly contradictory to science and the ones that affect other people - such as homosexuals, women and so on. You can argue until you are blue in the face but it will not take away the fact that the Earth is more than 6000 years old. To argue otherwise is intellectually lazy and harmful to the progression of science as it is usually accompanied by a strong desire to make everyone else believe in the same thing.

 

[Thalassamania]

But Christians as a group do not do those things.

Fundamentalists comprise a very small percentage of Christians. Yes, they are vocal, annoying and politically active to the point of being damaging, but they are not normative of Christianity anymore than terrorists are normative of Islam (and yes, I do think that there are some similarities there ...)

I don't mind if people want to bash on fundamentalists and ID adherents. But too many seem to forego all semblance of accuracy and attention to detail in this debate and paint with a rather broad brush.

Fundamentalists are not Christianity writ large. Conflating the two actually does damage to those in the science community who wish to use this debate to improve science education and defeat the ID proponents in places like school board meetings. You don't build effective alliances with those who agree with you about the science issues by continually insulting them about their religious affiliations and beliefs -- against which you have no arguement as it relates to science education or research methodologies and conclussions!

Yes the fundamentalists are the primary problem, but mainstream religionists do far to little to deal with their more extreme fellow travelers, in fact their unwillingness to criticize them encourages them. The idea that those of us who are committed to the struggle against both terrorists of the mind and terrorists of the body, need to make nice-nice with the those moderates who's very gutlessness when it comes to the extremists is one of the basic problems. This reality is much better identified by Sam Harris here than I can do.

What is needed is not more effective alliances with moderate religionists, so that we may join together and smite the extremists with a rousing chorus of Kumbaya ... what is needed is for the moderates to find the gumption to stand up and criticize, and actively struggle against their co-religionists.

The mind they save may be their child's, the life that they save maybe their own.

 

[Kingpatzer]

Some examples? I believe there has been a lot of good science put forward in this debate, which has in no way been addressed by the supporters of creationism. How is that for attention to detail?

I don't mean in the description of scientific theories, methods or conclusions. I mean in the broad-brush attacks on Christianity instead of Fundamentalism, on the conflating of "Belief in Creation" with "Belief in a American fundamentalist literal interpretation of Genesis I," etc.

Numerous posts in this thread diverge from literal creationist accounts to attack Christian, and religious belief, specifically.

You can argue until you are blue in the face but it will not take away the fact that the Earth is more than 6000 years old. To argue otherwise is intellectually lazy and harmful to the progression of science as it is usually accompanied by a strong desire to make everyone else believe in the same thing.

As an example of the lack of precision I was mentioning . . . I have never once argued that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Indeed, I don't believe that I have once mentioned in this thread my view on that particular question at all. My answer however, in case you care, is that I have no idea what the current view of geology and astronomy are on the question, but I have no problem accepting whatever the current consensus view is (which last I looked it up was something like 4 or 5 billion years old).

Look, the goal as stated by many here is one of education. I've been to board meeting where curriculum in biology was up for debate, and after the first five minutes the entire thing was a mass insult-fest, with ego-filled idiots on both sides "arguing" (in something resembling a Monte Python sketch) not about science and education but about the validity of belief in, and/or existence of God. It was pointless and futile and neither side was at all interested in actually talking about what was best educationally, it was about if Christianity was evil or not.

It was an entirely puerile event. But instead of using an opportunity to garner support from those Christians there who agreed with the science supporters on all points related to science education, the science fundamentalists decided that they wanted to alienate the mainstream Christians as much as possible.

Like it or not, it is a political issue as much as science question. Perhaps more so. If you want to "win" the debate in the sphere where it counts in terms of public life (after all, it's not even a question within the scientific community) then the science supporters need the alliance of Christians. Insulting them through cavalier denunciations of all of Christiandom, and a lack of precision about who one is debating against (not to mention engaging the question of the validity of religious belief in general) hardly furthers the cause. Indeed it is rather counter-productive.

 

[Kingpatzer]

What is needed is not more effective alliances with moderate religionists, so that we may join together and smite the extremists with a rousing chorus of Kumbaya ... what is needed is for the moderates to find the gumption to stand up and criticize, and actively struggle against their co-religionists.

The mind they save may be their child's, the life that they save maybe their own.

And those people who want to join you in that fight are told by many of those on that side of the fence that they aren't welcome unless and until they renounce their religious beliefs in total.

You don't win political issues without alliances. Moderate Christians aren't gutless, we are rather more interested in charity and social justice issues. Still, many a moderate Christian has come out to strongly denounce fundamentalism, and there are numerous official positions on the topic by large religious bodies that ferverently criticism fundamentalists on any number of points.

I'm a ELCA Lutheran, it's hard to get more "moderate" than us, and I'm here and in real life, quite critical of "fundaholics."

In the places where this matters, it is not a debate about the validity of science. It is a campaign for political support of an issue before governmental bodies.

The scientists may not like that, but failure to recognize that fact and to take pragmatic approaches to winning that campaign will doom the side of science to failure.

 

[Sas]

Sorry Kingpatzer, I meant the general 'you', not you, yourself when I was talking about Young Earth Creationism. Nearly 3am so getting tired here and not phrasing things well enough

 

[Kingpatzer]

Sorry Kingpatzer, I meant the general 'you', not you, yourself when I was talking about Young Earth Creationism. Nearly 3am so getting tired here and not phrasing things well enough

I understand, and I wasn't taking it as a personal insult but merely using it as an example of the sort of thing I was talking about.