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Christian Churches Celebrate Darwin's Birthday
kthejoker writes "Today is the 197th anniversary of the great biologist Charles Darwin's birth. In response, some 450 Christian churches are celebrating Darwin's birth, saying, 'Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.' There's also an interesting perspective on Darwinism and Christianity in the San Jose Mercury News."
Christian (and Islamic and Judaeic) dogma inevitably and logically results in fundamentalism and rejection of all secular (ie, rational) thought and belief. To think otherwise is to ignore the very scripture one claims to believe in.
(Long Now has a great talk given by Harris available for free download in Ogg Vorbis or MP3)
In fact, Kenneth Miller has advanced a very plausible religious view in his book "Finding Darwin's God" that reconciles the two. It's based on several ideas:
1) If God knows all causality, then he could have brought about everything into being originally AND have it, from science's view BE random and undetermined. The two are not mutally exclusive when God is the best pool player of all time, setting up the most elaborate shot of all time.
2) God could act via influencing things in ways that, due to quantum outcomes, would indeed be like magic to us, and undetectable or testable (hence we can still believe in a God that does miracles)
3) Evolution itself has plenty of room for a valid new theology based on the idea that God would WANT life to be free of God's direct design. This is known as "liberation theology" and though many Catholics disdain it, it's perfectly plausible.
If the above is true, then both atheists and theists can agree on everything concerning the physical world, without conflict. The atheists certainly wont agree with the faith theology above, but the theists can believe it without having to make any claims that have consequences which rule out the legitimacy of atheism (i.e. the not believing because there is no good evidence kind)
Here's the link. I loved that one.
I would just like to remind those out there who still believe in an Abrahamic faith that having your church/synagogue/mosque celebrate the birthday of a human being not associated in any way with God is idolatry. Darwin is not a religious figure, he is a scientific one. You can believe in evolution and be religious, however.
I would also like to remind the people who wrote my Biology textbook, a Miller and Levine of Prentice Hall, that their treatment of Darwin and evolution is rather idolotrous. Details of earlier theories (inheritance of learned traits, geological theories that led to "Earth is billions of years old" in the first place, Darwin's actual evidence) are left out, and the authors practically declare Undying Love for Charles Darwin. Declaring Undying Love for anything is unscientific.
This has been a public service announcement because idolizing people causes problems, such as reading the National Enquirer, stupidity and electing the stupid "National Enquirer" readers you idolize to high political office.
You seem to confuse testability with repeatability. Testability here is the ability for observation to support or refute a theory, not the ability to reproduce experiments in a laboratory. That is to say, a proper scientific hypothesis must be answerable to the facts. Repeatability is not, however, a requirement of all the sciences.
By your argument, astronomy and the rest of biology are not science either. And yet patently they are.
Darwin did not therorize about the origins of life, only the origin of species. The origins of life is not normally considered part of evolutionary theory.
Regarding the other two examples, evolutionly theory does not claim to be able to explain how every evolutionary occurence throughout time took place in minute detail. You state that it is nonscientific because we have an incomplete understanding of what happened two billion years ago? Ridiculous.
If you want to read Darwin's ideas about Human Evolution then you should read "The Descent of Man" where he demonstrates that sexual selectiona nd the competition that entials are sufficient to account for Human diversity as observed 2 centuries ago.
I have to stress that at no pont in Darwin's writings did he address the question of the Origin of Life. 1. Everywhere in nature, the double helix DNA works the same way. To mate, animals must have the same number of 'rungs'. But man has 46, and ape has 48; humans have #2 & #3 bonded together. Nowhere else in nature are rungs "bonded" like this. We're just not the same, but we appear similar, visually.
No, there is no such requirement in order to mate. There are any number of websites that demonstrate mating between different species. To mate and have functional and fertile progeny, that's another thing however. I'd like to point out that as you said, Humans have 2 chromosomes from apes bonded together, which is simply a transcription modification.... I assume that God can allow the telomeres to unfold differently if He wishes?
And regarding your points about ID, well, in the opinion of myself, and many of the memebrs of our Church, ID is one of the greatest threats to Christianity in many many years. ID requires that God be an imperfect being, that creation be imperfect and that he makes mistakes. My God does not make mistakes, therefore ID did not happen.
Finally I'd like to refer you to St Augustine, who made the point that when experience and scripture seem to be in conflict, it's always that we have mis-interpreted scripture.
I'd like an answer to such things as to how inorganic matter became living or even how matter came to exist in the first place. I'm pretty sure evolution can't answer these questions. And if it can't, it really is not a general theory of the origins of life but just a way to explain specific biological processes.
This is absolutely correct. Evolution is a theory of speciation (the emergence of species from other species), not of origins.
Theories of Abiogenesis (life emerging from non-life) I've heard are within a decade or two of being experimentally tested. I'm a physicist by training and don't know the details, but from what I've read in popular science magazines, biologists are optimistic.
How design supporters insult God's intelligence
and the following documentary about some priests who are also hard core scientists:
Galileo's Sons
A few days ago the Pope came out and reinforced the Catholic Church's view that Science and religion are compatible. In other words even the Pope thinks evolution is valid. Here is the original speech in Italian.
All in all the proponents of intelligent design are looking more and more like the snake oil salesmen they are.
I would just like to point out that just because somebody coined your technique as "genetic" does not mean it closely emulates biological genetics per se. That is like calling "artificial intelligence," such as the techniques used today, the same as human intelligence.
There are countless factors in reality that are all interrelated and reflecting on each other's properties. Your simplistic computer simulation exists in an artificial abstract environment with rules that are infintesimally incomplete if not outright incorrect.
So I would point out you shouldn't put much faith in those numbers to correlate with meat space evolution. Real evolution probably does not even behave exactly like your simulated evolution.
Comparison deals with similar traits.
Dictionary.com's definitions
Note the second definition:
To examine in order to note the similarities or differences of.
Note the usage notes, which state that the preposition "to" is generally indicates that compare is being used to highlight differences between the two (or more) things, while "with" is usually used to indicate similar traits. Note that the origional post stated:
How about the idiots who, for example, think Bush is comparable to Hitler?
Also, recall that a rather famous playwright and poet once asked,
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Clearly, the intent is to compare a human being with a temporal event, things that don't share precisely similar traits.
There is plenty of stuff on the web, but to get you started, here are some things to get you thinking about how abiogenesis may have occurred, or at least suggest the workings of some steps along the way.
1) In 1953, Stanley Miller, working under Harold Urey, showed that amino acids are able to form spontaneously in the conditions which may have existed in earth's primordial atmosphere. In three months, his experiment produced at least 7 amino acids, which included 3 of the 20 found in modern (and probably ancient) organisms. (Amino acids are the 'building blocks' of all proteins).
2) Certain lipid molecules, including phospholipids (the main type of molecule that makes up cell membranes), will spontaneously form a number of structures when placed in water, eg "micelles" and "bi-layers".
Micelles are tiny spherical structures made of relatively few molecules, and can 'carry' other molecules inside them, although I'm am not aware of the significance of this.
Bi-layers are often much larger structures capable of forming large sheets, or "membranes" which can be quite bendy and stretchy. They can even bend around on themselves to form massive. spherical "containers" which separate their contents from the outside world and thus allows the contents to become significantly chemically different. This is exactly the structure used by all living cells to contain the vast array of chemical reactions that need to be carried out under special chemical conditions.
The significance of spontaneous organisation of certain lipids is that it is thermodynamically favourable for these structures to occur and therefore plausible that they played an important part in containing the first biochemical interactions that occurred during abiogenesis.
3) It has also been suggested that certain clay substrates may have formed a biochemical "staging ground" for collecting and organising biologically significant molecules. I remember reading (possibly in a Richard Dawkins book) about one theory which suggested the idea that the clay substrates themselves could have been self-reproducing. The premise of this particular theory is that imperfections in some crystal structures are often repeated throughout the crystal as it grows. Therefore crystal structures with certain imperfections may have encouraged more of themselves to exist. Furthermore, the theory says, if particular "self-replicating" crystal structures gave rise to large scale properties that further encouraged the production of these crystals, then they would become even more prolific. For example, if a certain "self-replicating" crystal was usually generated in still water, but also had the property that, when washed into slow-moving water, sediments of the crystal caused that slow-moving water to "dam up", then the water would become still again, thus creating an environment suitable for creating more of the crystal.
Far-fetched? Perhaps, But I am always wary of criticising a theory simply because of my own incredulity.
Anyway. The upshot is that we are a number of theories of abiogenesis out there, none of them at all complete. I guess that any theories will remain speculative until we are able to satisfactorily string together a series of observeda and reproducible reactions and interactions that would be able to explain abiogenesis.
What evidence do you have of their presence in Iraq?
They hide among the population which is turning against them. Ordinary people are turning them in.
So, why are ordinary Iraqis being imprisoned and tortured, even if they have nothing to do with Al Qaeda or terrorism? If we are at war with Al Qaeda, saying that we should imprison Iraqis (without rights or trial) is like saying that the French should be imprisoned in WWII, because we were at war with the Nazis.
War on Terror is shorthand, not misnomer.
We also have a War on Drugs. Does that mean that drug users should be denied constitutional or international law rights? If it counts as war, why aren't they treated as POWs?
In order to qualify for the protections of a Prisoner of War under the Geneva Conventions you must meet certain standards. Al Qaeda and company violate the standards and therefore don't qualify for the protections and priviledges.
Please explain this. If they are not enemies in a war, then they are civilians, and deserve civilian protections. If they are enemies in a war, then they should be treated as POWs. There is no third category recognized under US or international law.
War on Al Qaeda is about the same as war on pirates in centuries past, or various guerilla groups. Nothing silly about it at all.
Well, under US law and international law, pirates, guerillas, and war criminals are granted criminal trials if captured.
Faulty logic, and quite silly.
Why is it silly?
Might I suggest that you actually read the Geneva Conventions?
Yes, I have. Might I suggest you actually explain what you mean? Where is it in the Geneva convention that allows anyone to be treated the way the US is treating prisoners? You don't actually present a logical argument. You just say "this is silly" and don't explain why.
Aside from the Geneva conventions, what about the conventions against torture? What about George Bush saying "The US does not torture"?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Might I suggest that you actually read the Geneva Conventions?
That would only prove you even more wrong. Geneva says that signatories should follow the rules, even if the enemy isn't. In fact, it's Article I, "The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances." Emph. mine.
And Article II: "Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations."
And let's look at Article V: "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4 [POWs], such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."
While you can use slippery lawyer talk to try and get al qaeda members out of the POW definitions in Article 4, it simply isn't a logical argument, and it is completely bereft of any moral standing. You want so badly for this to be a "WAR", but then you want to throw away the protections that we've agreed to for the treatment of prisoners of war, because.. oh.. uh.. they're not prisoners.. or something.
This attitude is a religion in itself - and your generalizations are basically based on observations of religion based purely on the media or by listening to others like yourself.
Fascinating--you apparently know all about me, my religious upbringing, my studies in ancient Christianity and the history of the English church, and my broad reading in non-Christian religions. This is a fine example of religious thinking: when faced with something that challenged an article of your faith, you made something up that protected your faith.
I grant you that many minor Christian sects have at one time or the other questioned the divinity of Christ. The Gnostics were at it pretty much from the off. But no major Christian denomination would even consider recognizing such sects as Christian until the latter half of the twentieth century, and the Christian denominations to which the majority of Christians have been subject since the Middle Ages have spent far more time killing people for questioning Christ's divinity than encouraging them.
You need to look at Christianity beyond what a few atypical modern sects believe. I've known UU's who call themselves "Christians", but that does not make them so. Based on my deep and extensive knowledge of Christianity across the last two thousand years and across the world today, including many years of personal experience as a Christian I am comfortable standing by my assessment of Christ's divinity as central to Christianity's mythos (in saying "divinity" I intend to be agnostic regarding person/body distinctions.) If you take away the divinity of Christ you are left with just another Jewish preacher, a footnote to history whose sacrifice on the cross was simply an unfortunate turn of political events, no different from any other Jewish prophet who came to a bad end at the hands of secular or religious authority.
You and people like you may want to call yourself Christians, but I am willing to bet you are in fact Christian-inspired humanists, and that you do not believe anything that the majority of Christian thinkers or followers at any time in the past two thousand years would recognize as being doctrinally close to the teachings of Jesus or the Pauline church. You cannot simply believe whatever you damn well please and claim on that basis that you are a Christian. The Nicen Creed, the 39 Articles, something has to be held in common between Christians, or the word means nothing.
Finally, if being willing to question everything is in your view a religion, then what in your view is not a religion? Or by "religion" do you simply mean "any set of foundational beliefs whatsoever, however tentative, however open to revision, however empirical"? If so, then I can only say,
"that word you keep using, I do not think it means what you think it means." It is certainly nothing like what most people mean by it, as most people have no difficulty at all distinguishing religious beliefs from empirical, scientific, or humanist ones.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.