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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."
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.
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.