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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."
How about the idiots who, for example, think Bush is comparable to Hitler?
Of course he's "comparable" to Hitler: It is possible to compare Bush to Hitler: Bush is immensely less charismatic, competent or intelligent than Hitler.
Brought to you by the British campaign to eliminate idiotic American misuse of the word "comparable".
Many people don't really know anything about who he was or what he thought or how it applies to modern biology.
The guy was:
1) A careful and thoughtful scientist who spent countless hours studying tihngs most people would find incrediby boring. Darwin spent EIGHT YEARS studying BARNACLES.
2) Fairly shy.
3) A Christian for most of his life, and only an agnostic in later life (which had more to do historically with death in the family than with evolution, just ike Lincoln's rediscovering of Christianity)
The guy is/was NOT:
1) a guy who's ideas are a dogma. What Darwin thought is historically important in the development of evolution, but has no bearing on what and where that theory will lead.
2) 100% right about a LOT of things. He not only got the patterns of heredity completely wrong (he thought it was analog: by trait blending, when it was really digital), but was embarassingly forced to admit it when people with better arguments pointed out that blending was in contradiction with the evidence.
3) Someone that thought fossils had proved his case. To Darwin, fossils showed mainly the fact that past life was very different from present life: hence that most of species that existed in the past no longer existed in his day. This was one of the chief inspirations for his idea. The current creationist obsession with fossils overlooks the fact that Darwin put forward his theory, and was considered to be correct, long before we had anything like the fantastically rich fossil record of today. Darwin predicted that future fossils would all confirm his theory, but he NEVER expected that we'd find anywhere as many as we have, or that an entirely unimaginable field (genetics) would someday come to exist and provide an indepedent second check on the fossil record, allowing us to figure out actual lineages.
Darwin also didn't propose that the origins of life were part of evolution. The most he ever said on the subject was that maybe life had started in some warm little pool somewhere... in a private letter. He didn't publish this idea as scientific work.
There are so many misconceptions about the man that this otherwise fairly reserved guy is just buried under layers of legend. He was neither an exceptional genius and phropet, nor was he arrogant, careless about jumping to conclusions, or an atheist. He was a bright, studious man who worked hard, amassed tons of evidence, and hit upon a stunningly innovative realization about how evolution could have occured (one which was as much due to the new discoveries in geology and biology of his time as to his own thinking: as is obvious from the fact that no one in the history of earth had thought of it before... and then suddenly two guys did indepedently around the same time). He's worth remembering and learning about, not worshiping or demonizing.
I'm not a christian, but I'm glad there's some active stance among religious people against the fundamentalists who seem to have taken over any kind of discussion of religion in this country.
I'm not religious, and I find, on the whole, that fundamentalists hijacking a religion can be a good thing in the long run. Probably nothing else could turn as many people away from the whole idea of religion so much as a generation of frothing-at-the-mouth zealots fighting each other and anyone disagreeing with their inflexible, warped view of the world.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
"Christians have no need to choose between religion and science."
I beg to differ. The premise of religion is to accept that certain things are mysterious and cannot be investigated, or that certain things are true whether there is evidence for them or not.
The premise of science is that everything should be investigated, and that things are accepted as generally true only after evidence emerges for them, and that new evidence can change our perceptions of what is true.
Some of the most vocal opponents of the current American regime are those who actually fought in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and other conflicts. They know the true horrors of war, and many of them know the actual smell of fascism. You can call them idiots of you want. However, I'll listen to them when they start putting out warnings.
You speak of discussing events one did not witness. Just like that man and his children may not have witnessed macroevolution, I take it you did not witness World War II. While I was young at the time, I did. I remember leaving London during the Blitz. It is hypocritical and ignorant for you to suggest that those who experienced it firsthand are incorrect when they correctly point out history repeating itself.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
Here's the link. I loved that one.
Because in order to discredit evolutionary theory, those who oppose it attempt to undermine science, reason, and even empirical observation as bases of belief. The heliocentric model of the solar system isn't all of science, either, but no one who honestly believes in science disbelieves it.
English is easier said than done.
Why is it that if you are against Darwin you are against science?
Well, of course in principle it doesn't automatically mean that.
However, evolution is one of the most well-established theories that science has to offer. It is supported by evidence extremely well and is validated by hundreds of new observations every day. And if you publicly come out against it and in favor of some alternative theory for which the only evidence is a religious text, chances are pretty damn good that you are incapable of holding a logical thought in your head to begin with.
Now maybe that's an unfair assessment to make about you, but to make a more accurate one requires too much time and energy to expend on every evolution-basher out there. Life is too short, and there are too many of them (especially in the United States of America) to interview every single one as to his feelings about science in general. And it's a simple fact that people who publicly oppose evolution tend to be quite vocal in not only bashing scientists as a group, but bashing science in general as an inferior source of knowledge as compared to religion- an apples to oranges comparison if there ever was one.
If I were some omniscient being with all the time and resources in the world to examine the innermost thoughts of every creationist and intelligent designer, perhaps I'd be able to develop a more accurate opinion. As a human being with limited years on this earth, please forgive me if I take a short cut and make what is a pretty accurate generalization to save time. If you are against Darwin, you are probably against science. You may think you're pro-science, but usually what that means is that you're pro-technology and view your toys as validation of the superiority of your culture and by extension the correctness of its religious views. Individuals opposed to Darwinism on the merits of the theory itself (and who may offer alternative theories equally unpalatable from religious viewpoints) are actually quite rare.
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.
Scientists don't support Darwin; they support evolutionary theory. In fact, Darwin's idea that evolution is gradual has been largely replaced by punctuated equilibria based on evidence. Scientists don't simply look for things to reinforce existing theory, but instead they seek to expand and revise it constantly. This is the sort of thing creationists don't want; they start from a given premise and discard all evidence that doesn't agree with it. You basically took an argument against creationism, replaced the word "creationist" with "scientist", and expect people to lend credence to your nonsense because you admit to uncertainty.
English is easier said than done.
I know that humans were just the design we ended up with, not the goal,
but.. think in terms of the creation of a creature as much more "fit" [from evolutionary perspsective] as a human to an ape.
I think the real question is "more 'fit' for what?", and until we have some semblance of an answer to that I think your concerns are awfully speculative. We really have no idea of what pressures or constraints led to humans developing. In contrast your example of and F16 from a Sopwith Camel there are some very well defined implicit constraints and specifications as to purpose and what constitutes "fitness" in this case. What led to humans may have been some fairly loose and easily satsified constraints with some of the particulars that we take for "fitness" simply being aberrations where the process spun on in an unconstrained direction.
Could evolutionary algorithms solve the Sopwith Camel to F16 problem in the required time? Maybe not. Evolution/Life doesn't always manage to solve the problems with which it is presented, particularly when the constraints are excessive. History is littered with examples of evolution failing to develop a satisfactory solution in time: it's called extinction. So even if humans are a remarkable solution to an incredibly difficult problem it may well be that we are just one of those few cases where an answer did turn up in the requisite time out of millions more cases where it didn't.
Jedidiah.
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2. Normal Iraqi people are not members of Al Qaeda. But they are the people being detained.
3. The idea of a "war" against such an amorphous and vague group is ridiculous. They should be targets of law enforcement. War is about nation-states and armies fighting one another. "War on Terror" is a misnomer.
4. If we are at war with Al Qaeda, then why doesn't the US treat them by Geneva conventions, and other standards for treating POWs? But the administration has denied that they are prisoners of war - they are "enemy combatants" - therefore, there must be no war, if they are not POWs.
... and then they built the supercollider.