Oolon Colluphid

One for <a href="http://www.geocities.com/missus_gumby/tract.htm" target="_blank">Missus Gumby's label collection</a>, yeah?

Oolon

MOJO-JOJO

Check out this message by our friends at the Chuck Colson camp.

Charles Colson Commentary #020214 - 02/14/2002

Students and Intellectual Freedom: Challenges to Naturalistic Evolution

This year, the State Board of Education in Ohio is considering new science education standards. Recently, controversy erupted because the state board is listening to citizens who want students to be free to evaluate evolutionary theory critically -- and to consider alternatives to naturalism in science [what the hell, let's make up whatever we want].

I want to recommend two new books that should help Ohioans in this debate -- not to mention the rest of us. The first is DARWIN'S GOD by Cornelius Hunter. Hunter exposes one of the most interesting, but least understood aspects of the evolution debate: Beginning with Darwin himself, evolutionary biologists have leaned heavily on theology in their thinking about the world.

Hunter shows how Darwin's major work, ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, is loaded from start to finish with "Why would God have done it that way?" questions -- what Hunter calls "negative theology." Darwin wondered why a wise designer would have used the same bone pattern in the forelimbs of mice and whales, or why people
sometimes choked on food [duhhhh]. In effect, Darwin asked whether these designs were the best that the Creator could do. And these sorts of questions live on today, whenever the subject of evolution is taught.

But students can't properly answer these questions without being given the freedom to challenge Darwin's theology -- that is, his view of God. As Hunter points out in DARWIN'S GOD, "negative theology was a consistent theme for Darwin, and it remains popular with today's evolutionists." If evolutionary biologists can say what God wouldn't have done, then why can't students challenge their conclusions by employing different theological assumptions? It's only fair. Darwin's view of the designer shouldn't be the only one available. If the ORIGIN OF SPECIES, the founding document of evolutionary biology, already presupposes theology, students shouldn't be prevented from joining the conversation -- which brings me to a second book.

In NO FREE LUNCH, William Dembski discusses the science of intelligent design. The firestorm in Ohio wouldn't have flared up so fiercely if citizens hadn't also asked for the freedom to introduce into the classroom ideas like intelligent design. Science, after all, moves on from discarded theories to better theories. If evolutionary theory can't explain the origin of biological complexity -- as many scientists now conclude -- then we should consider alternatives.
Intelligent design is, from my point of view, a very worthy alternative.

Drawing on discoveries in molecular biology and mathematics, Dembski shows how the complex design of organisms requires an intelligent cause. Attempts to get such design from blind natural causes only move the problem; they don't solve it. The most reasonable response to complex designs in nature is not to debate what God would or wouldn't have done, but to see design as evidence of the Intelligent Designer.

Should students in Ohio hear about these ideas? Of course [in Sunday School ONLY]. Our schools today are faced with a choice: Keep the <strong>antiquated system</strong> [yes, it may be true, but it's too antiquated] we have of science education bound in by naturalistic philosophy, or science education that pursues intellectual freedom and truth The decision ought to be simple. Let's hope there is the courage to make it.

.....unbelievable <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

phlebas

Ah, Chuck Colson. If you can't believe a Watergate crook, who can you believe? (That is the same guy, right?)

So instead of answering questions like "why do we choke on food," they are just gonna shake their heads and say "that's just negative theology."

They can call it what they want. Just answer the f@#$%ing question: is it REALLY smart to have the esophagus and the trachea accessed by the same orifice, especially when food blocking the trachea will send you to an early grave?

hezekiah jones

That's exactly why it isn't a very worthy alternative, numbskull.

MOJO-JOJO

Amen and pass the Primordial Soup...

DireStraits

I concede the point about geology.


This may sound stupid but what, aside from evolution, do creationists dispute about biology?

Well, isn't that rather like asking "What, aside from the atomic theory, do creationists dispute about chemistry?"?

Oolon Colluphid

Spot on, DS. Or, "what, apart from the constancy of the speed of light, do creationists dispute about physics?" (Ever heard of e=mc^2?)

The answer, tgamble, is either very little, or all of it. I take it you've seen the Dobzhansky quote that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution? I thought you'd know this

TTFN, Oolon

tgamble

heard of it yes, understand it no.

Sure, I've read the entire article. But the facts that don't make sense aren't disputed. ie, creationists don't deny that humans are made up of cells, how the reproductive, circulatory etc. systems work in various animals. They don't deny the struture of cells, they don't deny that animals breath oxygen and plants produce it through photosynthesis. etc.

Such facts are hard to explain without evolution, but creationists don't deny them. Just deny how they arrived (and how good of a design they are as well I suppose).

Geology on the other hand is a bit different. What about DO creationists accept?

rocks exist.

That's about it. I guess I see it as relative, creationists (especially YECs) seem to reject a lot more geology than biology.

Don't some of em even reject continental drift? Isn't the collideing of the plates what causes earthquakes? Not even cretinists can deny earthquakes happen so how do they explain that?

bluefugue

Without evolution, biology really amounts to little more than a list of organisms' features, behaviors, etc., and also taxonomic classification based on shared characteristics. I don't think creationists take issue with any of this (it's all proof of God's wonderful design ), although they seem to have an emotional objection to calling humans "apes." I don't see why it's any worse for us to be "apes" than for us to be "mammals" or "vertebrates" or "animals" or "eukaryotes," which I hope no creationist disputes that we are (as those categories, by their very definition, include us).

So yeah, creationists accept everything about biology except for the ultimate "why," the big unifying theory that ties it all together. That's a big exception, though! And without evolution, biology looks a lot less like a science and a lot more like a musty old attic full of specimens.

To carry the analogy to geology, it raises an interesting question. Do creationists dispute even the brute-fact assertions of geologists? For instance, if you classify an animal as "vertebrate," you are not necessarily implying anything about its origin. But if you classify a rock as "sedimentary" or "igneous," aren't you saying something not only about its characteristics, but also about the process whereby it was made? And that in turn might conflict with Biblical creationism. I guess to the Creationist, most rocks are "god-formed" as they were all made on whichever day God made them. But you would still have to acknowledge that there are different *types* of rocks, with different *types* of characteristics, and surely no creationist would dispute this...

[ February 15, 2002: Message edited by: IesusDomini ]</p>

hezekiah jones