One reaction on the part of believers in the 19th century debate between science and religion was to identify things that weren’t susceptible to scientific explanation given the then state of knowledge and postulate such phenomena as evidence for the divine. This strategy, of course, is a losing one, as the gaps into which one wants to posit God as cause get filled in. Anyone familiar with the philosophy of religion and the debate over miracles would be well aware that this is a losing strategy in another way - what it risks doing is picturing God - not as a divine creator - but as a sort of lowest common demoninator causal agent. The irony of course is that the sort of God that would set in process “intelligent design” is much more akin to the deus absconditus of the Enlightenment Deists - a God who kicks off the process of creation then disappears into the ether. A very different God from the God of Christian faith - as Pascal perceived when he contrasted “the God of Abraham” with “the God of the philosophers”. A curiosity of the twenty-first century is the way this ultimately religiously uninspiring God has returned with a vengeance - as turf wars long thought decided have been revived by American Protestants. There are in fact much more interesting perspectives on science and religion - from theologians and philosophers and scientists - which do not seek to “reconcile” science and faith as if they were two bodies of competing explanatory knowledge. Rather, the position of the Catholic Church has always been that faith and reason are complementary. Not incompatible, but not the same either. There’s quite an interesting op/ed by Paul Gray in The Australian today on these matters, which points to the recent article in The Tablet by Vatican Astronomer George Coyne SJ, which is well worth a read.
This stress on our scientific knowledge is not to place a limitation upon God. Far from it. It reveals a God who made a universe that has within it a certain dynamism and thus participates in the very creativity of God. Such a view of creation can be found in early Christian writings, especially in those of St Augustine in his comments on Genesis. If they respect the results of modern science and, indeed, the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly. Perhaps God should be seen more as a parent or as one who speaks encouraging and sustaining words. Scripture is very rich in these thoughts. It presents, indeed anthropomorphically, a God who gets angry, who disciplines, a God who nurtures the universe, who empties himself in Christ the incarnate Word. Thus God’s revelation of himself in the Book of Scripture would be reflected in our knowledge of the universe, so that, as Galileo was fond of stating, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature speak of the same God.
The ironic thing is that scientific proof of intelligent design is not going to prove anything for Christians. It is perhaps possible to scientifically prove that life was designed, or at least too complex to be explained by the theory of evolution, but do Christians think this will afford them a stronger foundation for their faith? The designer could have been anything… any god whatsoever. We are still no closer to any verifiable knowledge of the nature of the creator. ID theorists shouldn’t think that they are any closer to the answer, nor should ID theory be an excuse for Christians to say “I told you so!”.
Can someone please explain how you can believe in evolutionary theory and then with a straight face state empathetically that:
1 there are no dfferences between races
2 there are no differences in IQ based on race.
3 there is no pre-disposition towards specialization between the sexes.
If you believe in evolutionary theory you can’t leave these issues out.
Also please tell us how many of you then wrote to Harvard protesting the rough treatment of Larry Summners.
Please……? Anyone….???
Lets face it guys
The racial, IQ, sex differnces thingi is based on far more solid evidence then a couple of horses in North America a few thousand years ago.
And Yes I did protest in fact.
I wrote to the woman (MIT prof) who was reported to have almost “fainted” at Summers speech and if you want to see her corespondence I am quite happy to post it. She denied the fainting, crying spell. Nice old gal though despite what she helped cause.
This denial in my eyes is no different than the ID crowd putting of all you IDers and the rest in the sme bucket of muck.
Joe Cambria:
There are no differnces between races in intelligence. Fact: there are no races in the human species, race is a social construct.
The rest of your stupidity doesn’t deserve a response.
Thanks Zarquon
You just proved my point
JC, how on earth does evolution point towards a link between IQ and race? That there are non-physical differences between races? Or… any of the other things you mentioned in your comment trilogy? Why do you believe evolution necessitates these things?
Personally, I’m predicting a laughable answer, so humor me.
Summer was an idiot minimising the effects of gender discrimination. Like Le Driver I await your account of how evolutionary theory supports your points JC.
Educate us!
Driver
What is left out of Darwinism by some is one of its central tenets found right in the title of the work:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (usually abbreviated to The Origin of Species
Evolution isn’t just about the survival of the fittest it is also about intra-species specialization. In other words why certain racial traits pre-dispose one group to be better at something than another group- such as surviving on the cold steppes of Asia vs surviving on the hot plains of Africa where food is plentiful.
Species specialization also means women are on the whole much better then men at doing things and visa versa. Hunting comes to mind.
Hey, but if you want to laugh go take a look at the comment above about social constructs. That’s a howler.
Then ask Zarquon to explain why Kenyians usually win marathons and African Americans almost always win the sprint. Guess that’s a social construct too.
Driver
Please focus on the part of Darwin’s title a little. Read it again ……
Notice the part which it says, “…..The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”.
Are you laughing because I can’t stop… And, and guess what? The book is mostly just about that in the second part.
Lets face it. The best gap God made was between a womans legs.
Halle-fucking-lewya!
You’re not starting well JC. The term ‘races’ as used by Darwin referred to populations and was not used as you are using it in this thread. You are impuning something that Darwin did not say. In fact the Origin of Species hardly discusses homo sapiens at all.
Also there has been considerable advances in regards to evolutionary theory since 1859. Best keep up with the times.
Shaun:
Summers was not minimizing gender discrimination at all. He was bringing forth the proposition that is absurd to claim men and women are the same. For that he almost lost his job and had to fork up $50 big ones on the alter of lies.
Evolutionary thery doesn’t support any of my points. It supports its own points because if one believes in evolution ( notice I haven’t sided with any belief) it follows that you can’t simply leave the rest out. It’s the same as needing oxygen to survive.
If you want an understanding of the theory I would suggest you go straight to Darwin for an explanation.
Frank
You’re Darwin in reverse, it seems.
I’ve amended above to say ‘In fact the Origin of Species hardly discusses homo sapiens at all.’
JC;
Charles Darwin never knew what a gene was, or a chromosome, or dna.
If you want confirmation that there are genes out there which code for dark skin, or fair hair, or short bodies, then yes certains genes do these things. If you think this makes one particular race stronger than another, then yes certain physical attributes can provide a focus for selection. However none of this matters now, in our modern age of sunscreen and aeroplanes, except to bigots like yourself who feel the need to judge others based on ‘race’.
“Species specialization also means women are on the whole much better then men at doing things and visa versa. Hunting comes to mind.”
Now let’s get this straight JC, women are a different species?
(Drags up a chair, puts a few more tinnies in the bar fridge, pulls out the Dick Smith memory stick for posterity—this’s gonna be fun)
Quite right Shaun it doesn’t mention man for reasons to do with the time. He would have been thrown out of the country if he had done so. So he alluded to it by talking about other species knowing that the inference would be obvious. Hence why there was open rebllion when the book came out.
So, Shaun, you are a creationist then?
JC,
I believe that men and women are different. What I have trouble is when this is implied to mean that one gender is inherently better than the other. There is more than one way to skin a cat so to speak. In fact one of my earliest LP pieces is on gender and science and I touch in the gender inequality as still being a factor.
Summers did minimize gender inequality by overstating alleged differences between the abilities of the gender.
Your disengenious dodge is obvious JC. Instead of being so 1859 are you actually prepared to mount a coherent defence of your ideas or is bland assertion the way to go these days?
Matt
“in our modern age of sunscreen and aeroplanes, except to bigots like yourself who feel the need to judge others based on ‘race’”.
It offensive to suggest I believe in a superior race of people. I don’t and never will and woul;d never judge others like that.
I also believe it is spurious in the extreme to think that races don’t exist. In fact it is damaging in lots of ways.
Any of you read the recent study on why European Jews excel at intelligence tests further supported by the number of Jewish Nobel prize winners. It said it took 35 generations to create superior IQ. Evolution again, I guess.
Peter:
I guess you are simply being difficult. Specialization does not infer anything of the sort.
Try touring through the my author archives JC. That will tell you my views on evolutionary theory.
Darwin did write a book called ‘The Descent of Man’ as well which is probably what you are looking for. So he wasn’t exactly hiding his cards.
“What I have trouble is when this is implied to mean that one gender is inherently better than the other”.
Did I say anything like that, Shaun. None of my comments weren’t even remotely suggestive of your sad assertion.
Please, be accurate.
These emotional assertions I read are just that or simply dishonest attempts to steer the discussion away from the obvious gap. IQ is not the determinant of the worth of a human being as some of you are suggesting by default.
Einstein would have made a terrible tradesman, technician or lawyer by the sounds of things. Specialization doesn’t claim superiority of a race. It simply means some are better certain things than other groups of people.
My point remains the same. IDers at least disbelieve evol theory in whole. Most of their opponents believe in the firt half of evolution for convenience sake.
My point is that both seem to be creationists with one group being honest about admitting it while the other is confused.
JC
” Specialization does not infer anything of the sort.”
But by your criterion, such ‘’specialisation” differences can only be explained by differences between ”races”.
So if not a species, women must be in a ”race” of their own?
(Boy this is getting interesting, race gender= much speciousness differentiated by ‘’specialisation”.)
The trouble is JC that people do consider alleged gender or racial differences to indicate that a gender or so called race is better. It may be emotional but it is true.
As of yet you have supplied no evidence regarding to how evolutionary theory supports your views. Keep dodging boyo. You’re the one making all the assertions at the moment.
When are you going explain how evolutionary theory supports your assertions?
Peter
A race by definition needs to have women as the 50% subset otherwise their wouldn’t be a frigging race, you dill.
Didn’t your parents (a male and female) ever tell you about the birds and the “fleas”. Ask them!
I am of the “other” gender and clearly the ability to interpret jc is not on the list of things I’ve evolved to be good at.
Can you explain what your comments have to do with Mark’s post? Here I was thinking that this was your chance to talk about God, rather than wasting your time on those evil evolutionists…
In Darwin’s day “race” also meant subspecies, an identifiable population with a degree of reproductive isolation. There are no such subspecies in the human poulation, there’s always been gene flow between human populations.
As for Kenyans,
1. They’re not a race
2. They’re mostly middle-distance runners, not marathon runners.
3. From [link] Typical kenyan training involves a steady early morning run, followed by hard intervals or hills mid-morning. A third session is often completed in the afternoon. Training in Kenya is characterised by extremely intense training at high intensities (the most potent producer of aerobic development), made only more intense by the affects of the altitude. Hill training is also a characteristic of training in Kenya. Large training camps, whether they be military or school based, provide stiff competition in training. Kenyans name this group ethos “harumbee.” ie, the success of Kenyan runners depends on training, which is culture.
If you want to argue biology and evolution you have to provide all the data, not just selected anecdotes as you have done and Summers did.
Scrolls back to the beginning…sees that Mark was talking about something entirely different..
Re the actual OP, I agree with Gray. Science is not about proving or disproving God. The biggest mistake the ID movment makes is that is about athiests/science v theists/religion which it is not (considering that many a scientist has religious views).
The idea of theistic evolution I think is the more common view and in line with Catholic thought. It is considered threatening by both creationists and IDists.
“A race by definition needs to have women as the 50% subset”
Really?
( trying to trace the boundaries of your abysmal knowledge of evolution and terminology JC. )
So explain asexual reproduction in the animal world?
Indeed, Shaun, my point was twofold - that there’s an irony in ID because it lacks any particularly deep religiosity, and that faith and reason need not be at odds.
People can go off on tangents if they like, but I’d appreciate an end to name calling such as “you dill”. Thanks.
Indeed Shaun, for the life of me, I cannot begin to understand the theist/religious point that dismisses out of hand the last of these premises:
(1)Assuming a supreme being created us, then any mechanism used in so doing was possible.
(2) One mechanism that fits the scientifically known facts of human evolution is evolutionary change.
(3) The supreme being could have engaged a process of evolutionary change to create human life.
It follows therefore, for the ”evolution is evil” IDers or creationist brigade, to totally deny premise (3) is to also deny a supreme being.
Yeah, really JC. Your legendary anti-scientific obscurantism needn’t have a home here.
Well ID is part of the Culture Wars in the US which, while waged under a guise of religiosity, is purely a matter of politics. The whole nature of the ID movement uses political tactics and religion is the cloak it uses to gain adherents yet denies when it gets down to the crunch.
Mark
Peter knows by now that I wasn’t angrily insulting him by calling him a dill. At least I hope so and if he isn’t … well sorry Peter. But he has called me worst things.
There are a couple of points I was trying to make that got holed up with emotionalism.
I don’t think RC is tied up completly with evolution because evolution is by nature a belief in materialism. In other words its belief is opposite in most ways to the belief in God.
Recent discussions from higher ups in the Vatican has (I believe) put a cabosh to this idea anyway.
Joe - there’s quite a good article on Pope Benedict’s rather difficult to interpret views here.
JP2 was very clear on it - see this address:
JP2 rejected materialism as an ideology, and interpreted evolution through the philosophical lens of an ontological difference between humans and the rest of creation, which as a philosophical theme, goes back to Plato really.
Science is about finding answers in the physical world - it doesn’t say anything either way about God.
Mark’s point is that by clinging to the things that science can’t/hasn’t proved yet, and saying “God did it”, it seems to cheapen religion, and sets you up for a fall when science does eventually prove it.
Why don’t you try discussing that rather then going over the same old evolution stuff. Because I’d actually be interested in hearing your ideas on that.
Where’s Facelift and Homer when we need them, Anna? Off having “conservative fun” I guess!
The concept of god/s has never contributed to any new or worthwhile knowledge, or at least any I can think of, if anything the contrary, which is not to reflect on the existence of god/s, but it does reflect on the nature of god/s and how that nature is understood by those who choose to believe that god/s exist.
Well Conservative Fun is the best kind, isn’t it?
How about moderate fun?
Anna
“Why don’t you try discussing that rather then going over the same old evolution stuff. Because I’d actually be interested in hearing your ideas on that”
Because I can’t. For several reasons.
I am not sure where, when, how God fits in to the whole mess of life on earth.
I look around and read arguments from religious people that ask me to have faith in an unknown, about something that I can’t see evidence of -leaves me in doubt.
I then look at evolution theory, which has everything down so pat (with most adherents leaving out the other pertinents bits)- leaves me also a little cold.
I then look around and see that the composite of life in the eyes of evolutionary theory can be easily explained simply because the raw materials are readily available. However it is done as though the infinite odds of these materials getting together to form higher life in no way get in the way of the story.
Mark said “JP2 rejected materialism as an ideology, and interpreted evolution through the philosophical lens of an ontological difference between humans and the rest of creation”.
This comment alone stares in face of evidence around us by avoiding the obvious: the existence higher forms of life on earth are really not that much different to humanity- creating further doubt. Or faith must come into it yet again.
I can’t blindly accept we are that much different from other animals. We have learnt to use our brains rather than our nose at sniffing around for food.
In other words you can die of old age trying to find answers without getting close.
Lets see who destroys the world first; then I guess we’ll have our winner. My money’s on European civilisation.
Anyway, according to Jared Diamond (Telly, 2006) its all a big geographical fluke based on who had access to the most productive crops. Taro and Bananas dont let you build an empire, it seems….
LE, you might find this interesting if you’re tempted to watch the rest of this affront to Weber!
Mark, good post! (I almost forgot!)
Thanks, dk.au, I’m not too familiar with Diamond’s work (I switched over to sbs tonight to watch Saffran and Father Bob!) - be interesting to hear what you have to say about him if you’ve been following it.
Joe - I think that the mindset whereby people look to “science” for “meaning” is also a remainder of 19th century debates. There’s really a confusion of roles when people expect a description of what is to answer the question “why?”. Of course, scientific popularisers fill this demand to their own and their publishers’ profit.
Mark, I was wishing I’d done the same to be honest. I haven’t read Guns Germs and Steel, but the sort of reasoning and imagery of tonight’s show could have benefited from a big dose of The Protestant Work Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism. Reducing US wealth and hegemony (as if those markers are discovered in nature) to it’s farming practices (a crucial factor to be sure) is pretty naive. Hopefully it’s less so next week, otherwise it’s Safran and Bob for this Weberian…
Are you entering the realm of metaphysics here Mark? I’m still looking at the way things work out here, and wary off entering a potential fray in a potentially hostile environment, but I think you’re right to say that the Creator isn’t fixing gaps as He goes along, whihc would demonstrate fallibility of design.
Rather He set the patterns and kinds and they follow dynamic laws. If all things came from God, as the Creator He must have been the Reasoner, the Author, and the Instigator. Then it would follow that natural things should demonstrate order of some kind. There should be a basic pattern for all kinds, but there can be adaptations within a species, which develop differences over time, but do not form other species.
To understand the idea of creation, you must grasp the concept of the Word (Logos) being able to construct matter out of nothing, which is where things logically begin. The ‘big bang’ theory starts with ’something’, but where did that ’something’ come from, and how did it evolve, if it evolved, from nothing?
Creationists believe that all things had their beginning in the Word, who is also defined as the Seed. This concept was also popular amongst Greek philosophers [link], where the Seed, or Word is called the Logos. Philo developed this concept. John deified the idea.
Most things organic still begin with a seed of some kind. Seed is an essential in generation. Seed is always small and loaded with potential, carrying all the prerequisites of it’s kind.
The Word, or Logos, is Seed in spiritual form, and, by definition, spoken. So God speaks things into being. Once spoken, the creation unfolds according to it’s pattern, but is governed by pre-established laws, but allowed a certain randomness. It’s rather like setting things in motion and watching unique development. Nature has a multidirectional ‘domino’ effect, preplanned, but with infinite permutations.
I’m just posting the link to Coyne for its intrinsic worth, FaceLift, but I like his approach. Personally, I’d prefer to think of the interface of Creator and creation as something of a mystery which we can only understand by analogy. I don’t know that the marriage of Greek philosophy to Christianity is all that helpful in this regard - it’s behind the rather rationalistic approach to these questions, I suspect, in the final analysis. I’d prefer to keep my religion religious rather than rationalistic, personally.
Personally, I’ve always considered God’s direction to the first woman and man to
…an explicit direction towards mathematics and the science of numbers. That the people who happened to come up with figures and numerals, with which to multiply real and abstract numbers, came after the time of the Old Testament and well into the AD era is neither here nor there. Clearly Genesis directs humans toward science.
Bam. Crash. Minds everywhere fall silent at the cut price biblical scholarship.
Oh, and as for this idea of a half-back deity who drop-kicks the universe into being and then fades into the obscurity of the scrum, what a load of nonsense. Genesis obviously provides an answer—God did find fault with Creation, flooded it, killed everything except for Noah and his bizarrely monogamous menagerie, and started again. C’mon people.
Aw! You’re just upset that God wouldn’t let gay couples unto the Ark, liam. The answer is quite clear though. They were all breeding stock!
Facelift
It pains me to say it, but he mustn’t give much of a crock about us though. He let’s kids get murdered and treated terribly. He allows 300,000 innocents to get blasted by a wave a day after his Son’s birthday last year.
When I get to the pearly gates and sneak in behind Homer he’ll need to answer a few questions I got prepared for him and saying he just leaves things alone won’t cut it. He had a choice in making all this- murdered young kids and all. We didn’t!
What Joe wants is for merely to be puppets. Lord Paddy of Balmain made such a statement once and then went ballistic when it was pointed out.
You have to make allowance for Sin Joe. It was GK Chesterton , I think, that said the history of man was the best evidence of original sin.
Facelift ,
did you see the article in Christianity Today concerning the evidence in the ‘ID trial’ and how the Judge stated some of the board members lied under oath.
not a good look
Homer
At the risk of offending everybody here, which is not my intention…..
Pick up a paper every other day and you read about an innocent kid dying a horrible death. What has sin got to do with a kid at the age of two?
300,000 people got wiped out last year. What on earth has sin got to do with it? We were canstantly fed the stuff we were made in the perfect image image of God. Well I got to tell you I don’t see that as a perfect image. But if it is a perfect image, then not even God is perfect if he allows things like that happening.
Doesn’t his non-action resemble a parent letting his kid get runover despite being able to avoid it.
There may well be a God, but I tell you he doesn’t give that much of a shit about us. The sin stuff doesn’t cut it. And neither does the puppet example.
What’s wrong then in saying if I ever meet him I have a few bones to pick over? Shouldn’t we be allowed to question his actions?
And despite all I have said, the evolution stuff simply doesn’t cut it. That’s because randomness isn’t the order or laws we see around us.
So, Homer, what’s wrong with being pissed with God?
Homer, I didn’t see that article. If they lied on oath they got what they asked for, which was removal from the Board and a verbal clip around the ear from the Judge. I don’t know a heap about the findings. The whole thing seems a sorry mess, and demonstrates the divide between what is percieved as science and religion. Neither side really comes out with glowing colours in the Dover case.
JC,
God says, “Come and reason with me!” so if you’ve got something to say, say it! Why wait. Settle it now!
You know as well as anyone that there is good and bad in the world, right and wrong, good and evil. I think that’s what Homer is talking about. When sin entered the world, it all went wrong. Everything that happens, good or bad, happens to everyone. No one is exempt. ‘It rains on the just and the unjust’.
There’s no guarantee of total safety, or protection from everything or anything. One day we’re all gonna die, hopefully of natural causes at a ripe old age, but there are those who go ‘before their time’. Did God promise us anything to suggest that our time on this planet would be comfortable and pain free during this age? Nope!
The world is subject to immense natural forces. If you live in California, sooner or later there’s going to be an earthquake. If you live in Darwin there are cyclones, crocs, and deadly box jellyfish. In Brisbane huge hailstones drop out of the sky. If you live in other places there are volcanoes, tornadoes, floods, sub-zero temperatures, dessert, raging oceans, landslides, avalanches, lightning strikes, etc.. This planet is hurtling through the galaxy while orbiting the sun and spinning like a top at incredible speeds. Somethings gotta give. It’s a wonder we’re here at all! Then there are non-natural disasters like train smashes, plane crashes, car pile-ups, murders, accidents, etc.. And, of course war, which is generally man-made.
Are you saying there’s a God up there orchestrating these things, pulling the strings, or is it just a confirmation of His warning that ‘in this world you’ll have troubles’? Somehow in all of this billions of us seem to survive, and many reach the dizzy age heights of sixty, seventy, eighty or even ninety. Maybe God does more to stop stuff than we know, because, frankly, how would we know?
Facelift got in before me.
The only virtue that has come from original sin is a wearing cricket wicket!
DK said
As a bit of a fan of Gun Germs and Steel the book, I must say that I although I started I couldn’t actually finish watching the GGS doco last night because I thought it was really poorly presented. The book makes no real claims about stuff like US hedgemony which the doco seemed to allude to.
The GGS thesis is primarily about why Eurasia had such a big lead on the the rest of the world by 15th Century. Essentially he says this was fairly inevitable due to availibility of high quality plant and animal resources, and the fact that these could be shared much more easily on a laterally arranged continent because of similar climates. These limiting factors slowed or halted the technological progress of societies in Australia and the Americas. Its essentially very much la longue durée explanation.
There is a small section on why Europe was dominant versus China, but this part is not really anything original.
When you’re dead you’ll be perfect.
Whether or not Diamond’s theories are too deterministic, I believe it is still useful. Of course, human civilization depends, in the first instance, upon our capacity to adapt, innovate and utilize resources in such a way that can only barely be mimicked in some of the animal kingdom, and in most, not at all. These qualities include our cultures, and the way they direct our minds and bodies in particular ways towards the development and use of the world around us. However, an analysis cannot merely include cultural factors (Weber himself warned that the Protestant Ethic is by no means a complete explanation of the rise of modern capitalism), because our possibilities and potentialities are also pre-determined to an extent by the material conditions in which we find ourselves. It is this fact that makes Diamond’s materialism useful as a tool for historical analysis. I find Diamond’s work to be quite interesting (check out his essay on Japan - not in the book, but on the net somewhere. Quite interesting… and bound to antagonize conservative Japanese historians).
With regard to God and science… I am certainly more symphathetic to Mark’s Catholic idea that faith and reason are complementary. I am curious, however, to hear why Catholic’s have always held this to be true… why then was Galileo’s theories the subject of such contraversy? Certainly, heliocentrism is not a central tenet of Christian faith (it seems to me that Christianity doesn’t have its own cosmology… iiuc the medieval cosmology derives from Aristotle)… but then why was a challenge to it contraversial? Why did it take until JPII to pardon Galileo? Is it simply because in his dialogue the proponent of the old cosmology was clearly written to be viewed with ridicule? But then why did the Church require Galileo to present both theories equally? Seems to me similar to the views of conservative politicians re: ID (namely that it should be given equal weight to evolution in bio class). Furthermore, if faith and reason are compatible, if the progress of science is the progressive discovery of God’s creation… then what happens to religion’s critical distance from the more contraversial and ethically problematic frontiers of science? Surely religion should seek to elevate itself above science as an ethical arbiter.
Mind you, I find it interesting that many of the views here are informed by a prior assumed, positive concept of the nature (and existence) of God. Beware that your difference of arguments does not simply stem from the difference between your starting points. Refer to my initial post that evidence of design does not license us to infer much at all regarding the nature of the designer. Nor should such conceptions of God be placed too close in mind to science. Science and religion are two very different things… some here seem to think that religion can explain science… I would suggest that its much more possible for science to explain religion. Whether the content of science and religion are both anthropomorphic is also possible… but I would argue that religion is more so, as it does seem to involve the “filling” of an unseen (and merely inferred) void… with a concept not observable in any species other than humanity. Is God the result of our own intelligent design? I wonder…
I do believe we can infer one thing about God, if we accept his existence, and his authorship of the world… and that is that he evidently intended for there to be suffering. It seems to me that this would be the natural intention of a God that (if one accepts the view of religion) requires our recognition… for what would the status of religion be (if it be at all), if there were no suffering? I recall a quote from Lennon (”God is a concept by which we measure our pain”).
forgive the errors of punctuation and spelling
Cliff - it’s a dogma, actually, and from Thomas Aquinas. I don’t pretend that the Catholic Church has always lived up to it.
Cliff,
Kirsten Birkett has written extensively on this subject.
The expurgated version is that Galileo was talking outside of his area of ‘expertise’!
A bit like Mark pontificating on Theology or Economics!!!
That is what it was like in those days.
Ha, Homer! I’ll dig out the link from Christianity Today I found recently which said the Reformation was over… but first I have to go to the Dentist - which is a good argument against intelligent design (why must we suffer pain to have clean teeth!!)…
I took out a bridging loan to pay for a crown!
“The expurgated version is that Galileo was talking outside of his area of ‘expertise’!”
What was his area of expertise then? I didn’t think that science was an area of expertise at that time anyway. The renaissance was an era in which men inquired into a number of areas that would only now be considered discrete areas of specialization.
“A bit like Mark pontificating on Theology or Economics!!!”
Having viewed Mark’s book cases… I would say he has sufficient resources at his disposal to speak with at least a little authority on such matters. Furthermore, I would say that economics is an area of concern within the fields of sociology and industrial relations. The difference being that economics is dealt with there within a broader context and with many more terms of reference than in the pure discipline of economics. At the very least, most people can observe the influence of economics within their own lives and communities. Commentary on the subject is not the exclusive domain of pointy-heads and technocrats. This is a democracy after all.
I haven’t looked at it for some time but trust me it was not within Galileo’s field of ‘expertise’ even though he knew more than anyone in that field.
Professional guild very strong then!
mmm.. I have a problem can you help? there are so many religions and Gods to choose from I just dont know which one is right for me. How do most people choose one religion from another. However I have noticed a strong trend geographicly, can someone explain this trend.. if i follow the trend geographicly I should be a christian, should i settle for this. Just not sure if I should study all the other religions… you know to be fare to the other religions.
How did you choose your religion, after all it worked for you.
Albert, don’t choose between them. Pantheism is the new black! Embrace them all and cherry pick the bits you like, and ignore the bits you don’t.
Evolution certainly does not imply that there are robust genetic differences in intelligence between races or sexes. I may return and expand on this later if I have time.
However on the original subject, I also find the idea of ID offensive.
A theory of ID looks like mechanistic evolution but with certain special signatures, that supposedly can’t be explained. Presumably these signatures are there to test our faith, so that we can reject blind mechanism for Da Word.
However to comprehend these signatures (like the motility of the flagellum) we have to have studied the world rationally, and come up with evolutionary theory. Irreducible complexity as a concept is epistemological posterior to reducible complexity.
So the God of ID has created a world that looks mechanistic and requires us to use rationality to study it, only to turn away from this rationalism.
In other words this God is deceiving us and asking us to reject the gifts we have been given.
Apart from the scientific nonsense it makes, I find that theologically appalling.
Benedict is trying to present creationism as scientific, when in fact it is pseudoscience.