Former Monkey, and Proud of It
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
First off, I want to say how thrilled I am to welcome God to APW. His people were totally great to deal with, and I'm hoping we have Him back again soon.
Anyway, God got me to thinking about the whole Intelligent Design (ID) vs. Darwinism debate. And He made me realize, there is no such debate. Literalists aren't just opposed to evolution; they are opposed to anything that might suggest the world is older than 6,000 years old (like, say, carbon dating of dinosaur bones.) The Literalists want nothing less than to criminialize scientific speech that conflicts with the letter of the bible (and remember, when science is criminal, only criminals will have science.)
Remember that it is indisputed fact that the world is four and a half billion years old, and that men walked the earth 20,000 years ago. The Literalists find these ideas to be about as reprehensible as Darwin's theory of evolution. And by the way, the fact of evolution isn't actually in question either; merely the how of it. Hence Darwin's theory of evolution, as opposed to for example alernative theories of evolution.
I like the way Lawrence Krauss puts it. Especially this paragraph:
In fact, the "fairness" argument is itself disingenuous. Scientific ideas that have become sufficiently mainstream to be taught in high school have survived a gauntlet of stringent tests. The first takes place when proposals are published in peer-reviewed journals, often resulting in severe criticisms that must be addressed. After publication, the proposals must be compelling enough to prompt exploration by other researchers. If they survive perhaps 20 years of testing against evidence, they may make it into high-school texts. ID proponents wish to bypass these messy steps and go directly into classrooms. Key aspects of other theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics remain hotly debated in the literature, yet there is no call to 'teach the controversy'.
Read the whole essay here.
Labels: The politics
Posted by: --josh-- @ 10:45 AM
Interesting blog. I like your writing style. Just so happens I fall into the category of those people who believe in both Evolution and Creation. I think Evolution was God's Creation. Doesn't the original book of Genesis actually use a different word than 'day' (as in, God created the world in seven days)? I remember hearing someone say that the word 'day' actually translates as 'a period of time'. I could be wrong, but it would go a long way toward showing how God could take as much time as He wanted in creating/evolving the world as we know it.
Anyway, nice blog. I'll be stopping in from time-to-time.
Tom
My blog
See? Tom is a member of the silent minority. Good to have you on board, Tom!
There are a lot of examples of words in the English language bible that could have been translated in more than one way. Somewhere along the line we came to accept the translation as immutable, which is simply unwise.
My own personal construct of God is more like the Force in Star Wars than like an old man in the sky with a white beard who tosses lightning bolts when he's upset. (That isn't God; its Zeus.) My God is sort of the same concept as Mother Nature, as the Oneness of All Things. (A concept, by the way, that bridges the Big Bang of science with the spirituality of religion.) So of course, evolution is His (or Her) work; evolution is merely a term meaning, how nature unfolds over time. And Nature is the Big Kahuna.
I agree, interesting blog and your description of how you see God is absolutely spot on.
I too will be popping in now and then. Good luck and hope to see you at my blog every now and then.
Neat! I thank you, and God thanks you.
I feel silly having to enter a secret word to comment on my own blog, but here goes...
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