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February 08, 2005
I Love a Good Firestorm
I post without comment.
I will, however, heartily concur with one part of Jonah's ID post:
"But regardless of the merits, I think the Christian Right (and some sympathetic neoconservatives) make a political mistake when they switch their agenda from concrete policies to the teachings of science, religion and metaphysics. Abortion is about deeds. It is an area where science is increasingly on the side of the pro-lifers. Gay marriage is about fundamental social arrangements. Trying to get rid of evolutionary theory in favor of intelligent design or creationism is an abstract battle which saps energy from more important issues and makes it easier to dismiss the Right on other fronts. An atheist or agnostic with an open mind can be affected by pro-life arguments. It's very difficult to imagine them being swayed by assertions the world was created in six days."
Posted by Matt at February 8, 2005 06:11 PM
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Jonah's comment is all well and good. However, truth is truth. Darwinism is just plain bad science. It would be foolish to refrain from pointing this out in the hopes of gaining some political advantage. And ID does not assert that the Earth was created in six days, so that is a red herring.
Posted by: Matteo at February 8, 2005 11:44 PM
I don't think it was a red herring. Jonah wasn't just talking ID. He's talking about the angry mob threatening to homeschool their kids if schools teach anything other than six day creationism. You don't have to wade far into the creationist/ID camp to find those folks.
Posted by: Matt at February 8, 2005 11:55 PM
There is indeed an important distinction between intelligent design and young-earth creationism. The latter requires a trickster God who creates the photons needed for astronomers to think they are seeing galaxies that are billions of years old. I have trouble with that idea.
By contrast, it's well-nigh impossible to believe in a purposeful God without believing in some form of intelligent design. Perhaps the design entirely predates the physical universe. Perhaps there is divine intervention from time to time. And one must consider the possibility that, to a God for whom all things are present, the two are not mutually exclusive.
What both ID and YEC have in common is that neither is a scientific theory. Neither can be tested by the usual scientific methods. We need to get past the rather materialistic notion that scientific=true. This is not to denigrate science, only to recognize that it has limits, like all human activities.
Posted by: Kent at February 9, 2005 12:58 PM
Perhaps someone here can explain why deeply religious Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Orthodox Jews have no problems with the theory of evolution, but certain fundamentalist Protestants find it inconsistent with a belief in G-d. I don't get it.
Posted by: DBL at February 9, 2005 02:21 PM
Kent,
I agree completely with you that ID is not science. Whether it is true or not is beside the point.
Science, on the other hand, is not interested in what's true in an absolute or metaphysical sense. It's an interative process for understanding the natural world by means of formulating hypothesis and then shooting holes in the them (testing them) until you can prove them false, which then leads to a further refinement in a new hypothesis.
If we could all agree to keep evolutionary theory in the science classroom and ID in the philosophy or comparative religion classroom we'd be better off.
Posted by: DBL at February 9, 2005 02:26 PM
DBL,
Exactly.
Posted by: Kent at February 9, 2005 04:56 PM