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J. B.

False Start? The Controversy Over Adam and Eve Heats Up - 0 views

www.albertmohler.com/...rsy-over-adam-and-eve-heats-up

Adam and Eve Genesis Christianity and Science Science and Theology Theistic Evolution

shared by J. B. on 22 Aug 11 - Cached
  • As Hagerty reported: “Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently, says it’s time to face facts: There was no Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.”
  • “Evolution makes it pretty clear that in nature, and in the moral experience of human beings, there never was any such paradise to be lost. So Christians, I think, have a challenge, have a job on their hands to reformulate some of their tradition about human beginnings”
  • They argue that science is unable to resolve the question of Adam and Eve as a whole, but they write: “All science can say is that there was never a time when only two people existed on the earth: it is silent on whether or not God began a special relationship with a historical couple at some point in the past.”
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  • Later, they argue that “the most [science] can say is that there were never just two individuals who were the sole genetic progenitors of the entire human race.” They also claim, again, that “genetics convincingly shows that there was never a time when there were just two persons.” Ever since the challenge of Darwin and evolutionary theory appeared, some Christians have tried to argue that the opening chapters of the Bible should not be taken “literally.”
J. B.

Taking Science on Faith - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...24davies.html

Science and Theology Science and Faith

shared by J. B. on 04 Dec 10 - Cached
  • The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system.
  • Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.
  • The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn’t so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.
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  • namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.
  • the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.
J. B.

Come and See | The BioLogos Forum - 0 views

biologos.org/come-and-see

Science and Theology Theistic Evolution

shared by J. B. on 01 Dec 10 - Cached
  • Evidence of the Spirit at work is the only true measure we have of our theology; all other measures, including whether it fits our carefully-reasoned arguments of who is in and who is out, are vanity.
  • J. B. on 01 Dec 10
     
    Mark Sprinkle writes that "Evidence of the SPirit at work is the only true measure we have of our theology..." So much for Sola Scriptura...
J. B.

Antony Flew on Darwinism and Theology - 0 views

www.philosophynow.org/...47flew.htm

Darwinism Science and Theology Evolution

shared by J. B. on 24 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • J. B. on 24 Nov 10
     
    The late and former atheist Antony Flew writes a brief letter to Philosophy Now magazine, cautioning against drawing hasty theological conclusions from Darwinism
J. B.

The Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide to Reality « On the Human - 0 views

onthehuman.org/...d-naturalists-guide-to-reality

Science and Theology Darwinism Naturalism Atheism Scientism Scientistic

shared by J. B. on 01 Dec 10 - Cached
  • It is one that most naturalists have sought to avoid, or at least qualify, reinterpret, or recast to avoid its harshest conclusions about the meaning of life, the nature of morality, the significance of our consciousness self-awareness, and the limits of human self-understanding.
  • Scientism is my label for what any one who takes science seriously should believe, and scientistic is just an in-your face adjective for accepting science’s description of the nature of reality.
  • the answers to the persistent questions are not what people want to hear, and the bad news may lead them to kill the messenger—scientific research
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  • So, scientists have an incentive to cover up
  • the mechanism Darwin discovered for building adaptations is the only game in town. Any explanation of the very existence of even the slightest adaptation must be Darwinian. 
  • Ever since Newton physics has ruled out purposes in the physical realm. If the physical facts fix all the facts, however, then in doing so, it rules out purposes altogether, in biology, in human affairs, and in human thought-processes.
  • The fundamental laws of nature are mostly timeless mathematical truths that work just as well backwards as forward, and in which purposes have no role.
  • the process that Darwin discovered–random, or rather blind variation, and natural selection, or rather passive environmental filtration–does all the work of explaining the means/ends economy of biological nature that shouts out ‘purpose’ or ‘design’ at us. What Darwin showed was that all of the beautiful suitability of living things to their environment, every case of fit between organism and niche, and all of the intricate meshing of parts into wholes, is just the result of blind causal processes. It’s all just the foresightless play of fermions and bosons producing, in us conspiracy-theorists, the illusion of purpose.
  • When it comes to life, natural selection, it turns out, is the only game in town.
  • One source of meaning on which many have relied is the intrinsic value, in particular the moral value, of human life. People have also sought moral rules, codes, principles which are supposed to distinguish us from merely biological critters whose lives lack (as much) meaning or value (as ours). Besides morality as a source of meaning, value, or purpose, people have looked to consciousness, introspection, self-knowledge as a source of insight into what makes us more than the merely physical facts about us. Scientism must reject all of these straws that people have grasped, and it’s not hard to show why. Science has to be nihilistic about ethics and morality.
  • Just because there is strong selection for a moral norm is no reason to think it right. Think of the adaptational benefits of racist, xenophobic or patriarchal norms. You can’t justify morality by showing its Darwinian pedigree.
  • The process of natural selection is not in general good at filtering for true beliefs, only for ones hitherto convenient for our lines of descent.
  • we can’t invest our moral core with more meaning than this: it was a convenience, not for us as individuals, but for our genes. There is no meaning to be found in that conclusion.
  • J. B. on 01 Dec 10
     
    Alex Rosenberg pops the Naturalist's bubble.
J. B.

Do our genes reveal the hand of God? - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...es-reveal-the-hand-of-God.html

Science and Theology Darwinism Scientism

shared by J. B. on 26 Feb 11 - Cached
  • I went into science because of these religious reasons, there's no doubt about that. I asked myself what were the two things that appear inexplicable and are used to support religious beliefs: the difference between living and nonliving things, and the phenomenon of consciousness.
J. B.

Evolutionary Science Reveals God's Character - Kathryn Applegate - 0 views

biologos.org/...science-reveals-gods-character

Science and Theology

shared by J. B. on 24 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • J. B. on 24 Nov 10
     
    Kathryn Applegate claims that evolution reveals the character of God, but fails to mention any unique contribution evolution might make to our insight into God's character.
J. B.

Confrontation all the way : Pharyngula - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...post_6.php

Science and Theology Darwinism Atheism New Atheism Evolution

shared by J. B. on 25 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • the great unifying principle of my discipline
  • wallowing in self-inflicted ignorance
  • weird fantasies
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  • religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the young
  • Gnu Atheists are so dang angry. Damned right we are. The real question is why everyone else isn't.
  • Idiot America
  • The sea our country is drowning in is a raging religiosity, wave after wave of ignorant arguments and ideological absurdities pushed by tired dogma and fervent and frustrated fanatics.
  • The solution, the only longterm solution, is the sanity of secularism.
  • pseudoscientific BS like intelligent design
  • disease
  • if you're one of those people trying to defend superstition and quivering in fear at the idea of taking on a majority that believes in foolishness, urging us to continue slapping bandages on the blight of faith, well then, you're part of the problem and we'll probably do something utterly dreadful, like be rude to you or write some cutting sarcastic essay to mock your position. That is our métier, after all.
  • the Gnu Atheists have values, too, and premiere among them is truth. And that makes us uncivil and rude, because we challenge the truth of religion.
  • Evolution is a real, and it is a process built on raw chance driven by the brutal engines of selection, and there is no sign of a loving, personal god, but only billions of years of pitiless winnowing without any direction other than short-term survival and reproduction. It's not pretty, it's not consoling, it doesn't sanctify virginity, or tell you that god really loves your foreskin, but it's got one soaring virtue that trumps all the others: it's true.
  • J. B. on 25 Nov 10
     
    Atheist PZ Myers defends his anger toward religious people and has an interesting statement on what he believes the implications of Darwinism are (for those who consider themselves "Theistic Evolutionists").
J. B.

AlbertMohler.com - The Predicament - Francis Collins, Human Embryos, Evolution, and the... - 0 views

www.albertmohler.com/...and-the-sanctity-of-human-life

Science and Theology Theistic Evolution

shared by J. B. on 01 Dec 10 - Cached
  • Harvard’s Steven Pinker declared that Collins is “an advocate of profoundly anti-scientific beliefs.” Other leading scientists said far worse. Why? As The New Yorker reports this week, Dr. Collins is “a believing Christian.” As writer Peter J. Boyer explains, “The objection to Collins was his faith—or, at least, the ardency of it.
  • Even with all of Francis Collins’ achievements, qualifications, and experience, the bare fact that he is a “believing Christian” is enough to draw the active opposition of many in the scientific establishment. Just being a “believing Christian” is reason enough for suspicion, condescension, and opposition from many. Even when Francis Collins presses his case for evolution, he is dismissed by many scientists simply because he believes in God. In other words, when we are told that we have to accept and embrace the theory of evolution in order to escape being considered intellectually backward, remember the opposition to Francis Collins. It just doesn’t work. When Collins’ elevation to the NIH post was announced, evolutionary scientist P. Z. Myers lamented, “I don’t want American science to be represented by a clown.” This is the predicament of those who argue that evangelicals must accept some form of theistic evolution — the guardians of evolution still consider them clowns.
  • J. B. on 01 Dec 10
     
    Some evidence that Theistic Evolutionists won't gain much respect with their attempt at a mediating position in the scientific community. (Or at least they'll have to be willing to capitulate some more of their religious metaphysic first.)
J. B.

Education Week: Efforts to Improve Evolution Teaching Bearing Fruit - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...12evolution_ep.h30.html

Darwinism Science and Theology Evolution

shared by J. B. on 25 Nov 10 - Cached
  • I wanted them to understand it as an explanation for the natural world
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