Alternative Hypothesis: Evolution is a Dangerous Religious Belief
Looks like Vitter (R) of Louisiana has earmarked federal money for an intelligent design group.
The money is included in the labor, health and education financing bill for fiscal 2008 and specifies payment to the Louisiana Family Forum "to develop a plan to promote better science education."
But this takes the cake:
Among other things, a "Louisiana Family Forum Fact Sheet" at one point included "A Battle Plan -- Practical Steps to Combat Evolution" by Kent Hovind, a controversial evangelist who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for tax offenses and obstruction of justice.
Hovind's paper stated, "Evolution is not a harmless theory but a dangerous religious belief" that underpinned the atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
[...]
The group's "Evolution Addendum for Public Schools," also posted on the Web site, offers a flavor of its concerns. The document rejects the evolutionary connection between apes and humans, questions the standard explanation of fossil formation and seeks to undercut the prevailing scientific view that life emerged from a series of chemical reactions.
"Under ideal conditions, the odds of that many amino acids coming together in the right order are approximately the same as winning the Power Ball Lotto every week for the next 640 years," it states. "How could this have happened accidentally?"
Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Are you kidding me? And it is hilarious that apparently to these folks evolution is in fact "a dangerous religious belief." Oh, the irony... on so many levels.
And where do these folks get these crazy analogies with regard to odds. Considering trillions upon trillions upon trillions of these molecules in the primordial soup of the ancient oceans, I don't think it is unreasonable to suspect that it could happen -- especially over the time frame of billions of years.
There is research now where they are simulating protein creation in laboratory settings.
Nature, through the trial and error of evolution, has discovered a vast diversity of life from what can only presumed to have been a primordial pool of building blocks. Inspired by this success, a new Biodesign Institute research team, led by John Chaput, is now trying to mimic the process of Darwinian evolution in the laboratory by evolving new proteins from scratch. Using new tricks of molecular biology, Chaput and co-workers have evolved several new proteins in a fraction of the 3 billion years it took nature.
Science will continue to at least ask the questions and experiment for answers with regard to evolution. Intelligent design... well... at least you got $100,000 to "promote better science education" -- too bad it wasn't a NSF grant earmark to actually test ID theories in controlled conditions using the scientific method.
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Comments
I'm definitely with you on this, but I think trying to persuade these folks with logic is a waste of energy. I think some kind of instituional solution is necessry to rationalize the teaching of science and create standards that don't allow non-science to be taught as science in public schools.
John
"When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve!"
Haha, though to be fair if a scientist can develop proteins in a fraction of the time it takes naturally then those who believe a guided effort was involved in our development might have some ammunition for their timetable of a 6000 year old planet Earth.
It's Apocalypse time, I'm telling ya...
Only if he can explain all the other evidence, from light bulbs to stellar magnitudes to radioactive dating to Walther's law to heat flow to...
Something that folks often forget is that science isn't about any single subject. What you discover in one field interacts with many, many others and alternative hypotheses are only useful if they explain those other things as well.John
Even the pope was willing to classify evolution as an act of God...I'm fine with that.
Only 148 years after the publication of the Origin of Species. I guess that's progressive, by religious standards.
as long as we don't lump thinking believers in with those who blithely adhere to a poorly translated, 17th century English edition of the Scriptures.
We shouldn't lump thinking believers with anyone, just like I wouldn't lump tolerant fascists, spitting swallowers, or fat anorexics with anyone. And you're right, we shouldn't stop at the 17th Century translations; we should go all the way back to the First Council of Nicea when much of it was made up whole cloth. (Get it? Cloth? As in, "men of the cloth?" Nevermind.)
But, on topic, QFB is right. There is no limit to the amount of rationalization Creationists will use to maintain their apologetics. Every fact can be twisted to support their religiously inspired notions, no matter how many logical summersaults have to be performed to make them fit.
For your reference, Dan Brown isn't the recognized authority on what happened at the Council of Nicaea. One of the benefits of being the longest running institution in history is that you keep records of things from 1000+ years ago. We know what was discussed at Nicaea, we know who spoke, we can infer what Constantine's motivation was for calling it. From primary sources, no less.
You'll find that there is a defense for your allegation, but one would have to abandon the obvious contempt for my Church that you have displayed in order to have a discussion about it.
As to your "148 years" comment, you are right about it being progressive. It's also an indicator that science and religion are not mutually exclusive, but can coexist quite peacefully.
My point wasn't to start a believer-belittler spat. Just to say that there are people of faith who can accept evolution and other things that challenge a literal interpretation of the Scriptures without conceding the truth of their faith.
You are completely right Scio. There is nothing about evolution or modern cosmology that precludes the existence of a God in any way. There is no magical critical density of knowledge that will once and for all settle the dispute. I think that if you are made such that you believe, then more power to you.
I find the acceptance of evolution to be a modest step in the right direction for religion, bit it doesn't mean that the world is safe from religion either.There are those of us that think that you are either a rational thinker, and are therefor at best an agnostic, or you are not. IMHO, to subscribe to any particular sect that not only has the cajones to pretend to know the mind of this God, but to think that it is completely acceptable to try and control what others think and do based on this certain knowledge of the mind of God is beyond the pale in terms of rationality.
I can warm up to the approach that only brings God in to explain the things that science currently fails to.
I can accept this world view that so very few religious people ascribe to, such as the Dali Llama, who said that if science proves some supernatural belief of the Buddist to be untrue, then science trumps Buddism. He doesn't treat his religion as some futile bulwark against having to emotionally deal with the horrors of reality.
He accepts science as the only way of knowing the truth about nature, and uses his religion as a guide to how he personally should best go about existing in this harsh but beautiful universe.
I can accept this point of view as a starting point for a discussion about the "Big Questions".
It's not security blanket, it's a way to live a better life, pure and simple.
If this is your idea of religion, would you please go tell the rest of the believers? Because it's not my impression that any Christian in America could even begin to grasp that concept.
Are you a secular humanist or just pissy?
Actually, the latter. I apologize if I went overboard; I was in a foul mood. And while I am "secular," (by definition, not a member of the clergy), I am not a humanist. I wish I could say I am. I want to be. But to be a humanist you have to have faith in humanity, and I see too much of human folly on a daily basis to think our moments of excellence are anything but a fluke. They are the exception to the rule.
For your reference, Dan Brown isn't the recognized authority on what happened at the Council of Nicaea.
Or anything else for that matter, including stringing together a coherent plot, from what I understand. I've never read Dan Brown. While I wouldn't expect a Catholic to agree with me on the overall nature of the Council of Nicaea, there is little arguing over the fact that it was what it was - a government-sanctioned committee which decided by political quorum the nature of the early Church, which is enough by itself to give many people, myself included, the shivers.
As to your "148 years" comment, you are right about it being progressive.
Given the rate of technological change and the moral and ethical questions that the species will face in the next 20-30 years, I would hope that religion would learn to process the information a little faster than that. I would hope, but I don't. That would require a belief that humans are capable of that kind of paradigm change, on the whole, within a single generation. It's an idea for which I find no evidence.
why secular humanists and people of faith generally aren't friends.
Faith, or the adherence to beliefs in the absence of relevant evidence or presence of evidence to the contrary, makes it difficult for rational people to find common ground with people of belief, so yes you're right. A co-worker of mine is a good example. I believe in the scientific method, as it is the only truly self-correcting, long-term method of expanding human knowledge that we possess. She believes making a wish on a medallion will help her find her lost car keys and that her priest can literally make a cracker turn into human flesh when she eats it. We don't have much to talk about.
There is nothing about evolution or modern cosmology that precludes the existence of a God in any way.
They don't preclude the existence of invisible leprechauns living in my garage, either, but I'm going to operate on the assumption that there aren't. Although, frankly, that would be kind of cool.
You might ask just which institution preserved literacy, sanctioned scientific research and helped to lay the groundwork for the modern scientific method. It's never been that the Church is anti-intellectual, only that it prefers not to make sweeping pronouncements on matters of the faith or on matters of science until it has had several decades to work them out. This prevents "fad theology" of the type we see in New Age circles and some evangelical protestants. Take the concept of Limbo, for instance. It was only ever speculative theology, never defined authoritatively. And back in the 60s people really started to hate it. With the advent of the abortion crisis the Church really had to take a look at what happens to those babies who don't get baptized. Now the pope has fairly done away with Limbo in favor of a merciful understanding of God's grace.
Anyway, the point remains that you only really run into trouble reconciling science and faith when you take the Scriptures literally in all circumstances rather than taking the literal truths contained therein.
Your coworker sounds like a nice lady. St. Anthony has come through for me tons of times.
But I understand what you're saying. I would say that I believe that science and religion/belief are complementary and that both are necessary. It is a fallacy to ignore the human spirit and focus exclusively on human knowledge. What good is knowledge alone? What good is faith and belief if it is not refined by scientific understanding?
Pope John Paul II talked about it better than I could.
It was the "Holy Wars" that re-introduced Europeans to the classics and spurred the development of science.
John
What else should we give the church credit for? The Crusades, the Inquisitions (no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!), and the concept of Divine Right? It's been an amazing inspiration to artists and musicians throughout the centuries, but it's surpressed as many or more.
And don't think I'm particularly anti-Catholic. Protestant Christianity, Islam, and even Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucian philosophies all have their own particular historical and present-day horrors. Religion, as a mode of thinking that almost by definition precludes or at least supercedes rational thought, can't but help but to be a hinderance to a rational and humane society, no more than a fox can help itself from eating chickens.
And yet, we will continue to believe, because we seem to be hardwired to do so. And we will also continue to disagree on what we believe, and we will continue to kill each other over it. It's what religion does, but more importantly it's what we as a species do.
Tell that to Giordano Bruno and Origen. As for "pagan philosophers" - ever wondered why the Pope is called the Pontifex maximus? Or why they cense each other and the Scriptures during the service? Or why the doors to most basilica face east in Rome? Or why they have the niches for saints?
No - booze has been around a lot longer, but it was Jabir ibn Haiyan who first distilled the pure essence of booze into alcohol. The Caliphate was responsible for chemistry (aka alchemy) as well.
John
I actually put an article on my blog a while back that addressed the supposed anti-intellectualism of the Church. You can read it and respond, but it sums up my feelings on the bad rap the Church has gotten. Since you are good at looking for links, you might apply what the Church says in its defense to the formation of your thinking and to this conversation...I'd be interested to learn some things from that perspective.
Delayed defensive action in response to a request from the Byzantine Emperor for military aid against expansionist Muslims. Tours ring a bell? Charles Martel? North Africa? Crusades were a response to aggression and are defensible unless one is opposed to fighting Muslims.
Good for you to realize there was more than one. Why was that? Probably because they were operated in conjunction with State Authorities. It's not as cut and dried as perverted Churchmen torturing confessions out of buxom peasant s. Spain, for instance, had a real problem with covert Islamic holdovers who sought a return to Moorish nce of the Iberian peninsula. Made it difficult to try these people when nobody could read, so who do you turn to? Probably an institution which requires its members to know at least a little Latin.
I'd like to suppress a few myself, Paxton. Like the guy who sculpted Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin. Or the fella who painted the Virgin Mary in feces. Or Yoko Ono. Art has to lift up the human person and edify our minds and our souls at once, or it fails to be art. At least, that's how I feel.
It can most certainly complement it. It doesn't have to be all diametrical opposition. I thought rational people would get that.
Er, yes, it could - that was the point that Copernicus and Galileo made: based on some simple observations, statements that the Church had supported were incorrect. Neither the Moon nor the Sun were free of blemish (as they had to be under the standard cosmology of the time, which the Church supported as it supported their position of man's central importance), and the Earth was not the center of the solar system.
Galileo had trouble getting Church authorities to look through his telescope, and was dogged by something he had not anticipated: the rings of Saturn were not visible during the period of his greatest persecution, as Saturn had moved relative to the Earth in its orbit.That may be the understatement of the year. Putting the words of your most influential supporter in the mouth of a character named "Stupid" is just, well, stupid.
True - the popes have never claimed infallibility on this issue.
The problem with most artists is that they forget that not everyone speaks their language. (The greats never forget - that's part of why they are great.) The Virgin Mary painting, like the "Piss Christ" installation, was a reflection of how we treat religion and the sacred, not a comment on Mary herself. Yoko Ono, on the other hand, has no excuse...John
I'll look at your article after life settles down, if that's OK.
John
That's sort of defeatist! If being a rational society involves deciding that there's nothing we can do to combat things like religious conflict and the like then I'll stick to my slightly optimistic religiosity.
It is defeatist, and yet the fact that theists still defend things like the Crusades and the Inquisition don't give me much chance to hope. I can't have faith in humanity as long as the majority of it still believes in souls, angels, demons, holy war, and that an invisible, omnipotent being cares who you have sex with but doesn't care if you bomb a city. Until we are willing to put such beliefs on the shelf with Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy, where they belong, I don't think we'll be able to tackle the grown-up questions of how to manage a world with a growing population and finite resources.
I'm not sure how to respond to such a bleak worldview!