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Question for Barry: Why do people embrace Darwin today, when his cause is actually collapsing in science?

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O'Leary/Bencze

Who in their right mind would be a Darwinist in science today – if they had a free choice – in the face of lateral gene transfer and epigenetics?

In “First Things: From Part of the Solution to Part of the Problem,” Barry Arrington tells a familiar story: How media – First Things is his example – start out opposing destructive cultural trends, and end up capitulating to them. How else can one explain the suggestion that Darwinism is compatible with Christianity, fronted today in First Things?

Not only isn’t Darwinism compatible with traditional Christianity but no one who really understood it ever supposed that it was. As I have often pointed out here, the Catholic journalists of a century ago understood that implicitly.

Can an addled reverend be a Darwinist? Sure. Just as many such reverends busied themselves with Darwinist eugenics a century ago, their successors may busy themselves with Evolution Sunday today. Both cases are an accurate measure of the distance between their churches and sound Christian teaching. But freedom of religion is fundamental, so by all means let them worship as they please. (Here is a convenient guide to Darwin hagiography, for his faithful.

Why do people embrace Darwin today, when his cause is actually collapsing in science? Who in their right mind would be a Darwinist in science today – if they had a free choice – in the face of lateral gene transfer and epigenetics?

But when 80 percent of the intellectual world believes a lie – “man is just an accidental chimp” – the holdouts get lonely.

They start to accommodate. To agree. One must be nice to one’s oppressors. Mustn’t one? MUSTN’T one?

Wouldn’t all hell break loose if we started to shout what we really know?

And wouldn’t that be awful.

But awful … for whom?

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Comments
Joe, That is truly laughable. Instead of explaining how we get the information for a complex specified protein by blind processes, the person ended up teaching some basic chemistry with simple compounds. They just love to talk about simple chemistry and gloss over the transition to complexity. But they don't realize the critical difference here: simple compounds can be formed by themselves while DNA and complex proteins cannot, not without information at least.Shogun
March 11, 2012
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If you want to laugh, read this:
If you are going to say living organisms are different somehow, you are going to have to show where the laws of chemistry and physics stop operating in the chain of complexity.
LoL! They don't accept any responsibility for producing positive evidence for their bald assertions. They say it is up to us to prove a negative! IOW they really think that they have nothing to explain....Joe
March 11, 2012
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Joe:
“It only looks designed to you. It doesn’t look designed to me. Therefor I don’t have anything to explain.” Well, you still have to explain what we observe. “IDiot!”
Hahahaha, true. That reminds me of one Darwinist I debated before who claimed that complexity in living things is no problem for Darwinism because it is relative. So he is saying that complexity is relative to the observer! As if that's supposed to relieve him from any explanations. Even if we grant him this point, if it's actually complex and they can't explain it then Darwinism is inadequate. And if it's actually simple and they still can't explain it then that is even more embarrassing. Regardless of how they define complexity & design, there is still a biological structure that needs to be explained by Darwinian mechanisms.Shogun
March 10, 2012
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Ha...
...(1) Publication of the Origin was not a sudden (“revolutionary”) interruption of Victorian society’s confident belief in the traditional theological world-view. (2) The Origin did not “revolutionize” the biological sciences by removing the creationist premise or introducing new principles. (3) The Origin did not revolutionize Victorian public opinion. The public considered Darwin and Spencer to be teaching the same lesson, known today as “Social Darwinism”, which, though fashionable, never achieved dominance. (4) Many biologists expressed significant disagreements with Darwin’s principles. (5) Darwin made little or no contribution to the renovation of theology. His public statements on Providence were inconsistent and the liberal reform of theology was well advanced by 1850. (6) The so-called “Darwinian revolution” was, at the public opinion level, the fashion of laissez-faire economic beliefs backed by Darwin and Spencer’s inclusion of the living world in the economic paradigm...
Well at least he made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. There'll always be that...jstanley01
March 9, 2012
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Question for Barry: Why do people embrace Darwin today, when his cause is actually collapsing in science?
I ask myself that question all the time. Possible answer: repetition; criticism and critics are marginalised and censored where possible; widespread control of institutions and saturation of the media; and so lack of information due to the aforementioned. Of course there are some folks who's personal philosophy demand a world without purpose; and currently there is no (popular) alternative to neo-Darwinism. It's the only game in town, so you gotta play no matter how outdated, convoluted and silly it has become..Stu7
March 9, 2012
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The new mantra: "It only looks designed to you. It doesn't look designed to me. Therefor I don't have anything to explain." Well, you still have to explain what we observe. "IDiot!"Joe
March 9, 2012
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