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Louisiana, the Bible, and Darwin

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Never ends:

(See also: Pants in knot: “Creationism” in Louisiana schools )

“The vocal activists who oppose the LSEA are seeking to confuse the issue, since the LSEA is not about creationism. In fact, when a group of Nobel Laureates recently signed a letter calling for the repeal of the LSEA, it is noteworthy that their letter refused to quote from the law itself and instead harped upon the distraction of ‘creationism.’ The truth is that LSEA does not permit teaching for or against any religious viewpoint,” Louisiana College biology professor Wade Warren, Ph.d., said in written testimony submitted to the Louisiana Senate Education Committee in 2011.

“If Darwin were alive today, he would urge us to teach his theory objectively. In Origin of Species, Darwin explained ‘a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question,’” he added.

Some argue (and columnist Rod Cackley seems to favour it; it’s not clear) for teaching from the Bible in science classes.

But the Bible makes no such claims for itself. What can the Bible tell us about electrons or amphibians that we would not more practically learn elsewhere?

The real problem with not teaching the Bible anywhere in publicly funded schools is that much of our cultural background is only comprehensible in the light of the Bible, as well as the history of our country(ies).

So we pay a lot of money to turn out illiterates, who morph into low information voters, and then we wonder why they seem so dumb and things go so badly.

Here is a list of common phrases derived from the King James Version of the Bible alone:

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

A broken heart

A cross to bear

A drop in the bucket

A fly in the ointment

A graven image

A house divided against itself cannot stand

A labour of love

A law unto themselves

A leopard cannot change its spots

A man after his own heart

A multitude of sins

A nest of vipers

More, many more.

Not knowing what any of the above means, people are reduced to “Yeah.” “Whatever.” and “Wow! He’s just so hot!! He’s just so COOL!!! He’s just so … I don’t know … ”

That’s not informative but it texts. And it sets people up for a lifetime in which they will not know how to express themselves in a meaningful way or expect others to do so – or even understand when others are doing so. (O’Leary for News)

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Comments
OK Roy wins, my apologies for not looking at the context.
Accepted, and thanks for exceeding my expectations.
Denyse has some explaining or retracting to do.
Doesn't seem to be happening...Roy
July 4, 2015
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OK Roy wins, my apologies for not looking at the context. Denyse has some explaining or retracting to do.Virgil Cain
June 23, 2015
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Mung: The King James is the only true Bible. As given to Moses on Mount Sinai.Zachriel
June 23, 2015
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The King James is the only true Bible.Mung
June 23, 2015
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The Living Bible is indeed a bible, but it is not the King James Version; and equivalent meaning is irrelevant since the original comment concerned the actual phrase. I don't expect an admission of error either.Roy
June 23, 2015
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It's a bible, first published three hundred years after the first record of the phrase. Time to admit your mistake I think.wd400
June 23, 2015
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The Living Bible- as Bob O'H pointed out, has that saying. Checking further it appears that the bird saying is the equivalent of what Ecclesiastes 6:9-11 says- see this commentary Is the Living Bible a Bible or not?Virgil Cain
June 23, 2015
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Roy @ 8- Ecclesiastes 6:9-11 Are you really that lazy that you couldn’t use google to search for the answer?
No, I checked beforehand. You didn't though, or you'd have seen that those verses don't say anything about birds in the bush:
Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire: this is also vanity and vexation of spirit. That which hath been is named already, and it is known that it is man: neither may he contend with him that is mightier than he. Seeing there be many things that increase vanity, what is man the better?
I don't expect an apology.Roy
June 23, 2015
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Virgil Cain - I can google too, and no it isn't from the Bible. You've found The Living Bible's version, but the King James Version has Ecclesiastes 6:9 as "Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire".Bob O'H
June 23, 2015
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Roy @ 8- Ecclesiastes 6:9-11 Are you really that lazy that you couldn't use google to search for the answer?Virgil Cain
June 23, 2015
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related notes:
Bruce Charlton's Miscellany - October 2011 Excerpt: I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence it had undergone a significant Christian revival. ,,,The point I put to (Richard) Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world. How, I asked, could this be - if Christianity was culturally inimical to science? http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/meeting-richard-dawkins-and-his-wife.html Da and Nyet - Religion in the Public Square - 2012 By: Eric Metaxas Excerpt: Two years ago, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced a pilot program in which Russian public school students would be required to take classes in either religion or ethics. The plan is part of an effort to re-moralize Russia after seventy-plus years of atheistic Communist rule. Under the plan, students would study the history of one of the four religions termed “traditional”: Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. Or they could take a course in secular ethics. The two-year trial involving twenty percent of Russia’s schools went so well that, according the Asia News, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, plans to expand the program to every Russian school later this year. http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/19170
The last graph on the following site shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from the top spot or near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court, not by public decree, in 1963.
AMERICA: To Pray Or Not To Pray - David Barton - graphs corrected for population growth http://www.whatyouknowmightnotbeso.com/graphs.html What Happened When the Praying Stopped? April 6, 2008 Excerpt: How did the removal of voluntary prayer from the schools of the United States (in 1963) affect our nation as a whole?,,, Figure 1 shows how drastically the actual knowledge of high school students began to drop at an accelerating rate after 1962. Barton notes in his report that the upturn in SAT scores since 1981 is due to the increase in private Christian educational facilities which began to flourish at that time. Statistics have proven that students from private Christian schools showed higher academic achievement and higher test scores. Figure 2: This graph shows the increase in sexual activity in unmarried teen-age girls after the 1962 Supreme Court decision. It is evident from the figures provided that in the years previous to the removal of prayer the rates remained stable and relatively unchanged. In the post- prayer years the numbers immediately began to soar. The sudden increase on the graph appears as if a great restraining force had suddenly been removed. Figure 3: Unwed women 15-19 years of age showed a phenomenal increase in the rate of pregnancies after the School Prayer decision. Note that the figure jumps drastically after the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision which made abortion legal in the U.S. The United States now has the highest incidence of teen-age motherhood in any Western country. Figure 4: For the 15-19 and 20-24 age group, the rates of youth suicide remained relatively unchanged during the years from 1946 to the School Prayer decision in 1962. But in the years since, suicides among the same group have increased 253 percent, or an average of 10.5 percent per year. Figure 5: Stability in the family has also been affected since the 1962 decision. Divorce, single parent families, couples living together but not married, and adultery are areas of family breakdown which have experienced radical growth in recent years. In the graph above, the increase in single parent families (households with only a mother and children) are detailed. Note the dotted line at the bottom, which shows the rate of growth prior to the 1962 decision. Figure 6: Crime, productivity, and national morality had been on a fairly stable level prior to the 1962 decision, but that is no longer the case. It is obvious that such a quantity of students praying for their nation had a very positive effect on the course that this nation had taken. The rate of violent crime, as shown above, has risen over 330 percent. http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0124_When_America_stopped.html What Happened When the Voluntary Prayer Was Removed From Schools In 1962? David Barton - starting at 5:37 minute mark of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LiudwVNTUWA#t=338 and continuing through the first few minutes of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zo5L4f57H4
If anyone doubts those sobering numbers cited by David Barton, here is the raw data on crime statistics for America from 1960 to 2013:
United States Crime Rates 1960 - 2010 (Please note the skyrocketing crime rate from 1963, the year prayer was removed from school, thru 1980, the year the steep climb in crime rate finally leveled off.) of note: The slight decline in the violent crime rate from the mid 90s until now is attributed in large part to tougher enforcement on minor crimes. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm John 13:13 "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am." "I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.,,, All my discoveries have been made in answer to prayer." – Sir Isaac Newton - Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard - p241 “When I was young, I said to God, 'God, tell me the mystery of the universe.' But God answered, 'That knowledge is for me alone.' So I said, 'God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.' Then God said, 'Well George, that's more nearly your size.' And he told me.” George Washington Carver The Fallacy Of The Doctrine Of Separation of Church and State - video http://empowerliberty.com/videos/wall-of-separation-between-church-and-state-myth-reality-results the preceding family research video analyzes the infamous Jefferson 'separation' letter to the Baptists in full starting at around the 26 minute mark of the lecture and shows how the ‘separation’ phrase in the letter has been severely twisted out of its overall context. At around the 30 minute mark of the video Jefferson's ‘church planting’ acts as president are gone over.
bornagain77
June 23, 2015
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Here is a list of common phrases derived from the King James Version of the Bible alone: — A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
Chapter and verse? Or did you simply copy some-one else's claims without bothering to check their veracity?Roy
June 23, 2015
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wd400:
I only hear people talking about removing religion from science classes.
Then they should talk about removing Darwinism from science classes. Darwinism is nothing but chicken feather voodoo and assorted superstitions pretending to be science. All Darwinists should be kicked out of the schools and jailed for violating the Constitution and depriving the people of their right to a religion-free public school system. All atheists and Darwinists are fascists by nature. But that religion of fools will soon come to an ignominious end. Wait for it.Mapou
June 22, 2015
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They do attack the bible in subjects other then "evolution". No defense allowed. who and what do these Nobel awardees know about these subjects? Did they get their awards for biology things? Naw. they are trying to intimidate people. Why are they saying creationism is wrong? Who are they? These nobels do trivial things these days. No progress. The truth is the objective in education. If the state teaches the bible is not true its illegal. If the state refuses to teach the bible as a option its illegal as the state then saying ITS NOT A OPTION FOR TRUTH ON THIS OR THAT SUBJECT. You can't beat the truth and a free nations right to the truth in its education system.Robert Byers
June 22, 2015
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OT: The Case for Grace | Lee Strobel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Addd0Cx18M City of Grace (2015) - Lecture by Lee Strobel. Buy his book The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives http://www.amazon.com/Case-Grace-Journalist-Explores-Transformed/dp/0310259177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435024122&sr=8-1&keywords=the+case+for+gracebornagain77
June 22, 2015
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supplemental quotes:
“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint, and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it, the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.” Ruse, M., – atheistic philosopher – How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? Darwinians wrongly mix science with morality, politics, National Post, pp. B1, B3, B7 (May 13, 2000) A Neurosurgeon, Not A Darwinist – Michael Egnor Excerpt: The fight against the design inference in biology is motivated by fundamentalist atheism. Darwinists detest intelligent design theory because it is compatible with belief in God. But the evidence is unassailable. The most reasonable scientific explanation for functional biological complexity–the genetic code and the intricate nanotechnology inside living cells–is that they were designed by intelligent agency. There is no scientific evidence that unintelligent processes can create substantial new biological structures and function. There is no unintelligent process known to science that can generate codes and machines. I still consider religious explanations for biology to be unscientific at best, dogma at worst. But I understand now that Darwinism itself is a religious creed that masquerades as science. Darwin’s theory of biological origins is atheism’s creation myth, and atheists defend their dogma with religious fervor. – Michael Egnor is a professor and vice chairman of the department of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/06/neurosurgeon-intelligent-design-opinions-darwin09_0205_michael_egnor.html
Of related interest: The Supreme court has ruled that, for first amendment purposes, atheism is, in fact, a religion:
Atheism and the Law – Matt Dillahunty Excerpt: “… whether atheism is a ‘religion’ for First Amendment purposes is a somewhat different question than whether its adherents believe in a supreme being, or attend regular devotional services, or have a sacred Scripture.” “Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have suggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of ‘ultimate concern’ that for her occupy a ‘place parallel to that filled by . . . God in traditionally religious persons,’ those beliefs represent her religion.” “We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion. See Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 934 (7th Cir. 2003) (‘If we think of religion as taking a position on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.’)” “The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a ‘religion’ for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions” http://www.atheist-community.org/library/articles/read.php?id=742
Here are several examples of Darwinian atheists themselves violating the establishment clause of the first amendment by openly proselytizing their own atheistic religion in the classroom:
“Proselytizing for Darwin’s God in the Classroom” John G. West – video http://www.discovery.org/v/40/2
Also of interest, it simply is impossible to do science without presupposing Theology on some level. i.e. In order to do science in the first place, one is forced to presuppose that the universe is rationally ordered and that we have rational minds that are able to comprehend that rational order.
Epistemology - Why Should The Human Mind Even Comprehend Reality? - Stephen Meyer - video https://vimeo.com/32145998 Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b3ffffd524.pdf The War against the War Between Science and Faith Revisited - July 2010 Excerpt: …as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation. (Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos),,, Jaki notes that before Christ the Jews never formed a very large community (priv. comm.). In later times, the Jews lacked the Christian notion that Jesus was the monogenes or unigenitus, the only-begotten of God. Pantheists like the Greeks tended to identify the monogenes or unigenitus with the universe itself, or with the heavens. Jaki writes: Herein lies the tremendous difference between Christian monotheism on the one hand and Jewish and Muslim monotheism on the other. This explains also the fact that it is almost natural for a Jewish or Muslim intellectual to become a pantheist. About the former Spinoza and Einstein are well-known examples. As to the Muslims, it should be enough to think of the Averroists. With this in mind one can also hope to understand why the Muslims, who for five hundred years had studied Aristotle’s works and produced many commentaries on them failed to make a breakthrough. The latter came in medieval Christian context and just about within a hundred years from the availability of Aristotle’s works in Latin,, If science suffered only stillbirths in ancient cultures, how did it come to its unique viable birth? The beginning of science as a fully fledged enterprise took place in relation to two important definitions of the Magisterium of the Church. The first was the definition at the Fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215, that the universe was created out of nothing at the beginning of time. The second magisterial statement was at the local level, enunciated by Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris who, on March 7, 1277, condemned 219 Aristotelian propositions, so outlawing the deterministic and necessitarian views of creation. These statements of the teaching authority of the Church expressed an atmosphere in which faith in God had penetrated the medieval culture and given rise to philosophical consequences. The cosmos was seen as contingent in its existence and thus dependent on a divine choice which called it into being; the universe is also contingent in its nature and so God was free to create this particular form of world among an infinity of other possibilities. Thus the cosmos cannot be a necessary form of existence; and so it has to be approached by a posteriori investigation. The universe is also rational and so a coherent discourse can be made about it. Indeed the contingency and rationality of the cosmos are like two pillars supporting the Christian vision of the cosmos. http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/08/the-war-against-the-war-between-science-and-faith-revisited/
Verse and Music:
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Chris Tomlin - Holy Is The Lord God Almighty - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EduKNYVBKH8
bornagain77
June 22, 2015
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wd400 states
'I only hear people talking about removing religion from science classes.'
Little does wd400 know that Darwinism is not a science but is a full fledged religion. repost from 'Pants In Knot': As shocking as it may seem to some people, neo-Darwinism is more properly defined as a religion rather than as a science. And since neo-Darwinism is more properly defined as a religion rather than as a science, it is, regardless of whether it will ever be enforced or not, constitutionally illegal to teach neo-Darwinism in the public school 'science' classroom in America. To prove that neo-Darwinism is primarily a religion masquerading as a science is fairly easy to do. The reason Darwinism is best defined as a religion rather than as a science is because Darwinian evolution is not founded on a rigid mathematical basis, as other overarching theories of science are, but was originally founded, and continues to be founded, primarily on (bad) theological presuppositions.
Charles Darwin, Theologian: Major New Article on Darwin’s Use of Theology in the Origin of Species – May 2011 Excerpt: The Origin supplies abundant evidence of theology in action; as Dilley observes: I have argued that, in the first edition of the Origin, Darwin drew upon at least the following positiva theological claims in his case for descent with modification (and against special creation): 1. Human beings are not justified in believing that God creates in ways analogous to the intellectual powers of the human mind. 2. A God who is free to create as He wishes would create new biological limbs de novo rather than from a common pattern. 3. A respectable deity would create biological structures in accord with a human conception of the ‘simplest mode’ to accomplish the functions of these structures. 4. God would only create the minimum structure required for a given part’s function. 5. God does not provide false empirical information about the origins of organisms. 6. God impressed the laws of nature on matter. 7. God directly created the first ‘primordial’ life. 8. God did not perform miracles within organic history subsequent to the creation of the first life. 9. A ‘distant’ God is not morally culpable for natural pain and suffering. 10. The God of special creation, who allegedly performed miracles in organic history, is not plausible given the presence of natural pain and suffering. per Evolution News and Views Charles Darwin’s use of theology in the Origin of Species – STEPHEN DILLEY Abstract This essay examines Darwin’s positiva (or positive) use of theology in the first edition of the Origin of Species in three steps. First, the essay analyses the Origin’s theological language about God’s accessibility, honesty, methods of creating, relationship to natural laws and lack of responsibility for natural suffering; the essay contends that Darwin utilized positiva theology in order to help justify (and inform) descent with modification and to attack special creation. Second, the essay offers critical analysis of this theology, drawing in part on Darwin’s mature ruminations to suggest that, from an epistemic point of view, the Origin’s positiva theology manifests several internal tensions. Finally, the essay reflects on the relative epistemic importance of positiva theology in the Origin’s overall case for evolution. The essay concludes that this theology served as a handmaiden and accomplice to Darwin’s science. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=376799F09F9D3CC8C2E7500BACBFC75F.journals?aid=8499239&fileId=S000708741100032X Methodological Naturalism: A Rule That No One Needs or Obeys – Paul Nelson – September 22, 2014 Excerpt: It is a little-remarked but nonetheless deeply significant irony that evolutionary biology is the most theologically entangled science going. Open a book like Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True (2009) or John Avise’s Inside the Human Genome (2010), and the theology leaps off the page. A wise creator, say Coyne, Avise, and many other evolutionary biologists, would not have made this or that structure; therefore, the structure evolved by undirected processes. Coyne and Avise, like many other evolutionary theorists going back to Darwin himself, make numerous “God-wouldn’t-have-done-it-that-way” arguments, thus predicating their arguments for the creative power of natural selection and random mutation on implicit theological assumptions about the character of God and what such an agent (if He existed) would or would not be likely to do.,,, ,,,with respect to one of the most famous texts in 20th-century biology, Theodosius Dobzhansky’s essay “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (1973). Although its title is widely cited as an aphorism, the text of Dobzhansky’s essay is rarely read. It is, in fact, a theological treatise. As Dilley (2013, p. 774) observes: “Strikingly, all seven of Dobzhansky’s arguments hinge upon claims about God’s nature, actions, purposes, or duties. In fact, without God-talk, the geneticist’s arguments for evolution are logically invalid. In short, theology is essential to Dobzhansky’s arguments.”,, Per Evolution News and Views Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of theology? – Dilley S. – 2013 Abstract This essay analyzes Theodosius Dobzhansky’s famous article, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” in which he presents some of his best arguments for evolution. I contend that all of Dobzhansky’s arguments hinge upon sectarian claims about God’s nature, actions, purposes, or duties. Moreover, Dobzhansky’s theology manifests several tensions, both in the epistemic justification of his theological claims and in their collective coherence. I note that other prominent biologists–such as Mayr, Dawkins, Eldredge, Ayala, de Beer, Futuyma, and Gould–also use theology-laden arguments. I recommend increased analysis of the justification, complexity, and coherence of this theology. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23890740
Moreover, Charles Darwin’s college degree was in theology, not in math. In fact, Charles Darwin himself said that he found mathematics to be ‘repugnant’:
“During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh & at school. I attempted mathematics, & even went during the summer of 1828 with a private tutor (a very dull man) to Barmouth, but I got on very slowly. The work was repugnant to me, chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps in algebra.” Charles Darwin, 1887 – Recollections of the Development of my Mind & Character, the work which Darwin himself referred to as his autobiography
Here is a excellent video, based in large measure on Cornelius Hunter’s book ‘Darwin’s God’, that reveals some of history and faulty theological reasoning that went into Charles Darwin’s theory:
The Descent of Darwin (The Theodicy of Darwinism) – Pastor Joe Boot – video – 16:30 minute mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKzUSWU7c2s&feature=player_detailpage#t=996
Not so surprisingly, considering the historical background, it was the liberal ‘unscientific’ clergy of Darwin’s day that eagerly jumped on the Darwinian bandwagon, whilst the conservative ‘scientific’ clergy reacted against the book:
“Religious views were mixed, with the Church of England scientific establishment reacting against the book, while liberal Anglicans strongly supported Darwin’s natural selection as an instrument of God’s design.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_On_the_Origin_of_Species
In was not until the modern synthesis of neo-Darwinism came along, around 1940 or so, that neo-Darwinism had some semblance of a mathematical basis so that it had at least the veneer of being a proper science instead of being a pseudo-science. Ironically, the presuppositions behind the mathematical model of the modern synthesis (i.e. the 'central dogma') are now, empirically, found to be false:
Modern Synthesis Of Neo-Darwinism Is False – Denis Noble – video https://vimeo.com/115822429 ,, In the preceding video, Dr Nobel states that around 1900 there was the integration of Mendelian (discrete) inheritance with evolutionary theory, and about the same time Weismann established what was called the Weismann barrier, which is the idea that germ cells and their genetic materials are not in anyway influenced by the organism itself or by the environment. And then about 40 years later, circa 1940, a variety of people, Julian Huxley, R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and Sewell Wright, put things together to call it ‘The Modern Synthesis’. So what exactly is the ‘The Modern Synthesis’? It is sometimes called neo-Darwinism, and it was popularized in the book by Richard Dawkins, ‘The Selfish Gene’ in 1976. It’s main assumptions are, first of all, is that it is a gene centered view of natural selection. The process of evolution can therefore be characterized entirely by what is happening to the genome. It would be a process in which there would be accumulation of random mutations, followed by selection. (Now an important point to make here is that if that process is genuinely random, then there is nothing that physiology, or physiologists, can say about that process. That is a very important point.) The second aspect of neo-Darwinism was the impossibility of acquired characteristics (mis-called “Larmarckism”). And there is a very important distinction in Dawkins’ book ‘The Selfish Gene’ between the replicator, that is the genes, and the vehicle that carries the replicator, that is the organism or phenotype. And of course that idea was not only buttressed and supported by the Weissman barrier idea, but later on by the ‘Central Dogma’ of molecular biology. Then Dr. Nobel pauses to emphasize his point and states “All these rules have been broken!”. of note: Professor Denis Noble is President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences.
Moreover, when the mathematics of the modern synthesis, i.e. population genetics, are now applied in a rigorous manner to neo-Darwinian claims, and thoroughly analyzed with a computer, ironically, the mathematics of population genetics, that had given Darwinism a veneer of respectability, actually now falsifies neo-Darwinism as being a true description of reality (i.e. the mathematics now falsifies Darwinism as being a true science):
Using Numerical Simulation to Test the Validity of Neo-Darwinian Theory – 2008 Abstract: Evolutionary genetic theory has a series of apparent “fatal flaws” which are well known to population geneticists, but which have not been effectively communicated to other scientists or the public. These fatal flaws have been recognized by leaders in the field for many decades—based upon logic and mathematical formulations. However population geneticists have generally been very reluctant to openly acknowledge these theoretical problems, and a cloud of confusion has come to surround each issue. Numerical simulation provides a definitive tool for empirically testing the reality of these fatal flaws and can resolve the confusion. The program Mendel’s Accountant (Mendel) was developed for this purpose, and it is the first biologically-realistic forward-time population genetics numerical simulation program. This new program is a powerful research and teaching tool. When any reasonable set of biological parameters are used, Mendel provides overwhelming empirical evidence that all of the “fatal flaws” inherent in evolutionary genetic theory are real. This leaves evolutionary genetic theory effectively falsified—with a degree of certainty which should satisfy any reasonable and open-minded person. http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Using-Numerical-Simulation-to-Test-the-Validity-of-Neo-Darwinian-Theory.pdf Biological Information – Purifying Selection (Mendel’s Accountant - John Sanford) 12-20-2014 by Paul Giem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJZDsQG4kQ Biological Information – Mutation Count & Synergistic Epistasis (mutation accumulation) 1-17-2015 by Paul Giem – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gdoZk_NbmU Biological Information - Loss-of-Function Mutations (Michael Behe) by Paul Giem 2015 - video (Behe - Loss of function mutations are far more likely to fix in a population than gain of function mutations) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzD3hhvepK8&index=20&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUUhiC9VwPnhl-ymuObyTWJ
Thus, since neo-Darwinian evolution is based primarily on theological presuppositions, however faulty those presuppositions about God may be, and is not based on a rigid mathematical basis, (in fact, as was shown, mathematics now falsifies neo-Darwinism), then neo-Darwinian evolution is not even a proper science in the first place, in any meaningful sense of the word ‘science’, and, as such, it fully deserves to be called a religion to the full extent, and meaning, of the word ‘religion’. And it is therefore, obviously as a religion, illegal to teach neo-Darwinism in a public school 'science' classroom of America. Unfortunately, given my experience with the inherent dishonesty of Atheists in general (especially on the internet), and the overt favorable bias of the liberal media towards atheism, it is one law that I have scant hope of ever being enforced properly in America in the near future.bornagain77
June 22, 2015
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The real problem with not teaching the Bible anywhere in publicly funded schools...
Is this a goal of anyone? I only hear people talking about removing religion from science classes.wd400
June 22, 2015
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A niece of mine said that, before she started her initial post-graduate studies at Balliol, all the newcomers were told to read the Bible from cover to cover, because it is the basis of our Western culture.Axel
June 22, 2015
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