Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Walking it off
Hello. Well, I said I would talk about evolution today, mostly because I need to get it out of my head and move on with my life. The problem is I no longer have the notes that I took from the last two weeks of sermons which ignited my anger, so it wouldn't be too fair to lash out too much. But I want to say a little bit. Come back tomorrow if this stuff is boring for you, I will try to be lighter.
There are just a few issues that anger me about the current seven (yes, seven) week sermon series my minister is involved in. He has set out to disprove evolution in seven weeks, and arm his flock with enough information to debate well about the topic, and to have enough understanding to sleep well at night. However, that is only how it is advertised. The presentation has been awful, subjective, and contradictory in many instances. I want to address a few fallacies that have been shared.
The sermon series is based loosely around the premise that if Darwinism is true, then there are 5 things that are inescapable. One is that there is no evidence for God. Another is that there is no ultimate basis for right and wrong. Another is that there is no free will. I forget the other two. But those three are the three that I wanted to address anyway.
But before I do, I want to say that the sermon series started off in a nasty way, as most anti-evolution debates do... with the demonization of Darwin. It is convenient to roll up an ideology (theories of evolution, by the way, are as vast and varied as Christianity is in interpretation and practice) in one persona, so that it is easier to palate. Darwin did NOT invent the notion of evolution, he was not looking for an alternative to God, and he did not think that his theory was the end-all answer to every biological question. Darwin was a minister in training, a religious man, who also happened to be a scientist.
The data that he collected, and that was amassed by his day were so overwhelming, that it begged to be explained by a unifying theory. He presented a mechanism for the gradual change of an organism, and it was presented as a possible vector for speciation. In his books, Darwin pointed out the shortcomings and troubling areas of his own theories. Ministers like to set up the idea that he wrote his book with a smug air, having claimed to have solved the riddle of life. The truth remains that Darwin wasn't even the only person to propose natural selection... it was co-"discovered" independently by a contemporary of his named Wallace, but thats a long story...
As for the implications for God, this troubled Darwin his entire life (mostly because the wife that he loved dearly was a zealous Christian, and his theory challenged the Church, which you can imagine caused some heart ache). Darwin was in a perpetual crisis of faith, and like others of us, struggled to make sense of it all and find peace between his mind and his heart.
Okay, on to the three points I wanted to hit.
1) No evidence for God. This is interesting to me, because it shows a sort of all-or-nothing approach to the science. What is being said is that if Darwin is right, then there is no way we can know God, and that there probably isn't a God anyway. The minister opened the second sermon with the question "Is natural selection an adequate explanation of the origin of life?" The answer is "no." But it is also no more adequate than Genesis. Origins are sticky topics, because we can only allege what happened. Furthermore, if God intended the seven days of creation to stand as testimony to His being, then he would have passed along a better, more detailed account of the purposes behind his design (as to continually affirm his majesty as we discovered more and more about the universe).
When the Bible speaks of fixing lights in the sky to help mark the passage of time, it is obvious that this an ancient mind trying to grasp why the sun is there at all. I am not saying that Genesis isn't true (at least here anyway), I'm just saying that if the account was written to prove God's existence, he would have told all of the facts about the sun. That the sun provides energy into our system so that we can overcome thermodynamics. That the sun allows our plants to provided themselves with "food" and give them energy to fix carbon and release oxygen. That the sun acts as a heater for the earth. All of these things. To say that God hung the sun to denote time's passage and provide light is the sort of thing that people of that day could come up with on their own. God's "proof" of existence is rarely based on physical evidence. He requires faith on several levels, and there are endless ways that we can "know" God.
So saying that organisms can actually develop into a "new" species does not limit evidence for God. Something had to put all of this matter here to begin with, so there is huge room for God in scientific thought. Darwin and the Big Bang are two separate theories, remember. What Darwin's theory did was explain the large amount of biological data that was present, and believe it or not, his theories (with some adjustments) have been upheld with subsequent discoveries. Does it explain origins? No. But does it negate proof of God? No.
2) No basis for right and wrong. This is sort of the eternal question (morality), but let me say one thing. Does God's existence define right and wrong? In some ways, yes. But in order for that morality to be set in stone, we have to agree on one God, and agree that which words of His are for real, and the we need to agree on interpretations of those words. Christianity has done a poor job establishing this unified moral system in the 2000 years it has been around. Some Christians see a permissive moral code, where others expect a strict interpretation. So the presence of God, without sending us stone tablets and plagues, at best only serves to make us desire to pursue morality (as to avoid falling out of favor with him). And in no way does Darwinism negate any of that. Just because environmental factors, mutations, weather patterns, and other selection events cause a species to limit variation in one direction or another, this does not mean that there is no right or wrong. Darwinism is about biology. You can't confuse it with so-called social Darwinism (which has nothing to do with Charles at all). So this being an "inescapable truth if Darwin was right" is laughable. This would be a result of there being no God, and Darwinism does not necessarily negate God.
3) The last one is my favorite. He claims that if Darwin is right, there is no free will. What?! If there is no God (which is what the minister means by "if Darwin is right"), then there is ultimate free will. The minister went on to contradict himself several times on this point, by stating that "if Darwin is right, then I could just do whatever I wanted, and that is attractive to my selfish nature." He went on to explain that the presence of God is intrusive to this free will, and used verses that hinted towards predeterminism of events and purposes. The presence of God actually raises more questions about free will than it answers. Nothing has summed up this problem better than Milton's "Paradise Lost," in which Satan ponders how he can be evil when he was created to rebel and fulfill the role of God's foil (its more eloquent and deep than that in the book). The only way I can bend this argument to make sense is in a pure theological manner... that the free will Christ gives is to live eternally or not (you choose your eternal destiny), and that Godlessness removes that choice because we all end up with the same final fate (death). But this is not the point he was making, and it is a bad point to make when it is worded as it was.
So, from these three points alone, I could tell that the series has not been prepared with the most objective thought. As a scientist, it offends me that the minister used so much anecdote, few "proofs" outside the Bible, and even contradicted himself off and on. For instance, he claimed in his bulletin notes that most scientists doubt Darwinism, and that they are mostly non-Christian. He never qualified how he came up with "most." In his sermon, he changed this to "a lot of scientists doubt... and some of them are not Christian." If you are going to preach on science, you have to use science, or at least some critical editing before you present your sermon.
And then there was the mini-commercials for teaching Intelligent Design in biology texts, and removing evolution from them. Ministers like to say that evolution has reigned in the scientific community and in text books, not realizing that a lot of teachers find themselves scared to present evolution in class, even if they are lucky enough to have a school board that will allow them to have text books with evolution in them. The best case against ID in biology books is the fact that it isn't science. I wouldn't mind biology books having a point-counterpoint chapter, explaining many possible theories of origins (because talking snakes and magic gardens are as believable and provable as RNA originating from clay deposits, and man coming from mold), but the fact remains that religious ideas, like Chirstianity's Genesis account, are not susceptible to scientific method, are not defendable with data, and are not given to being overturned. At best, ID's best proofs come from disproving other theories. Creationism is a sacred cow, which often requires "accept it all or nothing." This is why ID is left out of text books. Evolution is presented because there is data. Is it an immutable law of the universe? No. Few would contend that. But the data is there, and there are a lot of questions out there, but for now it seems to have held up pretty well.
I want to close by saying that my minister is one of the best preachers I have ever heard, and a great Christian minister. He is a pastor in the strictest sense of the word. But it angers me that this is all the better treatment that he could give this topic, and there are 4 more weeks of it. It speaks poorly of Christianity to see something handled so poorly, when an objective presentation would more than suffice for placing doubt in people's minds about evolution (it is not a bulletproof theory). This is why I was upset. Not that the church stood against evolution, but that they did a poor job doing it.
Back to fun stuff tomorrow.
Horns up!
There are just a few issues that anger me about the current seven (yes, seven) week sermon series my minister is involved in. He has set out to disprove evolution in seven weeks, and arm his flock with enough information to debate well about the topic, and to have enough understanding to sleep well at night. However, that is only how it is advertised. The presentation has been awful, subjective, and contradictory in many instances. I want to address a few fallacies that have been shared.
The sermon series is based loosely around the premise that if Darwinism is true, then there are 5 things that are inescapable. One is that there is no evidence for God. Another is that there is no ultimate basis for right and wrong. Another is that there is no free will. I forget the other two. But those three are the three that I wanted to address anyway.
But before I do, I want to say that the sermon series started off in a nasty way, as most anti-evolution debates do... with the demonization of Darwin. It is convenient to roll up an ideology (theories of evolution, by the way, are as vast and varied as Christianity is in interpretation and practice) in one persona, so that it is easier to palate. Darwin did NOT invent the notion of evolution, he was not looking for an alternative to God, and he did not think that his theory was the end-all answer to every biological question. Darwin was a minister in training, a religious man, who also happened to be a scientist.
The data that he collected, and that was amassed by his day were so overwhelming, that it begged to be explained by a unifying theory. He presented a mechanism for the gradual change of an organism, and it was presented as a possible vector for speciation. In his books, Darwin pointed out the shortcomings and troubling areas of his own theories. Ministers like to set up the idea that he wrote his book with a smug air, having claimed to have solved the riddle of life. The truth remains that Darwin wasn't even the only person to propose natural selection... it was co-"discovered" independently by a contemporary of his named Wallace, but thats a long story...
As for the implications for God, this troubled Darwin his entire life (mostly because the wife that he loved dearly was a zealous Christian, and his theory challenged the Church, which you can imagine caused some heart ache). Darwin was in a perpetual crisis of faith, and like others of us, struggled to make sense of it all and find peace between his mind and his heart.
Okay, on to the three points I wanted to hit.
1) No evidence for God. This is interesting to me, because it shows a sort of all-or-nothing approach to the science. What is being said is that if Darwin is right, then there is no way we can know God, and that there probably isn't a God anyway. The minister opened the second sermon with the question "Is natural selection an adequate explanation of the origin of life?" The answer is "no." But it is also no more adequate than Genesis. Origins are sticky topics, because we can only allege what happened. Furthermore, if God intended the seven days of creation to stand as testimony to His being, then he would have passed along a better, more detailed account of the purposes behind his design (as to continually affirm his majesty as we discovered more and more about the universe).
When the Bible speaks of fixing lights in the sky to help mark the passage of time, it is obvious that this an ancient mind trying to grasp why the sun is there at all. I am not saying that Genesis isn't true (at least here anyway), I'm just saying that if the account was written to prove God's existence, he would have told all of the facts about the sun. That the sun provides energy into our system so that we can overcome thermodynamics. That the sun allows our plants to provided themselves with "food" and give them energy to fix carbon and release oxygen. That the sun acts as a heater for the earth. All of these things. To say that God hung the sun to denote time's passage and provide light is the sort of thing that people of that day could come up with on their own. God's "proof" of existence is rarely based on physical evidence. He requires faith on several levels, and there are endless ways that we can "know" God.
So saying that organisms can actually develop into a "new" species does not limit evidence for God. Something had to put all of this matter here to begin with, so there is huge room for God in scientific thought. Darwin and the Big Bang are two separate theories, remember. What Darwin's theory did was explain the large amount of biological data that was present, and believe it or not, his theories (with some adjustments) have been upheld with subsequent discoveries. Does it explain origins? No. But does it negate proof of God? No.
2) No basis for right and wrong. This is sort of the eternal question (morality), but let me say one thing. Does God's existence define right and wrong? In some ways, yes. But in order for that morality to be set in stone, we have to agree on one God, and agree that which words of His are for real, and the we need to agree on interpretations of those words. Christianity has done a poor job establishing this unified moral system in the 2000 years it has been around. Some Christians see a permissive moral code, where others expect a strict interpretation. So the presence of God, without sending us stone tablets and plagues, at best only serves to make us desire to pursue morality (as to avoid falling out of favor with him). And in no way does Darwinism negate any of that. Just because environmental factors, mutations, weather patterns, and other selection events cause a species to limit variation in one direction or another, this does not mean that there is no right or wrong. Darwinism is about biology. You can't confuse it with so-called social Darwinism (which has nothing to do with Charles at all). So this being an "inescapable truth if Darwin was right" is laughable. This would be a result of there being no God, and Darwinism does not necessarily negate God.
3) The last one is my favorite. He claims that if Darwin is right, there is no free will. What?! If there is no God (which is what the minister means by "if Darwin is right"), then there is ultimate free will. The minister went on to contradict himself several times on this point, by stating that "if Darwin is right, then I could just do whatever I wanted, and that is attractive to my selfish nature." He went on to explain that the presence of God is intrusive to this free will, and used verses that hinted towards predeterminism of events and purposes. The presence of God actually raises more questions about free will than it answers. Nothing has summed up this problem better than Milton's "Paradise Lost," in which Satan ponders how he can be evil when he was created to rebel and fulfill the role of God's foil (its more eloquent and deep than that in the book). The only way I can bend this argument to make sense is in a pure theological manner... that the free will Christ gives is to live eternally or not (you choose your eternal destiny), and that Godlessness removes that choice because we all end up with the same final fate (death). But this is not the point he was making, and it is a bad point to make when it is worded as it was.
So, from these three points alone, I could tell that the series has not been prepared with the most objective thought. As a scientist, it offends me that the minister used so much anecdote, few "proofs" outside the Bible, and even contradicted himself off and on. For instance, he claimed in his bulletin notes that most scientists doubt Darwinism, and that they are mostly non-Christian. He never qualified how he came up with "most." In his sermon, he changed this to "a lot of scientists doubt... and some of them are not Christian." If you are going to preach on science, you have to use science, or at least some critical editing before you present your sermon.
And then there was the mini-commercials for teaching Intelligent Design in biology texts, and removing evolution from them. Ministers like to say that evolution has reigned in the scientific community and in text books, not realizing that a lot of teachers find themselves scared to present evolution in class, even if they are lucky enough to have a school board that will allow them to have text books with evolution in them. The best case against ID in biology books is the fact that it isn't science. I wouldn't mind biology books having a point-counterpoint chapter, explaining many possible theories of origins (because talking snakes and magic gardens are as believable and provable as RNA originating from clay deposits, and man coming from mold), but the fact remains that religious ideas, like Chirstianity's Genesis account, are not susceptible to scientific method, are not defendable with data, and are not given to being overturned. At best, ID's best proofs come from disproving other theories. Creationism is a sacred cow, which often requires "accept it all or nothing." This is why ID is left out of text books. Evolution is presented because there is data. Is it an immutable law of the universe? No. Few would contend that. But the data is there, and there are a lot of questions out there, but for now it seems to have held up pretty well.
I want to close by saying that my minister is one of the best preachers I have ever heard, and a great Christian minister. He is a pastor in the strictest sense of the word. But it angers me that this is all the better treatment that he could give this topic, and there are 4 more weeks of it. It speaks poorly of Christianity to see something handled so poorly, when an objective presentation would more than suffice for placing doubt in people's minds about evolution (it is not a bulletproof theory). This is why I was upset. Not that the church stood against evolution, but that they did a poor job doing it.
Back to fun stuff tomorrow.
Horns up!
Comments:
I wanted to stop by and say that I agree with most of what Carl said. I think a big reason many Christians fall into the trap they do when with comes to evolution/science is because of fear. Even though this article http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9403/date.html deals with the creation date conterverosry the author, Dr. Hugh Ross, points out five fears Christians have when talking about creation in anyway but the standard 7 day creation we are told Genesis gives.
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