Evangelical Christianity is the hot new thing on elite college campuses, says the Boston Globe.
There are 15 evangelical Christian fellowship groups at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology alone. This is a pretty stunning development for a university where science has always been god, where efficiency and rationality are embedded in the DNA of the cold granite campus. Hundreds of MIT students are involved in these fellowships — blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians, especially Asians. Some of the groups are associated with powerhouse national evangelical organizations, like Campus Crusade for Christ and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Others are more home-grown. Either way, the ranks are multiplying.. . . At Harvard University, “there are probably more evangelicals than at any time since the 17th century,” says the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, religious historian and minister of the university’s Memorial Church, who arrived on campus in 1970. “And I don’t think I have ever seen a wider range of Christian fellowship activity.”
Gomes credits Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus for making it socially acceptable to be religious in public.
“It’s very chic to be a believer now,” says Gomes. “In a place which is so dispassionate, so rational, and in many ways so conformist intellectually, if you want to break out of the pack, you say your prayers in public. It is the example of religious practice elsewhere that has emboldened American evangelicals to exercise their own practice.”
Asian-American students are swelling the ranks of evangelical groups, says the Globe. Interesting.
Ugh. I recall 40 years ago at that little trade school down the yellow brick road toward the Charles, the CCC and the “God Squad” was hyperactive and quintessentially obnoxious. Being wakened weekend mornings after a week of labs, exams and no sleep, by two wild-eyed door-banging true believers babbling about saving my eternal soul never persuaded me to sign up for their crusade.
It did persuade me to tell them to get a life and leave me the *&$# alone.
Maybe the CCC learned better manners since. Or maybe more of later generations of students just feel emotionally needy and actually like being harrassed by control freak gits.
Just in case somebody wants to twitter about “anti-Christian bias”, I feel the same way about S*kk* G*kk** or H*r* Kr*shn* proselytizers or any others, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or Cthulu.
DNA, to me at least, presents a convincing view that God does indeed exist.
What else is DNA except a computer code with intelligence? From whence does that intelligence emerge? What is it? There is a thought process involved, a searching mind seeking to find what works, what does not, and the compromise between.
DNA is not so cold.
Stephen, go to http://www.talkorigins.org for some _real_ biology, including explanations of why such simpleminded arguments for “intelligent design” won’t fly. I have no problems with anyone’s religious beliefs- until they start trying to “support” them by perverting science.
I am not particularly religious, at least in any orthodox sense.
And I work in the sciences.
Different interpretations are possible.
Oh, sure, let’s all applaud the world’s longest-running anti-rational show coming to what should be the stronghold of reason. I’d post more but I don’t want to have to clean my lunch off the keyboard.
I am old enough to remember well a world in which religion dominated. The non-religious were viewed as some sort of mindless creeps, potential criminals and deviants.
We now live almost in an opposite universe. The non-religious dominate. I do not think that life is improved by viewing the religious as mindless creeps, potential criminals and deviants.
What is really involved here is animosity toward anybody who doesn’t obey the herd. The herd is now profounding anti-religious, and abusive.
And, remember, I am not particularly religious, particularly in the sense of belonging to any organized religion.
Sorry to comment twice in succession, but I am fascinated by the “anti-rational” remark.
Religion, by definition, addresses the spiritual needs of people. Spiritual needs are not rational needs. That should not need any explanation.
If you think that spiritual needs do not exist, or should not exist, well… you may be right, but the history of literature and the arts suggests that spiritual needs are real for most people.
Why does it anger you that people recognize that they have spiritual needs? If you do not have these needs, why not just ignore those who do and go your merry way? If you do otherwise, you are acting as a missionary. I doubt that you have very positive views of those who are religious missionaries.
Faith is belief without proof. Yes, you might say that is a cop-out or sophistry (or a sign of mental illness). None-the-less, true faith is self-sustaining: The “proof’ is in the faith itself.
I seem to recall that the U.S. has gone through a number of religious revivals over the last few centuries. There was a big one in the 1830s, and I think the Abolitionists and the Prohibitionists were both movements with a heavy religious flavor. It’ll be interesting to see if we are in the middle of another one (dating back, perhaps, to Falwell’s Moral Majority and continuing today with various groups like Promise Keepers).
Stephen, that’s precisely my point- beliefs that meet your spiritual needs are fine, but it’s simply a category mistake to try to give them empirical support by distorting science. What you said about DNA is not a “different interpretation”, it’s simply nonsense. (For what it’s worth I also not only only “work in the sciences”, but my training is in genetics and molecular biology.) When you’re ready for real information on the subject, check out that URL.
Mr. LaBonne
Something is bothering you, but it isn’t whether people are making “categorical mistakes.”
The attitude that you are displaying doesn’t strike me as scientific… it strikes me as religious. You are clearly angry at others who have belief systems different than your own.
Others with training in genetics and molecular biology disagree with you. My brother-in-law is one of the most respected ob/gyns in the world. He teaches at quite a prestigious university. He is an evangelical Christian.
There is no single, correct view. Your insistence that such a view exists is not scientific. The anger you are expressing falls under the category of “spiritual.” One of the most obvious indications that we are in the spiritual arena is the anger you express at apostacy. That is a spiritual response. If different views were only of scientific, rational interest, your response would be very quiet and disinterested.
No, Stephen, you simply don’t know what you’re talking about, and trying to cover that up with ad hominem arguments won’t help your case. There’s nothing “intelligent” about DNA (and “computer code” is a very poor analogy) and nothing about it that requires a designer. I really don’t give a crap what your M.D. brother thinks (that’s another fallacy by the way, the argument from authority. Except he’s no authority- physicians typically know less than nothing about evolutionary biology, and those who are not themselves medical geneticists ususally have a very weak grasp of genetics as well. I am somewhat better informed about that situation than you are, having taught both premeds and med students.)
Yes, nonsense does bother me. Fancy that.
Once again, Mr. LaBonne, if science were really the issue, your response would be dispassionate. It is not.
The argument I presented about DNA is plausible. Sorry you don’t like it. It is not heresy.
I’d suggest learning to separate your religious feelings and your indignation at religious disagreement from scientific discourse.
Oddly, I find your ideas and methods of conveying them pretty nonsensical.
Nuff said. Have a good life.
A Google search on “genetic algorithms” will reveal to you that even actual computer code need not be designed.
“Oh, sure, let’s all applaud the world’s longest-running anti-rational show coming to what should be the stronghold of reason. I’d post more but I don’t want to have to clean my lunch off the keyboard.” - speedwell
Why do you automatically assume that
a) reason and religion are incompatible
b) MIT students are so incapible of independent thought that they can’t come to their own conclusions regarding religion
and
c) that somehow this increase in religion will change grading policies. I have a hard time seeing a bio or physics prof accepting “And then a miracle occurs” as an answer on an exam (excepting that harris cartoon).
And Curmudgeon, I don’t remember any seriously intrusive recruiting attempts, mostly people passing out flyers and the like. Some postering, mailbox stuffing, etc. I guess they did learn some manners.
Steve LaBonne wrote: Stephen, go to http://www.talkorigins.org for some _real_ biology, including explanations of why such simpleminded arguments for “intelligent design” won’t fly.
And when you’ve finished there, try reading articles such as this one.
speedwell wrote: I’d post more but I don’t want to have to clean my lunch off the keyboard.
Uh-oh, watch out for that visceral revulsion leading to nausea — we wouldn’t want you to be anti-rational or something.
While you’re at it, also watch out for the tendencies to: weaken your argument with personalities; engage in fact-free invective; set up straw men; change the subject, etc.; you know, the usual tactics your allegedly anti-rational opponents engage in. Or do they?
Steve LaBonne wrote: I am somewhat better informed about that situation than you are, having taught both premeds and med students.
Two sentences earlier, Steve LaBonne wrote: that’s another fallacy by the way, the argument from authority.
Steve LaBonne also wrote: A Google search on “genetic algorithms” will reveal to you that even actual computer code need not be designed.
Ah, well, then that explains a lot about the products of certain software companies (”an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters”, etc.).
One fact continues to fly in the face of all “intelligent design” theory: childbirth.
If that’s intelligent design, God’s a sadistic SOB.
Steve, I am not a scientist at all, and no doubt you are well-known in your field. Nonetheless, men more intelligent* than you and more well-known than you believe in what you disdain. Scientific knowledge does not preclude religious belief. Obviously in your case it does, but you do not speak for all.
*Unless you are the most intelligent man that has ever lived, in which case I apologize.
What intelligent design? If we’d been designed intelligently, we wouldn’t have a spinal column originally designed for an eel, that tends to go bad in erect bipeds by age 40.
And the more we find out about the genetic code, the more it looks like a patchwork of corrections to the corrections to … to the corrections to the original weaknesses in the design. Sort of like a computer program that was miswritten 40 years ago and has been patched again and again by many programmers, none of whom understood the original intentions - only your chromosomes are much worse. As the result of evolution, it’s understandable. If it’s the result of design by an omniscient creator, He must be the original bad practical joker.
As always, this is simply a religious discussion. It has absolutely nothing to do with science or evolution in and of themselves - if it did, then there would be no religious people who believed in evolution and there would be no scientists who didn’t buy the theory of evolution as stated. (Both exist.)
Either you believe in god/s/esses or you don’t. Period.
Yes, the evangelicals are doing their thing on Northeastern college campuses. I got to see them up close during my last two years of undergrad, as one of my roommates was one of ‘em. (Hey, what can I say, he was a Catholic who fell in with a bad crowd. ;-)) Didn’t make any difference to the religious balance in the room — two guys were very religious (one Evangelical Christian, one Sikh) and two were very much not into organized religion (both agnostic, I guess). My non-belief was never threatened by my roommates’ beliefs.
I don’t find it all that surprising that there’s a rise in evangelical groups’ visibility — they fill a need that we have for moral guidance in groups. I’m not religious, but I did miss the chapel services I had in the school I went to before college — our chaplain would talk seriously (and humourously) about issues of the day, thoughts he had had recently, and so on, and treat it as morally serious stuff; our old headmaster would tell us about growing up and being upstanding and honourable young men. It’s something that’s missing from most of the newly secular educational institutions, I think. We haven’t figured out how to speak that language while being concerned about offending people’s sensibilities. It’s not so much that it demands a specific religion, or any, but it does need moral certainty and a _genuine_ feeling of community. Speeches about diversity and tolerance are _nice_, but not especially inspiring.
So it isn’t so surprising that people are drawn to groups with such moral certainty and a sense of community.
As for what I made of the people in the groups? — They were awfully nice kids, but I didn’t think they were the sharpest knives in the drawer. I kinda envied them their faith but couldn’t share it. I _did_ think their hymns were pretty bad — singing in a school hall to an acoustic guitar about loving Jesus didn’t stack up in my mind to singing in a hundred year-old chapel the grand old hymns of my schooldays (”Onward Christian Soldiers”; “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord is Ended”; “Eternal Father”; “O God our Help in Ages Past”; and so on). My Anglican school past begins to tell, I suppose.
Basic points: when public observance flags, private groups pick up the slack. And there’s something in universals that is deeply satisfying to us, that relativist stuff can’t touch. This is the strength of evangelical movements. I suspect they’ll be around for as long as the country is.
Oh, the difference a comma can make: should be “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended”. The Lord (if he should exist) isn’t ended in that title.
I don’t know how a post about the number of Evangelical Christian fellowship groups on campuses immediately turned into a debate on the rationality of faith and certain points of theology. But for those who can’t fathom how faith and the intellect can possibly be reconciled, remember a few things. It was people of the Christian faith who made some of the great scientific discoveries in history, and your elite universities, particularly those in Europe, were founded by the church, with the original intent of training people read, study and teach the the things of God. Look into the writings of C.S. Lewis, the 20th century’s best theological writer and perhaps one of the few people in human history to actually have come to faith for intellectual reasons.
As for calling the presence of evangelicals on campuses a “hot new thing”, 10 years ago when I was at UCLA there were over 50 different registered Christian groups on campus, many of which were flourishing. They are more than a positive presence. They provide real, profound community for students seeking something a little less meaningless than the binge-and-party-all-weekend frat life. And I can point to scores of people who can look back at their college days and tell you without hesitation what impacted their lives the most from their college experience. And these people are doing all kinds of good in the world: living intentionally in inner cities serving and working with the poor, partnering with churches in third-world countries as missionaries or relief workers, fighting for social justice and advocationg for the poor in their particular profession (whether it be law, teaching, urban development). Sacrificing their own ambitions to serve others. You’d be amazed at the radical changes in people that the gospel affects.
Oh, and Markm wrote
“What intelligent design? If we’d been designed intelligently, we wouldn’t have a spinal column originally designed for an eel, that tends to go bad in erect bipeds by age 40.”
Just so you understand, the Biblical worldview is that the God created everything right, then the Fall, that is, humankind’s decision to give God the proverbial middle finger and do our own thing, distorted and screwed up all of creation. That would certainly include the defects you mentioned in the human body.
Stephen wrote: “What else is DNA except a computer code with intelligence? From whence does that intelligence emerge? What is it? There is a thought process involved, a searching mind seeking to find what works, what does not, and the compromise between.”
Whatever, fella. DNA is nothing more than a program that is found in viruses and trees and people and lichens. The whole impetus behind “intelligent design” is to take the fact that life seems unlikely as irrefutable proof that it had to have divine origin. Whether it is simple or complex, life is here. The odds against it aren’t going to change that fact. Religions’ answer to this fact is that the life was planned. Science seems to suggest that weirder things can happen. In this wild world, I side with science.
If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t throw away the ticket because the odds were so much against me, I’d cash in. The odds of life popping up are of a different magnitude, but we’re still here. We won. This anti- and pro-religion nonsense is a big waste of time. The facts are in, and we exist. Happy living!
Mr. LaBonne wrote:
Google search on “genetic algorithms” will reveal to you that even actual computer code need not be designed.
Yeah, ’cause nobody wrote the program that generated those genetic algorithms, just the same way that the computers that run them appeared ex nihilo.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
Jeffrey, the laws of chemistry and physics played the same role in setting the framework for chemical evolution that the designers of the computer and the “seed” program play for genetic programming.
People are welcome to believe whatever they want, but they shouldn’t be surprised that scientists resist their efforts to pervert science in order to shore up their evidently shaky faith. It is psychologically interesting that many of those who find it necessary to loudly problem their beliefs, are the very same people who also find it necessary to seek phony empirical support for what, after all, is supposed to be “the evidence of things not seen”.
When I was in college I took a Philosophy class and we briefly discussed “GOD”. My professor stated that there were two positions you could take, yes there is a god or no there is no god. He then went on to state that from each position there were two results. If you decided that yes there is a “GOD” one of two things would happen when you died, you would be right and receive your reward or punishment or you wouldhave lived a moral life and then be wrong and nothing would happen. If you chose not to believe in “GOD” and then “GOD” did exist, you would be up a creek without a paddle or you would have lived and died and nothing would have happened. He stated that in his opinion it was better to believe and live a good life and be wrong in the end rather than to not believe and end up wrong. If the “scientific” types are right - what does that give them? After death - nothing not even the knowledge that they were right. I would rather believe.
Your professor didn’t invent that idea. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
What I find appalling about the rising evangelical Christian movement is its shallowness. To a very large majority of these folks, it seems to be nothing more than their currently chosen version of fan stardom. They approach Jesus as they would a pop star, and often with as little understanding. ‘Jesus as personal friend and savior’ is such an immature world view that it makes me nauseaous.
Most people, like a hobby, seem to have a religion, and to derive considerable satisfaction from constantly fiddling with it.
Quoth Steve LaBonne: ‘Jeffrey, the laws of chemistry and physics played the same role in setting the framework for chemical evolution that the designers of the computer and the “seed” program play for genetic programming.’
Exactly. Now, how did the laws of chemistry & physics come to be such that they were as amenable to the formation of complex information systems as those computer systems are? The computers were designed by intelligent beings, we know that. Absent proof, the argument from analogy is at least tenable.
Now, in fact nobody has ever come to believe in God, or a god, because of the argument from intelligent design. The argument was advanced in the first place, & continues to be used, in an effort to point out to atheists that they are not the only intelligent life forms on earth. It doesn’t seem to be working well; you, for one, seem determined to deny that anyone can be a religious believer without being indefatigably stupid & ignorant. Not necessarily so, sir.
It doesn’t work because it’s an invalid argument. And again, anyone who needs to grasp at such straws in order to retain his / her faith has very weak faith indeed. As I noted, it is not surprising that such people, evidently gnawed by secret doubts that desperately need to be suppressed, feel compelled to batter one and all with their intellectually pitiable arguments. They are really addressing themselves.
As to where the laws of physics came from, the “M-theory” (formerly string theory) physicists have already shown that a remarkable amount of physics falls out automatically from basic requirements of mathematical consistency. A wise man won’t bet against further progress along those lines- the “God of the gaps” will fail here as he has always done before.
And finally, I did not and do not “deny that anyone can be a religious believer without being indefatigably stupid & ignorant”- that is your willful misreading. I object _only_ to the intrusion of religious beliefs into areas of empirical study where they have no place- as Galileo said, the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. He was a wise man.
Steve, so in order to have a strong faith I have to be a strict Darwinian evolutionist?
Mr. LaBonne writes:
Jeffrey, the laws of chemistry and physics played the same role in setting the framework for chemical evolution that the designers of the computer and the “seed” program play for genetic programming.
Yeah, but things were pretty well set up for those genetic algorithms to be put in play, weren’t they? If you’re arguing against Intelligent Design, don’t rely on examples that rely on intelligent design.
I suppose the only arguments I tend to have truck with involve The Inherent Unlikelihood Of It All, to which the counter-arguments are ‘If such and such did not happen, then we would not be around to notice it’ and ‘If the universe is infinite and the physical properties thereof are invariant and our understanding of quantum mechanics is accurate, then somewhere 10^80 light years away is an exact copy of the entire viewable universe’, and everything rapidly degenerates into a metaphysical fight that’s been going on since Plato.
Anyway, in general I’ve got to admit that I find these Creation vs. Evolution arguments as interesting as Free Will vs. the Iron Hand of Fate, i.e. really dull.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey ‘la-la-la-I-don’t-care’ Boulier
Nick Blesch wrote: As always, this is simply a religious discussion. [...] Either you believe in god/s/esses or you don’t. Period.
Does anyone else detect the distinct odor of a thought-terminating cliché?
jon wrote: Whatever, fella.
A clean miss; nice try at diminishing and critically dismissing the relative importance of arguments which you fail to refute, though.
DNA is nothing more than a program that is found in viruses and trees and people and lichens.
More baseless assertions and “nothing-buttery”?
The whole impetus behind “intelligent design” is to take the fact that life seems unlikely as irrefutable proof that it had to have divine origin.
More straw men?
The facts are in, and we exist.
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
But that’s precisely the point, jon — all the facts are not in (and if they are, whose authority says so, and for what cogent reasons?), and I’m disappointed to find that people who claim to be science-minded are ignoring that.
It just doesn’t appear to me that the creationists/”intelligent design” proponents are the ones trying to close this question.
Steve LaBonne wrote: People are welcome to believe whatever they want, but they shouldn’t be surprised that scientists resist their efforts to pervert science in order to shore up their evidently shaky faith.
Speaking of “evidently shaky faith”….
Which leads me to wonder: who else but a True Believer would try to characterize the mere contemplation of the possibility of “intelligent design”, let alone data-gathering to try to support it as a tentative hypothesis, as “efforts to pervert science”?
Methinks Mr. LaBonne doth protest too much — which IIRC was the point Stephen made, much better than I could.
It doesn’t work because it’s an invalid argument.
I understand you to mean that you disagree with it; but how does your mere assertion of disagreement per se render it invalid? (See, right here is the part where you back up your assertion with facts and logic.)
Claire wrote: Most people, like a hobby, seem to have a religion, and to derive considerable satisfaction from constantly fiddling with it.
You are, of course, paraphrasing Heinlein.
Is there intelligent design in nature? I don’t know–and I absolutely reserve my judgment–but instead of (all unscientifically):
a) rejecting certain questions a priori as unworthy of examination and thus “forbidden”;
b) assuming one’s conclusions; and
c) ridiculing, instead of refuting dispassionately, those who disagree;
…let’s FIND OUT. That is called free inquiry, and that is what I would call “doing science”.
While I confess that what I said may have been a “thought-terminating cliche,” I said it in all honesty. Some people believe in God, and some don’t, and that’s the real issue here.
The argument for intelligent design is simply an argument that people use to try and either a) shore up their faith with science or b) shore up their science with faith. It doesn’t matter which.
What does matter, however, is the unholy (pun intended) mixing of science and religion. Religion is faith, and by definition, it cannot be proven true or false - if it could, then it would be science. Science is not faith, and by definition, it must be proven true or false - if you believe something (have faith in something), then it is religion.
That is to say: until there is proof of intelligent design OR of strict Darwinian evolution, both are merely articles of faith - just as the shape/size of the universe, time travel, and other “scientific” ideals are. As long as people don’t pretend that intelligent design is anything other than faith/religion, we’re square.
Nick, many religions are unfalsifiable only because the believers ignore all the failed predictions.
All the ID proponents are doing is demonstrating their emotional attachment to their particular metapysical commitments. I will show some interest when scientists *without* such pre-existing commitments start finding that the data force them in the direction of ID. Really, this is just another, perhaps the final, iteration of the age-old “god of the gaps” maneuver. The gap is getting mighty small these days…
It’s not significantly different than Descartes’ ontological proof:
Premise: God exists.
Conclusion: God exists.
With logic like that, how can one argue? Heh.
Three days later, and people are still arguing about whether people have the right to believe in God.
They do.
Such believers are no threat to public safety or the continued existence of the republic.
Mr. LaBonne, something is really bothering you, and that is that other people think and believe differently than you do. The “rational” left is now sick with this. I’d suggest you find something better to do with your time.
Stephen, please learn to read. Nobody is denying, or wishes to deny, your right to believe in God.
Only the right to smuggle your beliefs illegitimately into science (many sincerely devout scientists have no trouble understanding and making this distinction). As far as that goes, you’ll just have to get over it, because “goddidit” is never going to meet the standards of scientific explanation. And by the way, I am no leftist (I think GWB is a pretty good President.) I don’t know why you, and many like you, feel so threatened to the extent of having evident difficulty in thinking straight, though I have already offered one possible diagnosis.
people are still arguing about whether people have the right to believe in God
…what?
You have every right to believe in god/s/ess/esses. Neither I nor anyone else here has ever said otherwise.
But: I have a right to think that you’re missing the point here. (to put it politely) Further, I even have a right to question what part of your faith it is that dictates that you deliberately misinterpret everything Steve LaBonne says (although you have a right not to answer).
Suppose God really did have a hand in creating the universe we live in. You can’t prove he didn’t.
Then if you adamantly cling to your conviction that it all happened by chance, you’re in error.
I’ll ask again: in order to have a strong faith, do I have to embrace strict Darwinian evolution? I can’t even speculate as to whether God might have nudged things along here and there?
I cannot prove god had no hand in creation (or whether he exists or not), and that’s why I readily admit that I don’t know. I have atheist leanings, yes - but I don’t know.
And to answer your question, you are free to believe/speculate that god nudged things along here and there - but realize that you are no longer talking about science, you’re talking about religion.
A real scientist would never assert that strict Darwinian evolution occured, nor would he/she ever assert that god did not exist - as it stands, there is barely (if any) more proof for strict Darwinian evolution than there is for god himself. Real scientists only consider true things that have been proven as such, and further, they are willing to change their beliefs in a heartbeat if something once true is proven false.
So-called “scientists” that have dogmatic views give those who truly are a bad name. For example, lest we forget: until Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, there were many who asserted that such a feat was impossible, and they even had “science” to back it up. Whoops. A real scientist is a skeptic in the ancient-Greek-philosophy-school sense.
Thus: beleive what you want, but if it’s not science, don’t pretend that it is. Accept that it’s faith, and (this directed to Stephen, not you, Laura) realize that not all people share that faith; some people have none. That work?
The problem with invoking an intelligent supernatural being to explain natural processes is that it can explain literally anything (except that it doesn’t, of course, explain who designed the designer! Funny how ID types are willing to let THAT nexus of organized ) It’s like playing tennis with the net down. Or if you want to take a Wittgensteiian view, it violates the rules of the “language game” of science. Thus the vast majority of scientists- devout believers included- are bound to, and do, resist it strenuously.
Hit the button when I didn’t mean too due to my crappy browser! The garbled sentence should read “Funny how ID types are willing to invite THAT nexus of organized complexity to a free lunch.”
“Real scientists only consider true things that have been proven as such, and further, they are willing to change their beliefs in a heartbeat if something once true is proven false.” Exactly. Also, I think real scientists feel compelled to speculate about what-ifs. I think one would have to be a poor scientist to be afraid of even contemplating a theory because it seemed to be tinged with religious overtones. I could speculate about intelligent design, (and speculation is all it could be,) and I’d expect to be able to do so without a real scientist telling me I was an idiot to do it. Actually, what happened, happened, regardless of what any of us think. I’d like to know the truth, whatever it is. I think that’s really the scientific approach.
As I told my daughter when she was seven years old and asked me, “Where did the first cat come from, not lions and tigers, but kittycats like ours, where did the first one come from, huh, Mommy?” following a brief explanation of natural selection and my own ideas, and the fact that no one really knows because no one was there to see it, “When you get to heaven you can ask God and he will explain it all.” (I actually have a list of questions for that day.)
I suppose nobody really knows that Julius Caesar existed because nobody now alive was living in his time? Really now, Laura, you can do better than that, can’t you? This is a perfect example of how an emotional commitment to unquestioned beliefs can cause the thinking of an obviously intelligent person to go off the rails, in a way that would not happen with less emotionally charged subjects. And it illustrates the danger to science of allowing it to be
Darn, did it again; “of allowing it to be infiltrated by such prior commitments.”
Steve, there is contemporary historical documentation as to Julius Caesar’s existence. There was no one taking notes when the first cat came about. That’s really all I said. I’m wondering who has the emotional commitment here.
Hey, how did you folks get into theology and Darwinism? The subject was evangelical groups on campus, if anyone remembers that. Seems to me that such a discussion should center on issues such as what college kids do in their free time and the First Amendment. I’d like to put my two-cent’s worth in, whilst avoiding cosmology, theology and Darwinism, all of which encompass unproven theories—which may well be unprovable—no matter how much you all want to beat the horse.
These kids are mirroring trends in the greater society. Americans are the most religious people in the western world and the faction that’s growing the fastest is the evangelical movement. So it’s no surprise that the movement is growing on campuses, where what’s new and trendy is usually valued more highly than in other segments of society. The evangelicals are wise to be leery about the odds of many kids making a long-term commitment; history says many will fall by the wayside. It’s also no surprise more kids are embracing religion now: they’re at the time in their lives where they’re searching for answers and religion offers an awful lot of comfort to an awful lot of people.
First Amendment. They have an absolute right to practice any kind of religion they want—so long as no human sacrifices are involved—and to proselytize as well. Who cares? If you don’t wish to associate with those who wear religion on their sleeves, don’t. It’s as simple as that.
Those of you who try to convince believers that there’s no rational basis for belief in a higher being are just wasting bandwith. It doesn’t work. OTOH, there are many recorded instances of non-believers going over to the other side. The rational, science-based non-believers should also consider that there are a number of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences who do believe in a higher being.
If you want religion, go for it. If you don’t, likewise. But in my experience, there are few activities less rewarding than arguing about it. We’ll all find out someday. Or not.
Laura: Asking questions is real science, indeed. Assuming you have the answers - which many supporters on both sides of the ID/Darwinism fence do - is faith, at least in this case. I’m always open to new data, but based on the data available, I don’t see any point in worrying about it because there’s no way I can know. The question is one that I am simply incapable of answering, thus I don’t feel too obligated to look into it.
Also: Even real scientists can be religious - but they’re the type of people who build their faith by asking questions, not by blindly accepting what someone else tells them.
Jeff: No clue how this happened, heh. I agree with your analysis of the original argument, though.
Jeff, your last paragraph pretty much says it for this thread. From the heat (but little light) generated by what I’ve read here so far, I also suspect many of you need to get a life somewhere beyond the Internet.
Laura, how naive. How do you know it’s contemporary? There’s not a scrap of actual, physical writing remaining from Caesar’s time- the texts we have that mention him are known from copies made long after his time (and which stand at the end of a long chain of earlier copies, now lost.) Actually, the evidence for how, say, cats evolved is far *more* massive and compelling than the evidence for Caesar’s existence. It’s irritating, to say the least (and this needs to be said regardless of whether Bill Leonard likes it- he needn’t, of course, read any of it)to see it airily dismissed by people who have taken the trouble to understand none of it. And once again, this kind of intellectual irresponsibility occurs only in matters where people bring to the subject minds already blocked by emotionally charged beliefs. It’s useful to have Laura demonstrate the dangers of approaching scientific evidence with such preconceptions.
Gosh, maybe Julius Caesar doesn’t exist. Wow. My mind is so open now.