Evolution and Intelligent Design Forum

Name: L Kerman () Date: 09/24/2005 11:08 Link to this Comment: 16277

What if the issue were not intelligent design vs evolution, but intelligent design vs global warming, and the reluctance to acknowledge evidence of global warming wasn’t coming from business interests but from religious/Christian (let’s be honest about what religion means in this context) adherents. Would that make it any easier to disentangle the relative usefulness – and indeed the potential harm – of the different stories? Why give religious/Christian convictions a special status?

I still think what is important here is not whether it “matters” to the universe whether we disagree or whether disagreement is intrinsic to “story-telling” (if you tell one story, you are obviously not telling another), but rather how to make real distinctions between stories. The philosophical and theoretical implications are less critical to me than the practical ones: people tell different stories, and they can be generative or they can be destructive; some can “fit” and explain our experience of reality, others can distort and mislead; some can destroy the world as we know it (albeit not the universe), others can protect our environment. What people do with their stories on a personal level is their own business, but when they play out on the public level -- locally, nationally or internationally -- then it matters to all of us.

I like Tim’s idea of a “middle ground” – not just within educational institutions, but in the culture. There are indeed some places where different stories can easily and even usefully coexist (journalism, media, art) and others where it is essential to make some practical distinctions (government, technology, medicine). Whether or not there is “truth” or “reality,” there are some calculations that will result in building a stable bridge, and others that will cause the bridge to collapse. And overusing antibiotics will make a difference, whether ID adherents like it or not. Surely we care about that.

It strikes me as interesting that what seems to bother Paul most is not the relative usefulness of stories but the fact that people are arguing at all. Yes, it is an expression of our personal freedom that we think for ourselves and, in that sense, see the world differently. There is a lot to celebrate there. And it is important for people to realize that they can disagree without having to fight about it. That’s very much the lesson we need to learn as we look at racial, ethnic, class, and political conflict around the world and in this country. Yet, at least with some disagreements, I think we have to go further: for some stories – perhaps these are special and can be defined -- their relative “truth” (thanks, Tim, for not being afraid of the word) is relevant.

one dimension Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/28/2005 16:21 Link to this Comment: 16348

Reducing the multidimensional to one....?

Y'day's (9/27/05) New York Times piece, "Agreeing Only to Disagree on God's Place in Science"...describes the refusal of the Templeton foundation to do "flat science," to acknowledge that science and religion are "alien categories" of knowledge (in Gould's famous formulation, "noma," or "nonoverlapping magisteria"). That would be building a firewall, one that assures the safety of the whole by not allowing the contamination of a part to s-p-r-e-a-d...

For more on this, see closing the system, retrospectively, and related/linked explorations....

Greetings ... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/04/2005 09:59 Link to this Comment: 15974

Welcome to the on line forum for discussion of matters arising from and related to Intelligent Design and the Story of Evolution: No Need for Drawing Lines in the Sand. Like all Serendip forums, this is a place for informal conversation, for leaving thoughts of your own that you think might be helpful to other people and for finding thoughts of other people that might be helpful to your own thinking. Its not a place for final answers but rather a place for thoughts in progress, for letting ideas interact with one another to see what new perspectives and understandings might emerge. So join in, and let's see what sense we can make of the continuing contrast between evolutionary and intelligent design perspectives. Individually, and collectively?

the inevitability of line-drawing in the sand Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/05/2005 22:38 Link to this Comment: 16008

The exploratory seeking that Quakers call "continuing revelation," the process of constantly "testing" in a social context, against what others know, what one knows oneself, against new experience and new information . . . are activities that, ideally, can be practiced in both the religious and the intellectual realms (from Science and Spirit; see also Religion as Testing: Another Sort of Story Revising).

I write as one of those "people involved with religion" who "see what they're doing as being pretty much the same thing as what" scientists like Paul are doing: "trying to make the best sense" I can of "a world not fully understood." It's so clear to me that religion and science are comparable and compatible projects that I've pretty much lost interest in the increasingly insistent attempts to oppose them (as seen, most recently, in the 8/23/05 front page story in The New York Times, "Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science": "'Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?'....'No!' Belief in...God is not only incompatible with good science, 'this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race.'")

The more interesting question that Paul's essay raises for me is WHY--given what I see and experience as a clear congruity between religious and scientific seeking and storytelling--so many of us keep on drawing "lines in the sand" between them. What's our psychological motivation for doing so? Are we being so assertive--belligerent, even--because we're so uncertain about what we know? Or--what seems to me the more intriguing possibility--is the activity of line-drawing an inevitable by-product of storytelling itself?

When one tells a story, one draws a line of some sort (of connection between events: of cause and effect, of give and take...). What's not "on the line" is "disconnected," left out. If one says, "I'm going to take this person as my partner, in order to begin telling a story of our shared life"; or "I'm going to take this job, to begin to write the story of a shared project"; or even "I'm going to end this affiliation, to conclude a story of an association whose usefulness has expired"... one is drawing a line in the sand: saying "yes" to new possibilities, while saying "no" to other intimate relationships, other work commitments....

There are at least three possible origin stories of the phrase "drawing a line in the sand" which illustrate this nicely. It could have first been used @ the Alamo; in a very similar Egyptian/ Macedonian stand-off; or even (this is a very different tale, and to me, the most intriguing possibility) in the Biblical book of John. According to William Safire , the most recent possible origin for the phrase was "during the siege of the Alamo in 1836, when William Barret Travis drew a line in the sand with his sword and urged those willing to stay and defend the fort to step across it." A second possible origin story is that of a Roman senator, who confronted a king leading a Macedonian army in an invasion of Egypt: he "drew a circle in the sand around the king and demanded that the king agree to withdraw his army before he stepped out of the circle." (Note that this version actually involves a circle, rather than a line, and so evokes, in a back-handed sort of way, the old proverb that goes, "I drew a circle that shut him out, and he in love had the wit to win; he drew a circle that took me in.")

But most intriguing--and perhaps most generative, because most mysterious, because the writing is so undecisive--is a third possible story of origin, a parable taken from John 8:

1 Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.
2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.
3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one...

One web commentator observes, the phrase is "inadvertently appropriate," as "no one takes the slightest notice of all these lines in the sand public figures are forever drawing." I'd say, rather, that we take this notice of our insistent line-drawing: a recognition that the telling of a story is itself quite appropriately (and wonderfully appropriate as) the drawing of a line in the sand. It is a temporary account, one that will be revised whether we will it or not. To tell either a scientific or a religious story is to record a trace, and to take a stand there, in the knowledge that both the trace and the place at which one stands will soon be erased, by weather, by the waves, by time and change.

And by other stories told by others, using the same materials, drawing different figures in the sand nearby.

Many non-contradictory stories Name: Ann Dixon () Date: 09/06/2005 18:28 Link to this Comment: 16014

In the heat of the discussions about evolution and intelligent design, I've never understood there to be any inherent contradiction in the two world views expressed. If one wanted to believe in intelligent design, there is no reason that one would then be compelled to reject evolutionary theory. I see it as a sort of logic chart:

Stories About How the World Developed
	Intelligent Design	No Designer
Evolution	An intelligent designer created the world and also created a process of random variation and natural selection to constantly change and re-create the world.	The world began with the Big Bang, and random variation and natural selection work to constantly change and re-create the world.
No Evolution	An intelligent designer created the world and actively changes and re-creates the world.	The world began with the Big Bang, and changes occur from a process we don't understand.

Of course, there could be all SORTS of other creation stories and maybe as many stories about how the world developed subsequently, too. But I just don't see that there's a contradiction in the stories that could cause lines in the sand to be drawn.

Ann

politically incorrect Name: Lucy Kerman () Date: 09/07/2005 11:35 Link to this Comment: 16018

I would feel more comfortable if Paul had called his essay “The stories of intelligent design and evolution,” rather than “Intelligent design and the story of evolution.” I certainly agree that there is no necessary contradiction or incapability between science and religion, or even theories of evolution and intelligent design (in the sense that yes, the “designer” could have set up random selection). But that is not to say that they are the same thing, or equally useful in all circumstances. Yes, both science and religion seek to make sense of the world. As do lots of other things that humans do (art comes to mind). But just because the goals and some of the questions are similar, doesn’t mean that the processes -- or the outcomes – are comparable, or can be used interchangeably. What goes on in the lab and in houses of workshops is different: there are both practical and policy distinctions to be made.

I agree there is no absolute “truth,” either about science or religion (or anything else). People go through their lives creating and recreating narratives -- “stories” -- making best use of the evidence around them. Everything we do takes the form of a narrative of some sort. That insight doesn’t get me very far.

As Paul notes, evolution is a “VERY good story.” And that seems to me more the point. Not all stories are the same, they are more or less useful, differently for different people at different times. Isn’t the point of education to help people recognize the nature of stories and learn to make distinctions between them? Isn’t that where the real work is to be done?

Is intelligent design a good story? Is it useful? Does it open the way to other understandings and observations? Paul suggests it should be “mentioned” along with evolution -- not because it is “useful,” but because it has been around for so long. So, in a 14 week course, how much time gets devoted to this story? One hour? One week? Six weeks? Don’t we evaluate the usefulness of stories all the time, and isn’t THAT the point?

In this politically polarized and in many ways disturbing time, we are justifiably sensitive to “demonizing” and name calling, and we want to be able to converse productively with people who think differently. At the same time, I think we have to acknowledge that people disagree, and that while disagreements can be productive, they also at times need to be adjudicated, at least in the public realm.

I don’t think the issue around evolution and intelligent design is about whether two people can sit and politely disagree while accepting the value of the other, without “drawing a line in the sand.” It has to do with the responsibility of the government to regulate, to varying degrees, the education of children, and how – and by whom – decisions about things like curricula are made. We don’t need to set science and religion against each other, but we do need to make some decisions. What gets taught in a 14 week college course in biology? In middle school general science? How many weeks does intelligent design get taught, what are the experiments and textbooks we use, how much time is spent discussing observations about random selection? Who decides and what control does government have over what gets taught in an individual teacher’s classroom, whether in Ohio or at Bryn Mawr College?

The editorials and op-eds on the effects of Katrina this past week have been refreshingly smart, open and invigorating, from all political perspectives. I was struck by George Will, who saw in the aftermath in New Orleans a reminder of Hobbes’ theory of government. I’ve always been a passionate Lockean in my optimism about the social contract, but I thought he had a point. We need to find ways in our polarized and uncivil society to reach some social decisions -- without demonizing, but also without simply deciding that all stories are of equal usefulness.

correction Name: LK () Date: 09/07/2005 11:44 Link to this Comment: 16019

Apologies for my "houses of workshops" instead of "houses of worship." My own 'religious" orientation is probably obvious (thanks, Dr. Freud), but no offense was intended.

without simply deciding that all stories are of equal usefulness Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/08/2005 20:34 Link to this Comment: 16062

Hobbes turns out to be an awfully useful exemplum in this context, though not at all, I think, in the way that George Will uses him.

In the Study Group of the Graduate Idea Forum this week, we're discussing Carl Zimmer's Soul Made Flesh, which is less about what the subtitle says it's about--"The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World"--than it is a slice of 17th c. English political and intellectual history.

In which Hobbes shows up a lot.

Three of those appearances seem to me directly applicable to this discussion. The first is the usual thing Hobbes is known for (what George Will gestures toward/grabs for in his claim that the first business of government, on which everything depends, is security): Hobbes' belief that, given the nature of men--their fear of death, their hunger for life, their struggle for power...only one kind of government would do: an absolute ruler to whom the people surrendered their natural liberty (128).

Zimmer's second mention of Hobbes explains the rationale for the certitude which underlies the first: his belief (a la Descartes) that the philosophy of human nature should seek the same certainty provided by mathematics. Hobbes wrote in his notebook that the universe...was made only of matter. Our bodies were no exception, nor were our thoughts....With confidence born out of his knowledge of the absolutes of geometry, Hobbes declared that in order to preserve a happy nation, its ruler must dicate its religion (128).

But by far the most striking anecdote, in this present context, is the third one, which makes it clear not only that Hobbes hoped to apply the reliability of closed-system mathematics to the insistently open system that is the social world, but that he did so by explicitly denying the relevance of observations of the latter: When Boyle published his experiments with his air pump, Hobbes attacked him. Experiments proved nothing, he argued...a philosopher should rely on pure deduction from first principles. Hobbes' own reasoning had led him to conclude that there could be no such thing as a vacuum, and he refused to believe any evidence to the contrary (232).

Hobbes' sort of reasoning seems to me, in the context of this discussion about the business of exploring and sharing useful stories about those explorations, to function remarkably as an exemplum of the kind of story-telling that can assure a "final answer" by creating a closed system which doesn't question its own terms, as opposed (yep: another line drawn) to those stories which, in acknowledging their unfinishedness, create new questions.

I'm not sure what to do... Name: Doug Blank (dblank@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/20/2005 00:25 Link to this Comment: 16225

I've started to comment here more than once, but I'm not really sure what I believe. Actually, I know exactly what I believe about ID and evolution, but I'm not sure what to do with that. I'm not sure where this is going to go, but here it does...

I was raised a Christian, but the stories were too simplistic for me, even as a child. I liked the social aspects (singing, eating, etc.) though.

I was a card-carrying skeptic in college. But that didn't seem productive. It is inherently a negative position. I didn't like debunking pseudoscience all that much. Like the time I went out to a farm to take soil samples around an alleged "alien landing site." The farmer was so distressed about all of the media, he soon confessed that it was a little joke that got out of control.

Now, I am a scientist. Last week, a young boy asked me to define science. I didn't have a stock answer, but quickly came back with "it's a philosophy of life." I take joy in this philosophy. I love it when a theory makes a very unexpected prediction, and it is confirmed with evidence. This world is truly a wonderful, mysterious place!

I don't think that science as a life philosophy has "boundaries" and religion has (different, overlapping, or the same) "boundaries." They both seem to permeate all aspects of one's life. Both are more than just stories---they have implications, a worldview, a perspective. And they both are sets of stories that get revised.

Now what?

Call to truth Name: Timothy Burke (tburke1@swarthmore.edu) Date: 09/20/2005 09:26 Link to this Comment: 16227

There are a lot of answers about how we know when we've got a small grasp of one corner of the truth.

One of them has to do with what Hacking called "intervening", or the predictive quality of our knowledge. If what we know allows us to make a concrete claim about what is likely to happen next, or what the consequences of a specific action will be, then that is a meaningful indicator that we have a grasp on some whisper of truth. I think evolution has this character. It not only explains or represents the world, but predicts it, and allows us to conceive of interventions, of making things happen which would otherwise have not happened. This sort of truth puts causality, however poorly, in our fragile hands. (Which, by the by, may be one of the deeper unspoken drivers of the entire opposition between ID and evolutionary theory: a feeling or intuition from some that causality is God's to master, not ours, that intervention is what we are meant to abjure in fulfilling God's design for humanity.)

There are escape hatches that lets someone out of recognizing this particular sense of truth and our knowledge of it. One of them would be the kind of advanced neurobiological solipsism that Paul sometimes pushes out on the table as conjecture, that we don't know anything "real" about the world, just what we perceive to be real. I think if you take that argument very seriously, there is no point to having any of these discussions. It's kind of like the "strong" version of memetics that Susan Blackmore peddles: if what she says is true, then memes are just another meme, and the "truth" of the meme guaranteed only by the cognitive mechanisms that allow memes to propagate. (It's almost a version of the old "All Cretans are liars" paradox). In this context, the answer to your question about what lets us care about one another in that instance is "nothing", because we would have to reject in principle that others exist except as constructs in our own minds. There's a latent sociopathic quality to really serious solipsism: no distinctions could exist between torturing another person and loving them, in that perspective, except as we experience or represent that difference in the prison of our own consciousness.

Intervention and prediction is a sense of truth, though, that favors science, of course, and so has its limits. It's not likely to help us much to adjudicate ethical or moral problems. At that point, I'm as much in the dark as anyone else. I intuit that there is a difference between a liberal democratic society and an authoritarian one in terms of the suffering they inflict on their members and the freedoms they encourage or deny. I've got little to anchor that on that is even remotely as solid as a predictive or intervening relation between knowledge and reality. A few comparative claims I can make about human history, but it's pretty thin gruel in empirical terms.

I certainly have no way to argue with anything approaching certainty that humility is a supreme value for the storyteller, that we all owe it to one another to recognize the boundary conditions of our stories. The best I can do is a kind of potted utilitarianism, that a narrative ecosystem is healthiest when it is most diverse, most generative of future insight and possibility when all the stories within it have limit conditions. But I actually think this is where complexity theory helps to provide potentially persuasive metaphors, a description of how human possibility spaces get mapped, explored, filled out. Stories are seeds, full of potential, but they can only grow into mighty trees in the right soil, with the right light, with the right nutrients. When they grow, the conditions around them may make them tall, or short, gnarled or straight, healthy or weak. They can only be one kind of tree, not all the trees in the world. The story of the designer, it seems to me, is one kind of tree. The story of speciation over time in nature is another.

Intelligent Design and the Story of Evolution Name: (thomas.m.young@widener.edu) Date: 09/12/2005 14:42 Link to this Comment: 16106

Paul,
Thank you again for your typically generous, yet penetrating discussion. It got me wondering whether the "design" throughout the universe that we find so "intelligent" might itself be the product of an evolutionay process.
Tom.

The Division of Story Labor Name: Timothy Burke (tburke1@swarthmore.edu) Date: 09/15/2005 12:34 Link to this Comment: 16165

The consistent problem or concern I have with Paul's attachment to the concept of "stories" as he sees it, despite the fact that I'm almost equally attached to a very similar way of thinking about a great many things, is that it's difficult to make his judgement that some stories are more useful in some fashion. There's only two ways to make that work without avoiding some of the kinds of truth-claims that Paul very clearly wants to avoid: one, that some stories are more generative of other stories, more productive, and that this is a good thing; or two, a blandly sociological statement that when many people deem a particular story valuable, tell the story a lot, circulate it, it is by definition useful because many people find it useful.

The second argument is easy to bypass: it's tautological in the extreme, and leaves us unable to account for the origin and dissemination of new stories and morally indifferent to the consequences of the circulation of or uses of stories: the narratives offered by European fascist movements in the 1930s would be "useful" in this sense.

The first is more (dare I say it?) useful, or at least interesting. A story is useful if something about its structure or intrinsic character is generative of other stories; if it is a story which asks questions, highlights its own gaps and contradictions, creates processes of investigation. You could certainly identify forms of the "story" of evolution in biological science that actively seek to generate more stories, and some that attempt to pare down or eliminate lines of new investigation or uncertainty; religious narratives of creation or intelligent design have the same dualism, some opening up questions, others actively seeking to foreclose questions and new stories.

But it's not clear at this elemental level why more is better, why generation is more prized than pruning or reduction, why a story's usefulness lies in its unfinished character. Unless we think of stories as a sort of strange full-employment program, that we're using stories to generate more and more things for human beings to do and think and investigate so that we can keep them off the streets and out of trouble.

So I think at some point you have to (at least I have to) come back to the proposition that "useful" means "usefully explanatory of something about the universe around us", which means (to me), "has some truth to it that goes beyond whether the story aesthetically satisfies the person hearing it". Some capacity to explain the world in a way that can be collectively validated or tested, that is predictively powerful, that can be reconciled with other stories possessing similar qualities of "usefulness".

I still like the concept of story here, because I think human beings often think intuitively in narrative terms (and that tendency is much reinforced by contemporary expressive culture). I've often observed that very few people calculate risk in the abstract: they do it by imagining narrative scenarios of their own experience of catastrophe or harm, of trying to envision future emotional and physical conditions through story-telling and imagination. I think this is also the case with something like "evolution" or "life": we understand it by narrativizing it, by making it meaningful, by identifying patterns.

Pattern-identification is one of the things that humans do which is generating a good deal of the social friction on this whole subject in the first place. A human being can see a pattern in anything: it's what our story-telling facility is so smoothly capable of. If we don't insist that "useful stories" have some explanatory power, then all observations of patterns are true inasmuch as all human beings are capable of perceiving patterns where they do not exist, even in sequences of random numbers. What comes along with pattern-finding is a fairly deep inclination to think that any pattern is a mark of an intention or design, that patterns cannot happen by accident, that there are no coincidences in the universe and all events communicate information from some hidden or invisible source.

The most hostile defenders of science-as-truth invariably make such characterizations in a negative way: that this inclination to see design and intention everywhere is human weakness in the face of harder truth. I don't: I think what makes human existence meaningful is our capacity to make meaning. I think the truths of evolution would be impossible for us to observe or describe without the ability to make meaning in this manner, and this is no mere concession of the necessity of language and the loss of information that communication involves. It's a positive assertion about the precondition of truth: that without the desire for truth and the ability to make stories about it, it doesn't exist. That tree makes no sound in an empty forest.

Nevertheless, it also means that we have to beware ourselves, since we can see patterns in anything, and since we are inclined always to assume a pattern had a maker or designer. I think we can demonstrate in plain sight that patterns can form with no design or intent or blueprint. If we can demonstrate that, it means that our deep inclinations can deceive us. Once we know that, then I think we have to studiously practice a kind of humility in our stories about patterns and designs. We have to consciously try hard to make the universe strange, to de-anthropize it, to resist the first or easiest story that comes to mind in the presence of organization, structure, pattern.

What I think this ought to mean is a division of labor in the making of stories, that stories are usefully explanatory as long as they're self-aware of their own limitations, humble at their boundaries. There's no necessary conflict between a story about God or the divine as the uncaused cause of the universe we see around us: you can introduce cosmological theory after cosmological theory, pile M-brane theory on top of Big Bangs and still not ever get to a story that tells you what all the things you can describe are when they are not. You can tell a story about the benevolent (or malevolent) intent that lies pervasively behind the world we see and imagine, about the purpose of existence, and have it do nothing to evolution.

But that's not intelligent design in most of its forms, and not creationism in its contemporary American form. Those versions of those stories are not willing to accept a division of labor. They have no humility about the ability of human intelligence to perceive patterns and intent, no constraint. That makes them not explanatory, and maybe even in the sense of useful that means "generative", not useful. And I do really think, Richard Dawkins notwithstanding, that evolution is vastly more sinned against in this respect than sinning, that the practice of evolutionary theory and research in science is rarely aggressively exclusionary of the stories that lie outside of its own explanatory domain, and that the practice of evolutionary theory is explanatory inside that domain because it recognizes, unlike creationism or ID, the fact that patterns frequently come to exist without design or intent, without conscious will, without a guiding intelligence. Any version of religion which denies as a matter of course that any specific pattern can be in the world without a specific conscious process of design, fails to be explanatory because it fails to recognize and respect a demonstrable truth about the universe.

rhizomes revenge Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/16/2005 10:02 Link to this Comment: 16174

So, Tim, in all that...

two things stand out to me.

I've got an observation about one of your questions,
a question about one of your observations.

The observation--
You say that it's not clear at this elemental level why more is better, why generation is more prized than pruning or reduction, why a story's usefulness lies in its unfinished character. That seems to me acute, a reminder of emergent group discussions of two years ago regarding the importance of pruning in a rhizomic, ever-proliferating landscape; without shaping/selecting/cutting-back, the irises become root-bound, the garden runs to weeds.

The query--
is about your even-more-acute (and certainly related) observation re: the need for a division of labor in the making of stories, that stories are usefully explanatory as long as they're self-aware of their own limitations, humble at their boundaries. So: what's the logic that demands a division of labor?

It occurs to me that a division of labor only takes place if agents in a system are either aware of their "partness," of their contribution to a larger whole ("I'll have the babies, you bring home the bacon") or--in the case of an anthill--if the contributions of the parts, while unaware, nonetheless are contributing to some system larger than themselves ("I'll forage for food, you bury the dead"). Scientists who insist that evolution is an adequate explanation for the world-as-we-have-it accept no division of labor (that their story doesn't give us all the meaning we want-and-need); creationists who insist that God is an adequate explanation likewise accept no division, no (in your word) "boundaries" for their story.

I guess that pushes the question back one step, doesn't it: why should we accept our need for one another? What might convince us that we need one another's stories? That others' stories are useful additions--rather than threats--to our own? What might help us see the limits-and-unfinishedness of our own? Must it be grounded on the assumption that we simply cannot know everything/the final answers?

Name: Timothy Burke (tburke1@swarthmore.edu) Date: 09/16/2005 10:56 Link to this Comment: 16175

It comes to my insistence that the value of stories is partially related to their explanatory power, and that their explanatory power is non-arbitrary, that it has something to do with their ability to truthfully represent the world and meaningfully intervene in the world, to borrow Ian Hacking's framework. I'm going to cling to the whisper of ontology like a rheseus monkey clinging to a soft towel in this case.

So the division of labor is not a command decision made from above by a human with a god's eye view. It's a distributed responsibility that we all as story-tellers have to one another but also to the truth. That we accept that as our stories travel to grounds in which other stories flourish with greater explanatory fertility, our stories ought to retreat, or at least commit to pacific co-existence, to a principled division of labor.

So, for example, let's suppose that you actually like the idea of "teaching the conflict" between intelligent design and creationism on one hand and biological evolutionary theory on the other. That conflict can't be abolished; it wouldn't be fair to tell the person who finds truth in creationism to just bugger off and go hide in their church somewhere. But where's the right place to "teach the conflict"? Not in a biology class, which is precisely what is being demanded by school boards, Presidents, and cultural conservatives. Any more than it would be right for an evolutionary psychologist to demand equal time in my classroom to talk about how silly my interest in hermeneutics and agency are, that meaning is just an epiphenomenon of cognitive modules and agency an illusion.

So teach and talk on the conflict, but leave biology its space. Not just as a mannerly, polite gesture, but because in the space that biology marks off, evolutionary theory has legitimately greater explanatory power, is more true as a representation of what the world is and as a guide in how to intervene in and predict what the world will be. Anyone who wants to know why there is something rather than nothing, what the meaning of life is, who aspires to know the mind of God, should have the humility to recognize that those inquiries do not sweep the field, and that God does not require that they should.

Where do we teach the conflict, then? Surely there are middle grounds in our organization of education. Philosophy, for one. Sociology and anthropology, for another. (E.g., who believes what, and how do they understand their beliefs: emic and etic inquiry). History: from where do both kinds of stories come? Maybe we can create middle grounds as well, not just in education but in our culture at large. I actually think a significant amount of popular alienation from science is reasonable, or stems from actual experience, and that spills over into this discussion and these issues. Maybe that's where all kinds of science, not just evolutionary theory, need to be put into contexts where the explanatory limits of their stories become evident or at least contested, where they arrive at boundaries as well. Humility is a general commandment to story-tellers, not a specific restraint on the religious.

need vs desire Name: Aia Hussein () Date: 09/16/2005 13:55 Link to this Comment: 16176

Thank you, Anne, for inviting me to the forum. In an attempt to answer the question that you posed: why should we accept our need for one another? – I have come up with yet another question. I wonder if a distinction should be made between a primal need for one another and a desire for some connectivity. Do we really “need” one another’s stories or do we desire them in order to arrive at a sense of being part of the whole? Should the question be, then, why should we accept the desire to be part of this whole? And semi-echoing your question, Anne, do we need to be part of this whole? It seems to me if we do not desire other’s stories, if we do not make an effort to contribute to our own story’s evolution, we run the risk of not expanding, of either contracting into extinction or falling into a static state of being. Perhaps this desire to understand one another stems from the realization that we cannot hope to achieve a more culturally nourishing existence without branching out and taking our chances. Perhaps we have evolved into a species that needs stories and their meanings only become apparent when they are compared to other stories…why else should we seek to understand one another’s stories if not to shed some light on our own?

clinging...vs. expanding? Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/18/2005 22:18 Link to this Comment: 16203

...there was a piece in today's New York Times Magazine (September 18, 2005) by Mark Lilla called "Getting Religion." It ends w/ this passage:

Doubt, like faith, has to be learned. It is a skill. But the curious thing about skepticism is that its adherents, ancient and modern, have so often been proselytizers. In reading them, I've often wanted to ask, "Why do you care?" Their skepticism offers no good answer to that question...something quickens within me. The Greeks spoke of eros, the Christians of agape and caritas. I don't know what to call it, I just know it is there. It is a kind of care...directed toward others....

I like the way you find a motivation for that "care," Aia, in our need to expand, to nourish ourselves. That works for me better than the rheseus monkey, clinging ontology, to our "responsibility...to the truth." Seems tautological to me: what's out there, do you think, Tim, that you're clinging to? And how will you know when you've got a-holt of it, have been "faithful" to it? I have my doubts (sic)....

Once upon a time .... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/22/2005 09:05 Link to this Comment: 16266

Wonderful stories, thanks all. Let me try one, very much in the spirit that "humility is a supreme value for the storyteller" (humility = "profound skepticism"?) and "a narrative ecosystem is healthiest when it is most diverse, most generative of future insight and possibility".

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was .... [a universe in an ongoing process of continual change and novelty generation with no one around to intend anything for it or even observe it, no organized assembly that had the internal architecture required to be able to tell stories about the universe, themselves, or anything else, and hence nothing to create either purpose or meaning]. The brackets are to acknowledge that there is no way to describe this condition without the description being reflective to one degree or another of properties of an observer; the effort has been to make the description as free of observer dependent characteristics as I can manage. In any case, this something-that-was-there in the absence of a story telling observer had been around for a VERY long time (MUCH longer than the not -so-very-long ago where this story starts) and had through its ongoing processes of change/novelty generation brought into existence large numbers of different, interacting, improbable assemblies (the "active inanimate"), including some ("model builders") for whom entropy contributed to maintaining their assemblies, and which contained information from past interactions that contributed to further stabilizing such assemblies. These assemblies had as well both semi-homeostatic and semi-autonomous properties which contributed to continuing information acquisition.

As things in this universe bounced around, for no reason and with no intentions other than the randomness with which the universe began and the inertial and semi-homeostatic properties of the improbable assemblies it contained, there evolved still more improbable assemblies with a bipartite architecture that gave them the capability to represent themselves as things distinct from their surroundings, to develop stories to try and account for themselves, their surroundings, and the relations between and among those things. With the appearance of these "story tellers" came into existence concepts like "reality" and "meaning" and "purpose" that proved sometimes to further enhance both the maintenance of such assemblies and the exploration of new forms of them ... and sometimes to inhibit one or both processes.

Intrigued and excited by the successes of stories employing such concepts, the story tellers began to try and use them in broader and broader contexts, to the point where they developed the idea that the universe used the same strategies and rules that they themselves used (at least sometimes), that "reality" and "meaning" and "purpose" were not just human story telling elements but properties of the universe itself. This led in some interesting directions, and had some useful outcomes but it also created, for humans, some terrible problems when it turned out that different story tellers and groups of story tellers had different conceptions of "reality" and "meaning" and "purpose". Confused about the relation between their stories and the universe people became so dependent on their stories that they largely forgot the universe and spent their time fighting each other about whose conception of it was correct. The universe, of course, didn't care and, for the most part, went on changing without being much affected by humans or their squabbles.

Will humans come to understand that "reality" and "meaning" and "purpose" (to say nothing of truth, science, religion, "faithfulness", and "need for one another" (or its absence)) are matters of great interest to themselves but of little or no significance to the universe? Will they learn that story tellers, for clear architectural reasons, are not and cannot be in touch with "reality" (that "solipsism" is not an intellectual posture but an unavoidable feature of the human condition)? Will they come to accept (perhaps even to value) the usefulness of stories as well as their inevitable (even desirable) multiplicity? Can humans become comfortable with both the wonders and the limitations of their story telling capabilities, accepting that stories are paths to the future but never a guarantee of it? Yep, it is sometimes (though not always) difficult to make a judgement that some stories are more useful, but maybe that's a fair price to pay for our freedom and agency? There is no reason to think the answers to any of these questions matter to the universe, but they may well be the grounds on which the universe's exploration of the viability of humanity as a relatively long-lasting form of improbable assembly proves (or fails to prove) continually generative.

Will humanity live happily ever after? Tune in again for the next exciting episode of Once Upon a Time is Now.

if a tree falls... Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/22/2005 09:18 Link to this Comment: 16267

Okay, so the forest of stories is made up of all sorts of trees
(which are cut down to make paper to write stories on...)
and in the forest are all sorts of storyeaters, each w/ different dietary needs and tastes....

So now I'm thinking about niche displacement: short antelopes eating the lower branches and tall antelopes eating the middle branches and giraffes eating the tallest branches...all these species living together yet not competing each other out of existence, because differences in diet allow them to coexist. I started this posting w/ the notion that, in the intelligent design/evolution debate, there's a marked refusal to niche displace, and insistance, from both sides, on one diet fitting all. I'm exploring now a different idea/angle: that each side of the debate keeps the other insistently in play, in a process of unremitting niche displacement--and unremitting balance.
Tell a story of design--> provoke a counter-story of random exploration.
Tell a tale of indeterminacy--> evoke a counter-story of deliberate intention.

So when you speak, Tim, of a potted utilitarianism, a narrative ecosystem healthiest when it is most diverse, when all the stories within it have limit conditions...they can only grow into mighty trees in the right soil, with the right light, with the right nutrients. When they grow, the conditions around them may make them tall, or short, gnarled or straight, healthy or weak.

...I think that the trees around them--the other stories--are part of that environment, as are the foragers--the other storyeaters. Their growth may be stunted by the growth of a large tree, or facilitated by the disappearance of a certain bush nearby

So: maybe the problem w/ humility as a supreme value for the storyteller is its "humble" failure to acknowledge how pronounced an effect--as part of a complex eco-system--we actually do have on each other, how much our stories can stunt (or nurture) one another's stories, shut out (or illumine) one another's sun, eat up (or contribute to) one another's nutrients....hm. Better quit. Starting to evoke the latent sociopathic quality of advanced neurobiological solipsism...

Name: http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/ (tburke1@swarthmore.edu) Date: 09/22/2005 16:16 Link to this Comment: 16272

It doesn't matter that much to me that our stories matter to us but not to the universe: we are us, and not the universe, so that's fine. The scale of our intervention doesn't determine whether or not we're able to represent the world in such a way that we're able to predictably intervene within it. And I stick to my guns: a reliable capacity to repeat certain interventions is a suggestion that our stories sometimes really tell us something about what is real.

That, I suppose, is the problem with my ecosystem/tree metaphor: it's value-neutral about the organisms within it, just positive that diversity is an important goal. (Which, by the way, I'm not even sure can be said about "real" ecosystems.) I'm not value-neutral. There are bad and good stories, and true and untrue ones (these are not necessarily the same: it's an XY grid, maybe). One of the limit conditions of stories in that ecosystem ought to be that they know what they are, and for whom they are sustenance--but part of that is knowing whether and what kind of truth they contain. The boundaries between journalism and fiction are often blurry, for example, but when someone actively purports to be offering one and knowingly is crafting the other, many legitimate problems arise. In some ways, this is why I object more rather than less to the Discovery Institute's version of intelligent design: it has the feel of parasitism about it, a deliberate attempt to pose as the kind of story it is not. It may be that other kinds of creation-evolution stories run into an incommensurability that leads them into an inevitable fight to the death, but at least that's a bit cleaner when the two stories are honest to themselves, know what kind of story they are.

Emergence as hypothesis-finder (story-maker?) Name: Timothy Burke (tburke1@swarthmore.edu) Date: 09/22/2005 16:28 Link to this Comment: 16273

Kind of another twist on all this. I mentioned above that part of being "humble" about our stories involves knowing that one of the fundamental preconditions of our intelligence is the capacity to identify and describe patterns, to make the world have meaning.

I keep thinking that what we sometimes deeply desire is an alienating device, a black box, a thing or automaton, that will take our initial perceptions of patterns and meaning, perform a transformation upon them in some space veiled to us, and give them back to us. A kind of story-telling alchemy. Our disciplinary methods function that way sometimes; our institutions function that way sometimes. Because we mistrust our ability to make the universe conform to our capacity to make it meaningful, our need to interpret, we want a check-and-balance, or if you're more cynical, the ability to plausibly deny that the truth we arrive at is the truth we were looking for all along.

Well, the single most interesting thing I've seen said about "emergence" and similar issues in the literature on "artificial society modeling" is that emergent simulations of societies aren't something which shows us a "true picture" of human society, or allows us to experimentally test our models. It's that such simulations are a hypothesis-making machine, a black box that can churn out a map of the possibility space of explanation (of stories!) about a given social situation. That we can use that to find the explanations or hypotheses that readily come to our minds, but maybe also some that never occur to us. Naturally we run into a problem if those explanations take a form that we simply don't understand, so it has to sty within our bounds: the simulation is still a trick, a peekaboo that we play with ourselves. Useful all the same. I'm not sure this directly applies to ID/evolution, but it might.

the problem with relative 'truth' Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/25/2005 12:14 Link to this Comment: 16283

we have to go further: for some stories...relative "truth"...is relevant

Can we go even further? "Relative 'truth'" is to me a really confused and confusing, miguided and misguiding concept.

The BMC Philosophy Department is sponsoring a series of visits by Anthony Appiah, and (in connection w/ his seminars) the Graduate Idea Forum is beginning to read his new book, The Ethics of Identity, which uses John Stuart Mill as a traveling companion to think--very deliberatively and carefully--through the relationship between individual liberty and identity politics. Curled up with that book this weekend, I found myself digging my way back into Tim's useful metaphor of the ecosystem :

"Human nature is...a tree, which requires to grow...according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing"....Mill's...metaphor makes the constraints apparent: a tree, whatever the circumstances, does not become a legume, a vine, or a cow.

But this is only half the story. The rest is that,

for it to make sense, it must be an identity constructed in response to facts outside oneself, things that are beyond one's own choices...To create a life is to create a life out of the materials that history has given you....our self-construction is...a creative response to our capacities and our circumstances......we are collectively created...

What seems really important to me here is both the refusal to oppose the individual to the collective (the insistence that we are made relationally, out of our interactions with others), AND the insistence that we not confuse/conflate the first- and third-person standpoints (Appiah actually takes this move from Kant, who quite famously distinguished between the first, in which we conceive ourselves as causes, and the third, in which we contemplate our actions as effects). What's helpful here is recognizing that each of these distinct purposes is just a point of view, neither more "real" or "true" than the other: the logic of structure (which yields causes for action) and the logic of agency (which yields reasons for action) belong to two distinct standpoints; when we conceive ourselves as practical we are simply selecting the latter. But to call this "truth"--even "'relative' truth"--is to hide the action of choice and badly confuse the two standpoints. For instance...

the charming fairy tale of "once upon a time," that the universe...didn't care and... went on changing without being much affected by humans or their squabbles is of course not "true." We know, from what we have seen of the result of our misguided attempts to 'control' nature in New Orleans, to take only the most recent and awful example, that our squabbling stories and our stubborns actions are affecting the universe (or @ least the shape of one of its fragile coasts...)

Theory of a mutidimentional living conscious universe Name: Peter Broderson (peterbroderson@hotmail.com) Date: 09/26/2005 23:40 Link to this Comment: 16326

FROM: Peter W. Broderson, Peterbroderson@hotmail.com,
3865 Imaginary Rd. Tallahassee, Fl. 32309 (850-877-5737)

Subject: We all recognize how thought can manipulate matter and energy yet this force is not taken into account as one of the forces at work in our physical universe.


First Hypothesis:
Negative Entropy and implications for a living-conscious Universe

Any Force that challenges the theory of increasing Entropy
Needs to be seriously considered by modern science.

Current physics theory is based on the concept of entropy, a measure of disorder. Positive-entropy is an acceleration of disorder and is seen as the inevitable fate of energy and matter, leading to chaos. Present physics has not yet accepted, or recognized negative-entropy, any force that seems to increase order.

The field of physics recognizes gravity as a natural force, yet gravity cannot be seen or measured except by how other physical bodies react in its presence.

There is at least one other natural force that as yet cannot be seen or measured; one we might call “ life-consciousness.” This force creates infinite new possibilities for both matter and energy. In physics, as positive-entropy is a measure of disorder, life-consciousness or negative-entropy, is a measure of order.

Ever since modern science separated physics from biology, the field of physic has not recognized biology or life-consciousness as a force in understanding our physical Universe. Still, the unacknowledged force in the theory {E=MC2} must be life-consciousness which can conceive and apply this equation to our physical world.

By understanding and accepting negative entropy in physics, we see life-consciousness, biology, creating new and ever more complex order. It has changed the physical condition of our planet with plants and animals. Earth was not originally an oxygen-based atmosphere, but earlier forms of life created the oxygen. So the force of biology, life-consciousness, is not dependent on oxygen or carbon to exist. The term 'organism' refers to organized matter; hence the name denotes the power of biology, life-consciousness, to create order.



Evolution as a theory suggests a conscious force affecting matter and energy. DNA and gene research shows this power to increase the complexity and adaptability of life forms over time and conditions as needed. Humans first conceive, and then create, roads, fields, mines, cities, arts and music. The ability of Mankind to create such a complex social order as modern civilization proves that there is negative entropy at work creating order.

The existence of biology, life, and consciousness, or negative-entropy, challenges the dominance of positive-entropy and challenges current theories in the field of physics about the Universe and how it works.

Modern Physics indicates that about 90% of the Universe cannot be observed. They are calling it dark energy or dark matter. If this is a living universe, negative entropy or the force of life and consciousness may well turn out to be the missing 90%. A complete theory of physics must explore the possibility of the universe filled with negative entropy, this life-consciousness force, and the role it could be playing in an evolving living-conscious universe.




FROM: Peter W. Broderson, Peterbroderson@hotmail.com,
3865 Imaginary Rd. Tallahassee, Fl. 32309 (850-877-5737)

Second Hypothesis: The Living Universe

Accepting the force life-consciousness as negative entropy


Modern physics has put forth the concept of a ten dimensional string theory. This string theory may actually represent one living-conscious Universe, containing multiple levels of life-consciousness.

The Jewish, Christian, and Moslem religions, all refer to God as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, or all and everything, therefore God is both the creation and the creator. In accepting a living-conscious universe, there is no separation.

Modern science is based on the principle that the laws of physics are the same on earth as they are throughout the Universe. The microcosm is the representation of the macrocosm; or as in the Christian prayer,
“On Earth as it is in Heaven.”

From our position as humans, the view to the tenth power larger and to the tenth power smaller is indeed looking far into the known universe in either direction. Each of these powers or dimensions might constitutes
Individual life-consciousness: the clusters of galaxies, the individual galaxies, the star clusters and nebulae, individual stars and planets, down to life forms on earth including cells, molecules, down to particles and waves.
Each level consists of an individual consciousness, living one within the other, within the One, in a great Chain of Being.

Modern medicine has recognized that our choice in the consumption of food and the quality of air we breathe affects our health. It has also recognized that the power of thoughts in situations of stress or happiness can affect the well being of internal organs. We literally have the ability to affect the micro-lives within us.

The ability to focus consciousness or concentration helps create our conditions in life. The more our attention is focused on problems or goals, the better chance the desired results will manifest. Focusing concentration acts like a magnet, attracting conditions, people, and physical events. Our attitude even seems to affect time: when we are happy time goes fast, while sad, lonely, or bored, time seems to pass slowly.

The existence of life-consciousness or negative-entropy challenges the dominance of positive-entropy, and challenges the current theories in the field of physics about the Universe and how it works.

Modern Physics indicates that about 90% of the Universe cannot be observed. They are calling it dark energy or dark matter. If this is a living universe, negative entropy or the force of life-consciousness may well turn out to be the missing 90%. A complete theory of physics must explore the possibility of the universe filled with negative entropy, this life-consciousness force, and the role it could be playing in an evolving living-conscious universe.

intelligent design Name: ken kendall () Date: 09/30/2005 12:40 Link to this Comment: 16392

Does anyone reading this section truly believe that something intelligent would design a life form this complicated.

the complications of intelligence (and identity--and ethics?) Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 10/01/2005 10:50 Link to this Comment: 16404

Funny. Actually? Seems to me that intelligence=complexification.

For instance, Anthony Appiah describes The Ethics of Identity as being constructed in response to facts outside oneself, things that are beyond one's own choice....To create a life is to create a life out of the materials that history has given you. Our self-construction is a creative response to our capacities and our circumstances.

In that context: a very striking intersection took place this week (question is: is it an irreconcilable opposition?) between claims being made in two different sites on Serendip: the proposal, in a discussion about The Emergence of Emergency, that a useful response to Katrina might have been building a firewall, one that assures the safety of the whole by not allowing the contamination of a part to s-p-r-e-a-d...

...and the (directly counter?) suggestion, in the forum for Stories of Teaching and Learning, that what we really need to do is not put on armor, but take off armor, and to open ourselves to others, which brings with it the possibility of being hurt (and changed) (and overwhelmed).

My own angle on this--which is really a question about the defensiveness of both of these postures--is informed by my current reading about Buddhism and psychoanalysis, Thoughts without a Thinker, in which Mark Epstein opposes "a clinging to what comes to be a unhealthy confluence and a pulling back from, or estrangement from, healthy confluence." The first gesture doesn't allow others their "otherness," but the second is its shadow-side, engaged in protecting the self (falsely imagined as autonomous).

Ethics, indeed.

What kind of line? Name: Ken Whang () Date: 10/05/2005 08:01 Link to this Comment: 16449

I can't join this morning's live discussion, but I thought writing in might be the next best thing to being there (was that an advertising slogan or something?)

To follow from Anne's comments a few weeks ago on the origins of "line in the sand," I'm interested in exploring the issue of what kinds of lines we're comfortable with and what kinds of lines we need.

In the discussion thus far, at least 2 types of lines have come up, lines of demarcation and lines of discourse, aka boundaries and paths. On the "boundaries" side, consider Rush Holt's piece invoking Pauli's "it's not even wrong" to describe theories that are fundamentally untestable. On the "paths" side, is there a way to introduce concepts like evolution and falsifiability in ways that are less belittling, and that build on people's naive notions?

response and update Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 10/05/2005 15:16 Link to this Comment: 16453

Yep, I think there are ways to handle both falsifiability and evolution in ways that encourage rather than discourage engagement. See, eg, Evolution (and revolution?).

See also notes for a talk in which I reflect on the original essay and responses to it here. Its mostly aimed at developing methodologies for evaluating things in the absence of terms like "truth" or "reality", but the motivation is very much to avoid "belittling" and the motivation/methodological forms lead directly into thoughts of how to teach differently. Thanks to all who have contributed to my continuing thinking about these matters.

enlarging the local Name: Anne dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 10/05/2005 15:56 Link to this Comment: 16455

what i'm interested in understanding better/knowing more about
(based on what i heard this morning)?

• isn't that a local claim, that "generativity" is the most valuable "use" of storytelling? and

  --if the usefulness of all stories is "local,"

  --and the work of science is aiming for "wider" applications of the tales we tell--

• what happens to "local" when we "enlarge" the local"?

• do science's stories then/thus "trump" stories that cover "less broad" swaths of material?

Only one designer?? Name: () Date: 10/10/2005 22:21 Link to this Comment: 16505

As a practising Hindu and Biology professor I will personally enjoy toying with these unintelligent nuts who push ID by claiming that there is not one god...er designer, but many designers. After all if this science, then my theory would have to be disproved. But the odds are in my favor for many designers are better than one.

Spoof website Name: () Date: 10/11/2005 13:00 Link to this Comment: 16508

The following may be of interest :

http://www.mr-shouty-trousers.com/Less-Intelligent-Design

a new voice Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 10/13/2005 09:47 Link to this Comment: 16509

A useful new commentary providing some relevant historical context by Jim Wright, an archeologist. "We need to remember that the theory of evolution did not come about because anyone was trying to disprove the existence of God, but rather because everyone was trying to reconcile the creation account in the Bible with the evidence before their eyes" See Evolution and Human Antiquity.

If this is science . . . Name: Bearcat (bearcatstan@yahoo.com) Date: 10/16/2005 21:26 Link to this Comment: 16516

I think it is more correct to contend that if this is science your theory would have to be proven.

drawing the line @ tautology Name: Anne Dalke (adalke@brynmawr.edu) Date: 10/19/2005 18:47 Link to this Comment: 16551

Karen, you said this morning that you didn't understand what it meant to say "to call this 'truth' -- even 'relative' truth' -- is to hide the action of choice". Since that was me speaking (and since you didn't get an answer to your question), I'll presume to answer it here. What I meant was that we make choices to value certain stories, based on our core values, and to call a story the "truth," or even "relatively truthful," is to cover up the choice and the valuation. (This accords, of course, w/ the argument Paul was making today, that all stories express an authorial point of view.)

I found that argument quite convincing, along with its correlary, that science stories are useful because generative, and to be judged on the basis of their generativity. But I also found that argument--in this context--a particularly striking drawing of a line in the sand (more, actually: building of a wall...), a line which (I think) makes the argument tautological: if we value science because it creates the most generative stories, then we value the most generative stories. But on the other side of that line, outside that fort, there are other contexts, other worlds.

This summer, I heard a talk that juxtaposed three world views and their core values (a core value being "that which needs no further explanation"):

• the premodern, which values order
• the modern, which values efficiency, and
• the postmodern, which values diversity.

There are trade-offs in each view (in the modern world, for example, where science reigns, there exist difficulties in dealing with the nonquantifiable: "if it is not sense data, or derivable from that," then it is "non-sense," not real).

A concrete example:
Among a group of students returning from a semester abroad,

• a "premodernist" might say, Now I understand how good we have it here, how right we are
• a "modernist" might say, Since we have to compete in a world economy, it's useful to understand how others live
• a "postmodernist" might say, In order for all of us to survive--even to flourish--we need to understand how all the others (in the global network of interdependence in which we are all enmeshed) think and feel.

So science, as Paul presents it, is expressive of one particular, particularly modern, particularly "useful" set of values--in a context that elevates precisely that "usefulness" above other values. Isn't that tautological, if it (he?) doesn't feel the need to justify that value, with reference to survival, or any other value ?

Motives Name: Keith Rex (biochemrex@yahoo.com.au) Date: 10/21/2005 02:30 Link to this Comment: 16574

Those behind the Intelligent Design movement have declared that they see this as a wedge to split up the forces of secualism. so the question of evolution and intelligent design is being compatible is not valid. One has to choose as Richard Dawkins says. You cannot have both intelligent design and evolution. They are in mjutual contradiction. Keith

Name: () Date: 10/21/2005 11:18 Link to this Comment: 16578

Re: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/week7.html

The inverted retina that causes the blind spot happens in all vertibrates. Evolu tionists claim this as proof of evolution, since a \'designer\' or \'creator\' w ouldn\'t have made such a \'mistake\'. In fact, our eyes being inverted like tha t allow for tons of other features - like cooling for the heat made from focused light, and like protection, and nutrition from some of the pigments that cover the retina.

The point is - it\'s really not a good idea to listen to evolutionists about any thing. They often have interesting and true facts, but that ALWAYS have an agenda as well.

For example, they defent their \'theory\' by saying gravity is also a theory. Ac tually, it isn\'t. It\'s Newton\'s LAW of gravity. It IS NOT, however, Darwin\'s LAW of evolution, but his theory.

Sorry to be off topic, but this blind spot business is often held up as \'proof\ ' of evolution. It\'s interesting how the eye works, but it really has nothing t o do with evolution at all, and I wanted to point that out.

GenghisKhan Name: () Date: 10/27/2005 06:21 Link to this Comment: 16653

The late-great sci-fi writer Douglas Adams wrote that all religions probably started from a sense of wonder about the world, a bit like a newly-conscious puddle of water thinking, "Hey, this hole in the ground fits me so perfectly, it must have been created especially for me." Intelligent Design only a step away from this. Suppose that over time our puddle learns some more about his environment, but he still cannot explain the weather and different phases of matter. So he says, "Ah, but all that science stuff still can't explain why water falls from the sky. And those snowflake thingys look much too complicated to occur naturally. Logically, my hole and I must have been created by an intelligent entity." Theology? Sure. Religious conjecture? No problem. But this is hardly science!

GhengisKhan Name: () Date: 10/27/2005 06:24 Link to this Comment: 16654

To reply to (), the blind spot IS an interesting part of the debate, since it both helps to explain how the eye developed as well as highlighting an imperfection in the human body that, were it "designed", should not have been included.

Automobile Evolution Name: Ed N. () Date: 11/03/2005 08:23 Link to this Comment: 16790

In a future society where advanced automobiles are the dominant 'life form', the theory of evolution has taken a path similar to ours.

http://home.earthlink.net/~autoevolution

An amazing lack of... Name: Barbarian () Date: 11/07/2005 19:21 Link to this Comment: 16866

...cited evidence.

In any question about the physical universe, evidence is what counts. Otherwise, it's just a contest as to who is the most imaginative storyteller.

Which isn't a bad thing, mind you. It's just not science.

Some kids Name: Dannielle and Nadine (billabongbabe4333@hotmail.com) Date: 11/14/2005 17:42 Link to this Comment: 16984

hello we are some kids in year 5/6 and we would like some more info on what this is all about. could you send some to Loftus st Yarralumla A.C.T 2600 5/6 adress it to Dannielle and Nadine

Thank you very much,
Dannielle Kevill and Nadine Pretorius

IDio - The GOD of Intelligent Design Name: Head IDiot (thankidio@godinabox.com) Date: 11/15/2005 01:20 Link to this Comment: 16991

OPEN EPISTLE TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD
November 8th, 2005
I write with joy and thanks in my heart for your bold decision to teach Kansas schoolchildren of The Intelligent Design GOD IDio. Finally, The Church of The Intelligent Designer needs no longer cower behind a façade of science.

Now that your establishment of IDio has rendered the Constitution's first amendment inoperative, we can proudly proclaim in every Kansas classroom, "There is but one Intelligent Designer and His Name is IDio!" Thanks be to the taxpayers of Kansas for donating their money to proselytize for His church. May IDio mutate you all intelligently.

Finally, we see an end to the dark decades of awkward debates, of tedious aping of scientific method, of endless self-publication to mesmerize the faithful. No more need we pay our devout 'scientists' to appear in court, only to be insulted by the IDioless forces of logic. Never again must we shrug uneasily and mumble, "Umdon'tknowbutit'snotagod," when Darwinists ask the identity of the Intelligent Designer.

Spread the Word of IDio: http://www.godinabox.com

What if man had nothing to do with apes? Name: Simone Nencetti (snencetti@libero.it) Date: 11/17/2005 10:53 Link to this Comment: 17044

Brain is the most difficult thing to change over evolution. According to science, in less than 2 millions years man's brain has not only doubled its size, but it has also made a quality change by mainly increasing its cortex, isn't that hard to believe? Scientists tried to explain this miracolous change by theories based on special diets, language, social interactings and behaviors, recently they even gave account for it to a new discovered growth gene. They also keep on saying that human brain's growth cannot be compared to that of any other ape or mamal, why do they always forget the cetacea? And why they say the chimpanze are our closest relatives? What if mankind were closer to dolphin and killerwhales? Their brains are more similar to humans then apes. External changes, even moving one's nose on its back as marine mamals did over the ages, it's far more easier than changing its brain. As Desmond Morris says in his book "The naked ape", the hair on man's back doesn't grow upwards, as for apes, but in a hydrodynamic way. I think that mankind comes from the same family of marine mamals, 50 or 60 millions years ago we all lived on earth, then dolphins and whales went to the sea and we stayed on the shores. That would also explain why dolphins and even killerwhales never harm man, often help people drowing or attacked by sharks and have that very special relationship with mankind. It would even explain the legends about giants and titans... I'm not a scientist, but I find it incredible that no scientist has never taken this hypothesis under consideration, always preferring apes as our closest evolution relatives, just because they look more similar to us. Please let me know if someone else has thought of it.

Re: What if man had nothing to do with apes? Name: Adam, Ph.D. student, Biologica () Date: 11/28/2005 19:41 Link to this Comment: 17204

Scientists base the statement that Pongidae (Great Apes) which include the Genus Pan (chimpanzees and banobos) are our closest relatives on genetic evidence. There are significantly fewer differences in the DNA of modern humans and that of chimps and other apes than between humans and any other group (including any member of the Order Cetacea which includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. The taxonomic (what things look like) and fossil evidence support the idea that we are closely related to the apes, but they are not the basis of the claim. There is also a lot of fossil, and taxonomic evidence that Cetacea are derived from quadruped (four-legged) land mammals, and that humans are derived from bipedal (2-legged ape-like) animals. There is no genetic, taxonomic, or fossil evidence to support your theory Simone, so it is not incredible that no reputible scientist has thought of it. Oh, and they are rare, but there have been Orca (Killer Whale) attacks on humans. Pilot Wales (in the same Order) also attack humans:
http://www.oceanfootage.com/stockfootage/Attack_People///?DVfSESSCKIE=3f11290d1ebd069c943c2e36f0d3f948eea73cd7 for footage.

dolphins attacks Name: adam, Ph.D. student, Biology () Date: 11/28/2005 19:59 Link to this Comment: 17205

oh, dolphin attacks on humans (though extreemly rare!) HAVE also occured. There is even a scientist at Duke who studies them. And humans, who are more closely related to each other than they are to any other animal, attack each other all the time. Other animals attack their own and closely related species all the time too. So attack frequencies are not a good argument for what is related to what.

http://www.fishingnj.org/artdolphagress.htm

Feedback on Article... Name: Wayne Ferguson (wayneferguson@juno.com) Date: 12/15/2005 17:31 Link to this Comment: 17410

This article has recently been posted to The Four Precepts Web Portal... Feedback appreciated!

Intelligent Design While it seems rather obvious that the objections raised by conservative Christian groups against the theory of evolution have less to do with scientific evidence than with what they perceive to be its moral and theological implications, their belief in intelligent design is not at all unreasonable. [More]

Breathtaking Inanity Spot On! ^_^ Name: Poster102 () Date: 12/21/2005 08:48 Link to this Comment: 17456

Intelligent Design is like Scientology...flimsy on the outside and flimsy on the inside...and flimsy is putting it nicely..

Science Name: Dr. Whiting Wicker (whitingwicker@hotmail.com) Date: 12/21/2005 13:34 Link to this Comment: 17458

I define evolution as unintelligent design. If evolution and intelligent design are antithetical, then evolution and unintelligent design appear to fit together nicely. I say this as, although I love science, I know that science cannot prove everything. For example, how does one scientifically test the hypothesis "There is an omnipresent God that created everything"? Where's the scientific control? How does science test the hypothesis "Science can prove everything" without resorting to an obvious paradox? I would find it conducive to the educational and learning process if more scientists would admit that science is a subset of research, not necessarily the other way round. For example, qualitative research is, at times, non-scientific, yet much worthwhile information can be gleaned from such research. And yes, I believe in separation of Church and State. But I don't believe that anyone has proven that evolution is true. Since when in statistical hypothesis testing does one assert that the null or alternate hypotheses are or are not true? There is only evidence that TENDS to support the null hypothesis, or there isn't. One may surmise that a null hypothesis is true, but actually proving it is true using sampling (whether sampling fossils or whatnot), no way.

Name: LILA KASHI (Lila@lkashi.com) Date: 01/04/2006 17:15 Link to this Comment: 17542

DOES ANYBODY THINK THAT EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN EQUAL TIME IN A SCIENCE CLASSROOM? PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY OR WHY NOT. I AM DOING THIS FOR AN ENGLISH PAPER AND I AM VERY CONFUSED!

ID and evolution in a science classroom Name: LILA KASHI (Lila@lkashi.com) Date: 01/04/2006 17:17 Link to this Comment: 17544

DOES ANYBODY THINK THAT EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN EQUAL TIME IN A SCIENCE CLASSROOM? PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY OR WHY NOT. I AM DOING THIS FOR AN ENGLISH PAPER AND I AM VERY CONFUSED!

lila k Name: () Date: 01/09/2006 17:16 Link to this Comment: 17577

do your own homework lila. that sound's like you just cut and pasted the question right out of your assignment.

what makes a world? Name: () Date: 01/11/2006 13:49 Link to this Comment: 17594

I understand that science believes that the universe consists of matter and energy, which are, in a sense, interchangeable.

I'm also told that the universe contains spirit.

I've never ubnderstood whether spirit is a form or matter, of energy, of both, or neither.

Is spirit a third component of the universe?

ID Name: lika k () Date: 01/11/2006 13:52 Link to this Comment: 17595

Where did you get the idea that intelligent design is "science"?

Intelligent Design Name: Bill (wselman@swbell.net) Date: 01/24/2006 12:39 Link to this Comment: 17770

Regarding "intelligent design", what is it we really know about our own reality? Not much! Some thoughts:

1. Look out at the universe. Notice any other habitat which can support humans? The earth seems to be unique within our range of perception. Sure, we can estimate the infinite possibilities of other earths located precisely at certain distances from other suns, but those are only estimations.

2. If you were creating a habitat for fish, you would create a lake, river or acquarium habitats which have water; if you were to create a habitat for humans, you would create an "earth", a biosphere, with air. See any "planets" around with "air"?

3. From this thought alone, we could argue that the existence of earth & humans, in this "airless" universe all around us suggests intelligent design.

4. With regard to our reality, imagine having no eyes, no sight! How would we know, sitting in a room, that there were twenty people around us staring at us? The only way we could detect them is through our four other canonical senses (taste, touch, smell and hearing).

5. Consider that we can only detect that portion of the world around us which our five canonical senses can detect. Whatever other reality is around us we cannot detect. There may be ghosts, angels, etc. all around us which our five senses cannot detect.

6. ESP i.e. estra sensory perception, includes clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience precognition, retrocognition, second sight, aura reading, telepathy, medium hood, seancing, spirit walking and astral projection.

7. Psychic's claim that evidence of ESP exists when you hear a telephone ring and know who is is, when you know what someone is about to say something and it turns out to be correct, when you get a sudden urge to go somewhere or do something and when you do that thing, it turns out to be the right thing that you should have done, you can understand someone's true inner feelings, that you feel there is a presence behind the scene helping you, when something in your life either good or bad instills in you a higher purpose, etc.

8. Mainstream scientists argue that a reproducible ESP phenomenon has never been discovered, so any arguments relying on ESP are unreliable, but that doesn't prove the lack of ESP phenomenon or the presence of a reality all around us which we cannot detect through our five senses.

9. Evolution appear to us to be the process by which everything on the earth has evolved over time. It does not answer the question of how did it all start? It does not rule out that everything we think we know and sense is an illusion?

10. What we think we know, is that throughout history, men and women have believed they knew something about the world & later it turned out to be false. Why is this time period any different?

11. Evolution is kinda like a study in how to build a house. We could say, how would one create a human. Build a habitat, put something to create life in the habitat, let it evolve into millions of life forms, the strongest of which will survive. Ok, so that happened. But that avoids the questions of how everything got started and what kind of reality do we now exist in.

12. We are told that our universe arose from a singularity....something like an acorn that exploded 14 billion years ago and spread out creating galaxies, solar systems i.e. everything we can sense plus 95% of something else we cannot sense, called hidden matter. So, where is this hidden matter? Why can't we detect it? If we can't detect 95% of the world around us, how can we ever say we can figure out our own reality. Also, who created the acorn, or what created the acorn? How do we answer the question, which came first, the chicken or the egg, the singularity or our universe?

13. Ever considered what existed before the 14 billion years ago, when the acorn exploded? Imagine that the last 14 billion years is a mere 1 second in time itself?

14. Imagine that our universe is contained within a bubble floating somewhere and there are billions of other universes all around us. Imagine that our bubble's size is about the size of an electron flying around a nucleus of an atom. How do we know anything?

15. Imagine we are the product of a computer program? If so, our ability to understand the reality around us is determined by our program. How do we escape the program and extend our knowledge beyond?

16. Actually, the fact that we appear to be so limited in our ability to perceive our own reality suggests that there may be intelligent design i.e. a greater intelligent.

16. What seems silly to me is for any of us to treat "evolution" as the final answer. It expands our knowledge. But it doesn't answer the important questions about our reality.

Enought for now.

Thinking about intelligent design(what Quran says?) Name: Emre (emre_1974tr@yahoo.com) Date: 08/03/2006 20:24 Link to this Comment: 20119

Examples from Quran ...........

2. The Heifer (Al-Baqarah)

164-164. Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah Sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth;- (Here) indeed are Signs for a people that are wise.
***************************************

3. The Family Of Ìmrán (Al-Ìmrán)

190. Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day,- there are indeed Signs for men of understanding,-

191. Men who celebrate the praises of Allah, standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and contemplate the (wonders of) creation in the heavens and the earth, (with the thought): "Our Lord! Not for naught Hast Thou created (all) this! Glory to Thee! Give us salvation from the Chastisement of the Fire."
**********************************


45. Bowing the Knee (Al-Játhiya)

4. And in the creation of yourselves and the fact that animals are scattered (through the earth), are Signs for those of assured Faith.
**********************************************

88. The Overwhelming Event (Al-Gáshiya)

17. Do they not look at the Camels, how they are made?-

18. And at the Sky, how it is raised high?-

19. And at the Mountains, how they are fixed firm?-

20. And at the Earth, how it is spread out?


******************************************

67. The Dominion (Al-Mulk)

3. He Who created the seven heavens one above another: no want of proportion wilt thou see in the Creation of the Most Gracious. So turn thy vision again: seest thou any flaw?

4. Again turn thy vision a second time: (thy) vision will come back to thee dull and discomfited, in a state worn out.

*********************

7. The Heights (Al-Aráf)

185. Do they see nothing in the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and all that Allah hath created? (Do they not see) that it may well be that their terms is nigh drawing to an end? In what message after this will they then believe?

***************************

25. The Criterion (Al-Furqán)

49. That with it We may give life to a dead land, and slake the thirst of things We have created,- cattle and men in great numbers.

**********************************************

27. The Ants (An-Naml)

86. See they not that We have made the Night for them to rest in and the Day to give them light? Verily in this are Signs for any people that believe!

*******************************************************

54. The Moon (Al-Qamar)

49. Verily, all things have We created in proportion and measure.

***********************************************

56. The Inevitable Event (Al-Wáqiá)

57. It is We Who have created you: why will ye not witness the Truth?

**************************************************

95. The Fig (At-Tín)

4. We have indeed created man in the best of moulds,

************************************

78. The (Great) News (An-Nabaa)

7. And the mountains as pegs?

8. And created you in pairs,

9. And made your sleep for rest,

10. And made the night as a covering,

11. And made the day as a means of subsistence?

12. And (have We not) built over you the seven firmaments,

13. And placed (therein) a blazing lamp?

14. And do We not send down from the clouds water in abundance,

15. That We may produce therewith corn and vegetables,

16. And gardens of luxurious growth?

***************************

29. The Spider (Al-Ànkabüt)

19. See they not how Allah originates creation, then repeats it: truly that is easy for Allah.

20. Say: "Travel through the earth and see how Allah did originate creation; so will Allah produce a later creation: for Allah has power over all things.

************************************************

21. The Prophets (Al-Anbiyáa)

30. Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?

*************************************************

62. And ye certainly know already the first form of creation: why then do ye not take heed?

63. See ye the seed that ye sow in the ground?

64. Is it ye that cause it to grow, or are We the Cause?

65. Were it Our Will, We could make it broken orts, and ye would be left in wonderment,

66. (Saying), "We are indeed left with debts (for nothing):

67. "Indeed we are deprived"

68. See ye the water which ye drink?

69. Do ye bring it down (in rain) from the cloud or do We?

70. Were it Our Will, We could make it saltish (and unpalatable): then why do ye not give thanks?

71. See ye the Fire which ye kindle?

72. Is it ye who grow the tree which feeds the fire, or do We grow it?

73. We have made it a reminder and an article of comfort and convenience for the denizens of deserts.

74. Then glorify the name of thy Lord, the Supreme!

75. Furthermore I swear by the setting of the Stars,-

76. And that is indeed a mighty adjuration if ye but knew,-

******************************************************

30. The Romans (Ar-Rüm)

22. And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variations in your languages and your colors: verily in that are Signs for those who know.

*****************************

39. The Groups (Az-Zumar)

6. He created you (all) from a single person: then created, of like nature, his mate; and He sent down for you eight head of cattle in pairs: He creates you, in the wombs of your mothers, in stages, one after another, in three veils of darkness. Such is Allah, your Lord and Cherisher: to Him belongs (all) dominion. There is no god but He: then how are ye turned away (from your true Lord)?

******************************

40. The Believer (Al-Mümin)

57. Assuredly the creation of the heavens and the earth is a greater (matter) than the creation of men: Yet most men know not.

****************************************

52. The Mount (At-Tür)

35. Were they created of nothing, or were they themselves the creators?

**************************************

22. The Pilgrimage (Al-Hajj)

5. O mankind! if ye have a doubt about the Resurrection, (consider) that We created you out of dust, then out of sperm, then out of a leech-like clot, then out of a morsel of flesh, partly formed and partly unformed, in order that We may manifest (Our power) to you; and We cause whom We will to rest in the wombs for an appointed term, then do We bring you out as babes, then (foster you) that ye may reach your age of full strength; and some of you are called to die, and some are sent back to the feeblest old age, so that they know nothing after having known (much), and (further), thou seest the earth barren and lifeless, but when We pour down rain on it, it is stirred (to life), it swells, and it puts forth every kind of beautiful growth (in pairs).

***********************************************

10. Jonah (Yünus)

6. Verily, in the alternation of the night and the day, and in all that Allah hath created, in the heavens and the earth, are Signs for those who fear Him.
************************************************

51. The Winds that Scatter (Az-Záriyát)

49. And of every thing We have created pairs: that ye may reflect.

*****************************************

36. Yá-Sín

38. And the Sun runs unto a resting place: that is the decree of (Him), the Exalted in Might, the All-Knowing.

*****************************

29. The Spider (Al-Ànkabüt)

43. And such are the Parables We set forth for mankind, but only those understand them who have knowledge.

**********************************************

77. Those Sent Forth (Al-Mursalát)

8. Then when the stars become dim; (dies of stars-like black holes)

***************************************************

24. Light (An-Nür)

43. Seest thou not that Allah makes the clouds move gently, then joins them together, then makes them into a heap? - then wilt thou see rain issue forth from their midst. And He sends down from the sky mountain masses (of clouds) wherein is hail: He strikes therewith whom He pleases and He turns it away from whom He pleases, the vivid flash of its lightning well-nigh blinds the sight.

************************************************

Yasin

77. Doth not man see that it is We Who created him from sperm? Yet behold! he (stands forth) as an open adversary!

78. And he makes comparisons for Us, and forgets his own (origin and) Creation: he says, "Who can give life to (dry) bones and decomposed ones (at that)?"

79. Say, "He will give them life Who created them for the first time! For He fully knows all!-

80. "The same Who produces for you fire out of the green tree, when behold! ye kindle therewith (your own fires)!

81. "Is not He Who created the heavens and the earth able to create the like thereof?" - Yea, indeed! for He is the Creator Supreme, of skill and knowledge (infinite)!


*******************************************

ID / Evolution Name: B.T () Date: 08/08/2006 12:45 Link to this Comment: 20144

Unintelligent Design = a claim, a proposition based on religious beliefs.

Unintelligent Design is not a scientific theory, a scientific theory is based on experimental, testable data. ID is more like a trojan horse, a way or an ability for creationists to get religion into the public school forum. So one may argue, Ok show me the scientific data for evolution for darwin's grand theory, Charles hypothesis. Of course we can not experiment with the fossil record, but rather observe the fossils and their ages based on Carbon dating. More intriguing (current) scientific data has been experimentally shown through the "conserved" genetic sequences across species lines, along with studies in stickleback fish and of course the beloved Darwin's finches of the Galapagos and Daphne major. Peter and Rosemary Grant's experimental work and montoring of the Galapagos islands have provided solid, scientific data of evolution occuring at the present.

A concerned scientist

Evolution and the after-life Name: Marie (marielovesbeethoven@hotmail.com) Date: 08/13/2006 18:14 Link to this Comment: 20158

There is one element that I deem crucial to any discussion on the topic, but have never received an intelligible response from either side. Let me pose it as a question therefore and would welcome replies. How does evolution affect the afterlife? Is this question even relevant? I believe it is, for those of us who credit a future where our moral decisions affect a final outcome. You may be atheist or pagan and believe in an afterlife, so my question is aimed at all. I am interested in viewpoints first before I reveal my aim, but as I see it, this issue could be a stumbling block in church/state cases, and it may be discriminatory to teach only ONE viewpoint.

Name: GKG () Date: 01/31/2006 21:15 Link to this Comment: 17905

THIS IS MY FIRST VISIT TO SERENDIP. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW I GOT HERE. BUT I BELIEVE THAT EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. MANY OF THE DISCUSSIONS AND THOUGHTS I'VE SEEN HERE ARE THINGS I FREQUENTLY DWELL ON WHEN I AM ALONE. WELL REALLY EVEN WHEN I'M NOT ALONE, BUT I CAN PONDER DEEPER WHEN NOT AROUND OTHER PEOPLE. I CONSIDER MYSELF A VERY OPEN-MINDED PERSON AND INTELLIGENT IN MY OWN WAY, BUT I DON'T KNOW IF I UNDERSTAND HOW THE 'INTELLIGENT DESIGN' AND THE 'SCIENCE' COMPARISION IS WORTH IT. TO ME ALL OF THESE MIND-BODY QUESTIONS ON EVOLUTION, SPIRITS, INTUITION, PASSION FOR YOUR BELIEF'S...I FEEL THESE ARE ALL THINGS NOT TO BE COMPARED OR ARGUED OR DEBATED, BUT MERELY RECOGNIZED AS POSSIBILITIES, FOR IT IS MY REALITY. I NORMALLY WRITE MY THOUGHTS DAILY BUT I'VE NEVER SHARED IN A FORUM, SO IT'S HARD FOR ME TO SAY WHAT I REALLY MEAN. I KNOW WHAT I MEAN TO MYSELF, BUT I'M UNDERSTOOD BY FEW IN PHILOSOPHICAL CONVERSATION IN MY SURROUNDING ENVIRONMENT. I GUESS I JUST WANT TO SAY THAT I AGREE WITH MANY OF THE PREVIOUSLY LISTED THOUGHTS BY BILL ON THE LAST POSTED COMMENT. I FEEL THAT PEOPLE THAT DO NOT BELIEVE IN FURTHER EXPLORATION, ESP, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, THE EXISTENCE OF MENTAL DISORDERS, THE BELIEF IN AN OVERLAPPING OF SCIENCE AND WHAT IS (SEEN AND UNSEEN), AND OTHER PHENOMENA ARE NOT NECESSARILY IGNORANT, BUT MAYBE THEY JUST AREN'T ABLE TO USE THE SAME AREAS OF THE BRAIN. OR MAYBE THEIR BELIEF'S WERE INSTILLED AT A YOUNG AGE AND FEAR KEEPS THEM FROM EVEN GOING TO THAT PLACE OF THOUGHT THAT I LIVE IN. MAYBE IT'S IN THE STARS FOR THESE PEOPLE TO NOT EXPERIENCE THE SAME THINGS, OR HAVE INTUITION OR HAVE A CONSCIOUS, OR HAVE FAITH, OR TO EVEN CARE TO KNOW IF THERE IS MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE. NE-WHO, I'M JUST HAPPY TO SHARE MY TWO CENTS.

Evolution should be taught Name: (jfdude@gmail.com) Date: 02/05/2006 21:59 Link to this Comment: 17979

I am a stauch believer that evolution should be taught in science class. It is a long accepted theory with tangible proof and solid evidence, unlike ID which is based on guesswork and faith. I am not against the belief of ID because I feel that people should have the freedom to choose there courses and values. Everyone should be allowed to believe in what they select. However, teaching the idea is ID should not be allowed in school. In the Bill of Rights, we have the right to freely practice whatever religion we choose and we also have the separation of church and state. ID violates both of these rights. ID clearly based from a religion standpoint that should be not allowed to be publically taught from our taxes. However, evolution can must be taught for it is the accepted truth among scientists. We have been free for more than 200 hundred years and spent over 10000000 lives guarding our sacred freedom. We cannot let a idea destroy our basis of our country; the Bill of Rights. It is time we stop teaching ID!

ID Name: () Date: 02/13/2006 13:55 Link to this Comment: 18099

"Actually, the fact that we appear to be so limited in our ability to perceive our own reality suggests that there may be intelligent design i.e. a greater intelligent."

1) This statement seems to me an illogical leap. Our own limitations do not prove that there is any entity with fewer limitations.

2. What is "design"? It seems to me that the idea of pattern is inherent in the idea of design. We look at our anthropomorphic world and see that patterns are often, if not always, the outcome of what we produce or what is produced by other living creatures, e.g. bees and beavers. Thus, we reason that ALL patterns MUST have been produced. However, it is also possible that some patterns are random, not produced by "living" creatures.

The fact that there is design (or pattern) doesn not prove that there has been as designer. Rather, it identifies a perception of pattern. Period.

The proper time and place Name: Kimberley Knudson (kknudson@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/14/2006 13:34 Link to this Comment: 18115

My father once worked with a man who not only believed in creationism, but also believed that Adam and Eve were the first human beings and that the bones of dinosaurs were actually planted in the ground by Satan to test one's faith in God. Both he and my father worked in a government lab and both produced and published interesting new research in their respective fields. My father however is a firm believer in evolution and that all the creatures on this planet are the product of natural selection.

Both men have done solid research, both have gone through the rigors of Ph.D. programs and both have at some time in their lives come into contact with the ideas presented in creationism, intelligent design, and evolution. Yet neither came up with the same conclusion about the origins of life.

The concept of choice and making conclusions for myself is something that I hold sacred. I believe that everyone should have the option to choose his or her own beliefs. Yet the question remains where should one learn these beliefs? The fact is that the education system in this country is strained for recourses. The scarcest resource of all is time. There simply are not enough hours in the school year to fully cover all the things that ought to be covered so some things must get left out.

As for what to include in science classes, I believe the greater scientific community should dictate what to teach. Though there are some exceptions, my father's coworker being one of them, most scientists believe evolution via natural selection is the best explanation for why living things are the way they are. But students should be informed that alternative explanations exist and they should be informed where to find information on those explanations (i.e. the library). Students should only be tested on evolution in the science class. They are free to believe or not believe in evolution but they should know the principles behind it so that they may be well versed in how the general scientific community explains our origins.

Not necessarily Science vs. Religion Name: Joanna Scott () Date: 02/14/2006 14:48 Link to this Comment: 18116

I agree with a lot in Kimberly's post above, and with the comment made in class that religion and science need not be mutually exclusive. I think that part of what makes the debate so volatile is the sense that a person's religious beliefs are somehow reflective of 'intelligence'. I have heard people say, "no one in their right mind could argue against evolution" and that people who believe in intelligent design are "wacko". These types of comments are counterproductive. We need to recognize that that many successful and well-educated people believe in a higher power. It also seems that among people who subscribe to an evolutionary story as put forth by science, there is a spectrum of beliefs or acceptance of the traditional story. I personally believe in what is called "Theistic Evolution", or that the biological process of evolution is ultimately guided by a higher power. This is just one example of how a person's understanding of evolution can combine both the spiritual and the scientific.

The question remains, of course, what should teachers and school administration do? Moreover, what do states do in terms of regulating what is taught and how? I think it would be dangerous to allow parents to dictate what is taught in school, but they counter this argument by saying it's their child and most likely their tax money involved. I almost see some parallels between the debate as to whether or not to teach sex education in public schools; it becomes an argument about 'morality' and again, the role of schools in a child's overall development.

I think ultimately, and this echoes a bit of what Kimberly said, that we should be teaching the science of evolution but allowing individual choice--give students the information and allow them to decide how that fits with their set of observations.

Name: Elena () Date: 02/14/2006 19:01 Link to this Comment: 18119

I agree with much that has been said so far so I will try and state some other thoughts. Intelligent Design is an interesting idea in comparison to evolution. We spoke about looking at the scientific process in the manner of a summary of observations. Evolution is supported by a tremendous summary of observations, but one can also say, "I see many patterns, I see that organisms and the ecosystems around us function with harmony, with precise mehcanisms that allow them to do so. I recognize the chance of life at all coming about to begin with is by a very slim chance". While many probably won't claim that they see or have the experience of knowing directly that God or any other higher power created the world, this summary of observations is not invalid either. So in that sense the two views are equally valid, although evolution appears to have more variety and volume of observations supporting it. I suppose though that I am still attached to the classical way of evaluating the world, through scientific experimentation and the fact that if one cannot produce a falsifiable hypothesis, it is not scientifically valid. In this sense ID is simply not science. It's possible one could try to produce such hypotheses, but the fact that ID proponents don't seem too motivated to do so really just makes it sound like they're just trying to oppose evolution with Abrahamic values. Any way I look at it, it really is just belief. Belief is not what science is based upon. I would support looking at evolution critically; it should not just be accepted either. Look at the concept of Punctuated Equilibrium, which challenged certain aspects of the theory. It would be a great exercise in schools to scrunitnize the paradigms of science, understand why they hold up. ID must be subjected to the same thing. I think more than anything that is what must be preserved in schools: teaching to think critically about any and everything.

Who's Intelligent Design? Name: (elipkin@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/14/2006 22:33 Link to this Comment: 18121

The biggest problem I have with the current debate is the fact that all the people who want to teach "intelligent design" MEAN that they want to teach creationism, but they don't say it. As far as I can figure, the minute you take the "god" out of intelligent design, those who now are the first to support it will be the first to object to it. There are many "alternative" forms of intelligent design: the world was created by a sentient, living arm so that it could create the perfect host (Arm of Kannon, all life was made possible by a race of beings that travel the galaxy making planets and all life will eventually be destroyed by a being known as Jenova, or bishounen son (Final Fantasy VII), life in the galaxy is all an imperfect representation of an older, extinct race (Star Trek; The Next Generation), we are all the creation of his Noodlieness, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and I'm sure the list goes on. Now, I ask those who want "intelligent design" taught in schools, "Do you REALLY want to imply to the kids that we were created by some dessicated arm in it's search for a host?"

Name: doug m (doug.marks@gmail.com) Date: 02/15/2006 02:23 Link to this Comment: 18124

I agree that teaching creationism and intelligent design is incredibly problematic as the basis for Intelligent design is in belief and our society believes many things. In a country like Saudi Arabia, where religion is uniform and deeply integrated into education and governemnt, creationism is more conceivable. I think the motivation for this debate is in many ways much more important and meaninful in terms of understanding future science policy issues, then the resolution of it. We discussed briefly how Authority plays a unique role in science knowledge and teachings as Science is often associated with truth instead of continued learning. I think that Science and religion have always had a very unique relationship in that authority relationships seem to come to a crux. Moral, Familial, Personal and Religious authorities somehow influence a lot of the way people live, and Science is often viewed as an authority which can somehow replace the rest of them. I think a stigma is associated with science, that if it is not controlled it will go rampant and ultimately hurt everyone. We see this idea joked about in movies, but we see it especially evident in the medical community. The idea that someone can beat the odds and outsurvive doctors' predictions (science), is extraordinarily prevalent. Science is assumed by many to be a truth which can only be outweighed and overpowered by the belief in a supernatural which disobeys it Maybe this is where part of the debate stems from as now science is providing answers (evolution) for questions which for forever have only been able to be answered through supernatural.

ID vs. Evolution Name: kate (kdriscol@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2006 09:17 Link to this Comment: 18126

I think that people should have the right to believe in whatever they want to believe. If one wants to believe in evolution, Intelligent Design, or the flying spaghetti monster, one should be able to. However, it is important to understand the difference between beliefs and science. As we discussed in the previous class, science is a commitment to a “summary of observations” and the creation of stories based upon these observations. While Intelligent Design does seem to have the “creation of a story” aspect covered, it seems to be lacking the summary of observations to support these stories. Faith alone in the notion that a higher being controls the fate of the universe is not enough. By no means do I think that evolution is the one and only “Truth” as there are no “Truths” in science. However, there are a large number of observations and stories that support the theory of evolution, which is lacking for the ID theory. So in sum, if proponents of the ID theory are able to make observations about the presence of a higher being controlling the universe, I would certainlly consider it is a valid scientific theory. Until then, I just can't seem to accept it as something that should be studied in science class.

Name: () Date: 02/15/2006 10:37 Link to this Comment: 18128

One of my problems with Intelligent Design is that it presupposes that everyone is on the same page as far as the supernatural entity goes. I have no qualms with people who believe in God or a variety of gods or spirits or what have you. However, as far as I am aware, Intelligent Design isn't the teaching of the many possible stories of how people and the world came into being. It tends to be the teaching of one creation myth. Because of this, I do not find it appropriate to have Intelligent Design be a large factor in either education or policy. I can understand that Evolution is a relatively new concept compared to how long ID has been taught, but that does not mean that it should be the continuing basis. Further, Intelligent Design is not just an explanation for how life was created. It forces on people an entire philosophy of how they should live, act, or think, based on a belief system that might not be everyone's. I acknowledge everyone's right to believe what they want and indeed it might not be bad to teach a variety of different ideas, but in the end, I do not think that ID should be our final politically established story.

Name: laura (lbrymer@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2006 10:37 Link to this Comment: 18129

One of my problems with Intelligent Design is that it presupposes that everyone is on the same page as far as the supernatural entity goes. I have no qualms with people who believe in God or a variety of gods or spirits or what have you. However, as far as I am aware, Intelligent Design isn't the teaching of the many possible stories of how people and the world came into being. It tends to be the teaching of one creation myth. Because of this, I do not find it appropriate to have Intelligent Design be a large factor in either education or policy. I can understand that Evolution is a relatively new concept compared to how long ID has been taught, but that does not mean that it should be the continuing basis. Further, Intelligent Design is not just an explanation for how life was created. It forces on people an entire philosophy of how they should live, act, or think, based on a belief system that might not be everyone's. I acknowledge everyone's right to believe what they want and indeed it might not be bad to teach a variety of different ideas, but in the end, I do not think that ID should be our final politically established story.

Intellectual Authority Name: Alison Reingold (areingold@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2006 10:53 Link to this Comment: 18130

The policy issue I find most intriguing in the Intelligent Design debate is the purported ability to suggest alternatives to well established lessons in education. All classes must be built on a foundation of agreed upon facts and while there will always be mysteries and gaps, I find it shocking that any person can approach schools and propose that the lessons the state has agreed upon are not valid and demand that schools are obligated to teach alternatives. Evolution is an easy mark because the Bible supplies another alternative easily, however, if school boards allow people create their own lessons, where will it end? Before a social studies teacher presents materials on the Holocaust, should he or she be obligated to read a message saying some have doubted the authenticity of this event and direct students to consider a massacre only one theory of what occured? What's next, people standing up to doubt and "discount" the "theory" of gravity, spanish pluperfect conjugation, and rules of baseball? Just because some people have doubts on a subject does not mean that subject's foundation is inherently flawed and the entire world needs to be made aware of those people's distrust. Some people find variety in education beautiful and beneficial to children, encouraging them to seek their own answers. However, I believe that children should be taught what is overwhelmingly considered fact and encouraged to explore it outside of the classroom. Schools should not have to share their classroom space with religion, conspiracy theories, or overprotective parents.

What's the problem? Name: () Date: 02/15/2006 11:27 Link to this Comment: 18131

I think most people arguing that ID be taught in science classrooms don’t fully understand evolution. I have some relatives (I’m not sure how) who subscribe to ID, but couldn’t tell me what a vestigial structure is or what the mechanism for natural selection is. Also, they argue that it’s ludicrous to suppose that humans came from the “slime and muck” of the earth. And while that may or may not be true, evolution does not speak to the origin of life, but just to the origin of species. Why is there such a misunderstanding and ignorance about what the theory of evolution actually is? And how can people argue against something they don’t even fully understand? Believe what you believe, but make informed decisions and have informed opinions. I’m afraid too many people spit back out what they’re spoon fed ideologically.

Name: Amanda (adavis@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2006 11:27 Link to this Comment: 18132

I think most people arguing that ID be taught in science classrooms don’t fully understand evolution. I have some relatives (I’m not sure how) who subscribe to ID, but couldn’t tell me what a vestigial structure is or what the mechanism for natural selection is. Also, they argue that it’s ludicrous to suppose that humans came from the “slime and muck” of the earth. And while that may or may not be true, evolution does not speak to the origin of life, but just to the origin of species. Why is there such a misunderstanding and ignorance about what the theory of evolution actually is? And how can people argue against something they don’t even fully understand? Believe what you believe, but make informed decisions and have informed opinions. I’m afraid too many people spit back out what they’re spoon fed ideologically.

Intelligent Design vs Evolution Name: J. McHugh () Date: 02/15/2006 11:38 Link to this Comment: 18133

The debate between Intelligent Design and Evolution is difficult. Both side argue with convincing evidence. Intelligent Design will note to flaws in the theories of evolution, such as a lack of records of transitional organisms (such as no fossil records for stages in between primates and human beings). Evolution comes up with interesting theories such as natural selection. How then are we supposed to choose what is right, when neither can indisputably disprove the other?
I believe that it takes faith to believe in either Intelligent Design of evolution. Additionally, evolution, or at least the man who it is linked to had flaws from the beginning. Darwin believed that people of different races and ethnicities were of another species. Moreover, he believed that men were naturally more intelligent and stronger than women. We know that these beliefs are false; therefore maybe some of his other theories are false as well.
I would argue that both ID and evolution be taught so that all students have a good idea of what the debate is about. Give students all evidence from both sides. Moreover, I think that those who are adamant about evolution are not necessarily opposed to creation. Rather the may simply be opposed to GOD being mentioned in the classroom.

Accommodating evolution in religion Name: Hannah Kohut (hkohut@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2006 11:48 Link to this Comment: 18134

I looked a few of the articles in the New York Times section on the Evolution Debate (http://nytimes.com/pages/science/sciencespecial2/index.html) and was impressed with what some of them had to say. I especially liked the articles “At Churches Nationwide, Good Words for Evolution” and “In ‘Design’ vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins a Point in Rome,” because they spoke to the possibility of combining beliefs of science and religion in a simple and flawless way. My personal beliefs fall into the ‘existing life forms are as they are because of an initial creative act by a supernatural being with a plan and intent.’ I do believe that evolution got us to our current state and form, and that it continues to mold organisms through adaptation and natural selection. At the same time, I do believe in God, but have had somewhat of a hard time figuring how they fit together. I have my own ideas, but was never sure how others felt on the subject. I attended a progressive church growing up, enough at least that we studied other religions as a part of Sunday school. We never talked about evolution and how it fit in with God’s plan to my recollection.
The “Good Words for Evolution” article addressed a new event called Evolution Sunday, that was started in response to the Dover, PA attempt to discredit the teaching of evolution in schools. The point is to show that you can accept God as truth while accommodating evolution within that. Rev. Patricia Templeton, who serves at a church North of Atlanta, GA, is quoted saying, “A faith that requires you to close your mind in order to believe is not much of a faith at all.” Part of the doctrine of Evolution Sunday states that the theory of evolution is “a foundational scientific truth” and to reject it “is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children.” This makes a lot of sense, and signals that these churches are open not only to believing in God, but also to believing in and participating in the world around them. The recognize that science is a part of that world and cannot be ignored. The ‘Darwin Wins a Point in Rome’ article points out that the Vatican newspaper (not official but close), backed up the PA court decision that intelligent design should not be taught in opposition with evolution. The paper recognized that evolution is a scientific theory, and that the church’s teachings are not on the same, scientific level. This also says, essentially, that there is “no need to see a contradiction between Catholic teachings and evolution,” a point brought up by a former Dominican priest and current professor at the University of California at Irvine.
While these articles didn’t completely iron out my difficulties in combining science and religion in my own mind, they served to support my beliefs that God exists and that evolution is an undeniable scientific process that has transformed us throughout history.

Usability and multiplicity Name: Angad Singh (adsingh@haverford.edu) Date: 02/15/2006 12:02 Link to this Comment: 18136

Thanks to those who have shared their time and thoughts thus far. I’d like to briefly emphasize a couple points that were mentioned earlier.
First: there exist normative gradations for stories. Stories that feature functionality and usability, preferably some predictability, are better than those that are deficient in these areas. And so broad, vague, and adumbrative stories are of less import. There is little need to be apologetic for this reality, though condescension is also not warranted. The usability of a theory is important.
Second: being entirely inclusive is ineffective. There is a tendency to reconcile two opposing factions, to not draw lines in the sand. But not only does there exist cultural factionalization (manifest in trivial forms such as placid, monotonous orations for the evolution community and religious fervor and crazy gesticulations for the ID community), but there are substantive differences between the two. There exists a multiplicity of perspectives on reality. Attempting to include them all would render the story entirely ineffectual. Pick the perspective that is effectual, that provides a basis for conducting positive research, for pursuing positive questions, and for making a positive difference in the world.

I beliefs in science and God Name: () Date: 02/15/2006 12:40 Link to this Comment: 18137

I grew up in a moderately Christian household. My family and I went to church every Sunday, and I was taught the basics of my religion in Sunday school with other willing and innocent children. As I got older, my faith dwindled unconsciously. However, when I went away to boarding school, I reclaimed my religion and my faith for myself (these two aspects of Christianity I consider to be very different from one another). Over the subsequent years, my faith has grown and my belief in God has strengthened. However, despite my love for God and the happiness that he brings to my life, I remain absolutely anti-evangelical. I believe that faith and belief in God can not be taught to a person, nor forced upon anyone unwilling to listen. If people feel pressured to convert, it gives all Christians a bad name. Yes, I do have a strong background in Biology. I believe wholeheartedly in evolution. However, I don’t believe that God and science have to be mutually exclusive. I believe that faith in any religion is a very personal matter, and should not be brought into the public arena. It is something that everyone must discover for themselves in their own time, and not at the set schedule of a school curriculum. Therefore, I think that any discussion of intelligent design should be banned from the science regime in schools.

Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 02/15/2006 18:25 Link to this Comment: 18142

Many of the preceding comments were made by students in a class on Biology and Public Policy at Bryn Mawr College. See Intelligent Design and Evolution:
A Significant Issue in Science and Public Policy and links from there for additional comments, discussion notes, and other resources. Thanks to the students for their contribution to needed public discussion.

ID Disproven Name: Dish Of The Day (nayest@yahoo.com) Date: 03/04/2006 18:51 Link to this Comment: 18449

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "For proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing." "BUT," says Man, "Intelligent design is a dead giveaway isn't it? It proves you exist, so therefore you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that." And promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "Ooh, that was easy." says Man and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.

Science = Religion Name: () Date: 03/22/2006 13:47 Link to this Comment: 18645

Modern science begins with a religious proposition, namely that either (1) there is no God or (2) that the existence or non-existence of God is irrelevant to the search for truth and knowledge.

This is when we start to have intolerance for dissenting views (e.g., the view that perhaps God did in fact create or guide the creation of life), and when we begin to use science to make moral choices (e.g., when human life becomes protectable), ignoring the fact that moral choices are almost exclusively religious at their core.

If our teachings were prefaced with "these are our current thoughts, based on what we observe, with no allowance for outside guidance," the whole issue would be moot. However, we want to say "this is absolute truth, and anyone who disagrees is a right-wing bigot."

Personally, a number of my college professors in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences were clear about the fact that their study of the universe had convinced them of the existence of something greater than the physical. Only my Biological Sciences and Social Sciences instructors were unconvinced. As I have gone through life, it has generally held true that those who have explored the physical realm say that an overarching design is clearly seen, even if they do not believe in direct creation. Likewise, those who have explored the squishy sciences, where a + b may not equal (a + b), seem to feel that any sense of outside interference is a mental illness.

It seems to be an intractable problem. The more that scientists claim to have proven neo-Darwinian evolution, the more that they get government to enforce the teaching that this is true and nothing else is, the more that dissenters will try to get equal time. And as we know from our own experiences, there are very rarely any facts that can be 100% certain, even if we have contemporary witnesses' testimonies. How much less certain can we be, even with archeological and forensic evidence, of things that happened millions of years ago?

The solution? TOLERANCE. Stop trying to say that one side has the absolute truth. Invite dissenters to present their ideas. Since the states are paying for our students to be taught this religion, it is only right to invite other viewpoints. If we do this, overnight the opposition to the teaching of evolution will dissolve, and our students will actually be educated.

RE: PG [16509] Name: () Date: 03/22/2006 14:27 Link to this Comment: 18646

Paul Grobstein said "We need to remember that the theory of evolution did not come about because anyone was trying to disprove the existence of God, but rather because everyone was trying to reconcile the creation account in the Bible with the evidence before their eyes"

Rather, they were trying to reconcile the teachings of the Church hierarchy with what they observed.  In reality, those teachings contradicted both observable nature (extinctions could not have happened) and the Biblical record (the "begat" literally means "became the ancestor of").  Anyone who has read those books where they have pinned the creation down to an exact day knows what I mean.

The important thing to remember is that until the "creation science" debate a few years ago, there was much dispute about "guided" versus "unguided" evolution.  It was commonly admitted that the existing evidence was far too sparse to adequately support our current scientific doctrines.

Afterward, anyone who notices that the emperor has no clothes is immediately branded a religious extremist and required to avoid public discourse.  I call for a new way of dealing with this profound lack of proof.  Admit that contemporary biological science is a non-theistic religion.  As such, invite other religious views to speak equally on what they interpret the evidence to mean.  Stop fighting and be happy again.

Telling Stories Name: Lee Warren (gwarren@utk.edu) Date: 03/28/2006 12:22 Link to this Comment: 18713

Paul, I wholeheartedly agree with your portrayal of science as storytelling. Yet, I would add that it is uniquely unlike any other form of storytelling. In the telling, the story of science solicits (and perhaps even mandates) a response from the listener to actively challenge the content. But not just any challenge--the rules of science are clear and govern or moderate all content challenges through observation, objective evidence, and repeatability. Thus, the "stories" of science may be objectively re-affirmed by the listener before the listener becomes the next story teller.

In my opinion, this frames the problem created when evolution is applied to the origin of life. Science begins telling stories that are no longer verifiable through direct observation or repeatability. The same is true of computational models of the big bang. Great stories, epic stories! But, no one can directly observe these events or repeat them experimentally for objective re-affirmation. That is why I would argue that these types of stories should be placed outside the scientific "canon", in a separate book of stories.

In light of this, I also wanted to comment on your thoughts on "random variation and natural selection," specifically when you refer to "an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection." I assert that science would have just as hard of a time demonstrating an "unguided, unplanned" process as intelligent design would have demonstrating a "guided, planned" process. If science were to figure this one out, demonstrating the non-existence of a god ought to be trivial.

Concerning random variation, computer programs most certainly do not fit the bill as they represent fully deterministic processes. Pseudo-random number generation is both guided and planned, in addition to being fully reproducible. Much research has been devoted to quantifying "randomness" so that computer programs can mimic many of the properties of random noise. Yet, no impartial referee shown a sequence of numbers could never demonstrate that they were truly random. The author of the computer program would, however, have no doubt.

Thus, while it is acceptable to ask a question like Could it be that EVERYTHING we wonder about, ourselves and everything we find around ourselves, derives, at least initially, from nothing more (and nothing less) than "an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection?", no scientific story should ever seek to provide an answer if that answer cannot be objectively verified. This is why people claim that ID is not science. However, this is also why evolution as an explanation of the origin of life is equally unscientific. These are the bastard stories of science that inflame tensions and encourge argument because that is all that remains when the recourse of objective re-affirmation is removed.

My concern is that misapplication of ideas such as randomness, order, and planning hijacks the art of scientific storytelling and transforms it into something else. Peer review works pretty well for revising scientific stores told within the scientific community, but the problem comes when these stories are told outside of that community where the hearers are not instructed in how to properly listen. All scientists who seek to share the stories of science with society, share this burden. Lines will always be drawn, but the power of science storytelling is in daring listeners to cross lines.

Darwin was a Murderer Name: A. Granville Fonda (afonda7@crashex.com) Date: 07/06/2006 10:07 Link to this Comment: 19646

Granted that this forum has been virtually inactive since the course ended, I'll add this - - in hopes of further visitors.

Darwin was a Murderer

Darwin, shocked by his own dawning theory, said "it is like confessing to a murder.” Armed by Newton, Darwin did “commit a murder” — the murder of the great chain of being.

Argument 1. Causality presumes that one thing leads to another.
Argument 2. The “great chain of being” was a postulated top-down causal chain.
Argument 3. Illumined by Newtonian law, ‘intent,’ in Nature, lost its awe.
Argument 4. Random causality does not presuppose any element of purpose and intent.
Argument 5. Sequential causality may superficially suggest purpose and intent.
Argument 6. Consciousness is no demonstration of top-down causation.
Argument 7. Darwin saw that bottom-up random variation succeeding on its merits would explain evolution.

Each argument is explained in detail at
http://pov.wikia.com/wiki/DarwinianMurder

Intelligent Design likewise lacks both a means of causation and an ultimate cause. (What's at the top, above the "designer," and how does it affect material things including us?) It is just another futile top-down (teleological, and mind-over-matter) explanation of evolution. believe what you wish; but the only tenable explanations are bottom-up. But, see more on ID and its ineffectual gyrations at http://brainstorm.eponym.com.

But here is the big problem: This is unlikely to be read by those who might be most affected by it. The fundamentalists, and even the sincere scientists who have not throughly thought through the issue, will never see this forum. They reinforce themselves with the same old medieval top-down thinking, unaware that it really is not tenable. What a sad situation!

nonrandom variation Name: Ryan (wiserd911@yahoo.com) Date: 07/07/2006 14:48 Link to this Comment: 19651

I take exception to the assertion that variation is all random. Some of it is not. For example, HCV has highly variable and highly conserved regions of DNA.

To selectively conserve some traits while varying others is an intelligent or 'non random' act. Evolution is a non-random process with a random component. It is a process of goal directed adaptive behavior where adaptation is the goal and complexity is a byproduct.

New Book on ID and Evolution Name: Mike Gene () Date: 06/23/2006 02:13 Link to this Comment: 19560

Hello everyone.

If you would like a truly fresh and novel perspective on the relationship between Evolution and Intelligent Design, you might be interested in my new book, The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues. The book web page and blog can be found here . Let me know what you think. Thanks.

intelligent design Name: () Date: 06/02/2006 07:25 Link to this Comment: 19454

his doesn't tell me anything about intelligent design or why we have different races! I'm supposed to be doing a science project and this doesn't tell me anything!

What ID implies about GOD? Name: () Date: 07/19/2006 03:05 Link to this Comment: 19901

First of all, I want to state that this is not a religious argument, but it is a logical consequence of the design argument.
In all explanations of ID and irreducible complexity, it is always stated that “ID does not tell anything about the personality of GOD”…
But, is it really so? I have learned a lot by re-thinking about the definition of what can be considered as “designed”…
The very first condition of "design" argument is that, the "thing" we investigate must be composed of more than one part, a system.
If it is a one-piece (or singular) existence, then we can never conclude that it is "designed", in the light of design argument.
So, does not ID really say something to you about the only undesigned thing – GOD.
It tells me some, and I wanted to share it with you incase you can comment on them…
Here it is:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If GOD is an existence which is composed of more than one "thing" (cooperating like one), then the logical question to ask is "Is his existence reducible or irreducible?".
If his existence is irreducible, then one can easily claim that He is also DESIGNED by someone else (If one can not say this, forgive me but all ID staff is worthless, since we found something which is both an irreducibly complex system and not-designed).
If his existence is reducible, then what? (A GOD whose existence depends on pure-chance or a supernatural Darwinian process)
I also want to state that the "nature" of GOD is not important here (In fact, what ID can not say anything about GOD is his nature), the important thing is the fact that (the logical consequence of the "design" argument) ID implies that He must be ONE-AT-ALL (one-piece, singular).

I wonder what do you think of it? Am I wrong, if so, where is my fault?

Name: Elizabeth C. () Date: 08/20/2006 21:42 Link to this Comment: 20187

if all viewpoints are taught as stories, i don't think there is any danger in discriminating against those who believe in an afterlife. i think the risk is claiming on either side that "we know"...i think it's safe to say "we think" and then to build on that thought. those who like to think in binary ways (afterlife/not intelligent design=afterlife evolution=no afterlife) usually have good reason for it which may work for them but can, as a side-effect exclude other points of view. the more that's on the table the better...i think kids (and adults) should be given and accept a table with lots of stuff on it and then choose how they want to play with it and sort it out. clutter can be scary but without it there's just the illusion of clean and tidy. if no one really knows, it's more fun play and generate questions than to use the mind to trick oneself into belief. the only things that i believe in are stories themselves...and the life-engery that enageing with them creates.

Name: Robert (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 08/22/2006 01:25 Link to this Comment: 20196

I think it is interesting to listen to comments like Elizebeths. They appear to be very open minded and welcoming of differring ideas. But, (there's always a 'butt') do you notice that a dogma remains... The dogma that 'nobody knows'. The dogma that 'all beliefs' are 'only stories'. The dogma that they are 'all relative'. If that is true, then relativity is no longer relative, but absolute!

A prime reality, or objective reality is unavoidable. We can all believe what ever we want, but we can't change what is by belief.

We cannot say, while remaining coherent, that we cannot know... Because the immediate question emerges... "How do you 'know' that?"

Don't you see? We cannot have it both ways...

Jesus said that we 'can know' and that we 'will know' the truth, and the truth will set you free! He made many such audacious claims.

Please allow me to expand upon this principle with an excerpt of an article which appeared much earlier in this thread:

----We are manipulating reality in a sense, as the quantum sciences prove, or rather, making real by way of consequences in the material, our decision to observe reality the way we choose. One should not confuse the reality that is perceived within, thereby confined to perception, with the reality that exists before and after the observer exists. Individually, we are not the only observers. Self can only define reality by the self’s DNA and experience. But by the rejection of self and a repositioning into relationship with the divine, one can experience a new birth that transcends DNA and experience. Only the latter allows the self to exist in both states; as an individual ('I'), in relationship with the divine who is also a distinct being. Though some suggest that to call ones self 'I' is an egoist response to the dilemma, it is interesting to note, that that fundamental view is held as a way of avoiding conformity for the sake of the divine, and maintains the egoic self. It is the acknowledgement of the 'I' that reveals the individuals responsibility to the 'other'. This sheds light on the need for individual rehabilitation if one is out of sorts with the objective reality as opposed to reality conforming to our slef centered desires.

Stating fact or arguing with reason is not, by any means, necessarily egoic or fear based in nature. However, the denial of fact, or the inability to accept a reasonable and logical argument is always motivated by ego and fear. Some claims demand serious attention because the implications are so inescapably enormous.

That being said, the most offensive thing anyone could say to the fear and ego driven heart is, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me."

That is the ultimate, staggering, and exclusive claim to sovereignty. It is also a completely reasonable statement. Even so, such a statement is either motivated by the purest form of ego, and/or, it intends to manipulate by the most blatant use of fear, or such a statement is the most selfless expression and profound truth that any man will ever hear. It is a claim that only God can make consistently.

I believe that is why C.S. Lewis wrote the following:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

The monistic worldview is nothing more than an attempt to escape from individual responsibility and the only way to maintain such a position consistently, albeit an obstinate and rebellious posture, is to declare 'one’s self' as God. For most monists, it is far less confrontational to speak without such clarity. They like to avoid the necessity and inevitability of the conflict. The monist prefers to say that we are evolving into the divine. But by implication this is a theology of default divinity be it evolving or not. As in the disagreement over Jesus Christ’s claims, this claim is either the greatest blasphemy, or the greatest truth. The stakes are enormous.


Since much of the quantum’s incredible properties involve light and the difficulty of putting a finger on its true nature, it is exceptionally noteworthy that Jesus said the following: 'I am the light of the world' (John 9; 5) ‘I have come into the world as a light’ (John 12; 46). ‘This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God (John 3; 19).


Monism can explain our unity but not our diversity. Evolution can explain our diversity but not our unity. We seek unity in diversity (University, Quintessence, E Pluribus Unum), and the only way to have unity in diversity in the effect (creation) is to have unity in diversity in the first cause (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Only Christianity offers that. The Creator, the triune God, is a being that is also an eternal relationship. He is one though making up three distinct forms of Himself. With God’s plan, we are allowed to become sons of God, by denying ourselves as God, and accepting the wisdom of the only God. It is there that we awake and begin to understand the hymnist when he wrote, “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see”.

According to Christ, there is unity in Him and Him alone. All is not unity, only that which is in Christ. Christ forces us to either accept Him, or reject Him. If we accept, then that begins with careful consideration of his words and their implications. He did not ask us to jump in blindly. Rather He warns us to weigh the issue with intensity and actually seems to attempt to talk us out of following Him by making it so clear. Luke 14: 27-33 And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' "Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. "Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

If we reject Him, the only alternative is for man to claim himself and all of his conflicting and chaotic ambitions to be his and his life alone. Either Jesus is God, or we are. Matthew 12; 30 " He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me, scatters abroad." A monist cannot say this either because there is no ‘against’, there are only different sides of the same one, and therefore Jesus was not a monist.



Look at the following verse and see how Jesus describes the Spirit that created all things coming to make His home in the heart of a mortal, thereby making known to him the immortal and eternal God. This is the 'real', personal, and daily relationship with divinity (Christ). John 14; 23 "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him."

He often expands on the depth of the spiritual rebirth and further confirms the differential between powers and perceptions. John 14;17-20 " The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you." "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. A little while longer and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. At that day you will know that I Am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you."

The monist proclaims that we cannot 'know' that these things are true lest we risk being controlled by the ego (because all is individually subjective); but, if you did not notice in these verses before, see that Jesus proclaims that ‘you will know, or see’. "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8; 32) It is just the same way as mentioned in the beginning of this article, that we may close our minds to alternatives while remaining objective, since what we have found is the objective reality.

The monist is forced to accept all that is as part of the evolving divine oneness. This allows them to see themselves as divine yet in a state not yet fully realized (and keep their sin without the internal conflict). Genesis 3; 5 Then Satan said, "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…"

Only God can be God by logical necessity, even if we disagree as to who He is. That is one reason I put my life and faith in Jesus Christ, for He spoke plainly and in truth. Even the monist knows and is forced to say that God is one, they just misunderstand the implications of their philosophy. Many of them do so intentionally, constantly seeking to find a way out of the inevitable trap of logic.

Mark 12: 28-34 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these." "Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

Christ spoke no doubletalk about being all inclusive. We cannot have it both ways. 1+1 cannot = both 2 and 3 and 5 and 8 etc. To attempt such is to eat the fruit of ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil’. Jesus said, ‘Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division’ (Luke 12:51). A monist cannot say this for their concept of deity only works to unite. The truth always divides and separates reality from subjection, which is why Monism cannot be true.

John 9:16 Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided.

Acts 23:7 When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided.

Psalm 78:13 He divided the sea and led them through; he made the water stand firm like a wall.

Matthew 25: 31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34 "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

John 8:43-45 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!

In conclusion, I wish to point out that in the Biblical sense, Jesus was most assuredly not a monist. Now, many claim and make an interesting point now and then that Jesus’ words were manipulated and mistranslated. I disagree, for no texts have been protected like the Cannon of scripture. I believe that He did in fact say all of these outrageous and incredible things. It is why He was crucified and tortured more than any man who ever lived. You can believe all you want that He was a monist. You can even believe that he was a form of both. I am not the type who will tell you what you should believe. I think the evidence speaks for itself. I suppose I can agree with any philosopher that Jesus was a dualist, but more importantly, that He is God. He is good, and evil is evil. That is either true, or it isn’t. But we can’t have it both ways because in the very beginning God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness (Genesis 1: 3-4)

evolution as a religion Name: Marie Christ (marielovesbeethoven@hotmail.com) Date: 08/22/2006 19:58 Link to this Comment: 20200

( (Continuing the previous thread about evolution and the afterlife.)
The malignant rampaging of evolution -only proponents, and the concern that the atheist community seems to lavish on the issue, has alarmed me.Even non atheists, while not as militant, may succomb to the evolution agenda, being convinced that it is more "scientific".
It is not my idea to propose that ID is anything but religion based, nor will I go over the same old ground about evolution being unproven, just a theory, etc. However, not being able to put the two on an even footing as impartial scientific possibilities does not mean they can not BOTH be viewed as religious beliefs, and therefore BOTH would be prohibited in public schools.
My problem concerns free-will, and the afterlife. Christianity teaches that we are all created equal, with the responsibility to ensure our eternal salvation by following certain rules. It emphasizes the value of a single human soul and the idea that GOD knows each of us intimately from before we are even formed. Actually most of the world's religions are based on the idea that free will exists, that we choose either good or evil as detailed by a set creed, and that the choice determines our everlasting happiness.

Name: () Date: 08/22/2006 20:17 Link to this Comment: 20201

If we took away that choice from even one person the whole system would be unfair. But what of the apes? If we truly came from apes then there had to be a time when our free will was evolving along with our facial features. Was there one ape who could discern right from wrong first? Or were they all in a half and half stage? Was there even any such thing as right and wrong or did they remain pagan apes until their brains developed enough to invent religion? And of course, if they became so smart that they "invented" religion does that not prove that religion is necessary? I do not see other animals finding this necessity.
And finally, did those first misguided apes go to heaven, or to hell? Was it fair to condemn them if they were so new to morality? Which one was the first to have eternal life? We will never know.
So now you may tell me that this is not a problem if you do not believe in heaven or hell. But a great many people do, so therefore evolution will remain a stumbling block. It would be discriminatory to teach only evolution to those of us who acknowledge a higher power, because it DIRECTLY affects and belittles our core beliefs, and therefore is to be viewed as a religious dogma.

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 08/23/2006 14:53 Link to this Comment: 20209

What does it mean to belittle a core belief? If belief is strong, I don't think it can be belittled by anything, only tested. I enjoy my beliefs being tested. If they can withstand this (internal/indescribable) test then they remain, for the moment, beliefs. Is it that we don't want our children's beliefs tested? That we want to be in control of that?

It is my current belief that the only persons/beings that can condemn people are other persons/beings.

I wonder if, for people who are strong believers in God/Christ/Equivalent, not believing is somehow scary? I think that a lot of this comes down to fear and also hope...and yes, I very much think the evolution/ID issue "matters" in terms of death and the afterlife. This is a preoccupation which causes a lot of thinking about being or using religion as a lens to think about being. In other cultures this is, perhaps, less of an issue.

And yes, I agree that everytime you write down a thought, you've written down a piece of "dogma" but each other thought helps to undo that "dogma". Wouldn't this forum be boring if there were no people who believed in evolution writing in it or only those who had a singular belief in ID? Dogma (in my mind) can be best combatted by juxtaposition and many thoughts allowed in a single space. Since the Bible seems to be a place where a lot of citing is coming from in this forum, I've noticed that that it contridicts itself quite a bit. It was a collaborative writing attempt by a variety of people, right? (whether or not they were God inspired to me seems irrelevant) and that's part of its richness at the level of story and, I suppose "example for living". I don't know about the word dogma anyway. It's a strong word. All settled/established opinions can be unsettled. Nothing remains settled for long. To me that's not scary, it's fun and meaningful.

dogma Name: (marielovesbeethoven@hotmail.com) Date: 08/23/2006 18:45 Link to this Comment: 20211

True, Elizabeth,the word "belittle" or "dogma" may not have been appropriate and too strong for the topic. My goal,however,is just to start a thought about wether or not evolution can be considered purely a scientific theory. This is primarily important because it seems only a matter of time that those opposing any mention of religion in a school curriculum will succeed in making it illegal to teach ID. The way they will do this is by convincing the majority that evolution is the only SCIENTIFIC theory out there, proven or not. Regardless of my personal beliefs the thought is a frightening one, because as I explained it, evolution DOES affect religion and is NOT purely science. If one person could explain to me the evolution of free will perhaps I will change my mind. And yes, in certain aspects religion is comforting,in others, much more scary than the la-la land that "free"spirits often wander in. Beliefs, also, DO change, when a person becomes more informed or is put under the influence of a certain society. The point is that even if you converted 3 hours ago, your belief is protected by the constitution, and can not be jeopardized or singled out in a non-denominational school.

belief Name: () Date: 08/23/2006 22:38 Link to this Comment: 20213

I will just say one thing more.
Belief is not knowledge. If you needed to see GOD in order to believe in HIM you would not be believing any longer, but knowing. GOD does not want us to know for sure that He exists , but to believe it. The leap of faith is the beautiful part of the equation. Therefore when someone like Elizabeth previously states that the only belief they have is in the stories themselves, it is a falsehood. The stories exist in black and white. No leap of faith is necessary so no belief is occurring.

Name: someone like Elizabeth () Date: 08/24/2006 19:32 Link to this Comment: 20215

i think it takes a leap of faith to believe in a story. and so many stories are not black and white. Evolution idea--not black and white. ID idea--not black and white. in my opinion it's better to leap towards faith without calling anything a falsehood in the process.

Science of ID Name: Max () Date: 08/30/2006 00:11 Link to this Comment: 20229

I would like to bring the forum's attention to a passage I have recently read from a popular science book called 'The Ancestor's Tale' by an evolutionary biologist called Richard Dawkins. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and holds the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.
On page 217 he begins "The human imagination is cowed by antiquity, and the magnitude of geological time is so far beyond the ken of poets and archaeologists it can be frightening. But geological time is large not only in comparison to the familiar timescales of human life and human history. It is large on the timescale of evolution itself. This would surprise those, from Darwin's own critics on, who have complained of insufficient time for natural selection to wreak the changes the theory requires of it. We now realise that the problem is, if anything opposite. There has been too much time. If we measure evolutionary rates over a short time, and then extrapolate, say, to a million years, the potential amount of evolutionary change turns out to be hugely greater than the actual amount. It is as though evolution must have been marking time for much of this period. Or, if not marking time, wandering around this way and that, with meandering fluctuations drowning out, in the short term, whatever trends there might be in the long. Evidence of various kinds, and theoretical calculations, all point towards this conclusion.
Darwinian selection, if we impose it artificially as hard as we are able, can drive evolutionary change at a rate far faster then we ever see in nature. To see this, we cash in on the lucky fact that our forbears, whether they fully understood what they were doing or not, have for centuries been selectively breeding domestic animals and plants. In all cases these spectacular evolutionary changes have been achieved in no more than a few centuries or, at most, millennia: far faster than even the fastest evolutionary changes that we can measure in the fossil record."
Firstly I'd like to apologise if it appears I have succumbed to Okham's Razor. But he makes some valid points. I believe there is no need to draw a line in the sand as long as we all understand each other's take on the issue. I firmly agree with the passage above but perhaps that is because I'm uneducated on ID as a science. Some may firmly believe in ID but maybe they are uneducated on the scientific evidence available in the academic arena. One thing the world tells us at present is that you can't stop people believing in something they want to believe in. People, especially children, need to be supplied with all available evidence from both sides in order to make an informed, unimpeded decision about their own belief system. In conclusion I will purpose the question: If ID had nothing to do with religion or God, would it be as popular an idea as it seems?

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 08/30/2006 20:46 Link to this Comment: 20232

---If ID had nothing to do with religion or God, would it be as popular an idea as it seems?---

The answer to this question comes, by asking another question as follows:

If evolution had nothing to do with naturalism and materialist philosophical presupositions, would 'it' be as popular as it is.

Materialism allows us to dispose with the meddlesom doctrine of sin...

So I ask what worldview is that which people 'want' to believe?

As far as Dawkins goes... He also said in one of his books (and I paraphrase) "There is no such thing as right and wrong, we're all just dancing to our DNA."

That is by the way a Biblical doctrine called the natural and sinful man...

In light of Dawkins statement, how much more profound and up to date are Jesus' words, "You must be born again!"

Name: Max () Date: 08/31/2006 20:31 Link to this Comment: 20237

To answer the question posed as an inadequate answer to my question I think; yes. It would be as popular as it is. If not only for the simple fact that it's arguments are based in reason and most importantly measurable outcomes. The 'worldview' as it was called is none in particular. People will believe things, against all evidence that they want to believe.
Just say ID had strong footing before Darwinian Selection was discovered. I truly believe upon this discovery ID would be abandoned en masse and exposed for what it is. A lazy theory that assumes we know everything without requiring evidence of it. This is not about Religion vs. Science. This is about one scientific theory against another. Another who just so happens to involve a creator and is a new chance to bring God and faith to the scientific table.
And while we're quoting Richard Dawkins: "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, a lack of evidence.

Name: rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/01/2006 01:01 Link to this Comment: 20238

---People will believe things, against all evidence that they want to believe.---

Yes Max, I have found this to be true as well.

Have you ever tested the Bible with the bibliographical test and compared it to other sources that you find more 'reasoned' and accurate?

To do so would surely not comply with what you seek...

As for evolutions testability... Oh yes!!! It has been tested over and over, and despite failure after failure, the 'believers' have great 'faith' that the RNA world is the established foundation for evolution...

Perhaps one day they will get it right, and a test will confirm all of this... But please do not play the tune as though it is a done-deal. We've had enough pied pipers in this world.


Sincerely, Rob

Name: MarieC (marielovesbeethoven@hotmail.com) Date: 09/01/2006 18:07 Link to this Comment: 20240

Robert, your writing is both eloquent and concise upon the subject, at least for me. I know that believers in ID can be stereotyped a bit more easily than the followers of evolution. It is impossible to convince many people when voicing only personal beliefs because this society I think is looking for facts and yes, subconsciously, excuses for sin. But regardless of the creed you choose to follow science should never replace faith. I think faith wants to exist side by side with science, to fill a void we as humans constantly feel, the nagging suspicion that there is something greater than what we see. If evolution were proven 100% do you think we would all be satisfied and no longer desire spirituality of any kind? Nope. More likely we would revert back to nature worship. In the mean while, since it is not proven, let us remain clear that evolution IS a religion. Simply by denying the existance of God and causing inevitable torment for confused souls, evolution leaves the realms of pure science. Pure science should go hand in hand with ANY belief system. The science of evolution should not disturb one's head anymore than the science of photosynthesis. In fact neither science nor spirituality even comes close to presupposing each other nor do they rely upon one another for existance. While I see this as being because they are one and the same,i.e., God is Science, an atheist need just to take God out and science will become GOd. May we please question what we are trying to prove here? Is this whole thing really about origins or about proving there is no GOD? Without doubt there will NEVER come a day when mankind can say THERE IS NO GOD. Any science that tries to do this is not a science. It is brainwashing and confusion.

Name: Z () Date: 09/01/2006 19:41 Link to this Comment: 20241

Evolution as a religion seems to me to be an openminded statement and one that provokes thought. So, evolution doesn't have a "leader", a God, but it's still a religion? How?

Is golf a religion? Are card games religions? I'd say sure...very cool to construe religion broadly.

Words like NEVER, ANY (etc.) close down communication in my experience. I confess to using this language frequently (no doubt you'll be able to pick it out in what i've written here!) but it's something that I've been working on. It's important to me to do so. I think that as long we're not speaking in absolutes or we are speaking in absolutes with the knowledge and openess that that belief can be changed (using that language as a waiting place for a new language), we can live peacefully with each other in the world. Perhaps this is something more for the fundamentalism/relativism forum but...who really knows anything? I think it's a beautiful aspect of the human condition that we can't know a single thing but we can believe any number of things and that we have a drive to know. This is an argument for both evolution and intelligent design...

While my impulse is to say "yes, exactly" to the quote about religion ignoring that which can be proven...(yikes, i need to go back and look at what it actually said)...I think it's too harsh. The things we "make up" should be just as valued as the things we think we know (which we've also made up) HUMANS ARE HUGE MAKER-UPERS...That is who we are. We make arcs and shapes in what we call "the world".

Both the story of evolution and the story of God are extremely creative and serve good purpose in different ways for different people. I believe that if something is a story it exists as a story. God exists (as a story) because people believe in God. Evolution exists (as a story) because some people believe it. Santa Claus exists (as a story) because people believe in him. Purple boogie monsters exist because people believe in them. YOu won't necessarily find any of them in flesh (unless you THINK you have) but your ideas will have a flesh of their own which are just as valid.

And sometimes stories generate deep emotions...I think that these are particularly wonderful and valid.

At this momnt, in the end, I believe that there is nothing beyond this life but I am in love what this life is...I love every story. I love my ability to make and tell stories. I like that I want to "test evidence". I like that right now in my life I'm pressing my hands firmly against a strong belief in one thing and saying "no, i don't want that". That's what being human is about. Why would anyone want to get fixed in just one place and with the determination to have just one belief for an entire life? Why would anyone blindly keep with one story without reading the others?

As for religion as a story (when you say "religion is truth." what does that mean?) ...it's less pleasing to me now. I don't need a concept of "sin" to think about what is humane/helpful to other humans...I don't need a reward at death for suffering on earth. If I did, I'd find a story for it or find someone who could tell it to me. When my body needed that and my mind wanted that I belived in a single God and I wouldn't let anything else in. God? Maybe. Evolution? Maybe. Thought and the mind...for now, I'm saying "yes".

Name: MarieC () Date: 09/01/2006 20:31 Link to this Comment: 20242

I guess I mean that evolution is a religion, although not clearly defined, simply because it can deny the existance of a creator and can become something along the lines of atheism or paganism/nature worship. However evolution has still been incorporated into the beliefs of some christians to their minds successfully. For me that does not work because as I said earlier, it does not answer the question of the origin of free-will in humans.

Name: The Barbarian () Date: 09/01/2006 23:44 Link to this Comment: 20243

Amazing. By now, I would have thought no one in the entire world would buy that story about evolution denying a creator. Evolutionary theory can't say anything at all about God, or even whether or not He exists. Science is completely unable to consider the supernatural.

It is quite consistent, and the opinion of most Christians worldwide, that while our bodies are evolved from other organisms, we receive an immortal soul directly from God.

While it is true that free will may have been evolved as we reached the point where our nervous systems were capable of introspection and empathy, Pope Benedict XIV has pointed out that God can even use contingency to serve His purposes.

Name: () Date: 09/01/2006 23:46 Link to this Comment: 20244

And while we certainly have observed macroevolution, nothing in science is ever "proven." Science is inductive, and does not provide logical certainty. Evolution is, however more firmly established than gravity.

Name: Z () Date: 09/03/2006 01:27 Link to this Comment: 20250

"Pope Benedict XIV has pointed out that God can even use contingency to serve His purposes."

What does this mean? I mean this at the most basic level. I am not familiar with what "Pope Benedict XIV has pointed out".

Just to point out, for whatever it's worth...that the only thing that makes the above statement more than a story is belief in what Pope Benedict has to say, which seems to me no more valid than what a scientist has to say...or what you have to say.

We have made Pope Benedict XIV as we have made all presidents future and past...We are human. Certain beliefs are good for social order and stability etc...but they are not absolute.

The whole notion of free will is problematic for me. Because it means I can choose one thing or another thing. In making a decision or chosing to not make a decision...there is always one outcome. There seems to be nothing free about it. I don't think we're being controlled and I don't think we're free. I think as humans we have a heck of a lot of trouble transcending order. In this sense we're just like animals...binary, survival of the fittest-fitted, security and food seeking...animals can for example either eat or not, sleep or not...have babies or not. What controls that is inside of them and it may be instinct or whatever but who cares? Our instinct happens in a "usually felt as complicated" way in the brain...theirs "usually felt as less complicated" and originating elsewhere. So, maybe "free will" evolved but lots of comparable things were already evolving in animals. I think we're closer to animals when we're thinking in terms of free will than when we're trying to transcend it.

Name: MarieC () Date: 09/03/2006 14:24 Link to this Comment: 20253

At this time I feel the Vatican makes many concessions that it should not be making in order to keep Catholics from straying further and further from the fold. Yes it is ok for a christion to believe in evolution if they acknowledge God as the amstermind behind it. I do not think anyone is putting Pope Benedict forward as the ultimate authority on the subject, but they are merely pointing out what the official teaching of the church is at present. I do not wish to get silly about this topic. Of course we can all choose when we want to eat or sleep. That is pure survival and ties us to the animal part of our nature. Free will in the Catholic sense has to do with the spiritual part of our nature and our moral responsibility. For example we are the only animal that can choose NOT to eat or sleep, thereby endangering our bodies and creating a situation where one's moral code is called upon. Our free will allows us all a different opinion in such a situation. Some Eastern religions find transcendance in short term hunger and sleep deprivation. Magicians will attempt to amaze with feats of endurance. Hunger strikes are common, as well as difficult end of life decisions. Free will allows us to view the experiences as religios or entertaining. The catholic church covers the issue with the commandment "thou shalt not kill" which includes all types of bodily abuse and taking life for granted.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/03/2006 14:53 Link to this Comment: 20254

I know the contributors to this forum are not all christian. But for me and maybe others who believe that our free moral decisions affect our eternal happiness, I can never be content with evolution until it can tell me exactly how big our brains had to be before they received souls.

Name: () Date: 09/03/2006 18:41 Link to this Comment: 20255

When you say big, what do you mean? Like actual mesurable size? If one believes that the soul is not an actual tangible presence but rather something beyond tangibility than it probably was never "let in"...i'd say that it was probably "thought out" or perhaps more accurately "thought in" So probably just about around the time when humans were able to think about things like whether to eat or sleep or not, they also started desiring something beyond life because if you aren't just living life, but living life and then reliving it via thinking, then things can get pretty tough. I dare say tougher than being gobbled up by a bear...to feel yourself being gobbled up...to be feeling pain and "thinking pain" is pretty tough. This doesn't really relate directly to anything but I just wanted to say that I don't think that there is anything at ALL silly about a desire to believe in ID as well as evolution or even ID over evolution. The duration of belief in things like god or gods (in many many cultures...way before Christianity) shows a pretty general collective consensus that it would be nice if something existed out there to help with what's going on "in there" (that is inside of all of us.

Also, to really get at the heart of matters, I find it good to go to the places that seem "silly" with utmost seriousness of intent. If no one did this there wouldn't be post-it notes, peanutbutter, telephones or sandwitches. Also, for those who believe in him, there would, perhaps be no god.

As another perhaps unrelated note, I really appreciate this conversation and the openmindedness of the people in it. I like that people keep writing. And, Marie, thanks for explaining your thoughts on the Vatican and Pope Benedict.

Name: MarieChrist () Date: 09/03/2006 19:11 Link to this Comment: 20256

Sorry, the reference about being silly only about the eating and sleeping aspect of free will. I am trying to say that free will generally is meant as something deeper than our everyday habits. Free will can be a mindset because we can make choices mentally which guide us. I certainly did not mean that believing in one or both idea was silly, and actually the reason I posted to begin with was to say that I do not believe the time has come to seperate church and state in this issue. Those promoting freedom of religion, or more truly, freedom from religion, tend not to be so polite on their web pages.I feel the need for people to defend ID at the present because it seems only a matter of time when it will be ousted from the classroom.

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/04/2006 18:10 Link to this Comment: 20259

I think I understand where we might be misunderstanding each other...

I fully believe in natural selection... it is indeed a fact!

So Darwin did uncover part of the truth...

But natural selection is [not] evolution.

Natural selection is the [process we observe] within species.

Evolution is the [theory] that one species evolves into another.

Big differnece, and the problem is that neither can explain origins.

It's real simple. No evolutionist has answered the following dilemma because it defys the reasonable mind to believe it could happen by chance.

We all imagined (as opposed to observe) that the earliest life started out very simple and evolved into the more complex. That is what we are told by evolutionists!

But now we find that in order to have natural selection, we must start with the most complex arrangements of information in the known universe; DNA and RNA.

Here's why:

An organism (even the simplest one celled ones) cannot self replicate without the horrendously complex processes of cell division. Processes inwhich there is virtually no margin for error without death of the organism or a failure in reproduction.

It is an intricately vulnerable system.

To accomplish these miraculous feats, organisms are managed by the operating software known as DNA.

So, you can't use natural selection to explain DNA, because in order to have natural selection you need DNA [first].

So unlike what was assumed, that the simple became complex, we find that life needs all of it's components in place at the same time in order to reproduce.

Has anyone seen an autonomous life form that exists only as a string of DNA? One that could function without the aid of other organisms? Nope!

So how would it replicate without the other machinery in living cells?

RNA and DNA are not living things. Ever seen road kill?

All the pieces of the machinery need to be in place for the organism to live.

That's the heart of irreducible complexity.

I really don't care if some of you guys don't get this.

You cannot get it, when it is inconceivable for you to consider the possibility of intelligent origins.

It's called having a bias, and a closed mind!

Many scientists refuse to give up on evolution, but that proves nothing but the pains of revolution.

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/05/2006 19:42 Link to this Comment: 20274

Just wanted to say that I believe that intelligent design is possible as i believe that evolution is possible. But I also wanted to say that not allowing for the possibility of intelligent design NOT being possible could also be considered by some as having a bias and a closed mind. A bias can be useful...it's impossible to get around that or at least that has been my experience. It is, however, possible to have an open mind and still have a bias. And also, at the level of discourse...comments that say one "doesn't care if some don't get it" and saying that some have biases and closed minds doesn't really help to advance discussion. When I read something like that I want to stop talking. When someone says "you will never get it!" do you want to keep talking with them? I don't think it's important to make someone feel the way you feel but I do think as humans (evolved or intelligent designed or whatever) it is important to keep talking to one another, to keep channels open. This happens as much by "how" we speak as what we speak. To me, this seems to be a crucial issue if we want to peacefully coexist in the world together (which in my opinion is a VERY worthy goal). In the end (and this is just my opinion)...how we got here doesn't much matter but how we live here does.

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/05/2006 22:14 Link to this Comment: 20278

Elizebeth, thank you for your comments. I will address them as to a larger audience, so please do not take anything as personal.

You remind me of the sensitivities we are dealing with when it comes to individual worldviews. Particularly the repercussions of the logical outworkings therein. As careless as I tend to be when it comes to sharing the facts as I know them to be; those involved in these discussions also need to set feelings aside somewhat when dealing with something as momentous as this issue.

That being said, I would like to take the opportunity to dialog in regard to some your comments. Your comments will be enclosed in --- ---, with my comments to follow.


--- A bias can be useful...it's impossible to get around that or at least that has been my experience. It is, however, possible to have an open mind and still have a bias. ---

I absolutely agree with you. We are all biased in regard to the fact that we are bound by gravity, and yet I do not suppose that we have closed our minds about it. It is just a fact!

There are numerous other examples, such as 1+1=2...

--- And also, at the level of discourse...comments that say one "doesn't care if some don't get it" and saying that some have biases and closed minds doesn't really help to advance discussion. ---

I understand your meaning Elizebeth, but we must also be clear. Suppose that a persons bias will not allow them to accept the fact that sexual abuse of children is actually abuse (if you've never heard of NAMBLA, look it up).

In that circumstance, I do care that the person is so wrongheaded in their ideas and refuses to accept what is undeniably right. However, I do not care if they refuse to understand.

The ID debate has enormous implications metaphysically. The defiant resistance to clear headed obsevation of the facts is tantamount to undermining the whole of reality. The ID vs. Evolution debate is foundational to all cultures and civilizations...

--- When I read something like that I want to stop talking. When someone says "you will never get it!" ---

Now I didn't say that. My words are very clear. We must be careful when getting our feelings mixed up in these matters.

--- do you want to keep talking with them? ---

Absolutely! But, I for one, will not play games on such an important issue. If they want to talk with me, they are going to have to take this as seriously as it 'really' is. If they are not willing, then I am interested in those who are, and wish not to waste time with the unwilling.

This battle is far weightier than most imagine!

--- I don't think it's important to make someone feel the way you feel but I do think as humans (evolved or intelligent designed or whatever) it is important to keep talking to one another, to keep channels open.---

Agreed! But (an important But!) not at the expense of truth!

I don't think that it is reasonable at all for an entire civilization to endure feelings that 1+1=7, just because it may cause others some temporary existential angst! We are all faced with the pressue of cognitive dissonance on occasion, and often we must relent to reality.

Reality is the only thing that will set us free, so avoiding it only prolongs the sufferring caused by ignoring it in the first place!

This is not about how I feel about ID or Evolution. I am a former evolutionist, turned theistic evolutionist, and am now astounded by the clarity expressed in the ID movement.

We should be ecstatic about such a find. It is incredible! For the life of me I cannot understand the resistance to such an epic discovery.

Feelings?

This is momentous! The shear power of it intellectually... produces feelings in me that 'denial' (for the sake of lowlier lusts) could never have mustered.


--- This happens as much by "how" we speak as what we speak. ---

Point taken...

You are not the first to be taken aback by my almost 'prophetic' tone. I am doing the best I can...

--- To me, this seems to be a crucial issue if we want to peacefully coexist in the world together (which in my opinion is a VERY worthy goal). In the end (and this is just my opinion)...how we got here doesn't much matter but how we live here does. ---

There are so many assumptions in these last comments of yours Elizebeth. How we got here has 'everything' to do with whether we get along or not.

For example... if this is all a cosmic accident, and we then factor in the 2nd law of thermodynamics (which shows us conclusively that this entire universe is coming apart), then how can we even assume that we should get along in the first place?

In such a violent universe with coliding stars and black holes. With the animal world eating each other alive (us included) how can we logically assume such a thing?

Without 'peace' being a 'true' and 'real' purpose in the first place, we are only throwing darts into the dark...

I have often said in other debates as this to make the point, that maybe the problem with mankind is that we don't just be who we 'really are'! And the existentialist of the sixties and his battle cry of 'No Hang Ups Man' proves the concept!

(NAMBLA?)

It is entirely illogical! And to add feeling... scary!

And to the other comment that we should peacefully exist, I agree! But this is a purpose that can only be found in God.

Even Bertrand Russel the famous athiest understood this when he said, 'Unless you assume a creator, the question of life's purpose is meaningless.'

Philosophically, the only way to have peace, is for all of us to be on the same page!

So no matter what our angle, peace requires what is bitterly called 'fundamentalism' by so many today.

The truth is fundamental!

And to say that this is not true, only proves that it is. Because as soon as you say that I am wrong, you end up implying that you are right and that it is indeed only one way.

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the Father but through me."

The law of non-contradiction cannot be challenged without doing away with 'reason' altogether and just going with what 'feel right' at the moment (existentialism, NAMBLA). Scarry!

We have lost the ability to think critically. And we are being led by ideas that dominate our feelings. We are becoming slaves to things that make no sense!

Two posts ago, I laid it out as plainly as I can... It is abjectly unreasonable to believe that life evolved! And I showed why! The lack of challenge is nothing new... It is inescapable. It is the very argument that changed the mind of one of the world's former leading evolutionary biologists (Dean Kenyon).

I don't intend to walk on feelings, I only intend the truth to jolt you into reality...

Whether or not it does is up to you... Can you set aside your current feelings for an even deeper level of feeling that comes with, 'knowing the truth and the truth setting you free' (also said by Jesus).

If you really want to explore the ID argument and be astounded, order the DVD 'Unlocking the Mystery of Life'. It is simple and effective. Decide for yourself irrespective of what I've said, or it's irrational critics.

Sincerely, Rob Lockett

Name: Marie () Date: 09/09/2006 10:37 Link to this Comment: 20320

I guess I do want to leave you alone but at the same time feel that I should answer your questions in case you are waiting for a reply. I do also want to clarify that the She I spoke of is a catholic reference to the Church, not God. For some reason a church is referred to as a "she" like a ship is a "she". I was raised catholic but I like to think that I still chose catholicism on my own. I am not the kind of person that can be content with things that do not make sense, so I have had to study and think about all these things in my own way. If something no longer makes sense I would be forced to reconsider but I find that the more I look and the more I live through, the more I do see sense in it. I have a sister who is opposite and her thoughts seem to drive her away from the church. I do feel bad for her because the things that bother her are things that she has simply not been educated in. I support a person making their own decision, just not when it stems from misinformation. I think? you have pockets of misinformation, and I like to set the score straight, but I know you are past needing answers for personal help, and that you are content with where you are. I can not pass any judgement about your afterlife. It would be wrong and maybe even sinful. I certainly have done my deeds. The most I can say is that people like us need to be careful because intelligence can be dangerous. Some catholics believe there is no salvation outside of the church, but I like to think God judges our heart and what we make of the info we have to go on. I imagine it is sometimes an intellectual pursuit as well as spiritual for me, and I imagine I am not too abrasive in person because I have had good friends also from many walks of life. I certainly relish the words of scripture and the teachings of Jesus, but to quote them here seems much more like preaching. While preaching has its place, I think that nowadays it solidifies existing faith more so than opens new eyes. I am more inclined to apologetics and reaching logical conclusions. Of course there are immediate things that are important, but a religion is an all engaging thing, a lifestyle, and it should encompass and touch everything vital in life. Most churches are tremendous in missionary work, helping others (remember the corporal works of mercy?) and the use of prayer as an intermediary when we can not do enough. I do not know how to explain better, but sex is also included as I said before because it has to do with the value of human life and the image of God reflected in your neighbor. If all men saw things this way, there would BE no rape. Finally, I hope, I do of course believe in love. It is the greatest commandment in Jesus' own words. But we need to make distinctions between love and lust. I guess it bothers me to think that a man just loved another man sooo much that he had to have sex with him. It rarely happens that a man chooses a gay lifestyle becuase he fell in love. Well, I hope that covers everything, best wishes.

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/09/2006 11:43 Link to this Comment: 20322

Food for thought...


"For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch making. But at length we have discovered that to be free in this sense, that is, to have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost… In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free, we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity, and with neurotics, themselves, we find ourselves asking, "Who am I, what is my deepest destiny, what does living mean?" ( Hobart Mowrer, "Sin, the Lesser of Two Evils," American Psychologist, 15 (1960): 301-304.)


"Satan tempts us at the point of our physical needs, not that we might gratify them to excess, but that we might think of nothing else and gratify them at the expense of our usefulness in this world. Satan tempts us at the point of our ambitions, not that we might engage in positive evil, but simply accept the fact of evil, learn to live with it, come to terms with it, and maintain a discreet silence in the presence of it. Satan tempts us at the point of our religion, not that we might disbelieve in God, but that we might demand certainty — that kind of certainty of God that leaves nothing to faith, nothing to God Himself. These are the moral struggles that have reality for people such as we are. The subtle temptation to renounce our duty in favor of what is attractive. That insidious allurement to a kind of half goodness which is the essence of everything bad, and which is more productive of suffering and hatred, war and misery in this world than all the designs of wicked and greedy people combined."

(Arthur Leonard Griffith in his book “God’s Time and Ours” as quoted by Ravi Zacharias on his radio program Let My People Think in the message entitled: Absolute Truth in Relative Terms pt. 2)

Name: MarieC () Date: 09/06/2006 09:34 Link to this Comment: 20283

On a surface level I do not think anyone could disagree with the sentiments Elizabeth wished to convey. I do often call to mind that letting the truth speak for itself without human judgement calls is the most successful argument. If you think about it, when something is truth, it SHOULD speak for itself.
However I certainly understand what it is to be frustrated at a wishy-washy society that will not acknowledge reality. While we sit here talking about the beauty of openmindedness, there are 1000's of men and women lobbying fiercely to have THEIR way, and to take from us the right to raise our children as we see fit. And they are certainly not kind about it. See for example the pagan supporters of the ACLU and the clan of the so-called flying spaghetti monster. They are acting with complete intolerence and ridicule of ID. Whatever our private beliefs may be there will be a civil law that we must publically follow. Many people do not want to pay taxes or fund a war, many people do not like the ban on marijuana, but too bad, we comply or pay the price. Laws tell us what we can and can not do in every aspect of life. Seperation of church and state was intended to protect us from law ever governing BELIEF. But unfortunately, freedom of religion is becoming freedom from religion or else. And yes, the ideas of peace and harmony seem ingrained and natural, but in fact fallen man is anything but loving. We are greedy, back stabbing, gossiping, loving to revel in another's misfortunes. not to mention more serious crimes. Humane treatment of others under whatever name is residual effects of a once christian society. The standard we hold up in society is none other than that of Jesus Christ. I see all the time gay, lesbian, and pagan groups fundraising for a worthy cause in an attempt to prove that they are still good people. But the standard for a good person is, once again, that which has been laid down by Jesus. So in a sense it is frustrating to see them sort of spinning their wheels without a destination. Finally, if humanitarianism were natural we would not have to strive for it. Faith without works is meaningless , but what about works without faith? Actually I believe that kindness is the bare minimum that we are asked in this life because so often it leads us to see God in another's eyes and learn that there must be something greater than that which can be tangibly rewarded.

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/07/2006 13:02 Link to this Comment: 20300

Thanks Marie and Rob. There's a lot that I feel compelled to respond to but will only respond a tiny bit here. With regard to people who feel that sexual abuse is okay or that any abuse is okay: yes, i definitely feel that some biases are harmful to society as a whole and people as a whole and it is my feeling not that they are "wrong" but rather that they cause hurt and trauma and xyz. Sometimes it's more productive to think about what things "do" rather than what they "are" because what they "do" is often more specific and, as Rob points out feelings CAN at times get in the way of making change. Right now I don't believe in truth, The Truth etc. but I know what pain is and I know my desire to make meaning out of life. I think that not caring about whether or not someone gets it is okay but keeping dialogue open involves entering fully into other people's stories as horrible as they may seem as harmful as they may seem, as evil as they may seem. This seems, to me, to be the place where change can happen. Rob, you are right to point out places where assumptions are being made. I do this a lot. We all do. Here I am assuming that change is a worthy goal. Change does not happen through not talking to each other. And I feel this about people who do harmful things--that it is only natural to have a visceral reaction, to feel sick but in order to do something about it it's not enough to think I am following "the truth path", "I am following Jesus" (i am not quoting anyone from the forums, here I am using quotes b/c they are not things that i would say...are not in my voice). And it is not enough to say: well then I should try and make people feel the way that I do and then it will be better. Let me keep saying the truth as I see it! But actually (and I haven't figured out how to do this) it might work to listen harder to what others are saying. You don't need to convince someone to hear them or even to understand them. That would be saying that the only people we can understand are ultimately, the ones who are most like we are. It is great for people all to tell their own stories but in telling their own stories, it is sometimes okay to let the language of other stories enter. I would like to do this more. When we don't listen, we act based on the voice inside of us which is so limited because there are so many voices around us. About living here (on earth)...I do think that there was a way that we all got here and that can help us to understand why we might act the way we act but for purposes of "living here"...it is the acting that has the effect on day to day living. kindness and tolerence for example don't depend upon a past and can exist independently of a future. Yes, we very well cannot assume that we get along but if we all believed the same thing, i really don't think anything would work, would it? In an ocean there are lots of fish and each plays a role in the larger body of water. There are not just bushes, there are trees and bushes and waterfalls and dirt and small earthworms and inchworms and...If we all thought the same thing, people's minds would not come together as much. What if our spouses and partners and friends were exactly the same as we are? Wouldn't it be boring? If something is fundamental, it is not open. Is it? Rob, can you tell me how fundamental conforms with our shared belief in "keeping the channel open"? I don't at all mean this as a challenge or an attack or a question which i don't want answered, i'm just curious and I thinnk you have an opinion about it. Gays, lesbians and pegans (it's a bit worrisome to me why all three were grouped (as if to talk about all lesbians, all pegans, all gays) in the first place and then all grouped together...implying that "these are the ones who have denied god"? i'm really asking...i want to know where you're coming from) First, some gays and lesbians are religiously affilated and do believe in Jesus...it's the institution of the church (the catholic church...there are a lot of people in other religions where sexuality is not an issue as it is in the catholic church) So it is the church which has rejected them, not the other way around. And even if "Jesus' way" is the "right" way...why are some judging or how do we think we can really know the "jesus way."? You can "believe" the Jesus way...but if you talk to 10 different people, they may tell you 10 different Jesus ways. I really don't know about the fundraiser example but assuming that that is true in even just one case, the need for legitimization only happens when there is a lack of acceptance, so it's not the desire for legitimization which needs to be examined but rather the lack of acceptance. Furthermore, not going the "Jesus" way does not in my experience mean spinning wheels at all. I've found life to be happy because I live how I am and how I want to be and in a way that I feel does not hurt others. I try not to supress feelings...sexual, emotional, physical. Exclusion as an idea...hurts people emotionally and also can hurt them physically. Hurt can have spiraling repurcussions. If there is something fundamental, I'd say that it's that we are all human. Oddly, no one that I can remember was really that concerned with that simple thing when I was in catholic school. I think it may sometimes be good to go back to that part (that we are human) Also, I'd agree that laws DO govern so much of life...but we've made them, so they are not fixed and decided...we're the ones who can change things. I appreciate this discussion very much. Some of Rob's thoughts especially might be provocative in the fundamentalism and relativism forum. Maybe you have posted there? If not, maybe you'd consider it. Many thanks to both. I have to enter more fully in my life off the forum right now (new endeavor) so won't be able to respond, or if I do it will take a while, but I'm still listening. Thanks for having listened to me too.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/07/2006 23:32 Link to this Comment: 20306

I mention gays, lesbians, and pagans because they were the specific groups that I myself have seen doing the fundraising, not because they inherently belong together. But I must say that the church has not turned her back on them. It is simple logic that if one does not believe in what a church teaches, they are no longer a member by their own choice. Sometimes gays and lesbians get around this by saying that they do not have a choice and they were made the way they are. That is still a mystery to me because I don't quite believe it, but the members of that community that I have been friends with were very "normal" and do not seem to have suffered any emotional trauma or other external, nurture related issues that would influence their sexual preferences. So maybe it is nature and not nurture. I am not prepared with anythng but a stab in the dark that perhaps it is a trick of the devil to give confusion to even good people. It is too touchy ground, but regardless, if you do not believe in what a church teaches, which obviously they do not, you are not in that church.

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/08/2006 10:16 Link to this Comment: 20308

Ooops! Sorry, I don't think I was clear about one thing that I meant. I know I said the "last one" would be the "last one" but here I am again! I did not mean that trauma would effect sexual preference but that there is emotional pain and trauma associated with being rejected because of sexual preference. Here is the point where we do not agree. I think that the church rejects people without the societally percieved "normative" sexuality. You think that the church has rules which come directly from God and the Bible and for not following these laws, people who have different sexualities are rejecting the church or are being confused by the devil. Wanted to put that out there to see if that is what you mean. I actually have no idea what you mean but wanted to take a shot at it. But, Marie, I remember from previous posts that you do not agree with everything that the church says, do you? Weren't you saying that the vatican was being/had been too strict in some cases? And you are still a church member, right or if not a church member a religion member? So have you separated something inherent in your idea of Jesus/God that can let you not believe in some stuff that's going on but believe in other stuff and still not be rejecting "Jesus/Church/God"? But I've made assumptions here. I should ask the question instead. Do you believe in every single thing written in the bible and everything that the church teaches? I honestly don't know why sexuality needs to have anything to do with religion in today's society. That's personal choice. One reason for this that I've heard is that long ago the church needed more followers...so it promoted having a lot of kids--which seemed to happen best with hetero-"normative" practices. Now there is no need for this. But that is just one of a lot of reasons I'm sure... But love is love and sex is something that we need and seek which is also natural no matter who it is with. I believe the story goes that Jesus taught love NOT exclusion...why would "the devil" confuse people into loving one another...why at any level would it matter what your sexual preference was? Anyway, I don't know how we got here but since we did I really really felt like I needed to say what I felt about this, especially since right now there are only three voices here... Okay! Thanks again. I hope I'm off this forum now!

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/08/2006 10:24 Link to this Comment: 20309

Right, so I guess my question is in fact about WHY the church excludes certain people...If someone wants to believe in all other aspects of the church's story, but has her own story with regard to sexuality, what's the point of exclusion? Here this assumes that "counter to all logic" a person wants to believe some and not all. How does this exclusion (whether you believe it comes from within a person or from the outside institution of the church) better the way we share stories with each other? How does it help the world and other people in it? Even if the idea were to convert the "confused" back to "the way" (really really not my thinking and don't think it should be done and don't think there is "confused" OR "the way") but i'm just trying to use alternate language)...how do you do that by excluding people--invalidating who they are and what they want? Okay, anyway...people have been talking about this for a long time and much more eloquently than I and in much more of an informed way than I...

Name: Marie () Date: 09/08/2006 11:37 Link to this Comment: 20311

Wow, this is a lot for me to take in, and a lot to respond to without trapping you back in the forum. It is not a lot to take in in the sense that it is confusing or particularly eye opening, because I have certainly met my share of people who believe almost what you do and have been answering their questions for years. But it is a lot because I see I need to start from the roots up with you and I know you do not have the time. I will say one thing quickly before I read your words in depth. I repeat that the church does not exclude anybody. The church itself has no authority in that it is not a tangible thing, but a collective body of believers. It is not a club or an orginization with rules and regulations for membership. Sure it has an external orginizational structure, but it would exist with or without that in theory if not in practice. No church can disallow someone from believing in it, but all churches exist on the principal that the members are like-minded worshippers. If you do not believe what that church is teaching, you have put yourself outside of it, but the church has remained the same. It need not change its goals to encompass every other belief because that is compromising to its own integrity. There are certainly new communities being built around alternative translations of the words of Jesus. Hey, if you do not like what they have to offer, there is no reason not to invent one yourself! (not you personally) but you can not expect an established doctrinal entity to bow to any desire we may have in regards to what amounts to alleviating personal guilt. Furthermore, the church in its teaching does not excude anyone. It says we are all sinful and needing to overcome sin. For example a murderer is not excluded but is urged to repent and overcome. The same is true for gays and lesbians. It is taught that this is a weakness just like fornication which must be combatted. St John the Evangelist in Philadelphia has an ongoing ministry to the gay community who wish to preserve their catholic faith by abstinence. They regularly have gay masses and support groups. But if a member has a problem and begins to think that murder or alternative sexuality or whateveris a good thing, then they have excommunicated themselves. It seems harsh, but the word really means "being outside of the community" which community is composed of people who believe in common. The word community means "common" but what is in common is open, it can be the area you live in, the interests you pursue, or your religion. So it is clear that if you move outside of the geographic boundaries of any physical community, it has not excluded you, but you have left.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/08/2006 12:23 Link to this Comment: 20312

I made my comments about trauma not based on you but out of my own head, so do not worry on that score. About the issue of hetero sex.....first of all ,religion has EVERYTHING to do with sex.That depends somewhat on the religion, but certainly to catholics it is vital. There is no reason to believe in any "populating the church" theory. If that were the case then why would the church also promote priestly celibacy and monastic life? And why now, when the church is losing more and more members, would it not still be applicable? Well the true reason for hetero sex is complex and becomes clearer and clearer to me with the passing of time and technological advance. At the core it is based upon the infinite value of human life and the creation thereof. It is the work of God put into human hands,( back to why where we came from DOES matter) or at least an evolved instinct of self preservation. Since we have also
evolved/been created with freewill and a large brain, what once was pure instinct becomes a sometimes painful choice. Since we as humans do not always make the best choices and are subject to relativity in all matters churches attempt in general to tell us what is right.The Catholic church in particular says that sex ix not an end in itsefl, but a means to an end, namely procreation. The enjoyability of it is simply to make it palatable. Sex is not based on love, nor does love need sexual expression. When choosing a sexual partner love is only significant because of the possible result of offspring and the care they would need. Even marriage is not really based on love, but on like mindedness and care for each other. Thru consistant proof of the care that an individual takes of his family love is often solidified or rather infatuation is replaced by love. Marriage based on love is a relatively new idea. In the past, spousal suitability was given much higher importance , and this may account for the rise in divorce rates. Which leads me to the next point; broken families, instable childhoods, cloning, invetro fertilization, abortion, surrogate motherhood, fertility medication, gender alteration,etc,etc. All our attempts to play God with sexuality, all giving rise to terrible situations with unprecedented emotional crisis. For example, what about a surrogate mother's legal right to a child that she has contracted away? What about hormone injection for fertility resulting in multiple fetuses, early delivery, and death? The church does not make "rules" to serve a purpose such as gaining members. Rather, it is a set of people who believe that God makes rules to keep us from being stupid. I am Catholic, conservative, somewhat of a conspiracy theorist. I believe in all She teaches and I also believe that because of the decline in membership and outward pressure for answers from people such as yourself, some of the leaders of the church make mistakes in trying to please the multitude. I think that the decline in parishoners comes directly from this watering down of doctrine, and the perceived contradictions that are made in the process. I believe it is my duty to portray the original message of the church, not in opposition to the Vatican, but more harshly that it presently has the confidence to do. I am not a sede-vacantist.

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/09/2006 01:34 Link to this Comment: 20317

Thanks, Marie! I'm glad that this conversation happened because I had no idea just what different pages we were on. It's all good and productive (sorry I don't have more time!). I kept saying "the church" "the church" too and I like your distinction about Catholic doctrine. Though I've moved far far away...I still think "the church" which is problematic because there are a zillion churches. I was raised Catholic and then made a choice not to be anymore because I felt that I didn't agree with so much of what was going on there...(were you raised Catholic?) and I felt I owed it to my good friends who have a whole slew of different political beliefs and sexual preferences not to step foot in a place which can say "if you are a woman, you can not be a priest" (so if God is a She...as you say...what about this rule?), if you are gay, you cannot recieve communion/Jesus, a woman can't choose to kill her unborn fetus (i'll use the pro-life rhetoric as a way of allowing pro-life voice in) even if she's been raped, she herself will die, she can't support another life, where most birth control can't be used ( i really have a theory that about 98.9 percent of Cathloics ignore this rule). I think I see where you are coming from...and I really really think you are a very open-minded person who has firmly chosen her belief system not out of any blind process but out of a deep sense of knowing and a deep desire to live as a good person in the world. I commend you for that and truly respect all that you believe in. It's just that for me...I can't do it. What's your belief about me? I mean, if there is an afterlife...I don't get to go there, right? I'd like to say that this doesn't matter to me...i don't really care if there is life after this one but I am curious about what your mind says about me...that's an interaction happening in the present.

It feels like hurting people to me...just belonging to a group which isn't letting people be who they are...is based on guilt. I don't think this will really go anywhere...because you're saying...then don't belong...but it's just that as an institution, as a group of individuals...it seems so much that the chuch thinks they've got it "right." I don't have it right. They don't have it right. We don't have it "right". Nobody has it right. To this you will repond. Jesus, is the way, the truth, he is "right"...you must just believe...

If we are believing all the time, sometimes we are not thinking about the source of things. And to focus everything on one "right"...can ignore some more immediate things that need tending to. War for example, violence, dying people, hungry people, unhappy people...impovrished people, children's education...soooo much I don't have a clue about and need to.

I assure you that I do NOT have a desire for answers from you, the church, anyone or anywhere. If I say nothing else (see...still trying to get off this forum!) it will be that I certainly am not looking for answers...they're only waiting places. I'm looking for new questions and I think it's everyone's responsibility in the world to ask "why" so that they can know "what"...what is what we are believing doing...to others and for others.

And marriage not being about love feels so sad to me. That doesn't make you sad? Can one be in love? Under that belief what does "I love you" mean? I don't know if I feel that sex is an expression of love--if it is i think it's also an animal-like need and that's totally fine. I think that thinking that the pleasure part of sex is only so that it's palatable to make children would wipe the pleasure right out of it! There was a study that took place where a story was formed that the impulse is not at all to make children but to have sex. I think that people should be able to have fun for fun's sake....I also believe in being responsible in a lot of cases...but not repressed. Why is sex if you are not married bad? If one is not careful, there can be physical or emotional consequences (to a relationship that goes wrong etc) but why is it a religious issue? Yes, there's a lot that has gone wrong w/ marriages etc. and a lot of kids are hurting...but there is no perfect family and to sacrifice the idea of love so that one can have the illusion of a safe/happy home seems so silly. Taking your assumption that we were made in God's image...would it then not be our responsibility to "play God" in all aspects of life, including sexuality? Using "god" in here too...and throughout though it's not my belief.

I'd like if family were seen as a greater value in society but I don't think that making more rules is going to do it. How about masturbation? Is that bad/sinful? Someone once described a sin to me as "deliberately turning one's back against god" But why would loving oneself and finding pleasure in life be turning against God? Before I stopped believing in God in any sort of traditional way, I decided that I would see God not as this militant guilt presence but as a loving one who approved of what I did. That was better (for me) and I was a better person in the world because I didn't feel guilty and worthless. It's a question of where to expend energy...i think expending it on love is pretty cool but in trying to stick firmly to "the rules"...not as cool (for me). I mean...I really think that nothing is really bad here because it seems to me that Marie, you're not saying that people who are not like you shouldn't exist, you're just judging them as you think Christ is judging them. True? I want to put some song lyrics here for fun but I need to check to see if it's okay to post them...based on forum rules. I hope I stop posting soon. I honestly don't have time. Please stop saying provocative things! (kidding; thanks.) I also appreciate you going from "the roots". I think sometimes we assume more commonality than exists...we are definitely two very very different trees.

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/09/2006 22:07 Link to this Comment: 20324

Thanks sooo much, Marie and Bob. Really appreciate this sharing! I'm glad that you believe in love, Marie! I like your thoughts. I think I have pockets of misinformation too. I think you do too. And I think Rob does too! I don't know anything for sure and somehow, right now, that's comforting but maybe later I'll want to really feel like I know a lot more...strongly. I'm not sure but I'll look forward to finding out.

It is so hard to "know" but sometimes good to chose something to believe in and to allow oneself the flexibility of continued choice.

No need to respond to this unless you want to (not waiting for a response with this one but thanks for responding to the last post!) It is somehow more plausable for you (Marie) to think that two women can fall in love than two men? This is just speculation because it's hard to know about others but I'd say there have been a lot of men who have slept with each other and been in love. (i honestly don't feel if i can comment on the causal relation between sex and love (causal as in X causes Y)...i'm very undecided in a more general way...not a way that pertains to gender) But, even if there was just ONE instance (i think there's a lot more!) where that was true (man loves man and sleeps with man), wouldn't it be good to say that it was okay? I think the problem as you see it is more about the nature of sex (as procreative in your/the Cathlolic church's opinion)...a lot of heterosexual couples have casual sex and sex not based on love and act based on lust too. And a lot of men sleep with women based on lust...like a lot of women sleep with men because of lust. So...it's not really that clear cut for anybody and seems to depend less on the gender of the people having sex. I really do believe in male to male and female to female sexual love because as much as one can "see" love, I've seen it. This is a weak thing to say I suppose in terms of how exactly to see love but...I think believing in love helps with that. When I look at my friends who have sexual preferences not accepted in the Catholic Church I do not think "oh they must not be in love" It has always felt counterintuitive to me (even when I was VERY Catholic). But I must say that I was also raised to think that love was not dependent on gender...that it was something deeper. This was a belief that I held on to. I also belive in lust and the right that people have to it. I think that lust is okay and that really it's good to pay attention to it but it's so natural that to say that it is inherently bad seems not useful. I think it's okay to put love and lust in the same sentence. I'm aware that's not a Christian thing to think.

I'd love to get to the place where rape doesn't happen but in the meantime...what? i wonder if there could be a more expansive church rule that does not just focus on the "ideal" but the "ideal" though the lens of the real. I think it's good to think the absolute best (but not close one's eyes to all of the grey areas...to what is happening). But again I don't know if I really want the church to change...it's just that there are so many people in it...and in that sense it really DOES hold a lot of authority over other people's alternative stories.

You've both really opened my eyes to directions which I hadn't been looking in in a long time and honestly and truely had begun to hate so I really thank you for that. Hate's not good in any sense! It's easier to hate an idea but when you have two human beings who believe certain things...you come to realize that you were hating in the first place and that you should be looking and listening and thinking instead--to the people (not just the theory). I don't think it's good to shut one's eyes to other beliefs. It's hard to admit but I really needed this forum moment. So, thanks again.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/09/2006 23:58 Link to this Comment: 20329

I still think I am not being entirely clear about the love/lust thing, probably because I also am stealing moments in which to write. Love is ideally a free emotion, and does not need sexual expression, proximity, or gender. Love comes first and should be in our lives regardless of sexuality or abstinence or any other carnality. We love in many ways, and many different people, even those who are no longer here. Obviously sex has nothing to do with most of the loves in our lives. When at times a person breaks the normal pattern and begins to think sexually about a parent or child for example, it is met with a deep sense of disgust, of perceived destruction and violation of the natural order. So I am sure that you see love does not have to be fulfilled in sex. Sex also exists on its own and needs not love. But what do we need? The missing word here is "commitment". Stubborn, phsyical, life long commitment is maybe the natural conclusion to real love. It is easily granted to unchangeable things like a favorite movie or season or whatever, unfortunately not so easily given to a faulty human being. Thus the institution of marriage. Grueling, stubborn, life long. But why, why, why? Because only in this realm is sex meant to take place, and yes a healthy lust! why again? children! It is not gays and lesbians alone who are different, but all of us who use sex to gratify our own bodies or egos. The ideal is that love flourish within the union, but marriage was brought about as a back-up. Maybe I should say that it requires a very strong love to really be able to make this commitment on our own. With the decline of our commitment personally and as a society to ANY goal, religion, or greater good, the commitment of marriage is becoming more and more unthinkable. Well, glad to have spoken with you. I certainly think that it is common to overlook christianity nowadays, as maybe we already feel we know what it has to offer. It is probably even boring from the outside looking in. A great part of that is the fault of the catholic leaders themselves going easy and watering things down. What once was a well of provocative and profound theology and inspiration has turned to mush. A refresher is always good before the windows are closd forever and hatred grow up around them.

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/10/2006 04:47 Link to this Comment: 20332

THE MADMAN

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran into the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"

As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, and he provoked much laughter. 'Has he got lost?' asked one. 'Did he lose his way like a child'? asked another. 'Or is he hiding'? 'Is he afraid of us'? 'Has he gone on a voyage'? 'emigrated'? Thus they yelled and laughed him to scorn.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him-you and I. All of us are his murderers."

"But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, require time before they are seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars and yet they have done it themselves."

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account each time, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

"God is dead, we have killed Him!"

---Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.---

----------

Now that is interesting stuff no?

I think Nietzsche was wrong... God is not dead, but we have become dead to Him in our trespasses and sin.

Jesus said, "Because I live, you also will live". He came to save us because we were dead, and He wishes to raise us to life.

As my favorite evangelist said, 'Jesus did not come to make bad people good. he came to make dead people live.' To make people who are dead to God, alive to God. Dead to the Spirit of truth, alive in the truth.

----------

Consider the following clip from an article... I have provided the link at bottom-

[Yet what if the universe was designed in such a way that one religion actually did give the proper explanation of the way the world is? What if the universe was so structured that certain sexual practices actually went against the way you were made? I would hope that, if this was so, we would not be shouting "intolerance" over disagreements, but rather, doing our best to arrive at the truth. We do not call disagreements in science "intolerant," but we do with morality. Sadly, many people actually think religion and certain moral claims are indifferent to life—and to say "true" or "false" is like saying yellow is better than orange. This is a major problem.

Jesus comes to us as the designer of the universe who is deeply intelligent. If He really knows what he's talking about, then that means we'd better pay attention. Not only did he tell us to "Love your neighbor," but he also firmly held that "love rejoices in truth" (see 1 Corinthian 13:6). You cannot separate the two without losing something of both. http://www.rzim.org/publications/slicetran.php?sliceid=635]

Keep thinking...

Rob

Name: Marie () Date: 09/10/2006 12:46 Link to this Comment: 20334

There are people who desire that science one day become so certain that it does away with our need for faith to explain the origins of the world, and answer all questions pertaining to HOW we got here. WHY we got here is another matter indeed and still leaves plenty of room for uncertainty and the designs of God himself. Within this grey area is the issue of morality, but should it indeed be so grey? While science exists above and beyond us, and will eternally do so without need for us, the effects of morality are visible in everyday life, in the way we treat others, and in the way we treat ourselves. Good moral decisions bring harmony and order, while bad decisions hurt, slowly, suddenly, internally to destroy our spirit or externally to harm those around us. These effects are self-evident to even the layest observer and it would be assumed that many eons ago we as humankind would have tired of failure and perfected the art of self-preservation. As it is in every generation we have to relearn wrong from right and go through periods of trial and error in our own lives. How much easier would it be if we did all follow in the one true way?! But no, any type of moral accord is far off for us as a society. Relativism is put up on a pedastal above fundementalism, with focus on the difference in opinion in regards to what is "right". But just as darkness is non-existant and is merely the absence of light, the concept of sin and evil exists only as an absence of Good. To create a perfect Godless world, all notions of sin must be abolished along with all certainty of one "right" path. I do believe that this is happening more and more quickly, yet subtly. One by one our sins are going to trial, put before the public eye , and "judged". One by one the verdicts are coming back. NOT GUILTY! You are no longer a sin!!!! We are brain washed, emotionally pulled at, challenged, made to feel guilty, backed into a corner, until we are forced and coaxed into agreement that what once was sin may not be so any longer. Abortion, homosexuality, belief in evolution, divorce, just to name a few. We are guilt tripped into the conclusion that to defend right is equal to intolerence. Let us not be afraid!

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/10/2006 17:48 Link to this Comment: 20340

You're so right Marie...

You said, "Relativism is put up on a pedastal above fundementalism, with focus on the difference in opinion in regards to what is 'right'."

That is itself a fundamental and fanatical 'one way' philosophy...

The reletavists have not escaped the law of non-contradiction, they in fact use it, to disagree with it...

Michael Savage calls liberalism a mental disorder, but he is wrong...

It is a spiritual disorder that we all suffer from. It is called sin, and it is the death of 'reason'.

In it (sin), our light goes out. Thank God He sent His Son, the light of the world, so that we may see once again...

God bless, Rob

Name: Marie () Date: 09/11/2006 13:46 Link to this Comment: 20349

Thank you, Rob, I regret that there is not more activity on this forum at present, but I feel like we are helping as best we know how. Probably 75% of people I meet, who believe they are "free" are pretty nearly walking clones of each other. The predominate thread is not any variety of fulfilling or useful alternative "story" but almost always a hodge-podge of residual hatred or disillusionment with christianity. It is hard for me to imagine finding meaning in life not based on what I believe but on what I do not believe. It is hard to imagine deriving any strength during difficult moments or instilling meaning into a child's question. So it follows suit that suicide, murder, depression and drugs are becoming more and more the "way out". True freedom happens when your soul no longer suffers the gnawing effects of sin, the time consuming sleepless nights and distracted days. It happens when you experience enough internal peace to allow you the clear sightedness and presence of mind that accomplishes great things. To speak of an internal "light" is rare nowadays. So much emphasis is on charity and outward ministry that I have even found some catholics wondering what prayer was all about, and what good sacrifice was without a cause. Our soul does indeed house a light which needs fuel to stay alive. Perhaps it is like a muscle which grows sronger with use. This light when well lit illumines everything and it seems at times that nothing is impossible. It is the light of faith, of reason, and of hope.

God bless you also,
Marie Christ

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/11/2006 21:36 Link to this Comment: 20354

I believe in light. I used to touch it on the floor of our den when it came in through three evergreen trees in the back yard which I'd decided were represnetative of the trinity. I will remain fundamental in sticking to my relativism but I really agree that there does need to be time for personal reflection, deep looking, both thinking about the world and feeling it. In my opinion we're hardly clones of one another, though...The extent to which that "sameness" exists happens at the superficial level...and i think it's good to see the ways in which we're different (and beautiful in that difference) and the ways that we're the same because we're humans trying to make our way in the world. I agree whole-heartedly that the hatred of other stories...acting in reaction to rather than creating knew ones based on an understanding of them or not taking time to know them is very detrimental. To conclude (in so much as I am able) I'd like to say that light cannot be generated in closed space...it comes through windows and shines on everything. It doesn't judge ANYTHING that it touches. So it can be felt personally and in a way unites everything too. It's good to keep the openings for it...if 'fundamental' at least to be open and accepting, not to give up on the sharing of stories and 'beliefs'.
Good thoughts and much thanks.

Name: () Date: 09/12/2006 00:44 Link to this Comment: 20356

Elizebeth said: ---'fundamental' at least to be open and accepting, not to give up on the sharing of stories and 'beliefs'.---

Now before I criticize your statement Elizebeth, let me say that I know you mean well. I think most of us mean well, but that does not mean much in terms of result. All the outward pleasantries in the world do not equal fig leaves that can cover the real and nasty nature within.

Results without real intent are simply a cover...

The root of the problem is much deeper.

Now as to your statement, is there any belief that you would not be open to sharing or accepting?

Do we really need to consider the point of view of Nazi's for a clear example, and if not why?

Also, not to be trite, but there was little in your post that was relativistic!

Relativism is a contradictory worldview because it excludes it's opposite... that of fundamental truth! And relativism by definition excludes nothing. It's only true form is chaos...

We can't have it both ways, so don't let them fool you. It sounds nice at first, but it is simply a way for people to have their spiritual cake, and eat their physical desires too.

That is why New Age is so popular... It's sold as the best of both worlds. But good and evil are at uncompromizing odds.

It's all in the extensions of the logic...

Rob

Name: () Date: 09/12/2006 01:55 Link to this Comment: 20357

Quote from another forum regarding a new view of reality: "a giant step above the good and evil preadolescent themes that redundantly infest the genre."

???

So yours is good, and the other is not good? Preadolescent?

What does above mean? Is it higher? In other words better? (Good?)

What does preadolescent mean? Is it less mature? (Evil?)

Are those judgements?

----------------------------------------


Is this like the movie 'What the bleep do we know'?

Where they promote the idea that we create our own reality. And then they say that we need to get out of 'that' judgemental Christian paradigm, and into this other one that is 'non-judgemental'?

???

How can we judge that the 'old' paradigm is bad, if the new paradigm calls for no judging as a starting point?

And if we create our own reality, what does it matter what the 'paradigm' is? In that case, there is no 'Paradigm'... not even a new one that says there is a new one!

Does anybody know how to think critically anymore, or is this simply about coping by whatever means works for you?

And if that is true, and the old 'paradigm' works for me, how can you judge me as wrong, even if I say it is true for all?

Can I impose my morality on you?

Would it be 'wrong' for me to do so?

Think about it!

If it is, then aren't you imposing your morality on me, by not allowing me to impose my morality on you?


Rob

Name: marie () Date: 09/12/2006 13:01 Link to this Comment: 20361

Well, Rob, I see you have found one of the not-so-nice comments I keep mentioning coming from the other side. It makes it very hard not to be up in arms when you start to notice that this relativism seems to breed so much hatred and ridicule of any other way. Especially when we know for fact that following our way can not and never will bring any of the harm to the world that their way might. In other words, we are counseled to be free and guiltless, but sin always brings with it ruin, no matter what name you put on it. I asked a priest a long time ago the difference between sin and crime, and he said "nothing". So in all reality relativism may work with color perception, artistic appreciation, how we look at certain events, but if it is merely a New Age term that attempts to camoflauge sin by saying it is relative to each individual, that will never work. Sin has its own offspring, and they will always resemble their parent.

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/15/2006 10:07 Link to this Comment: 20422

I will not believe in a God who hates. If there is a God I do not believe that he does anything but love. I will not believe in a God who hates homosexuality. I will not believe in a God who hates people for making their own reproductive choices. At this time, I do not wish to believe in the God that you both are believing in. You didn't answer your last question, Rob...if it was to show me, by way of all of the previous logic that the answer was No, the Catholic church cannot condone homosexuality! than I am not really struck in any way...if it was to keep it open, then I am interested. I hope the answer to that will someday be Yes! I think it is so sad that anybody (so many bodies) think the answer to this should always be no. To say that is to go beyond our communication and to really judge a story (i suppose yours)...which I don't want to be doing but I can't say it any other way. I feel very very sad that you think homosexuality is wrong. I think that your stories are JUST as valid as mine but the sadness comes when I think of the people that your stories are effecting. I do not see my story as hurting as many people. But then, you do because you think that homosexuality causes familial havoc. So here's a point where...what now? We have listened. I feel sad.

Marie, you didn't respond to what I said about the possibility of God (in your terms) deciding that two people of the same sex can fall in love and therefore by extension deciding that they will not have children and others will. Like I said, I don't think this is in any way inconsistent...that it could fit into your belief system if the "fundamental truth" could be opened up a bit. I usually don't bring back something which isn't responded to but I'm really curious about this.

I don't know how y'all are so sure of what God wants/loves/hates etc. If He is something beyond all of us...I don't know how it can even be expressed in those terms. I don't know how a notion of God could be so reduced to Yes! No! Yes! I think we're the ones doing all the loving, hating, judging and because we're doing all of that, we should also be doing some major re-evaluating not as to what that does to God (he's perfect anyway, right) but what it does to all of us imperfect ones.

That's really all. Marie, I'm glad that you think adoption is okay. I certainly do too. I think it can be as perfect as all of the other situations out there...

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/12/2006 19:33 Link to this Comment: 20373

RE: Rob


Now as to your statement, is there any belief that you would not be open to sharing or accepting?

There is no belief that I would not be open to sharing or having anyone share. There are many beliefs that in any given moment, I do not accept by virtue of believing other ones (yes, yes, I see your point, Rob that by believing one thing one necessarily does not believe another) BUT as a general statement there is no story that I WILL NOT hear and I have made no determinations to not accept any story for any reason at any time. For example, though I do not believe in God now, I have not made the decision to never believe in God. You and Marie believe in God now and have made a decision that this will absolutely, always and forever be the case. There is NOTHING in my life that I am not open to changing.

Do we really need to consider the point of view of Nazi's for a clear example, and if not why?

Yes, I think we ABSOLUTELY have to consider the POV of Nazi's or to take it to more contemporary terms, the POV of terrorists, the POV of everyone who is telling a different story. Shutting the "other" ideas out and not thinking about them isn't going to help anything. You can't change what someone is doing if you don't know where they are coming from. You can't agree with someone if you don't know where they are coming from. Listening does not mean agreeing with. Listening does not mean disagreeing with. You have to know the structure of the thought of the "other"--perhaps to speak with the langauge of one of your beliefs, I feel it is better to take "the devil" in to myself scary as it is...in order to get him out. You've got to know how "he works"...(right now i don't believe in a devil...but that's the closest equivalent to what you believe, I think.) I'm not saying that this is what I do all the time or even what one should do at every minute, but it seems to me that that is the way that change and progress happen. As a somewhat tangential statement, I know that there is a lot of sexual repression as a byproduct of Catholicism (well...i do not know but have experienced) and what I was taught is not to think about sex at all...and so, if you're not thinking about something which is so crucial and key to being human--there will be emotional consequences. One has to be able to feel whatever it is that one is feeling...to see it, to know the structure and logic of our repressed thoughts to. It will not come through ignoring them. So, why, in your opinion, is it not necessary to listen to alternative beliefs? I think that the things that we are most prone to rejecting without listening are those things that we are most scared about confronting within ourselves.

No one can impose morality on another...it's physically impossible. You can impose your body in someone's space, you can impose your words in someone's space, you can communicate disease etc...but morality is intangible...there is no way to impose, only to suggest. The answer to "you must believe this" is either "yes", "no" or "perhaps." As long as all three of these exist there can be no imposition. Even physical force, while it can change the appearance of what someone believes and influence it, can't change it.

I don't know what the top part re: adolescence/genre/judgement is about. ???? Could you link it to the forum that it came from or write the forum's name?

Rob, I appreciate that you said that you said I meant well first. I think you do too. I see the logical aspect of this but would like to know more about what the logic means in a wider way. I'll agree with what you are saying...in order to say relativism is right you have to say that fundamentalism is wrong (fine!) and I'll agree that if you believe one thing you are excluding another belief (fine!) But where does this get us? Lets say people who believe in relativism accept that they are excluding fundamentalism: all we have proven is that they are excluding fundamentalism. The crucial thing seems to be what it is that they are thinking instead...that judgements, in a general sense are not productive--to say "wait, wait, but THAT'S a judgement" is an interesting thing to say but what does it mean? And so...people who believe in relativism who don't listen to the stories of fundamentalists, probably do not help things too much but those that listen to all stories---and do not stop listening...I do not see harm here. Where is the harm here?

I STILL think we all have to listen more for positive change. And it seems to me that in a general way, the people who are listening more are the people who have not made absolute decisions about belief. Yes, yes, fine BUT RELATIVISM IS AN ABSOLUTE BELIEF...so it is. But it is an absolute belief which lets other stories be heard. Of course...it's not perfect. I don't even know what it really is just as I don't know what fundamentalism really is. I think it varies from person to person also. I think it's difficult for people who believe in a variety of things because they can appear wishy washy but it is as difficult to be in this place as to be in a place of firm and fixed belief. I do not know anything. Tomorrow everything I have said here might be different. I do not mind this.

I'm not entirely sure if I should post this, because I am feeling annoyed. I think I need some sort of calming intervention here--if I could draw a picture and post it I would. But anyway, still thanks and I probably will never leave, though it is becoming problematic. I appreciate the continued thought and the effort to speak in ways that promote listening! (which quite arguably in this particlar post, I have failed at...just so you know i'm aware ;)

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/13/2006 01:00 Link to this Comment: 20383

Elizebeth... wow! You are a very reasonable woman. You have a healthy skepticism, but are not cynical. You can see things that many simply cannot...

I apologize if this is too long a post, but it is as short as I can make it. It is a very ambitious response, so please be thoughtful and consider it. I'm afraid it may frighten you! So keep in mind that I am aware that this is stuf to weigh for the long haul. No band wagon jumping is implied or encouraged. We must think carefully. God says in His word "Let us reason together."

It occurs to me that I am embarking on a mission to point you in what I firmly believe is the right direction... But that is precisely where I have gone wrong in my Christian youth!

It is you who must see for yourself, so I do apologize for the pushiness. I never allowed anyone to push me... I am an infant in terms of sharing a thing as profound as this, if indeed it is true (and I firmly believe so).

No man ever convinced me that Christianity was true! (Christ being the exception as no 'ordinary' man).

As my favorite evangelist and philosopher (Ravi Zacharius) once said to his aunt, about his uncle's conversion, "uncle said no man would ever convince him that Christianity was true. Let's take him at his word auntie... no man did!"


You see, I am 36 yrs old, but have only been a Christian for 4 yrs. Previously, I held many of the beliefs that you now hold.

I cannot conceive of a way to explain some of this, but I will address some of the things you have said. You must simply see for yourself, and you have shown yourself to be quite capable of that.

Jesus said often, "He who has ears, let him hear." "He who has eye's to see, let him see." And in the context of the culture, he was speaking equally to women. No one lifted up the role of women like Jesus, and this fact is burried by many factors. It is clear in the Gospels, but a cultural understanding of the times is necessary. A good pastor makes this helpful. Be willing to go hear one...

You are right that we must keep an open mind. But the purpose for that is finding the truth! Once you have found it, there is no need to think that by becoming biased about it, we have closed our minds. For example, you are not open-minded to the idea that 1+1 = 5. That does not make you closed minded, but rather it makes you reasonable. The root of reasonable is 'reason', as in 'logical', or 'coherent'.

Now let's see if I can keep all of this in context. Please listen carefully as I address some of your points. Please do not be discouraged. Consider it a challenge, but not a rebuke!

---There is NOTHING in my life that I am not open to changing.---

Are you willing to really consider the possiblity that Jesus was God incarnate? I mean really? And make a determined effort to put Him on trial, and see for yourself if He was telling the truth?

He said some outrageous things... And they killed Him as a liar (Blasphemer).

---You can't change what someone is doing if you don't know where they are coming from.---

You can't change someone at all! They have to be willing to change. And to do that, they must believe it is true!

If you know mathematics, you don't have to learn someone elses convoluted version of it to explain the real thing to them. You only need to tell them the truth and explain why it is sensible. If they refuse to listen, there is nothing that you can do.

By definition, some illogical form of mathematics is not understandable. The only terms we have for making sense, or 'Shedding light' on, or making known, is that which is clear and visible.

It is the same with the spoken word in terms of objective reality in general. The book of John starts out with the words, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. And the word 'was' God... And the word became flesh."

Who can shed light on reality?

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world".

He also said, "Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of the light, because their deeds were evil."

---I feel it is better to take "the devil" in to myself scary as it is...in order to get him out. You've got to know how "he works"---

You cannot understand how he works until you know God. Logic is a clue Elizebeth, and the devil distorts it. But he is a master at doing so. He is not understandable, because his logical end is chaos. It is darkness, and he remains hidden.

Logic is not the Spirit of God, so do not misunderstand. But God's Spirit 'is' completely and totally logical. Reason is a quality of God, but it is only one of the means by which He tries to reach us. It is not at all the entirety of God. If it were, God's judgement would have rightly put a stop to this violent and evil world we have made it. But His Mercy is as incredible as His unwavering Justice. His grace and patience unimaginable from a natural human frame.

---So, why, in your opinion, is it not necessary to listen to alternative beliefs? I think that the things that we are most prone to rejecting without listening are those things that we are most scared about confronting within ourselves.---

I think that this is true of all of us before accepting God. We simply must be willing to entertain the possibility if we can find truth. But certainly, I do not have to entertain myself with the idea that a pure NAZI bloodline is the saving grace of the world. It is immediately recognized as being wrong, even if only on an intuitive level. (On that point... In the following post I will copy the first chapter of C.S. Lewis' 'Mere Christianity) He makes the point well. I reccomend purchasing and reading the entire thing.

----I'll agree with what you are saying...in order to say relativism is right you have to say that fundamentalism is wrong (fine!) and I'll agree that if you believe one thing you are excluding another belief (fine!) But where does this get us?----

It simply shows that only 'one way' can ultimately be true. Fundamentalism is logically inescapable. So for me, when I hear fundamentalism being lampooned, I immediately recognize the lie. It's a contradictory statement. I fell for it for years, and just 'assumed' -without understanding- that staying non biased was 'the way', and 'the truth'.

This does not mean that 'anything' fundamentalist is true because everything is inescapably fundamental. Every assertion of truth is fundamental... It just means that reason is fundamental. Somehow we have been fooled into believing that 'being reasonable' means giving up on ultimate truth in the name of peace, when in reality, peace is acheived by living in ultimate truth.

What it means is that Jesus is making a 'very reasonable' statement when He said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me."

Then later in John's Gospel...

John 14:7-10
7 If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." 8 Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." 9 Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?

Part of 'the way' is remaining open minded as defined previously. But in terms of Jesus' message, many people are not open minded because to accept Him means to give up sin. And some people refuse to see there sin of choice as 'wrong'.

The difficulty for those of us who are, is that without Him, we do not have the power to be other than who we are. But to ask Him for help means to identify ourselves as sinners and be honest. The truth is we are not good. Jesus said, "there is no-one good but God!"

We trivialize the difference between good and evil...

We must step into the light and see ourselves as we really are. That is truely frightening for all of us. But it is liberating to stop pretending we are all right by the false standards of our societies, and instead, embrace the truth of God's intuitive moral conscious.

The Bible says, "God has given light to every man." So the fact is, we 'know' what is right and wrong, and we know we are corrupt if we are painfully honest.

That is interesting is it not?... that honesty, down to our soul, is painful? It shouldn't be. The truth is the most powerful force in the universe and if we recognize that it is not a concept, but a being, who came as one of us and spoke in terms we can understand. If we accept Him, and give Him spiritual possession of us, He will reveal Himself to us!

That's what it's about Elizebeth... Not a religion. Not blind faith! He came to make us, who are blind, see! We can meet Him personally. You can meet the creator of the universe yourself. You don't have to trust me or any other so called priest. Jesus is the priest. You can meet Him for yourself. That is what He promised, and I have experienced it for myself. He spoke the truth.

Joh 14:23
Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

(Spiritual posession) I know it is a scary idea, but read the Gospel of John for yourself. The translation is not that important. They all say the same thing in slightly different language, but I find the NIV to be clearest to me.


---I STILL think we all have to listen more for positive change.---

But listen to whom? Who will tell us the truth if all are seeking? Only he who is from God, can reveal Him.

---But anyway, still thanks and I probably will never leave, though it is becoming problematic. I appreciate the continued thought and the effort to speak in ways that promote listening! (which quite arguably in this particlar post, I have failed at...just so you know i'm aware ;)---

I think you are doing fine! Don't give up... It is not so much problamatic as it is frightening and wonderful all at the same time. Seek and you will find. But if you only seek for seeking sake, how can you find?

Rob

Name: () Date: 09/13/2006 01:13 Link to this Comment: 20384

Book 1 from 'Mere Christianity' by C.S. Lewis

Every one has heard people quarreling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kinds of things they say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?"--"That's my seat, I was there first"--"Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm"--"Why should you shove in first?"--"Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine"--"Come on, you promised." People say things like that every day, educated people, as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.
Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects[ the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but it they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.
Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature. Nowadays, when we talk of the "laws of nature" we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong "the Law of Nature," they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law--with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either or obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.
We may put this in another way. Each man is at every moment subjected to several sets of law but there is only one of these which he is free to disobey. As a body, he is subjected to gravitation and cannot disobey it; if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice about falling than a stone has. As an organism, he is subjected to various biological laws which he cannot disobey anymore than an animal can. That is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses.
This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behavior was obvious to everyone. And I believe they were right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced? If they had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that then for the colour of their hair.
I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behavior known to all men is unsound, because different civilizations and different ages have had quite different moralities.
But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only to ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two make five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to--whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.
But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this in a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking on to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter; but the next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is not such thing as Right and Wrong--in other words, if there is no Law of Nature--what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?
It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on to my next point, which is this. None of us is really keeping the Law of Nature. If there are any exceptions among you, I apologize to them. They had much better read some other work, for nothing I am going to say concerns them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left:
I hope you will not misunderstand what I am going to say. I am not preaching, and Heaven knows I do not pretend to be better than anyone else. I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from other people. There may be all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the money--the one you have almost forgotten--came when you were very hard up. And what you promised to do for old So-and-so and have never done--well, you never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be. And as for your behavior to your wife (or husband) or sister (or brother) if I knew how irritating they could be, I would not wonder at it--and who the dickens am I, anyway? I am just the same. that is to say, I do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like if or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much--we feel the Rule of Law pressing on us so--that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. For you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we find all these explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.
These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

(From C.S Lewis' 'Mere Christianity')

Name: Marie () Date: 09/13/2006 12:47 Link to this Comment: 20389

Some of what I have been writing is in response to the general feel I got from other forums such as a pagan group in my area, which are riddled with sarcasm, intolerence, ridicule of ID, and quotes from the pope. I apologize if my own high horse has made my thoughts irrelevant or rude. (It really doesn't matter too much because if we bring in C.S.Lewis the subject could not get much clearer with any of my lame words). But I think I see how Elizabeth can feel indignant. Back in the day I was often mistaken for a pagan or atheist based on outward appearence, dress, company I kept, etc. I noticed that many young people assumed that in order to appear artistic, interesting, and individual, it was necessary to nominally change allegiences to a more trendy religion such as wicca or satanism as if it was the criteria and magic potion that would bring social acceptance and freedom of expression. For them identifying with a larger group really had nothing to do with personal conviction, and I think then when someone heard I was christian they were wiiling to listen to me a little more. Now that I look plain and motherly I find the opposite. Often I am sized up and disregarded in one glance. I can FEEL the boredom they have with christianity, and no matter how sure I am about myself, judgement hurts. I think there are several ways to deal with judgement. We may attempt to ignore it, we may retaliate with hatred. We may become part of a societal clique that excludes the existence of any threatening idea. Or we may create a different social buffer, that of openness, of judging not lest you be judged. In comparison with hatred and intolerence, a well-meaning person may indeed adopt this path in an attempt to rise above a need for judgement, and could be very upset to find themselves nonetheless judged, even to find themselves questioned about issues such as Nazism that are the essence of what they were intending to avoid. And Elizabeth, maybe you see us still as a self righteous fringe group trying to impose our belief to the exclusion of anything else in order to preserve our biases and our comfort zone. My problem is that there should BE no problem. The original and best authority on love and tolerence remains Jesus. There really is no need for all this confusion. What I mean is that there is really not such a big choice as it sounds in this term '"open". There is only one truth in this world, and many lies. Even if you can not believe in a devil, simply find one evil, such as Hitler. And who is his perfect opposite? Jesus! and think of terrorism. If we were all christian would this happen? now continue to think of any other evil, and wonder if it is something that could be rectified through christian love. The answer will always be YES! Christianity should be the embodiment of all that is good and all that is ideal that we could ever conceive of either individually or collectively. Christianity is not merely one thought among many, but the direct opposite of evil in all its forms. There are stories that have part of the truth, there are many more stories which are attempting to blur the lines between good and evil. Jesus was simply sent to help us tell the difference. If you do not believe this, consider how many men were convinced by Hitler himself and you will see how needy we are.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/13/2006 15:52 Link to this Comment: 20395

May I also say that I am inclined to disagree with the idea that those of us who have supposedly stopped listening are not accomplishing as much toward world peace as are the more broad minded. To understand and help people it is certainly important to listen, to some extent experience. But I find that usually only a strong conviction in any area provides the motivation for great accomplishment. Listening to stories, etc, is all very nice, but when it comes to actual results, christianity is unsurpassed in in so many charitable pursuits, most of which are directed at those who are different from us!

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/13/2006 21:49 Link to this Comment: 20400

Marie, yes...I agree so completely that the Catholic church has done a lot of good and that much of that good has come from a strong conviction and firmly held beliefs. Thank you so much for reminding me of that. And Rob, thank you for your kindness...and the long and thoughtful posts. Yes, I am willing to accept God/Jesus as a story and think more in that direction. You are not willing to go back to the direction that you were in 4 years ago. Not saying that you should. Just pointing out the difference. Just one tiny extra thought which pertains to Marie's invoking of "judge not and you will not be judged". In relationship to Rob's idea that there are ONLY fundamentals, this statement doesn't seem to hold up. I must say that this my favorite of all Jesus thoughts but the Church (or the human interpretation of it) seems to be founded on judgement...this is something that Christ would do (that judges the non-Jesus things as bad), this is what we believe (that's a judgement against what you don't believe)...things like this. Right so God's saying don't judge...but we're judging anyway because...? I'm sorry that I don't understand your perspective entirely still. I'm not offended if you say what you've already said again in response to it...It has not sunk in; I am not convinced. (or Rob or anyone--could answer if he/she wanted)

I still find this most profoundly with issues like homosexuality...Marie, in one post you said you would not judge my afterlife but you will judge other people's sexuality and lifestyle choices as wrong and/or not in keeping with Christ's teaching. This seems so contradictory. I used to love this one song in our church called "All Are Welcome"...it went like this: "Let us build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live. A banquet hall on holy ground where peace and justice live"...and then the refrain was: "all are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place." But then really I don't think that could be sung anymore...because it would have to go "all are welcome, unless you're gay, unless you're a woman and you want to be a priest, unless you use condoms, unless you've not been divorced" You know? It would make for kind of a silly song. I don't know if it's the job of the "faithful" to decide who can and can't come in...This is still where my hangup is. These are all such human things...if everbody's got the goal of transcendence there could be quite a bit of human variability. I guess it's the exclusion thing again...I don't think that a lot of people ARE making the choice to not believe...I think that that they are not being given a choice b/c of what they believe. They are getting physically rejected...(for example, not being offered communion...)

I know we've discussed it before...but, in terms of Catholicism, this is where I'd like to see "not-judging" taken to the next level. I don't even think I'm looking for the church to be more relativistic...(though I thought that that was what I was looking for before the two of you showed me otherwise), what I'm looking for is for people to be allowed to make their own decisions and not be forced out for making different ones because surely there can be different angles to get at "the fundamental" (that's where/how i think that fundamental is always already relative). But, there are other Christian religions that allow for a greater number of people to come in...so that's good. I do think there is a place for everybody and that there is a lot of good coming from a lot of directions in the world. That's lovely...warming. Your last posts really encouraged me not to feel so annoyed. Thanks. If I start to believe in God or something, I'll let y'all know. I do not mean this to be silly...I am being serious. It makes me smile to see how sure you both are--how really? really? really? doesn't seem to shake anything. It's kind of perplexing but also interesting. I'm glad that all of this has gone (and is going) to other place besides evolution and intelligent design because I think something core to all of this is the way that certain beliefs build on one another...so that issues are often larger than the ones stated at hand. It would at first seem silly to say "I don't believe in intelligent design because when I was a kid, being Catholic I had a lot of guilt and learned not to like myself." That sounds completely irrational but honestly, it's one of the big reason why I think/thought/? evolution is a better story...because the creatures before me, that I evolved from, wern't telling me that I was a bad person...weren't telling me to be obedient, didn't have me kneeling for hours in front of the statue of the blessed mother, didn't have me embarrased because the deeds that I did were not as good as other people's. Religion for me was intense is all of the wrong ways. And that's honestly why i was picking one story over another...So...going here was good (for me). I'll say I'm grateful again as I often do in the hopes that this gratitude will allow me to be done in this particular forum...but I doubt it. Anger would make me stop more than being thankful will...but I'm not angry so that won't work. alas.

That's my story for now.

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/13/2006 23:24 Link to this Comment: 20405

I would love to say a whole bunch, but do not have the time right now.

I have been astonished at the difference between the truth of the Bible and what my assumptions about it were.

I am providing a link to a speech that was given to the U.N. in 2002...

It is lengthy, but well worth the read (two or three times). Isn't it interesting that some of the greatest examples of a 'real' Christian, are people we have never heard of... Not seeking limelight, but being used by God behind the scenes to regenerate the hearts of mankind.


http://www.rzim.org/publications/essay_arttext.php?id=13

Enjoy, Rob

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/14/2006 21:17 Link to this Comment: 20417

Well, an alternate model comes when one partner in a lesbian partnership gives birth to her biological child and that child/children is raised by two moms. This seems like a fine plan. There are lots of ways to do this. I think what I object to is your assumption that the problems here are caused BECAUSE of the non-heterosexual relationship....lots of split-ups happen w/ straight couples, there can be surrogate parenting happening for straight couples etc. etc. I agree with you that it would be wonderful if children did not have to suffer from hurt and I don't think it's ineviatable that they need to, I just think that a large part of the suffering can happen because Catholics and others say "hey, you have two moms, your moms are sinners. your moms have made bad choices." I dare say the child suffers then too. A lot of the problems come from the societal prejudice and lack of rights given to people with non-majority sexual preferences. I think kids need to know that although their situations may be painful for whatever reason, there are not people judging the situations. I don't think what goes wrong in relationships has much to do with the same sex partnerships...it has to do with other things. It seems to me that you have a problem with surrogate parenting, perhaps even adoption in general (by your model, it seems that this would not be "fair" to the kid either because it would not be their "real" parents...correct me...) I just think you're linking other things that you have a problem with to the issue of sexuality which you also have a problem with. I just don't think it's related. I think to get to a "perfect world" people are going to be more accepted for choices, there could be more things like marriage counseling before marriage so that people can be thinking about what marriage means beforehand (this would be easier for gay couples if more places actually gave them the RIGHT to be married)...if there were more books written for kids about acceptance, tolerance and the "okay-ness" of various situations, I think that would also help. Little things that say we're all in this together. I agree with you that divorce is emotionally taxing on kids and even "unfair" as you say but it is also unfair for parents who are unhappy together to stay together and live falsely. It is good to believe that no situation cannot be changed. I do not think a perfect world is one where hurtful mistakes do not happen...it's one where we still use those mistakes to grow and we are hyper-conscious of these mistakes and open w/ kids about them. I've been using the word "perfect" here because you used it but I don't want perfect. Isn't it true that to be human is to be "imperfect". There seems to be no use living if everything is perfect.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/14/2006 21:31 Link to this Comment: 20418

Of course we are not perfect! That is the whole point about why Jesus came! Because we were forgetting then and still are forgetting that we are imperfect! Yhe times change and the lies change and each new generation and each individual is tempted at their own point of vulnerability. As to adoption, I do not mean to get personal, but my husband was adopted. It is what it is in our life. I do not think that it is wrong to care for another human who has no one. My comments are at all times meant to be objective, and if they appear otherwise it is my fault.

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/15/2006 00:44 Link to this Comment: 20420

---Isn't it true that to be human is to be "imperfect".---

Jesus was the first 'real' Human...

As for sin...

Is it wrong to lie?

Does God hate lies? Yes!

Does God hate liars? No!

He forgives...

Does God hate homosexuality? Yes!

Does God hate homosexuals? No!

He forgives...

Can the church welcome liars? Yes!

Can they condone lying? No!

Can they condone Homosexuality?

Rob

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/14/2006 13:34 Link to this Comment: 20410

The "true problem with the church" as I see it, is what it is calling sin. There gay couples who have children and this to me is just as beautiful and good as straight couples having kids. There are gay couples that do not have kids. This is fine too. At the practical level, there is such a problem with overpopulation anyway, that people who don't want kids shouldn't be forced to have them (so that they can put them up for adoption so that other people can have them?). To be denied pleasure and the pleasure of sexual connection if you do not want kids seems so hurtful to me. Frankly, I think it's dehumanizing.

Don't you agree that to believe in a notion of sin, you also have to be a firm believer in judgement? (i.e. what is and is not sin). The issue of sexuality seems to me much like saying to someone...because you have a tatoo, you cannot come to church unless you know in your heart having a tatoo is wrong. Or, because you have freckles, you can't be here unless you know that you have sinned. I don't really care whether sexuality is inherent or chosen (whether you were born with freckles or chose to have a tatoo)--it doesn't hurt anyone or anything...the only difference between straight couples having sex is the ability for there to be procreation that happens immediately. So couldn't God decide that two people who love each other and respect life and want to have kids and like to sleep with someone of their own gender can have kids? And couldn't (via your belief system) God think...these two people will be homosexual, therefore they will not have kids but rather love each other? I don't believe in either of those things but I don't think they'd be inconsistent with your belief system. I think that what hurts life is judgement of people's sexual lifestyles as sinful. I guess it might just be with issues of sexuality where we have different perceptions because I do think, that if someone has the impulse to murder someone, or rape them, that impulse should be thought about and not enacted. I see murder as hurting life, I do not see having sex for a reason other than procreation as hurting life...it can potentially enhance the lives of those having sex. So...I think it may not be a question of general belief but specifics that within each of our moral systems we see as fine and not. I still believe in pleasure and I still believe in love and to me believing in those things is really really believing in life. What does "many are called, few are chosen" mean? Are you saying that I am being called but YOU have been chosen? You have to be chosen to be welcome? I honestly never understood that one at the level of the words. Please explain. This is getting tiring. I'm sure it is for you too! You probably feel like you are just repeating yourself over and over again. Oddly, I don't feel like I am but I probably am too! At least we're talking to each other. But when we stop...then what happens? I apprecaite your gesture to explain God at the level of evil and beauty, that was helpful...and showed how much you were really listening...It is a bit awkward to think that you "love" me but are judging my "sins". I know we're speaking generally but this seems to be what is happening at the specific level. Hmmm

Name: Marie () Date: 09/14/2006 14:37 Link to this Comment: 20411

Just to hear another viewpoint I read a few sermons dealing with the phrase " many are called, few are chosen ". It comes at the end of a parable in Matthew in which a man is seeking workers for his vineyard. Like most of Jesus' words this parable may be interpreted in many ways depending upon the interpretor. This in itself is an example of what it means for me. If you took 100 people and asked them to read the same words, they would not always come to the same conclusions. If a jury is presented with all the same evidence the individual jurors will not always come to the same verdict. Still, that does not mean there was more than one solution to the crime. That is impossible. It simply means that some jurors, though no less qualified, were a bit less perceptive. It means that amoung 100 people who hear the words of Christ equally, the gift of understanding will not be given equally. That is why I say it is more dangerous sometimes to seek truth and reject it than to never seek it at all. I do not mean that I in particular am chosen, and you in particular are not. I do mean that we have reached a juncture at which we must divide, and remain divided until the chosing takes place, or may we call it the workings of the spirit.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/14/2006 15:10 Link to this Comment: 20412

Sorry just one thing--- the idyllic picture that can be painted of gay love and adoption is very far from perfect. The child has no choice, the parent or surrogate giving up the child loses their rights, the couple may divorce or split up and the child have no true parent in either of them. The custody battles from this could be horrendous. Is this fair to a child? It is hard enough when dealing with our real parents. I know you will say that these things happen in all families, but I hark back to my original thought, that in which christianity is striving towards perfection in ALL issues. Just because it happens in straight families does not mean that it should happen at all, and if we finally succeeded in making all straight families perfect and humble and functional and god-fearing then the truth of the evil in any other arrangement would be clearly seen. We have unfortunately been conditioned to accept sadness and failure as part of life. But God forbid we go out of our way to achieve it! Women priests by the way has nothing to do with sin. It just will never happen any more than lent coming in December, so I have not dealt with it because it does not fall in the category of right and wrong as we have been discussing

Name: Marie () Date: 09/14/2006 10:26 Link to this Comment: 20409

I am sure you have heard "love the sinner, hate the sin"? The point of this is that we need not blindly accept everything without standing up for ourselves, but even so at no time should our standards cause us to treat any other human disrespectfully no matter what. Now let me ask, is the true problem with the church that it does not accept the sinner, or that it does not accept the sin? As I have said before homosexuals are absolutely allowed to belong to any church, provided they believe that this behavior is a sin, just like murder, just like robbery, just like rape. It sounds harsh, granted, and I do definitely see where you may feel justified in your belief. You and I both know that the representatives of other sexualities that we have met do not seem to deserve this. But the problem here seems to be that we expect the church in becoming "non-judgemental" is not so much to be more loving, but to change its definition of sin. Is this fair? Is this possible? Would the church even have any integrity anymore, because if they could change this, where would it end? I know you want to say, "but what harm are they doing?". I will try to break it down one more time, but please understand that this explanation of sin does require a leap of faith and somewhat of a belief in the supernatural. Just suppose that there was no God, and then think of all the good things and honest and beautiful things you could, and then give them the name "GOD". Anything going against your picture of God would be therefore evil, and things that cause evil would be sins. We need to stray away from the idea that the church "invented" rules and decided what was sin and not sin, and instead view it as a group of people who believe in the same picture of a perfect world as you do. If sin is something which causes evil, chaos, disorder or makes you forget about the perfect world i.e, God, for most of us murder, rape, theft etc, are easy to recognize as sin. The effects of homesexuality might not seem so evident, but in the perfect world that the catholic church stands for, life and the creation of life happen to be extremely protected and esteemed. While not always producing tangible evil, homosexuality is nonetheless going against the image of perfect life in this particular story, and also condoms since you mentioned it. Let me just say that there are millions of people desperate for kids who can not have them, and millions more causing themselves not to have them. In the catholic ideal, this is considered the will of God alone to decide, and we are no more allowed to refuse or manipulate or deny new life than we are to end old. We are also not allowed to use our reproductive rights and organs in any way not consistant with their purpose. It is our belief that it upsets the natural order and the perfect world. While we may not totally understand we are content to believe that God ultimately does what is best for us and that this is just as harmful to us as murder. I can never make you believe in exactly this way. All the explanations in the end still require faith. So I will end with another quote from Jesus "many are called, few are chosen".

Name: marieChrist () Date: 09/15/2006 16:52 Link to this Comment: 20425

I knew this would happen with the word hate being used. Maybe it will be better to view it this way: GOd LOVES all people and wishes them to be happy. He HATES and is made sad by seeing them sin, because it leads inevitably to their demise. Still, as many ways as we say this, I do not think it is convincing you. Perhaps it is the wrong place to start, and these things would become clear when you knew more and accepted God.
I still do not see there being a model for great gay parenting. As long as there is famine, war, disease and disaster, there will be need for adoption. But this makes it even more important not to purposefully create stressful situations. Where ever there is a lesbian couple with a child there is a male who abandoned the child. There is a child who is maybe male with no role model. There is a man selling sperm. It is all wrong! And do you not think that if this was all so natural we would have "evolved" the correct body parts to make it happen? I think that one of the worst evils on earth is to drag an innocent child into our sin!

Name: Marie () Date: 09/15/2006 17:24 Link to this Comment: 20427

As to your question, it is hard for me to answer because I do not quite understand, but what I think you mean, I will answer.
God did not create evil, let us say, but rather he created everything and He saw that it was good, which the bible tells us. He created man, and on seeing that man needed company, he created woman. Then in the big event in the garden of Eden, he gave us choice. So evil came to exist which has no real substance like created things but is simply the void which occurs at the absence of goodness. By all this I want it to be clear that I do not ever believe that God could create us and then leave us screwed so to speak. He could not create a man who loves a man but then condemn him. Rather He did create a man to love a woman, and then gave us a choice. Just because a murderer loves killing does it make it right? And yes, he did let us choose even though we might choose not to follow Him. And yes, the idea that people were being lost and so many were chooing evil was sad, so He did send Jesus, that after Him we would know clearly what was right. Was it wrong to give us choice? Should we have been given only a choice between good and good? What kind of choice is that? And what is the incentive for those choosing good if no one is judged in the end? There is a lot of confusion in the world. Our love is not always sacred or appropriate because we are imperfect. Our love is known to be blind, to fade, to come and go, to die. It is not to be trusted. It is good for example for me, married, to love others. But if I love another man sexually, it is bad. If I even love my husband and the other man, it is not only sinful but against the law to engage in marriage with him. Why is it so hard to view homosexuality as this sort of scenerio?

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/16/2006 10:16 Link to this Comment: 20429

Okay, thanks. I just think it's creating a "purposefully stressful" situation if one tries to be something other than what one is. So, you keep bringing up murder and yes, I agree with you...if one loves killing I don't think it's productive in society to act upon it. I also judge that as bad. But when murder is the example that is placed next to why homosexuality is bad, my mind goes ???????????????? I think it's perfectly natural for people to feel what they feel towards others and because we have choice (given by God, just inherent, whatever) I feel that it is our right to choose to be happy. If you were to fall in love with another man and act on that love I think it would be okay. It is everyone's right to change and to feel what they are feeling. I think that marriage in society actually can at times be extremely useful--it feels good to children, it allows for a sense of security, it allows for the deepening of love (as I call it) mutual commonality/respect (as you call it) throughout the years. But I just think if for whatever reason a couple is not willing to work at love or something goes wrong on either end it's better to allow for change than to continue in misery.That is not healthy for anyone. And I feel that that change CAN mean the eventual enacting of love for another.

I watched this program on television about a pair of twin boys (this happened a while back). One boy's penis was accidentally cut off (or somewhat cut off) during circumcision and he was raised a girl because of it. He was very sad as a girl and wasn't allowed to know that he had actually been/WAS a boy. And then one day, he was told he was a boy and suddenly the world became clearer to him and he found love (as a male) and for a while things were very good (the damage from the past was already done though and the whole thing ended tragically) but my point in brining this up is to draw a parallel. This boy was forced to be what he was not and led a completely miserable life which ultimatley caused the loss of two lives (he killed himself and so did his brother). I think this is an example of how very good intentions (like yours...about homosexuality/the parents about the sex of the boy) are hurtful...they promote living falsely. I know the example doesn't have to do with homosexuality in any way and you'll probably say there was tampering with what God had given/decided (in the case of the twin boy) so it's totally different but to me it seems similar in that he was forced into a false life.

It's hard to "get over" how you feel/who you are. And sometimes there are very good reasons to "get over" it...(as, in the case of murder as you keep bringing up) but one ultimatley has to decide what one wants for oneself and it seems really hurtful to have a group of others telling another group that who they are is not okay.

The thing is, all of your beliefs center around one fundamental paradigm...God/Jesus and my fundamental paradigm seems to be "how things actually work in the world as I see them at this given moment" which is a more wobbily base-board because it allows the paradigm to shift. But ultimatley, it feels to me to be more honest logic. Sometimes, for stories, it is useful to say...Once upon a time, long ago in the garden of eden...XYZ and sometimes it is useful to say "yesterday, in my friend's living room..." You won't agree with all that, I'm just putting it out there. I appreciate the conversation still and also appreciate the gentle-ness with which it seems to be going about...I think THAT is one thing which comes from the God/Jesus paradigm which is helping with the conversation a lot. I'm still surprised that we're even talking to each other. It's good, I think though as one who is "changable" I seem not to be inclinded to be changing much right now.

Name: rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/16/2006 14:50 Link to this Comment: 20430

I heard this story on a radio show recently and did my best to relay it accurately... I do not know it's origin

Rob

--------------------------------------------

The Chief of a certain tribe was a particualarly loving and just man. He loved his people dearly and held them to the highest possible standard. One of the rules in the tribe was that food was never to be taken from the storehouse. All the food was shared among the villiage at the appointed time.

One night someone snuck into the storehouse (there were no locks) and helped themselves to some food. Several children witnessed this silently and were intrigued at the idea of filling themselves on their favorite portions.

When the Chief found out about the crime he was terribly shaken. No one could understand his mourning. No-one but the Chief could see the implications. The sreiousness of the act was lost on them.

He proceded to explain that the transgression is punishable by death and he wept for his tribe and the guilty party. The loss of innocence tormented him. He must act...

On the day of the execution, the offender is tied to the post to be beaten to death. As the executioner pulls back his braids, the Chief emerges from his tent as says, "stop!".

The Chief is an unshakably just man, and wise beyond measure...

He walked to the middle of the spectacle, took off his robes and embraced the offender and wispered to him, 'Do better now my child'.

Then as he shielded the offender at the expense of his own life, the Chief said, "proceed!"

In stunned shock and astonishment, the spectators witness an act of mercy, love, and justice that defied explanation or reason.

After that, the offender was a different person.

The villiage not only got to witness the absolute Justice of their chief. But also how much he loved His people.


It is a mystery... but it is true.

God loves you so much that he died for you!

If that kind of God doesn't make sense, then you're using a different kind of sense than I.

------------

Also... How can people take care of what they cannot comprehend?

It is interesting that we want to be taken care of. Be given the answers. But so often we reject the one place that it is found...

All because we want to find that answer, and that protection, in a form that will allow us to keep our sin.

We labor to find a philosophy (a worldview) that brings the unity and diversity into harmony. It is all found in the Trinity!

But that is not acceptable because in 'our truth' we seek to have our sin as well. We labor to find a philosophy that will allow our base desires to survive and find peace as well. We cannot have peace and harmony, AND sin...

We point fingers at each other. Blame the 'white man', blame the 'black'. Blame the Jews, and blame the Nazi's. Blame the homosexuals, blame the puritans...

The problem is sin... Our problem is not intellectual. Our problem is not material. Our problem is that we are 'dead' to the truth because we have prejudged what kind of 'truth' we will accept.

It is not arguable... The most deadly prejudice is that of truth!

As Malcomb Muggeridge said, "The depravity of man is 'at once' the most emperically verifiable reality, and yet it is the most intellectually resisted fact."

You want a savior?

Don't look to your fellow man to save you. Look within and listen to the voice of God speaking through your conscious.

God has hidden all of reality behind our ability to see that we are depraved. If we cannot, then we choose to deny the most emperically verifiable reality there is.

Mankind is fallen in nature because he rejects God's authority and insists on defing the terms himself.

Believe what you want of course, but that changes nothing.

Sexuality was created to be perfect. The pleasure and bonding it can uleash is meant to be sacred.

It's ultimate pleasure is found in the intended purpose. To misuse it is to lay hold of a distorted pleasure that falls short of the purity and holyness that God intended for it.

As a man who was molested as a small boy by another older boy, I am familliar with the pains of the homosexual community. But no sexual experience of mine was as wonderful and intimate as that between I and the woman I love. For those who have missed out on that bond, I am sorry.

If we turn to God, he will resotre all things. This life is not the end. We have a new heaven and earth to look forward to. A life so good, that we must be careful to judge what is right by our own distorted and shortsided perspectives.

Just think about it all carefully. The implications are emmense!

The world tells us that 'hangups' is the problem and that to be happy we must do what 'feels' right.

All I have to do to know that that is a lie is remember that there are times that it 'feels right' to assualt someone...

Name: rob () Date: 09/16/2006 14:53 Link to this Comment: 20431

He came to my desk with a quivering lip,
the lesson was done.
"Have you a new sheet for me, dear teacher?
I've spoiled this one."
I took his sheet, all soiled and blotted
and gave him a new one all unspotted.
And into his tired heart I cried,
"Do better now, my child."

I went came to the throne with a trembling heart;
the day was done.
"Have you a new day for me, dear Master?
I've spoiled this one."
He took my day, all soiled and blotted
and gave me a new one all unspotted.
And into my tired heart he cried,
"Do better now, my child."
(Footnote 1: Anonymous, “A New Leaf,” James G. Lawson, compiler, The Best Loved Religious Poems (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1961). Used by permission.)

Name: Rob () Date: 09/16/2006 20:32 Link to this Comment: 20437

Elizebeth, in case the point was lost on you... consider it this way...

Just as Alcoholism is out of control. Just as greed is out of control. Just as a pathological liar is out of control. Just as a workaholic is out of control. Etc...

So it is with sexual lust...

It is out of control, and though few in this current society equate sexual passion and pleasure with other addictions, it is nonetheless the same.

Sexuality has seduced this whole country. And to a large extent the world.

The worst kind of person is the one who points out the faults of others in order to justify his or her own lack of self control. This is particularly rampant in times and places.

At one time slavery was the norm....

At this time, open sexuality is the norm...

The rationalizations for both are rooted in the convenience for the society in question.

It's not as though any of these things will condemn us. We are condemned already. Heaven will be a perfect place, and will require perfect persons.

We're (as in YOU and I) are not perfect! That is why we need Jesus.

He is!

Name: Marie () Date: 09/16/2006 22:14 Link to this Comment: 20439

Yes I too saw the TV program you refer to, Elizabeth. Funny because I drew from it completely different significance. The show attempted to prove clearly that nurture could not overwhelm nature, and so conclusively that the doctor saying otherwise could be sued. While you viewed this as proof that a man can not change who he is if he was born gay without damaging consequences, I do not think anyone is born gay but that they are trying to tamper with nature in pretending to have sexual inclinations opposing what gender they were given, especially in the case on transgender individuals. I said before I am not sure exactly what gives the person the idea to "turn" gay, but again, what gives an addict the impetus to use drugs? Or the murderer to kill? Do you think someone is just born an addict and should not want to be judged?
Rob, I greatly admire your thought processes, and not just because they agree with mine,(I am sure we could find many things relating to our different church affiliations that we do not agree on) but I guess you have a more sophisticated way of explaining things, and sometimes I do think that men work with a different part of the brain. But I am sure we are still not on the right track. We keep repeating that homosexuality is a sin but I think she is looking for a better reason WHY and I am at a loss. That does not mean that I am believing it blindly, it is just hard to explain, like describing color to the blind. I know for sure that color exists, but I must say that even with the worst explanation a blind person would not doubt that it exists. I am not sure why this has become the focus of our discussion. It is not something that I think on too often in everyday life. I want to say that the fruits of homosexuality are obvious in the confusion it creates even in the lives of homosexuals, as in the way they dress and act. It is usually not their only sin but often goes along with promiscuity, crudeness, partying etc. Still there is an exception to every rule. I think that some of their brazen or crude acts are blamed on intolerence and the need to "come out". But this too is not convincing as to why it is a sin. On a different note, I was wondering if this was a national forum, or local, and forgive me if it is wrong, but I suppose that I have become curious what part of the country you are both in. And also I have many issues within my religion itself, such as what is happening with the Pope now, and another group which is saying that the formula used to ordain a priest has changed and therefore may not be valid. My family is very controversy minded, but if the priesthood is no longer valid, it will put into question whether or not my own marriage is. Just curious if you had any thoughts.

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/16/2006 22:29 Link to this Comment: 20440

Hi, Rob. Even if it's getting "lost on me" I'm sure there are other people who are reading this and who are finding it extremely meaningful...people whose stories are really intersecting with yours so all of the effort that you are putting in is certainly not wasted, even if it feels like talking to me is like talking to a brick wall; I hope you know that. I think that slavery is the opposite of open sexuality and that open sexuality is okay. There were some Christians, I'm sure who, during the time when blacks and whites (for example) were not allowed to be even in the same spaces, not allowed to ride buses next to one another...were seen as inferior, felt that all of this was a-okay and might have even used God/Jesus to justify that kind of behavior. So too the disapproval of homosexual behavior by certain Christians today. I see it as prejudice.

I am not wanting to advocate "sin" since I do not believe that homosexual behavor is in any way wrong. I am hoping for acceptance of people for who they are so that homosexual people can have the same rights as heterosexual people and not be societally or religiously disapproved of because of their way of life. I've seen such disapproval create hate. It's not even your particular opinions that are causing the most harm. Since you believe in the love the sinner hate the sin approach, you're not deliberately trying to hurt gay people (though i'd say that this kind of believe absolutely has a trickle down effect which does) but there are people who believe that those who sin the most don't have the same rights as people who do not sin. There have been a lot of hateful things done to gay people in history (even very recent history) So, I think, and hope...and feel that as time goes on, homosexuality will not be seen as a bad thing. I completely don't believe in rape or abuse or promiscuity and using sex for bad reasons and your personal example is proof that some pretty terrible things can happen because of the way in which sexuality can be used. (isn't it interesting that all three of us, brought in examples from our lives at this point in our conversation?) Yes, I agree, as a society (if we must speak categorically) we ARE very sex obsessed, often to our own detriment. I'm just saying that bad things that happen don't happen because people are not all heterosexual. There are larger issues than this one and I object to the issue of homosexuality somehow being placed in the center here and seen as the cause of bad things that happen to people. A while back, Marie said there is no good model for homosexual parenting...my feeling is that IF there is trouble there it is because gay parents are not given the same rights as heterosexual parents. They are not being given a chance and they are being judged as wrong...

I think the idea of someone dying for us is an interesting one and a potentially good one and Rob I so admire your deep desire to just make me see. I'm not looking for salvation in my fellow man, I'm looking to get along peacefully here, in this life, the one where I'm typing and you're typing in response. Can you imagine the person you love so dearly being a man? What if you fell in love and found the same type of love that you are experiencing now but the gender of the object of that care and love was not female? I'd say that the feelings would be just as deep and would feel just as natural and I'd say you'd have a harder time with the particular story you're telling right now. I still think that a lot of the prejudice against people who make different sexual choices doesn't have much to do with Jesus or the bible or any of it but fear of difference. But again...I appreciate your efforts and I do believe in the energy with which you are saying what you're saying and the EXTREMELY genuine place all of this is coming from. For that reason, I'd like to be able to just say...hey...it's good, i hear you, i believe all of that too...but I really can't, right now. But Marie can...and others do and maybe others will because of you and maybe that will be good for them. Maybe they will choose to be chosen... in the way you've outlined it...and maybe you guys have the answer to peace. Like I've said a lot, I do not believe my story is better. I think we all want the similar things but our own lives (even more so than our religions or lack of religions) have caused us to be on different paths towards it/them.

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/16/2006 22:53 Link to this Comment: 20441

Hi, Marie. I think we were posting simultaneously. Thank you for being so open minded. Yes, I do not get WHY homosexuality is wrong in your opinions. This would be a simple way of putting it. And also, Marie I think you need to meet and hang out with more gay people! It might be as simple as that. Your friends are probably mostly straight, aren't they? I don't know any homosexual people who are brazen, crude, party types...my friends are lovely, interesting, loving, fun, really cool types that can in no way even fit into types. Maybe you just need to go to a place where you can see that too...I think you're slightly judging by some preconcieved notions or people whom you've met or...something. Maybe? I don't mean this as a criticism at all. It is just a thought. Not only that but I've seen parenting work really really well too (gay parenting)...with the result of happier kids than I even was as a kid.

This forum can be accesed from anywhere that there is internet....so worldwide. I am living in Pennsylvania right now but am originally from New Jersey. You? I haven't been following what the church is saying about the priesthood--can you say more about it and how you are feeling? I'd say that your marriage is as valid as you think it is and it doesn't really matter the way any sort of rules are changing. But you would have probably guessed that I'd say that...so you should talk to Rob for a less deviant opinion. I wouldn't let an institution get in the way of your personal beliefs. You and I both know that you've got pretty strong beliefs!

I think it's funny that we got such different things from that program (and also that we both watched it). I'm new to having television in any sort of regular way so...Anyway, my thoughts about that were in the first paragraph.

Both you and Rob are speaking equally eloquently and each adding something differrent to the conversation.

Would love to hear more about the new church developments that you're speaking of.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/16/2006 22:57 Link to this Comment: 20442

Maybe it is just that homosexual sex is not really sex at all, since the body is not being used as it was intended, just like drugs, just like gluttony. Addicts and overweight people are still judged and we have turned to looking for a gene to explain these tendencies so that we may excuse these people from personal blame. Do you think that homosexuality may be genetic if it is not a choice? and if so would it then be a disease, like alcoholism? or should it not have stopped at one gene but actually supplied the needed body parts? sorry I ramble as it is late...........

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/16/2006 23:22 Link to this Comment: 20443

God annoints His priests, and Christ is 'the' priest...

We can have direct access to God thorugh Jesus. We do not need a 'priest' as defined by many religions such as the catholic church. And I am a former Alter Boy in the Catholic Church, so it is not as though I am judging from a distance.

The Bible is the authority, not denominations!

Jesus said 'There is only one who is called Father'. That right there tells me that something is ammiss with Catholisism.

As for homosexuality, there is no such thing...

Human beings are heterosexual. Sex refers to a species reproduction. Therfore there is nothing sexual about homosexuality. It is purely passion and pleasure.

Passion and pleasure is often the root of sin.

It is like the boy, who suffering from a severe case of acne, consoles himself with the very chocolate that is causing a good portion of his condition.

Anything in excess is sinful. Homosexuality is really a chronic case of narcicism. It is self love and selfish to a dangerous degree. it may be caused by genetics and environment, but so is all sin...

In fact, Richard Dawkins of Oxford University said in one of his books that, 'there is no such thing as right and wrong, we are all just dancing to our DNA.'

Perhpas he is right, but if so... how much more profound are the words of our Lord Jesus that 'You must be born again.'

Take a breath Elizebeth, I know some of the things I just said must cause problems for you...

Like the laws of Physics, reality is reality...

(here's a chapter from a work of mine):

Chapter 1 THE DOGMATA OF KARMA


Christians are converted from the world by a central question: What is truth? It is a simple question; let’s look at a simple illustration: Truth is perfect. Mathematics is reflective of this. 1+1=2; there is no confusion. Mathematics is true, and perfect in nature. Furthermore, it is conceptual, or spiritual in nature as it exists in our minds.

Let’s examine another simple question: Are the laws of physics?

Yes they are! They are! We could say they are fanatical in nature. The physical laws are just that. They are unchanging and therefore fanatical. You could say these laws are dogma. Do you believe in dogma? If not, then you do not believe in the laws of physics. However, the laws of physics do not care if you believe in them or not. You do not define the laws, the laws define you.

Consider the words of the physicist Stephen Hawking, "... If any one of about forty physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist: Either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn't combine into molecules, or the stars wouldn't form the heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could develop..."(Austin American Statesman, October 19, 1997)

We would not be who we are, if the physical laws governing this universe were different. Furthermore we have no power to change them. So in that respect, mankind is locked into his being. Humanity is imposed upon the human being. In my mind, that is the only imposition of our existence. We are free to break the laws, but the consequence is death. Again, the only imposition is our humanity. We cannot be other than human. At least not without the assistance of something that transcends humanity.

The justice of the physical laws is completely blind and thorough! Break the laws, and you will die. The law of gravity has no prejudice for your ignorance. The law does not impose a thing. You are free to flirt with it, and test it for a thrill. But if you blatantly defy it, then it will, break your will. That is the truth! Am I a fanatic to suggest such? Is my mind closed? Who is a man to defy the laws that create him? We are what we are, and we can't change that.



So the laws of physics are part of the very truth that allows us to exist. Man exists in divine appreciation to the laws governing his existence; anything beyond that, is illusory, irrelevant, and an abomination to reality. To rise above his fleshy nature, man must again become what fully defines him. In addition to the physical laws, what defines him is the perfection of the moral laws, as governed by God. He cannot change the physical laws without physical death. In the same sense he cannot break the moral laws without spiritual death.

If man will accept the rest of the laws, he will have the opportunity to become spiritually eternal as intended. He will be whole again, reconciled with God and fully within the laws. Since none of us is within these bounds, and we are powerless to return, the Christian concept of salvation by God himself enters the picture.

Our actions have repercussions on our fellow man that only God himself can fully appreciate. Violent shockwaves flow into the universe because of our evil deeds. Selfishness is an abomination to order, and to reality. Think of the ways things are changed by immoral acts. Sin does not exist in the midst of order on an eternal scale. We are fortunate that things are held together as they are by God’s own hand. He is giving us some time to escape. Can you appreciate that implication? We are separated from God in our sin, but he extends his hand to us, we only have to accept.

The only thing that is absolutely real is the truth. Everything else is fiction. Fiction does not exist by definition. The truth [is], and is always. Truth is timeless. Fiction can exist here, but only for a time, and only in our minds. Don't confuse fiction with possibility. There is much yet undiscovered that is within the laws.

Truth is. That statement is either correct, or it is not. It leaves no room for error. It is one or the other. There is no balance. There is no compromise. Which is it? It is true! To prove it, only requires that you exist, and, you do. And you are (because the laws are). So, there is truth. Truth does exist, and it is perfect. As long as you are within the laws, then you are perfect. It is simple. There is only clarity. We can be certain. These things are so obvious, that many cannot or will not remember them. The simple clarity goes (subconsciously) right under their heads.

Two things repel them:

1. The implication of truth's existence (that it is conscious). Not just conscious on its own, but also living inside you [as in 'your conscious']. Hebrews 8; 10 ..."I will put my laws in their minds, and write them on their hearts." This is the cup of the new covenant, and we are invited to drink from this cup of truth. It spills into us like living waters, if we accept. People become confused when they here of drinking Christ’s blood. Christ is eternal. His blood is physically symbolic of the truth that defines him and runs through his spiritual being. This is the truth. His flesh is also symbolic of the word, which is again truth, in spoken physical vibrations. By accepting these, we are saying that we accept his sacrifice, and are now receiving (consuming) his truth. Truth is nourishment for the spirit. These strange symbolic gestures confuse those who are not earnestly seeking the truth.

2. Truth is painful and frightening to them. The truth condemns, (specifically the Ten Commandments). Psalm 19:7 "the law of the LORD is [perfect] in converting the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making simple the wise". Christ said, "No one can come to me unless my father calls him". One view, is that here, he is referring to the Spirit of truth, specifically the spirit of the law (the Ten Commandments). To understand any of this, one must acknowledge the Law as they recognize the Physical laws. To do so, is to recognize our violations of the natural order and our guilt in an honest manner. We must face and accept that we deserve death because it is true.

The truth hurts! But should we not adopt truth in whatever capacity we are capable? It is obvious, that to know the truth, would leave one in a position to see perfectly clearly. No illusion would fool the crowd, if the crowd 'knew' the truth. Why the resistance? The statement, "The truth will set you free" is simply as self evident as truth itself! It is no coincidence that the creator himself was quoted as such over 2000 years ago. Matthew 8:32 "...Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." That's what the creator would have to say if he were to be truthful, and he is (literally).

The truth hurts only if you are not truthful. A lying, cheating, adulterous, money worshiping, truth denying, wicked man, wants nothing to do with it. He fears that he will see himself for what he really is; evil and alien to it (the truth). That is the problem; we want to feel good about ourselves. To feel good about ourselves means that we must constantly deny reality, because the reality is, we are [living lies]. We are free to choose to ignore reality, so long as there is time. Just don't forget about time. Time is in part, the dimension of death. I believe time was created to contain what is false. You might say [we] forced the creation of time with sin. But I believe it to be consistent with God’s plan within the necessity of choice (the truth). We are fortunate that he is a merciful God, and waits for a few of us to choose to escape by his own hands. The truth is, we are quite evil in and of ourselves. Do you not believe that you are Evil?

There is only one way to end a story, unless the story doesn't exist. For it to exist, it must be true. Anything else is only the imagination of a confounded mind. That is understanding and the clarity of truth. If the truth ever spoke, it would say, "I AM!", and it did! (John 8:58) What scares people is that if they acknowledge it, then they will know. And knowing, means change, and change means doing. Is that too simple? Is there even such a thing as too simple? Can you imagine a teacher telling the class that 1+1=2, and little Johnny saying, "That can't be right, it's too simple!"?


For us, understanding is never complete, and all knowing. If it was, would that not make us Gods? Must we understand all to accept the 'truth' that we are here? No! We 'know' that we are here, but who are we, and where is here? We must not be Gods, because we do not understand all. But many do just that, they decide what truth is for themselves. Declaring themselves worthy of defining what is already defined in spite of them. This is worshiping one's self as God. It is a violation of the first Commandment: Thou shall have no other Gods before me. What else is there to worship? To worship is to seek and live for. What should we live for; acceptance, money, power, sex, entertainment, or truth? Wisdom in truth destroys all desire for foolishness.

So, accepting truth first begins, with understanding and denying ourselves as Gods! Is that too simple? It is only then, that we will see ourselves clearly before the law. Humility breeds open mindedness to the truth. A further step in understanding is through acceptance of the truth of the law. Every sin we commit, sends abhorrent shockwaves into the universe. Affecting and polluting other souls around us and hardening their once trusting and open minds to the truth. Evil spreads like disease. And being evil, we secretly look to spread it for our own convenience. But nothing is secret to God. The truth sees all by the shockwaves in reality, for the truth is reality (God). Our rebellion is akin to a powerless worm, pushing against the unbending eternal tide that is a sea of truth.

Do you believe that every action has an opposite and equal reaction? Is that too simple? It is a scientifically proven (testable) law of physics. It is perfect. Do you believe that the simple Ten Commandments are natural spiritual law? It doesn't matter whether you believe them or not. They are the perfect standard. The truth is we are guilty of much. Once that truth is accepted, and the guilt is accepted, further humility will allow the flood gates to be unlocked, and more understanding will trickle through. Never on our terms, but by the unwavering reality of the truth, for accepting truth is understanding.

There is no compromise. We cannot discover truth; by the way we want truth to be. It is what it is. If truth spoke, it would say, "I AM who I AM", or it would not be true. And it did (Exodus 3:14) so it 'is'. To accept it, we must be prepared to abandon our assumptions. Then we will be closer to the floodgates bursting open and truth overwhelming our illogical (evil) assumptions. Consider what Christ said:

Matthew 10:39 "Whoever finds 'his life' will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake (The TRUTH) will find it.

We are not true, but we must become true once again through Christ.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/16/2006 23:39 Link to this Comment: 20444

I feel my last post was a bit insensitive, but was a newly formulated thought so I apologize. I am always multi-tasking. Yes I have been out all day and I am trying to catch up, so we are posting simultaneously.
Well, I have had many gay work associates, aquaintances, and two very good friends of many years. Since my marriage, for several different reasons, I have not had much contact with them, so perhaps the friendship was not so true as I thought. But I find this to be the case with my straight friends who are single as well, our paths just changed. I must say I am biased maybe because they were crude about sexual matters and back-stabbing, insecure and selfish. They were also very intelligent, educated, fun, and I miss their company. They knew my views on religion and we often discussed it but not in a way where anyone felt demeaned.
So I guess I can say they were open-minded and nice. I am in Pennsylvania also, curiously enough, and I do want to say that through this conversation I feel that if we ever met our barriers would be down and we would probably get along dispite our differences. So in that way, Elizabeth, you are winning with your message of listening and tolerance.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/16/2006 23:53 Link to this Comment: 20445

Rob, I am familiar with the teachings of Christian denominations other than Catholicism. Even so, I believe that Christ initiated the priesthood with Peter when He chose him as the first priest and said that he was the rock upon which His church would be founded. I believe that priests are acting in the person of Jesus on earth. I believe that they do not accomplish this based on their own merits, but through the intervention of God Himself, that they are called. When a priest is consecrated their is a formula so to speak which is used. It is new information to me but apparently recently this has changed, and conservatives are afraid that it means subsequent ordinations are not valid. I am more concerned because the priest that married us very shortly afterwards left the priesthood altogether. He was a very young priest and he was confused by the sexual scandal in the church.

Name: Rob () Date: 09/17/2006 00:05 Link to this Comment: 20446

As for your marriage... I think what matters most is that you and your husband made a vow to each other in the presence of God. Whether or not the 'priest' was truely a Christian or a priest.

BTW, my wife and I were married in a Catholic church here in Eureka, Ca. The priest who married us is now in prison (or was and has since been released) for sexual molestation charges. He was relatively new to the area at the time.

We have been married 14 yrs as of Oct 11, 06. We just had our third child in May.

Our marriage is not perfect (mostly because of me), but it is solid...

We attend a Foursquare church in Eureka and like it very much. It is not Charismatic or 'pentecostal' as I understand pentecostal or Charismatic to mean. It is really very non-denominational as I see it. There are few issues with which I take exception within the church. We enjoy it very much and have been attending regularly for about 4 yrs.

Name: Marie () Date: 09/17/2006 00:59 Link to this Comment: 20447

Must admit I do not know about Foursquare churches, I do think the similarities are much more to be valued in christian denominations than the differences, except when I am confronted by militant protagonists. I know in my heart that I am fine because we did all that we could with the knowledge and resources at our disposal to accomplish God's will. We had our second child in June. What are we doing awake! Still this turmoil is causing great stress on my mother and grandmother, who now believe that they have 20 some years of sin on their hands because their confessions were not valid, and they are going out of their way to find elderly priests. I will not accept controversy and scandal for the sake of variety, but certainly there are interesting points to be looked at even within a structured religion.

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/17/2006 11:28 Link to this Comment: 20448

---Still this turmoil is causing great stress on my mother and grandmother, who now believe that they have 20 some years of sin on their hands because their confessions were not valid, and they are going out of their way to find elderly priests.---

Oh my! That is the problem with religion...

People trying to get saved and basically go through the motions (with good intentions).

Christianity is not a religion...

That is what I wanted too, but was shocked to find that God actually wanted all of me. He forgave me of all my sins (past present and future), but in return He is calling me to be a different person.

Ours is not a religion of works. Our good works are not done so that we can be saved, but are instead a result of our salvation. He changed me on the inside and has created in me a new desire to do what is right.

I am resistent to share some of my own writings because I think that others have said the same thing much better, but here we go...:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE FANATIC?


You be the judge…



Dear John Doe, I have a couple of things bothering me in regard to our discourse:

The first is that in my haste, the decision to send Joe Blow a copy of my e-mail to you was gleaned from the more... retarded, side of me. I should have realized that it may leave you in an awkward position. I'm not trying to hide anything from anybody, but there was a time, when like you, I was still very uncomfortable sharing my faith. I apologize for the intrusion. At that time, I as well still wrestled with what the reality of this Christ thing (as you put it) was really all about.

So, when questioned by different faiths, I was in one moment over confident, and the next shaky and nervous. When knocked on my rear by simple rejection or persecution, I was confused. I quickly realized that I was too anxious to share something that most people do not want to talk about. I realized also, that weather they did or not, I was really not prepared to handle these situations. To make matters worse, in my excitement I usually pushed into the discussion as though I knew with certainty the arguments and the outcome. Those things make an awkward mixture to say the least. Well, I'll never know how to handle them all, so I'll just have to learn as I go and be willing to fall when I must. I will not be afraid to consider and debate these things.

Around that same time I pushed on and ignored my fears, I was beginning to see something I had not expected. It was great, but terrifying. Jesus was starting to look very different from the assumptions I had about him. I finally concluded that the problem was the way I was trying to confine Him. I was looking for something, but that something was turning out to be much bigger and more wonderful than I had dreamed for myself. In the final analysis, I was trying to make Him my equal or at least, I thought myself equal to Him.

I wanted salvation, but I was just beginning to see the cost of it. I had to see myself as I really am, and deal with the fact that most of my assumptions were illusions. It was a troubling time when I trembled and prayed. And it wasn't just the cost for me that was troubling my distorted ego, but the price He paid to save me from that world. My pride had to go, and as a function of that, I had to let go of the world, which was really my world. I had to give Him my life and trust Him to take it and make it His own.

I wanted to give part of it, he wanted all of it. When the Pharisee asked Jesus about paying taxes, Jesus said to give Cesar what is Cesar’s, and give God what is God’s. What is the implication? Everything is God’s! From the hair on my head, to my wallet, to the planet floating in space under my feet; it is all God’s. So I allowed Him to purchase and posses me.

My second concern is that you are going to conclude that I am a fanatic in regards to my faith. Giving one’s whole life to God (willing spirit possession) is a scary prospect for many. Your decisions are not in my hands but I cannot accept the idea of just keeping something so important to myself. It may mean that I am labeled a fanatic; so be it! I can only tell you what I believe. It makes no sense to do anything less. If my faith is misplaced, then I need to know, and if my faith is secure, then you need to know. Jesus tells me that instead of just keeping the outside clean by the standards of my peers, I must give what is on the inside, so that everything will be clean; first by the renewing of my mind, and by that renewal of the heart, the continuing deliverance from what binds me by nature. Nothing superficial will do as Jesus declared openness and honesty as the means for moving forward into the freedom he promised.

I would like to address something that may give you an insight into the dilemma. Things are not what they seem...

Do you remember the song, "We are the world"?

The lyrics went like this:

We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day so let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me

Now, just for illustration, what I want you to do is say those words with the kind of fanatical emphasis that Hitler would have used in his speeches. Go ahead and imagine it for yourself for a moment....

Now if you got the idea I'm trying to convey to you, consider this:

The only thing that will save us is the truth. We cannot be the truth. If we are, then we would be God. If we are God, then God is evil indeed. The spirit that so cleverly leads us to that end, appears (in this song) so peaceful and sensitive, but I believe it is the same spirit that motivated Adolf Hitler. It is just a different manifestation. A manifestation disguised as a casual and loving peace movement.

They want to believe in peace, and I do not question their intentions for they desire a noble end. But is their formula for peace precise? Is their algebraic equation lacking some crucial function? Did they misplace a value in one of their variables? Are they at all like the Galactic Empire's claim to promoting peace in the Star Wars series but with a genuine smile instead of a power hungry scowl? The words are very much the same it is only the tone that has changed.

Now, If there is a God (and most believe so), He would be the truth. Or, the truth would be of God; that is, begotten by God; part of God; a dimension of God. The truth would be God. It is very much just the way addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are a dimension of mathematics; and in fact they are math. They are not the totality of math, but they will lead us to the higher mathematics faithfully.

Continuing along this line, the truth in math (the logic of it) is the same in the lower mathematics, as it is in the higher. There is simply more or less information when comparing the two. They have a different function. Trying to put a value on either is really a rather individual and subjective project that requires a lack of the very essence of logic that opens into objectivity. For objectivity is itself the nature of logic. Logic has an objective. In that sense the lower math is just as pure and wonderful as the higher. I make note of this for obvious reasons; the Son is just as beautiful as the Father.

Together they are God, and as individuals they are God. There is no better than, but only love for each other and their mutual function and purpose. In this way, their Spirit is the very essence of logic and is also God. Jesus spoke of the abundant life; it is eternal and is therefore absolute. It is unlike our life that is a bound and limited life; limited by food, water, air, and death (entropy). Jesus spoke about having food that we new nothing about, living water, the clouds of heaven, and eternal life (the absence of death).

This whole manner of illustrating God by use of mathematic symbolism may provide a look into another mystery. In Mathew, chapter 12; 31, Jesus says that all blasphemy and sin will be forgiven except blasphemy of the spirit. I can’t help but think of the Spirit in the confines of our mathematical example as the essence of God. In our mathematics, the logic itself is to be revered and embraced. However, I think we must be careful with keeping our example too close to our minds, as it does not very well express the wholeness and power of the real thing. Our example is only a concept within the intellect, and the Spirit of God is very much alive and Holy. We should not confuse them.


If it is true that we are lost spiritually (and the agnostic agrees by default) then, THE TRUTH would be THE WAY to Him, and as a result we would also find THE LIFE that is Him.

Jesus said, I am the way, --THE TRUTH--, and the life. No one comes to the father but by me.

Hey John Doe! That is exactly what God would say if He were indeed God. How could it be any simpler?



I suppose we could say that at one time, we knew the higher math. That is to say, He was with us (in Eden). We want all of Him, but now that we have lost Him, we must humble ourselves and follow a different aspect of Him. If we try shortcuts, we will inevitably misplace a variable or a function and stray into oblivion because the higher math of God’s spiritual nature is infinitely higher than the most complex mathematics. He is the Most High God. We must stay in harmony with Him at the level he offers and let Him lead us along His path up to Him. To repeat myself in a different way, I am not limiting God and His Glory to the concept of mathematics, but only giving a simple illustration that I think is understandable.

There is a righteous claim to sovereignty in the ideal of truth. Now, notice that Jesus righteously claimed this sovereignty. That is why they killed him; if He was a liar in that regard then I suppose He would have deserved death, but if He were telling the truth, then God let them crucify Himself to pay they’re own penalty for killing Him. And it was ultimately not just them that crucified Him, but all of us.

Notice also, that the modern social and peace movements claim the same sovereignty, just not overtly. We are the world, we are the saviors, and we are the ones who make a brighter day (light). Stick with me here, because the Bible says that Satan appears as an angel of light. Naturally these good intentioned people want to give that light to others. You may find this difficult, but evil does not always come as a devilish and overtly evil image. Evil has convinced many it doesn't exist. We are taught (programmed by pacifism) to have sympathy for the devil (thank you Mick Jagger).

Evil comes as an imposter of peace. Notice that the lyrics say just you and me? No reference to God other than, in a different verse, the promotion of the idea that we are all in Gods family by default. The Bible warns us about the uniting of humanity in our own spirit and the resulting imposition as gods. Babylon was destroyed the first time, and it will be destroyed again. The spiritual tower to God must be built and limited by God. Any other way is not the way and dooms itself to failure.


Notice the lyrics start with we are the world? Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world...’ Biblically, the lord of the world is the 'prince of the air' that the Bible talks about; Lucifer! The Bible talks about us becoming Children of God through Christ, and coming out of the world. The Bible says we are aliens in this world if we are children of God (in his family). With this song, these people are boldly claiming to be the children of the world; and by default the children of the lord of this world. Are they children of the beast?

Whoa, let’s go easy here and not condemn to hastily. Read to the end please. The Bible clearly states that Satan is the lord of this world. Christ's kingdom is yet to come in its full glory, and is now only here with us in Spirit. Jesus said, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.’ He said to those present in that day, that some of them would not see death before witnessing the Kingdom of God coming with great power. On the day of Pentecost they did see (on the inside), and every time a new believer is born of the Spirit, they begin to understand what He said as well.

Jesus’ Spirit or the spirit of men; one of them is Christ (which has the righteous claim to sovereignty). The other is Anti-Christ (an imitation that can take many forms).

Sound crazy? Well, it is crazy; crazy and scary that people refuse to consider it; crazy that they choose not to. Crazy that they cling to a life that they know will be taken from them and crazy to not seek the higher life that always was and will never end; the life of the absolute God.

The new world order is in the making. The modern peace and social movements have a prominent role internationally. Within their thinking, I find some of their variables lacking the proper function. This makes me thankful that President Bush doesn't go along with the program. Let them mock him all they want. They hate him with the same passion as they hate Jesus.

Most of the activists have no clue that their philosophy is incoherent. The others that play the flute for them are approaching the more deliberate evil. That doesn’t mean they look and act like Hollywood’s portrait of evil. And it doesn’t mean that they believe they are evil. They are prideful and arrogant, but are not gods. I must believe that most, without even realizing it, are simply playing God. I pray that they and their counterparts may be saved.

There are those who know what they are doing, but what do you say to that? I suspect that they are the ones of whom Jesus spoke in regard to blasphemy. Like the Pharisees who persecuted Christ and the early church, they are the power crazed; the purely and consciously evil. They reject all honest argument, because their hearts are utterly closed to the logical and reasonable Spirit of God.

To make sure I am clear, what I am not saying, is that everyone who doesn't get it, or everyone who sang we are the world in oblivious cooperation (like I did) is a child of the beast and has taken the much debated mark. This is not a proclamation of condemnation; it is call to contemplation. What I am saying, is that there is a growing intolerance for the pure doctrines of Christianity. At some point, we may not be allowed into the debate at all, unless we are willing to compromise the truth and its implicit claim to sovereignty. There will be no buying, selling, or trading in the arena of ideas for fanatics like me. That is the label and I will be ostracized.

That arena of ideas; the intellectual and spiritual battleground for the church and state is the entryway to making a difference in the physical religious and political marketplace. If your ideas are not allowed, then you are rendered powerless. Laws themselves are not necessarily absolute, but the ideal of law is. Every political statement has at its foundation, a moral and therefore theological foundation in righteous sovereignty that is the ideal of law. So the idea of church and state being separate is as preposterous, as the idea of separating an atom from its nucleus.

If the state is not founded in God, then the state has imposed itself as God. In the same way, if a man is not founded in God, then that man has imposed himself as God over his own life. The Church can fall into this same malaise and all of these have happened at one time or another, and all will continue to happen within their respective times and temples.

Who is the fanatic; the man who creates his own foundation, or the man who humbles himself before his Lord? Maybe neither deserves the label of fanatic. I think the true fanatic is the one who takes matters into his own hands, not the one who argues for reason and respects others beliefs. I only presume to argue in the name of reason and objectivity. There is no arm twisting, as it is up to you. A good friend of mine recently put forward the argument that people do not change. After careful consideration, I must confess that this is partly true. You and I do not have the power to change the sins we have committed. Those sins in turn imprison us to define our image of ourselves by our guilt. That is precisely why a reasonable man will eventually turn to God.

God not only offers forgiveness and promises to give a clean slate, but he also promises to change what it is we want to do. The freedom from the bondage of self is complete. The bible says that anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. It also says that with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. If we genuinely confess our sin to God with our lips, and ask him to take residence with us (in our hearts and spirit) he does in fact respond. That is my testimony as I have experienced it for myself.

Many will turn around (repent) and consider some other questions because they have been prayed for, and will notice something is not as it seems as God whispers to them gently from On High. Many will not. You decide who’s who in representing the true ideal of Christ. You are the judge, and as you have judged, so shall you be judged. Who’s who? You will know them by their fruits...

on conversation ... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 09/17/2006 19:39 Link to this Comment: 20450

I've been reading through the recent postings by Elizabeth, Rob, and Marie. They bring to mind a deep Serendip principle

"All people should be encouraged to think of their ideas/perspectives as "in progress": to make them available as potential contributions to the thinking of others, and to make use of the thoughts of others as of potential significance to their own thinking"

Its hard work but you've all given me increased confidence that it can be done, and is worthwhile.

One suggestion/request? From someone who is notoriously a little prone to wordiness himself? Let's try and keep postings reasonably short and to the point? If longer things are critical, email them to Serendip rather posting them directly and we'll see if we can make them available in some way that can be linked to from the forum.

Name: rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 09/19/2006 22:49 Link to this Comment: 20477

Well, thanks for stopping the dialog Paul!

But this 'is' a universe governed by laws. It is necessary for 'being', else all Hell breaks loose. We might end up with people with chicken heads without boundaries. As G.K. Chesterton said, 'before you remove a fence, always be sure why it was put there in the first place!'

I'm not aquainted with the parameters of 'your assumed requirements' for communication, but I get the feeling they result in a total lack of dialog as per the private communication sent to me from user/s of this site.

So much for intentions! If I am mistaken in my 'feeling' about consensus and moderation impied in your nice little note, then forgive my ignorance. Otherwise, you are free to limit the length of the posts as per character limits.

If not, I will use what is offered within the fence...

Sincerely, Robert S. Lockett

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 09/20/2006 19:31 Link to this Comment: 20490

Hi, Rob. I liked your last posts and I'm sure that Paul didn't mean to limit communication. I think this is a question of formal layout, rather than actual post-length. If longer passages are linked then the theory would be that a larger group of people would be able to better distinguish your thoughts from the thoughts of others and have the option of opening up some of the longer stories in alternate windows. So, it would be a way for a greater number of people to take time with your posts...and to benefit the format of the site.

I really don't think it's a rule so much as a suggestion...I think you'd be perfectly within the appropriate realm if you chose to ignore the suggestion though it might be an interesting experiement to try the suggestion out. Paul can speak for himself on this but I really don't think it was meant as either pressure or obligation, but rather a delight in the openness of communication and a suggestion for how to make it read even more smoothly and be even more open. In any case, I like your thoughts very much and I hope you keep posting...time is what is limiting my activity on the forum as well as an e mail dialogue with Marie off the forum space about some issues which seemed too rooted in autobiography and too personal to continue explicitly here. This does not mean that I will never return but for now, I'm just taking a break from the forum space.

yeah frickin' right Name: () Date: 10/14/2006 00:37 Link to this Comment: 20676

If you know anything about DNA, evolution as Biology sees it is anything but a "story." The physical evidence is overwhelming, whereas the physical evidence for intelligent design is anything but. Is it amazing that we are here, considering the mechanism of evolution? Yes, of course. Is it possible that some force outside of simple physics affects the course of evolution? Or that the mechanisms of evolution were themselves "designed" by someone or something outside our realm of physical understanding? Yes, of course. But to refute the immense amount of empirical evidence for Darwinian evolution by calling it a "story" is ridiculous.

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 10/14/2006 18:14 Link to this Comment: 20679

---If you know anything about DNA---

I know that DNA is the biggest problem for evolution that there is...

Precisely because it is the most complex molecule in the known Universe!

Do you understand that???

There is nothing more complex than DNA.

And before you can have natural selection to begin with, you must have DNA first!

So Darwinism (long before DNA's discovery) considered that perhps life could have evolved from the simple to the more complex. it was worth considering, and makes tremendous sense until we discover that the truth is just the opposite!

You must start with the most complicated molecule in the known universe in order to even get the simplest life form.

That is why Francis Crick. A Nobel Laureate and naturalist (that means he believes in darwinism) concluded that the only answer is that life got here by missile from elsewhere in bacterial form. Not DNA but Bacterial form. Because DNA is not alive, nor will it get you a living cell without the rest of the cells components in place.

Now I'm not even taking the evolutionary argument as a whole. The idea that life evolved from bacteria is one thing, and far easier to swallow (though it has enormous problems) than the idea that a bacteria came into existence with all of it's mind boggling complexity in the first place.

Even an almost 'whole' organism is not enough. We've all seen roadkill.

Life is exceptionally fragile and delicate. All the pieces of the puzzle have to exist simultaneously.

I go long to explain this, because it is so often misunderstood.

So perhaps our designer is an alien from elsewhere in the universe, but then you still have the problem of answering how they came into 'being' by nothing more than the same evolutionary theory.

on "stories" ... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 10/15/2006 12:39 Link to this Comment: 20682

I don't at all mean "to refute the immense amount of empirical evidence for Darwinian evolution by calling it a story". Very much to the contrary ... Like any scientific story, [evolution] is no more and no less than a way to make sense of observations, and is significant only insofar as it does that well and, in so doing, motivates new observations that in turn lead on to new stories and further new observations.

In these terms, evolution is not only a good scientific story, it is a VERY good one. It accounts for an extraordinary number of observations that are difficult to account for in other ways, and raises a large number of approachable new questions. Moreover, it is a demonstrably useful story in a wide range of contexts.

Intelligent Design and the Story of Evolution

My point in calling evolution a "story" is not to diminish its significance in any way but rather to emphasize that ALL scientific understandings are "stories" (see Science as Story Telling and Story Revising and The Nature of Science) in the sense that they

• provide a way to make sense of observations
• are always provisional and therefore should never be regarded as "Truth"
• always derive from particular perspectives and may be more or less useful depending on the context
• should always be skeptically evaluated in terms of the observations they summarize together with the new questions they create

Rather than saying there is an "immense amount of empirical evidence for Darwinian evolution", I'd be inclined instead to say that the continually evolving story of evolution summarizes a huge number of observations, some available to Darwin but many made since because of the story. And that it continues to pose interesting questions ...

• Is there some force outside of simple physics? someone or something outside of physical understanding?
• Does one have to have DNA to have natural selection? Can complexity arise without any initial complexity?.

That people are thinking about these questions is not a reason to doubt the story of evolution but rather a testimony to the significance of that story (see Science Matters ... How?). Glad to share that thinking here.

Stories Name: MarieC (marielovesbeethoven@hotmail.com) Date: 10/15/2006 16:28 Link to this Comment: 20683

I think the term "story" has been used to cover all view-points without offending the believers of any one viewpoint. It is inferring choice, that outside of your own personal viewpoint all other viewpoints are "stories". Of course the word story does not always refer to fairy tales only. It has been used on this forum to be polite to other contributers and not vice versa.
But still the thought that any science could be questioned and linked to such ambiguous language means that it is not an evident conclusion, or if it is, that the public is not aware of all the facts. Such a science as photosynthesis or digestion does not require scrutiny or ongoing discussion. The general public has no problem understanding those things which make sense and offer no confliction of interest. I do not believe that any thing which is described as science should contradict or deny the existance of God. If it is truly science it will flow harmoniously into whatever lifestyle we live. If through God or through natural selection all life is tending toward perfection, there should be no turmoil between the pursuit within ourselves and the pursuit of life around us. Of course all we really need to do is open our eyes and look around, see what beauty there is, and how perfect it already is. The past does not help so much as the future, and the future of evolution is bleak. Instead of an improved world we see mankind repeating so many mistakes in every generation and destroying the species around us, not to speak of the destruction we wreck upon our own kind. The only sure hope from this is in believing in God and following the truths of Jesus. A story which rules out this possibilty is ultimately contradictory and self-distructive

Name: Robert Lockett (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 10/15/2006 20:36 Link to this Comment: 20685

MarieC said: ...the future of evolution is bleak. Instead of an improved world we see mankind repeating so many mistakes in every generation and destroying the species around us, not to speak of the destruction we wreck upon our own kind.-

Now not only is this true, but in order to even say that it is 'wrong', one must invoke a moral judgement. naturalism doesn't give us that!

With Neo-darwinism, survival of the fittest is the supreme law. And as such, the logical conclusions of nihilism and the destruction of the weaker for the benefit of the stronger is not only not 'wrong', but essential. Hitler explaind in his 'Mein Kampf' that "struggle is the father of all things."

So we must understand that if naturalism is true... then morality has it's place only in the survival of 'this life'.

So to be a naturalist, and insist on morality (or 'values' as the term Neitzche first coined), then one must presuppose or assume to be 'true', that this life is the only life, and there is nothing to the hereafter.

And since a naturalist cannot (as Paul demonstrates with his honesty)bring himself to actually 'know' anything for sure... he is forced to contradict himself whenever he invokes 'reason' to make an argument. Because at such an extreme of philosophy, reason itself must be suspect.

It is for these reasons that on his death bed, John Paul Sarte said, 'I have found my whole philosophy of life to have become incoherent.' (I have it on good authority that Norman Geisler has documentation for that comment).

These same philosophical dead ends is why Anthony Flue
is now in England in his 80's and says he can no longer consider himself an atheist.

If there is no God, then 'reason' itself is meaningless and all of our judgements are puffs of air.

C.S. Lewis said it well: "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark."

Or as G.K. Chesterton said: "If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so."

And Ravi Zacharius: "We sent all of our students to harvard, to teach them that morality was relative. And then when they go to Wall st. and live as relativists and our pension plans are raided, we want to put them in jail... Coherence is a powerful weapon of reality."

I think that is the reason that John, while being inspired by God's holy Spirit to write the last and closing book of his revelation in scripture, painted for us a picture of Christ's returning with a sword coming out of his mouth.

He created this universe by speaking, and when He returns, he will stop all speculation and irrational conjecture with the humbling power of crushing logical enlightenment.

Reality calls our bluff Paul!

stories bumping against one another ... Name: Paul Grobstein (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Date: 10/16/2006 11:42 Link to this Comment: 20689

"Story" may indeed have been used by some here "to cover all view-points without offending the believers of any one viewpoint ... to be polite". I'm certainly in favor of politeness, but I don't use the term "story" for that reason, any more than I use it to deny the significance of observations. "Stories" are, for me, much too important to be dismissive of them, out of politeness or any other motivation. "Its in and from the bumping of stories against one another than new ones emerge". Scientific stories, in particular, "are written not be believed but to be understood, made use of as appropriate, and revised", in part by being measured against other stories. there is everything to be gained by having available the widest possible array of not only observations but of candidate stories as well. By so doing, science maximizes not only the breadth of observations but also the repertoire of story telling styles with which new stories can be elaborated. The more people, the more observations, the more stories the better.

Science as Story Telling and Story Revising

Let's try it out? Politely, but equally with a shared commitment to the notion that it is not only other peoples' "view points" that are "stories" but one's own as well, and that "All people [are] encouraged to think of their ideas/perspectives as "in progress": to make them available as potential contributions to the thinking of others, and to make use of the thoughts of others as of potential significance to their own thinking"

Serendip's Evolving Web Principles

I very much share a concern that "we see mankind repeating so many mistakes in every generation and destroying the species around us, not to speak of the destruction we wreck upon our own kind". I'm not inclined though to attribute this problem to either "evolution" or "naturalism". The pattern of repeating human "mistakes", in particular of humans causing human suffering, is a very old one, one that long predates the quite recent development of both "evolution" and "naturalism" as stories, so it is unlikely that either is a principle cause of such patterns.

For the same reason, I'm disinclined to put my confidence in "believing in God and following the truths of Jesus", or to wait around until "He returns" to "stop all speculation and irrational conjecture with the humbling power of crushing logical enlightenment." The story of Jesus is a valuable one but one that has been around for some time and has clearly not fully solved the age-old problems (indeed, it has itself created some versions of those problems, both in the past and in the present). God may or may not exist and appear at some point (its not a question science can resolve for the moment), but its not at all clear to me that "crushing logical enlightement" would fix the problems. Still more importantly, I'm reluctant to sit and wait for something that may or may not occur and may or may not work when there are problems that we could ourselves try and do something about now.

So, what's my "story"? How would I approach the kinds of problems about which we share a common concern? I'm not sure I would call myself a "naturalist" but appreciate the recognition that whatever/whoever I am "cannot (as Paul demonstrates with his honesty) bring himself to actually 'know' anything for sure." Yes, indeed, "reason itself must be suspect." As must also authority, the revealed word, and so forth ....

Maybe at this point in human history we've finished cataloguing all the possible things that one MIGHT have used as a solid starting point for continuing inquiry and we can conclude (for the moment at least?) that NONE of them are in fact a solid starting point, in the sense that none can be taken as a given not subject to further skepticism and exploration. Maybe its time to seriously entertain the possibility that looking for a single solid starting point just isn't the right way to go, that one has to find another, different way to proceed.

Thinking may not be a solid starting point that one need not be skeptical about, but it IS, on the other hand, demonstrably useful at times. So too is being, without thinking. And so too, for that matter, are feeling, and logic, and sense data, and even the stories of other people (which is what "authority" and the "revealed word" are if you recognize their fallibility). Maybe then the starting point one is looking for to support ongoing inquiry is wherever one is at any given time based on all of these.

Writing Descartes

It doesn't all follow from this that "'reason' itself is meaningless and all our judgements are puffs of air". Nor that "morality has it's place only in the survival of 'this life'". What does follow is the story that both meaning and morality exist precisely insofar as we create them by our own thoughts and actions. And that we should be humble about meaning and morality and stories, recognizing that neither we not anyone else has unique and privileged access to enlightenment or perfection or Truth.

What we do have is the ability to notice problems, to share stories about those problems, and to use that sharing to create new and better ways to solve those problems. That may not assure that there is "no turmoil between the pursuit within ourselves and the pursuit of life around us" but it perhaps can help us better appreciate the value of what we have (some degree of "turmoil" included) and encourage us to use it to fix existing problems and so build a future that is, if nothing else, "less wrong" than the present.

Maybe that's not such a bad story?

Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 10/16/2006 21:43 Link to this Comment: 20692

Paul, it is not only nice to hear from you so personally, but what you have provided is certainly rich as a basis for a continuing discussion.

I would very much like to challenge some of your thinking. I give you the option of continuing this discourse in private if you prefer.

I cannot address the issues now, as I have a meeting to attend. But I will get to it in the next several days, and look forward to an honest and engaging discussion.

Doubting Thomas Name: Marie Christ (marielovesbeethoven@hotmail.com) Date: 10/16/2006 23:14 Link to this Comment: 20693

Paul, I think you have put much time and effort into what you consider a worthy pursuit, but, with all due respect, for me it is an unnecessary compoundation of the problem. I agree that skepticism has been the impetus for many a great discovery, that to some extent skepticism is necessary to learning and finding the truth. I do not agree that an all-encompassing skepticism just for its own sake is something to be desired after.

Let us say we are all on one page, that 'story' for us means 'possibility'. In a science classroom, possibilities bouncing off one another and/or rubbing together is indeed a legitimate means of problem solving, coupled with broad, albeit skeptical, observation. For me, although I am ignorant, the word science has always signified the study of those things which have answers, whether yet discovered or unknown. It has little to do with culture, and SHOULD be neutral in nature. Science should be accessible to all religions to the exclusion of none. You must realize that science and theology are seperate studies, or
quite simply that the same stars will shine from the same galaxies on each of us, having nothing to do with how we live our lives, or what our creed. While some religions have incorporated notions of science into their rituals, a true understanding of the workings of nature absolutely to this point has not ruled out the possibility of their beliefs. Even if we were to know every detail of existance, the part of our nature that longs for something greater would still have the aptitude and desire to create a new religion based on this knowledge, maybe similar to the awe-inspired Native American beliefs or other variations of nature worship. The point is that we all are born with an insistant and compelling ideal of a greater good. For me this is not a matter for science, yet we are at a divide in time where scientists are trying, not to explain God, but to explain away God. This problem will not diminish by simply 'rubbing' stories together. For those of us who believe in God, the old saying "seeing is believing" is false. Seeing is having proof; believing is faith in that which will never be proven. We do not wait around for the coming of Jesus, but rather are secure in the idea that salvation depends entirely on faith. Faith is the test by which we are judged, as Jesus says to Thomas "blessed are you because you have seen and believed, more blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe". To think that a man or any group of men will one day explain existance to the degree where we know for sure that there either is or is not a creator, is ludicris. Why? because it is impossible for a just God to exact the test of belief upon only a percentage of mankind. The moment that we know for sure our origins will effectively be the end of the world, for without questions of life and death, life itself is meaningless.

I like the idea of 'stories' if that implies an equal representation of these stories in the classroom, and in mainstream media.
I do not and did not put forth evolution or naturalism as a cause for human abuses, but rather the human tendency toward a destructive mentality is an argument against the ongoing process of natural selection for the improvement of species life. I am aware that this broad opinion could be open to much debate. I am not a preacher or evangelizer, I hold forth the pricipals of Jesus Christ because regardless of personal beliefs, His teachings are entire and effective against all of human ills.

There are some Jewish people nowadays who are afraid to accept Jesus because they feel it will make them "less Jewish". Family survivors of the Holocaust as well as tradition have instilled great loyalty in them. But for a people whose primary basis for perseverence is the belief that they are chosen, i.e., the messiah and savior will come from their tribe, it is foolish to cling to tradition for its own sake. The coming of the Messiah they await, no matter who he is, must mean change. Possibilities are comforting in many ways, we may be afraid to be 'trapped' in marriage, parenting, or career. Most of us have a period in life where we view possibility as a luxury and a noble calling. It comes as a great surprise, when confronted with the reality of stability and trust in marriage or the inexplicable bond with a child, that this is by far the truest freedom. In the end, it is not the amount or scope of the possibilities that matter, but what we ultimately make of them. For those of us who have chosen the freedom of God, it is impossible to integrate all stories. To be aware of them, yes, but to live in the dusk of skepticism?

Name: Elizabeth () Date: 10/17/2006 10:38 Link to this Comment: 20694

Quick comment from the side...Love Marie's notion of story as possibility and I think it's great to define terms...this is one of the best ways for us to be able to read the pages we're each on. It seems to me that Paul doesn't think that science "should" be disconnected from religious/spiritual just in the one aspect that the story nature (as he sees it) is in fact, the same...made up of the same elements (words, phrases, thoughts, ideas). Paul is this correct? I would agree with this. At the level of waiting around to be saved...hmmm...well, for Marie and Rob it seems that it is faith in the story of Jesus that gets them to believe in the possibility of positive change and a desire for less destruction. The story of Jesus gets them interested in "doing" rather than waiting around. It seems that for Paul, skepticism and a questioning of any one belief...and also a deep belief in relativism (right?) gets him to want to make change in the world in part via thinking and a deep comittment to the stories of others. This is what keeps him thinking and doing. So, this fits so perfectly with Marie's idea of story as possibility. Building from that, I'll call story potential. It's a scientific principle (story?) that "work" is the use of potential energy (can anyone help me go back to 6th grade and say what principle i'm referring to?). So...as long as one is seeking a story to keep them going and keep them going in relation to other people--could there ever be one story that IS "less wrong" than another story? I think if as humans we REALLY believed that all stories were COMPLETELY right though, we would not move forward and create change. I advocate not arguing for correct but I think it's okay to assert something of what one is believing at the moment...because yes...then stories can bump into each other and we can touch each other by giving each other a bit of ourselves and the places where we are. To listen is a step towards motion and bumping laterally...like bumper cars seems better to me than bumping head on...but that is just my judgement at the moment.

Name: Marie () Date: 10/17/2006 13:41 Link to this Comment: 20695

That is a good explanation, that some stories translate into a philosophy which requires action, at least for some of us, while other stories are more observation based and culture neutral. Those which are action based may require more aspects of our human psyche, such as morality, then those which are data accumulation and observation based. Therefore in the study of origins there should be more categorizing of stories into action-implicit, action-optional, and action-neutral, and within these boundaries the 'rubbing' together of possibilities may be more productive. At this point to place all stories under the heading 'science' or under 'religion', is not plausible. The original focus I had when seeking this forum was to question the constitutional legality of an evolution only classroom. While we few may be able to share and mingle stories, the validity of ID as an action-based story, and our right to hear this story, is being seriously jeopardized. The preservation of our freedoms in relation to this is possibly the best motivator of acton for both sides.

correction / Edit Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 10/19/2006 09:05 Link to this Comment: 20703

In Case there was any confusion in my last post, I wish to clarify a couple things..

1. Theology is an unavoidable part of the whole of our worldview (philosophy). I don't care if you are a theist, an atheist, or a pantheist... Theism is a necessary component in the discovery of reality, simply because 'the God question' is synonomous with 'reality'. Theology is the foundation of one's philosophy. It is integral.

2. I did not distinguish between Relativism, Pluralism, and Synchronism.

Relativism is popularly reffering to pluralism, but varies.

Pluralism is the idea that there are many competing worldviews and that none is dominant. It is at that point that pluralism becomes the 'dominant worldview', defeating it's own aim. One worldview simply must be correct by necessity.

Synchronism is the idea that all religions are basically the same and lead to God. It can be extended to universalism as well, where people of different faiths are encouraged to continue in that vein.

Typically, relativism (as popularized in the West) does not invoke synchronism, but is speaking with a secular tone.


All have that 'whatever works for you' implication, the result of which is to disconnect people from one another and avoid discussing what is ultimately the most profound and default anchor for our thinking (the theological element of our philosophy).

We need not fear being wrong and making corrections. Such corrections are really necessary if our actions are to change course individually and collectively. It is our philosophy that gives wind to the sails of action.

Truth is the fuel of man, so we must make sure our assumptions are correct.

Hope that clears up any misconceptions...

Rob

Name: Robert S. Lockett (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 10/18/2006 01:29 Link to this Comment: 20699

Paul, first I want to thank you for providing this forum. And I appreciate the sensitivity with which you have responded. It is important to be polite and respectful and I do think you demonstrate that well. That is something that I have only recently acquired. I apologize for the length of this post, but ask that you read it in its entirety. I do not suppose to persuade you to my way of thinking, but it is admittedly my aim. I have to the best of my ability shifted gears to attempt a conversation, as opposed to a lecture and preaching session. I hope it is acceptable in light of the gravity of these issues.

I’ve given it some thought, and I accept your use of the term ‘story’.

I think Marie touched on it in the last post. What we’re dealing with here are our philosophies. It is my understanding that philosophy is the attempt to find unity in diversity. That is where the term ‘quintessence’ comes from. The Greeks spoke of the four essences; water, earth wind, and fire, and then they asked what is the ‘fifth’ essence that unites the others?

Now, forgive me for the introductory lesson in philosophy (and logic) and I do not mean to patronize anyone in the process. I offer this as a means of being absolutely sure that we understand each other. I think that we do.

One of my presuppositions in this discussion is that we are all searching for the truth. The answer to our 'problems' (mistakes) or, to put it another way, we could say that we are searching for the story that best reflects reality; or one that does not break down as a system when the attempt is made to produce a coherent framework with which to view life. logical consistency is essential if we are to come to correct theological conclusions.

Now in my mind, that philosophical framework is itself part of the whole. Our philosophy (if correct) is actually one of many dimensions of the available diversity. It is indeed, ‘reality’!

So, if we are in agreement so far, I move on to my next point. And that is that before we can begin to look for ‘the’ philosophy described above, we simply must assume that it exists. If we presuppose that there is no ultimate or absolute truth (which is itself a philosophy) then there is no point in searching for one. Not to mention that it is a logical contradiction.

If one states that ‘truth’ cannot be known, then I must ask how they arrived at that, since it is a conclusion sustained by an ‘assertion of ultimate truth’. The same applies to the statement, “we cannot know”. Neither the agnostic, nor the skeptic escapes the assertion in their own statements.

C.S. Lewis said in Christian Reflections, “Unless thought is valid, we have no reason to believe in the real universe."

"A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid..."

------------------------------

The next point that I would like to make is that if there is a ‘real’ philosophy or story that brings the unity in diversity that we desire, it is rightly not something that we can call ‘our’ or ‘my’ story. For if it is ‘the philosophy’, it is only something that I myself am a part of. it precedes me.

Furthermore, it is not simply a philosophy at such a vantage point, but rather, it is reality in total. What we are doing now is confining this ‘Whole’ story to philosophical terms so that we can discuss it. Philosophical understanding is really only one aspect of reality's character.

Back to the point- we certainly cannot claim ownership of such a grand reality, but we would be a part of it. So it must be within somehow. There must be some light in us to guide us if it exists and we are in communion with it.

G.K. Chesterton had a way of putting things. He said regarding the philosophy of relativism: "The modern habit of saying, "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me" (the habit of saying this is mere weak mindedness). A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon."

And that moves me to my forth point; that all ‘false’ philosophies are really just ‘religions’. A ‘true’ philosophy is not a religion, but simply ‘reality’ or, the truth!

Now, this is where I can understand the skeptic’s angle, and the next point really makes relativism (pluralism, or synchronism) a force to be reckoned with. Because no one person or worldview, as judged by our experience has proven to us that they posses a ‘whole’ view of reality. They would have to embody that truth, not just preach like all of us do our own views.

If the Christian faith contains such a truth, it must be very confusing to the skeptic to see not only the wide array of interpretations within Christian denominationalism, but all out war and bloodshed between juxtaposed denominations.

The question really boils down to, ‘who can we trust’?

It brings to mind a song written by Ed Ames called ‘Who Will Answer’. I became familiar with it through a message from Ravi Zacharius (as is much of the material I present to you today), as he used it to demonstrate the same point I will attempt to make a little later.



From the canyons of the mind,
We wander on and stumble blindly
Through the often-tangled maze
Of starless nights and sunless days,
While casting for some kind of clue
Or road to lead us to the truth,
But who will answer?

Side by side two people stand,
Together vowing, hand-in-hand
That love's imbedded in their hearts,
But soon an empty feeling starts
To overwhelm their hollow lives,
And when we seek the hows and whys,
Who will answer?

High upon a lonely ledge,
a figure teeters near the edge,
And jeering crowds collect below
To egg him on with, "Go, man, go!"
And who will ask what led him
To his private day of doom,
And who will answer?

On a strange and distant hill,
A young man's lying very still.
His arms will never hold his child,
Because a bullet running wild
Has cut him down. And now we cry,
"Dear God, Oh, why, oh, why?"
And who will answer?


If the soul is darkened by a fear it cannot name,
If the mind is baffled when the rules don't fit the game,
Who will answer? Who will answer? Who will answer?

In the rooms of dark and shades,
The scent of sandalwood pervades.
The colored thoughts in muddled heads
Reclining in rumpled beds
Of unmade dreams that can't come true,
And when we ask what we should do,
Who? Who will answer?

'Neath the spreading mushroom tree,
The world revolves in apathy
As overhead, a row of specks
Roars on, drowned out by discotheques,
And if a secret button's pressed
Because one man has been outguessed,
Who will answer?

Is our hope in walnut shells
Worn 'round the neck with temple bells,
Or deep within some cloistered walls
Where hooded figures pray in halls?
Or crumbled books on dusty shelves,
Or in our stars, or in ourselves,
Who will answer?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Paul, you said, “I'm not inclined though to attribute this problem to either "evolution" or "naturalism". The pattern of repeating human "mistakes", in particular of humans causing human suffering, is a very old one, one that long predates the quite recent development of both "evolution" and "naturalism" as stories, so it is unlikely that either is a principle cause of such patterns".

I agree with you wholeheartedly Paul. And I am sorry if I gave the wrong impression. The point that I was trying to make is that if ‘naturalism’ is true, and if ‘materialism’ is true, then all of these things we call ‘mistakes’ or ‘sin’ that result in suffering are simply ‘natural’ and therefore ‘just the way it is’. They are not ‘mistakes’, they are but ‘necessities’. They cannot be otherwise with the assumption that ‘empiricism’ and ‘rationalism’ are the only important angles to understanding reality.

If naturalism is true… if materialism is true… we simply cannot make a ‘value’ judgment; a ‘moral’ judgment on them either for better or for worse!

There is another element that is needed in order for us to ‘coherently’ (within our philosophy) bring these judgments in. That element is the ‘heart’ or the ‘conscious’.

Now I am not going here, into a deep defense of the concept. I assume I do not have to. The necessity of the conscious is simply an unavoidable reality of our ‘experience’. The Bible tells us that God has given light to every man.

‘Reason’ (light) is composed of logic, experience, empiricism, and heart (at least that is how I define it).

Even Emanuel Kant, who started this notion that faith is all heart and no mind (in direct contradiction to the apostle Paul and jesus btw) was a theist. He said, “I shall forever hold in wonder, the starry hosts above, and the moral law within.”
But he made a mistake in his philosophy. He tried to remove a fundamental component of diversity, from the unity.

A man cannot appreciate reality by the mind alone! As Ravi Zacharius said (and I love this), “the ‘rationalist’ had an angle at truth, the ‘empiricist’ had an angle at truth. But in taking the single line, they blocked out all the others.” He goes on to say, “we have got to bring all of these realities and combine them into a composite whole. That is what the Christian aught to do best!”

All of this being said, I can appreciate the draw that pluralism (relativism) has to so many people and I believe that it is a correct position to take in some respects. But not in the moral realm. Pluralism is a necessary component to keeping the mind open. One cannot ever presume to have all knowledge. If there is such a being (and I believe so) it is God. However, this does not mean that ‘all things are true’, or even equally true. If that were the case, there would also be no need to keep the mind open.

You see, relativism as it is called today is really saying that truth is not exclusive. But as soon as it says that it is not, it only proves that it is. Because the only way we can say that ‘this’ or ‘that’ is true, is to, by necessity, exclude its opposite.

Aristotle caught on to this a long time ago: “To say of what is, that it is not; or of what is not, that it is, is false. While to say of what is, that it is; and of what is not, that it is not, is true. So that he who says of anything that it is, or that it is not, will either say what is true, or what is false." (Aristotle Metaphysics 1011b25)

If that is simply a tongue twister, then let’s put it this way…
If I say that all truth is relative, does that statement include itself or include itself?

If it includes itself, then it is not ‘always true’ which means the statement is false. If it excludes itself, then it is positing an absolute while denying that absolutes exist. It is plainly a logical contradiction.

The law of non-contradiction cannot be challenged. A logically contradictory statement simply cannot be true. And as soon as you challenge it, you prove it. Because in order to challenge it, you must infer that you are right, and I (or it) am wrong.

Remembers Lewis’ Quotes? , “Unless thought is valid, we have no reason to believe in the real universe."
"A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid..."

Now, I am not telling you that Chistianity is valid simply based on the laws of logic even though it is exquisitely logical.

Here I quote Ravi Zacharius: “Experience matters, testability matters, and ‘reason’ matters… Jesus rose again from the dead, as a demonstration to be the Son of God with Power. There was an empirical reality to it. And when Thomas touched him he fell to his knees and said, ‘My Lord, and my God!’”

It was the resurrection that gave the Apostles the courage to die for their faith. And it is a real encounter with the risen Lord that gives me the fortitude to stand before you and proclaim His truth. Not my truth…

And taking another page from Ravi’s angle to the skeptic and the rationalist… If we are seeking unity in diversity, there is only one place that we find it. To have unity in diversity in the effect (creation), we must have unity in diversity in the first cause (whole of reality). And the only place we can find unity in diversity is in the trinity, where there is unity, and diversity, and community in the trinity.

We were made in the image of God; made for relationship. God is an eternal being in relationship. Until we find Him, we are incomplete and do not have the philosophy in which to give us morality and its imperative for life. Simply because that philosophy is Him. The Bible says that 'In Him, all things consist.'


The problem with man is ‘sin’. We are trying to have ‘peace’ and our sin. The two do not cohere. Good and evil are not opposite sides of the same one as the pantheist believes. They are irreconcilable. The horror of it is portrayed on the cross. It’s real, and it is evil.

And we sin, because we do not know the truth, and therefore do not have the power to overcome our natural urges which represent only one part of the ‘whole’. We are broken! We are fragmented in our thinking and feelings. Our souls lost in the quagmire and resisting to call to the one hand that can rescue and lead us; reason Himself, Truth, the deliverer, the messiah (all synonymous terms).

"…If you feel it is imperative to fill all your needs, and if these needs are contradictory or in conflict with those of others, or simply unfillable, then frustration inevitably follows. To Abby, and to Mark as well, self-fulfillment means having a career, and marriage, and children, and sexual freedom, and autonomy, and being liberal, and having money, and choosing non-conformity, and insisting on social justice, and enjoying city life, and country living, and simplicity, and graciousness, and reading, and good friends, and on and on.
The individual is not truly fulfilled by becoming ever more autonomous. Indeed, to move too far in this direction is to risk psychosis, the ultimate form of autonomy. The injunction that to find one’s self, one must lose one’s self, contains a truth any seeker of self-fulfillment needs to grasp."

(April 1981 Daniel Yankelovich / Psychology Today)

Now at the time of that writing (I don’t know about now), Daniel Yankelovich was a secular thinker. But his conclusion is remarkable because Jesus said, “whoever tries to keep his life will loose it. But whoever looses his life for my sake will find it.”

Who did He think He was to say such things Paul?

Who is Jesus?

We’re all looking for the truth, so that we might find the way to real life.

-Who will answer?-

Jesus said plainly, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the father but by me”.

That is a staggering and exclusive claim!

Without ‘reason’ we are lost. But to have it, means we can no longer point fingers and say, ‘if it wasn’t for those Jews, or those Muslims the world could have peace. The problem with the world is not extremism. Because whenever we say ‘what is true’ (no matter what the assertion), we ourselves become the extremist. Mathematitians are extremists. The laws of physics are extreme.

All order is extreme. But so is chaos!...

So the questions really becomes ‘which extreme truth, is ‘the truth’.

We don’t have to be obnoxious simply because we possess truth. I have been at times, but I do not mock or threaten my 5 yr old son because he doesn’t know his arithmetic. I instead, like our heavenly father, encourage him and love him. Teaching and rebuking. No condemnation, but an expectancy that he will respond to ‘reason’.

In a letter to the editor, in response to the question, “What’s wrong with the world?” G.K. Chesterton responded,

“I am!’

Yours truly, G.K. Chesterton


I am a sinner in need of a savior, and in constant need for the drink of truth to sustain my growth. Spiritually we are more like plants than animals. As plants need photosynthesis to grow, so my spirit needs ‘truth synthesis’ to grow. And since I have been given this gift for no other reason than being humble enough to ask, I now give my life to tell you that He will respond If you give Him your life, and admit to him that you are lost and in need of him. This world is perishing. It has gone mad because it has lost its ability to reason.

------------------------------------------

The alien race who created us, came here not in a space ship, but in something far more technologically advanced… a human body containing the infinite Spirit of God. The way we were all created to be. He reasons with us and embodied that truth, living a sinless life.

We crucified Him.

And He rose.

Paul, if the resurrection is true, then you have to admit that life’s paradigm is far different than the assumptions of naturalism, simple empiricism, and materialism.

And to say that we cannot know, is in direct conflict with the words of Jesus; ‘If you keep my words...you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.’

Take the time to listen to Him. Put him on trial. He loves a skeptic because God is a reasonable man.

And Paul, in light of the quantum I ask you, "Do you want there to be a God"?

“What do you ‘want’ to believe?”

Name: Marie () Date: 10/18/2006 12:55 Link to this Comment: 20701

Rob has (although his is post is primarily addressed to Paul) touched two important things here.

" we are searching for a story that best reflects reality, one that does not break down as a system when the attempt is made to produce a coherent framework with which to view life".

This is a much better way of saying what I have been trying, that evolution can not be pure science, for pure science will not break down as a system when juxtaposed to any world view. A man-made philosophy, on the other hand, will hold relevance for only a fragment of the population, and is subject to change with each juxtaposition and rubbing together.
We are all imperfect, any philosophy which men attempt to pruduce or which can be attributed to any man, is in one way or another doomed to failure, or at least to incompletion. It is like attempting to recreate a landscape with a limited palate. Each of us is lacking one pigment or another, so that no matter the elaboration or pains taken, the final result is only an interpretive rendering. Maybe we can even say that just by looking over the shoulder of our neighbor and viewing his or her work, we certainly will get an idea of other possibilities, and certainly the more we look the clearer our picture of the finished product will grow, but yet this looking should give us no cause for arrogance. It may give us the impression that we are 'better' than our neighbor for being so enlightened, but ultimately can not gain for us the missing elements to our own work.

This is in agreement with another one of Rob's points, that we may lay claim to a philosophy, but not to ultimate truth. It further agrees with two major teachings of christian philosophy, one; that we all have talents or gifts to share, and all with purpose, and two; that we can not rest in our own gifts, but must always have recourse to scripture for further understanding. Knowledge is a life-long process, but since we know not how long we have, and have no hope to learn everything even given till eternity, the breath of this very instant is to be cosidered as the apex of our existance. It is this present moment in time which we must view as our last, no matter our education or where we are in the learning process, and it is because of the uncertain hour of death that reason must leave off and faith begin. Knowledge for its own sake, as a personal collection, and the belief that acquisition of philosophical "possessions" is inately to be valued, has failed to bring comfort to the most learned of men upon their deathbeds. It is the cowardly way out of being 'wrong' by adhering to any standard and thus coming under assault for its supposed fallacies. We are all afraid of that. But truly, you shall know a tree by the fruit that it bears, and there is quite a difference between those who are motivated by personal gain, and those who are acting under the inspiration of a Higher Being. We should all like to have concrete proof, to see Jesus come in the flesh and enlighten us, but since we know this will not happen, to me it seems that the highest form of intelligence is to accept that and live thru faith, rather than hold out for an answer that will not come. I have always been taught that God offers salvation to all of us equally, whether it come from great study, or simple humility. But the man who rests in the truth ultimately is wiser than the most educated, and to him much will be revealed. It is the humble of heart that God chooses most often as His messengers, not so that we may doubt them in their ignorance, but so that self-pride will not obstruct His word. As the bible says, "he who has ears, let him listen".

The bad news - and the good! Name: Rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 10/21/2006 23:54 Link to this Comment: 20713

The story of the Bible?
Is it really reasonable?

One of the biggest problems people have with Christianity is the doctrine of sin. It is the bold insistence that man is corrupt and evil; fallen in his nature. The Bible makes this plain, and makes no apologies for this view. The claim is made as simple fact. Man is a beast.

It was Malcomb Muggeridge who said, ‘the depravity of man, is at once, the most empirically verifiable reality, but at the same time, is the most intellectually resisted fact.’

We would much rather believe that we are sick. Hobart Mowrer, who at one time was president of the American Psychological Assosiation said, "For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch making. But at length we have discovered that to be free in this sense, that is, to have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost… In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free, we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity, and with neurotics, themselves, we find ourselves asking, "Who am I, what is my deepest destiny, what does living mean?" (Hobart Mowrer, [Sin, the Lesser of Two Evils] American Psychologist 15 (1960): 301-304.)

The biggest problem in most minds (including my own at one time) is that a good God would not condemn people to an eternal hell for sins committed, since it is not our fault that we are born into this fallen state. But the God of the Bible does not condemn people for this reason. The sin that is unforgivable and worthy of such eternal isolation from God is a different animal altogether.

We are not sinners because we do evil things. We do evil things because we are sinners. Our actions are a result of our hearts. And our hearts are desperately wicked.
Jesus spoke plainly on the subject:

Matthew 12:34
You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
15:18
But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.'
5:19
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

Luke 6:45
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.


It’s like my son. He is 5 years old, and has much to learn. It is not his fault that he is human and born ignorant. He has not learned to master himself. I certainly do not condemn him for his faults. But I do expect him to respond to teaching and rebuke now. And later in life, I expect him to respond to reason.

Now, if he refuses to cooperate. If he ‘consciously refuses’ to respond to reason, using all of the excuses and rationalizing one would expect from a defiant man, then we have a whole different animal. His condemnation is not my will but his. He is his own man, and out of relationship with me by his choice. He will take (forcibly) his own way, motivated by the very pain he is looking to escape.

This is the situation with mankind. We are who we are because of our environment and our DNA. If the world is falling apart as the Bible says, and if the creation is in decay and we along with it, then we half rightly ask, ‘how is it, that I am condemned for being what I have no control to be?’ If the whole universe is collapsing simply because one component (mankind) has failed in his divine duty, how can I change that?

It’s a good question…

But that is not the issue. The issue is that God has reached down from eternity, into our universe of finitude and decay, and offered His own right hand to pull us out, and we refuse!

We refuse!

And we do so because we have made peace with our sin and learned very quickly to enjoy it. We have at some point become allied with evil and enemies of God by choice.
We confidently insist that we have it under control and will find the answer apart from God.

That is the sin that condemns us. And it is ‘we’ who condemn ourselves, not God.

In fact, He, being the one ultimately responsible for creating evil (Isaiah 45:7 I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.) So he took the responsibility upon Himself to provide justice for our sin. He paid the price; a heavy price. He offers peace and mercy in return. All we have to do is accept it, and allow Him into our lives. The buck stopped on the cross, if you’ll pardon the crude analogy.

We are slaves to sin (our fallen world, its environment, and our DNA). He commands us to be ‘born again’ through Him. If we refuse, then we condemn ourselves to what we are now.

He offers all the answers… but we prefer to have our own way. And a good God cannot allow that to be the case for eternity, and has confined us to this half life, so that some might be saved. The only alternatives would be to destroy us instantly without allowing anyone to escape; or, to allow this malaise to go on ‘forever and ever’ (minus the Amen).

Here we are folks, trapped in isolation in a universe so vast, that we really have no excuse to believe that we are in control of anything. Yet we believe the lie we tell ourselves.

The man who imposes ‘his own truth’ upon us… is ourselves. Reality has been there the whole time waiting for us to come to our senses.

John 3;16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

NOTE THIS- 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

AND HERE IS THE SIN 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever 'does not believe stands condemned already' because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

Matthew 9:13
But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."


You do not have to be religious or pious to find God. Those are the people who will never find him. The teachers and Pharisees rejected him, because they thought highly of themselves. The idea that they were sinners was luducrous. They are the righteous Christ speaks of (the self-righteous). To them, Jesus is a weak and wretched fool. You only need to see that you are a sinner (which only requires honesty) and then you can hear Him because you hear ‘the truth’ and can do what he said…

John 10:27
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.

All of reality (the kingdom of heaven) hidden only by this hidden little door deep inside our hearts called...

Honesty!

The bad news - and the good! Name: () Date: 10/21/2006 23:55 Link to this Comment: 20714

The story of the Bible? Is it really reasonable? One of the biggest problems people have with Christianity is the doctrine of sin. It is the bold insistence that man is corrupt and evil; fallen in his nature. The Bible makes this plain, and makes no apologies for this view. The claim is made as simple fact. Man is a beast. It was Malcomb Muggeridge who said, ‘the depravity of man, is at once, the most empirically verifiable reality, but at the same time, is the most intellectually resisted fact.’ We would much rather believe that we are sick. Hobart Mowrer, who at one time was president of the American Psychological Assosiation said, "For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch making. But at length we have discovered that to be free in this sense, that is, to have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost… In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free, we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity, and with neurotics, themselves, we find ourselves asking, "Who am I, what is my deepest

The bad news... and the good! Name: rob (roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 10/21/2006 23:56 Link to this Comment: 20715

The story of the Bible?
Is it really reasonable?

One of the biggest problems people have with Christianity is the doctrine of sin. It is the bold insistence that man is corrupt and evil; fallen in his nature. The Bible makes this plain, and makes no apologies for this view. The claim is made as simple fact. Man is a beast.

It was Malcomb Muggeridge who said, ‘the depravity of man, is at once, the most empirically verifiable reality, but at the same time, is the most intellectually resisted fact.’

We would much rather believe that we are sick. Hobart Mowrer, who at one time was president of the American Psychological Assosiation said, "For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch making. But at length we have discovered that to be free in this sense, that is, to have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost… In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free, we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity, and with neurotics, themselves, we find ourselves asking, "Who am I, what is my deepest destiny, what does living mean?" (Hobart Mowrer, [Sin, the Lesser of Two Evils] American Psychologist 15 (1960): 301-304.)

The biggest problem in most minds (including my own at one time) is that a good God would not condemn people to an eternal hell for sins committed, since it is not our fault that we are born into this fallen state. But the God of the Bible does not condemn people for this reason. The sin that is unforgivable and worthy of such eternal isolation from God is a different animal altogether.

We are not sinners because we do evil things. We do evil things because we are sinners. Our actions are a result of our hearts. And our hearts are desperately wicked.
Jesus spoke plainly on the subject:

Matthew 12:34
You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
15:18
But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.'
5:19
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

Luke 6:45
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.


It’s like my son. He is 5 years old, and has much to learn. It is not his fault that he is human and born ignorant. He has not learned to master himself. I certainly do not condemn him for his faults. But I do expect him to respond to teaching and rebuke now. And later in life, I expect him to respond to reason.

Now, if he refuses to cooperate. If he ‘consciously refuses’ to respond to reason, using all of the excuses and rationalizing one would expect from a defiant man, then we have a whole different animal. His condemnation is not my will but his. He is his own man, and out of relationship with me by his choice. He will take (forcibly) his own way, motivated by the very pain he is looking to escape.

This is the situation with mankind. We are who we are because of our environment and our DNA. If the world is falling apart as the Bible says, and if the creation is in decay and we along with it, then we half rightly ask, ‘how is it, that I am condemned for being what I have no control to be?’ If the whole universe is collapsing simply because one component (mankind) has failed in his divine duty, how can I change that?

It’s a good question…

But that is not the issue. The issue is that God has reached down from eternity, into our universe of finitude and decay, and offered His own right hand to pull us out, and we refuse!

We refuse!

And we do so because we have made peace with our sin and learned very quickly to enjoy it. We have at some point become allied with evil and enemies of God by choice.
We confidently insist that we have it under control and will find the answer apart from God.

That is the sin that condemns us. And it is ‘we’ who condemn ourselves, not God.

In fact, He, being the one ultimately responsible for creating evil (Isaiah 45:7 I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.) So he took the responsibility upon Himself to provide justice for our sin. He paid the price; a heavy price. He offers peace and mercy in return. All we have to do is accept it, and allow Him into our lives. The buck stopped on the cross, if you’ll pardon the crude analogy.

We are slaves to sin (our fallen world, its environment, and our DNA). He commands us to be ‘born again’ through Him. If we refuse, then we condemn ourselves to what we are now.

He offers all the answers… but we prefer to have our own way. And a good God cannot allow that to be the case for eternity, and has confined us to this half life, so that some might be saved. The only alternatives would be to destroy us instantly without allowing anyone to escape; or, to allow this malaise to go on ‘forever and ever’ (minus the Amen).

Here we are folks, trapped in isolation in a universe so vast, that we really have no excuse to believe that we are in control of anything. Yet we believe the lie we tell ourselves.

The man who imposes ‘his own truth’ upon us… is ourselves. Reality has been there the whole time waiting for us to come to our senses.

John 3;16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

NOTE THIS- 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

AND HERE IS THE SIN 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever 'does not believe stands condemned already' because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

Matthew 9:13
But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."


You do not have to be religious or pious to find God. Those are the people who will never find him. The teachers and Pharisees rejected him, because they thought highly of themselves. The idea that they were sinners was luducrous. They are the righteous Christ speaks of (the self-righteous). To them, Jesus is a weak and wretched fool. You only need to see that you are a sinner (which only requires honesty) and then you can hear Him because you hear ‘the truth’ and can do what he said…

John 10:27
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.

All of reality (the kingdom of heaven) hidden only by this hidden little door deep inside our hearts called...

Honesty!

Addendum Name: Rob () Date: 10/22/2006 00:53 Link to this Comment: 20716

That is the sin that condemns us. And it is ‘we’ who condemn ourselves, not God. He loves us just as we are, and offers to lead us out of Egypt. We do not know the way by default. And to refuse His leadership is to deny the voice of reason; the voice of truth. It is total denial of loves embrace.

It is self imposed isolation; the creature, imposing evil, upon the merciful creator who gives nothing but goodness and righteousness, justice and mercy, which by such a nature, is not an imposition but freedom.

That is the sin that makes a victim of circumstance, into a beast that cannot be recovered.

A result of cvery onsciously choosing to operate our system on a program that runs directly in opposition to our conscious.

Matthew 12:31 And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

The man who imposes ‘his own truth’ (isolation) upon us… is ourselves. Reality has been there the whole time waiting for us to come to our senses.

Hell Name: Rob (Roblocketteka@aol.com) Date: 10/22/2006 10:23 Link to this Comment: 20717

"In every guilty man, there is some innocence. This makes every absolute condemnation revolting." Albert Camus

Is Mr. Camus absolutely condemning the concept of 'absolute condemnation'?

He is! And he proves that justice must be absolute by imperitive and displays the irrationality that motivates a crowd to choose ignorance over reason, when given a clear option. Such a choice is the lesser of the two threats to the will of the crowd, who chooses to live their own way, absolutely.

Matthew 27: 21 "Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" asked the governor. "Barabbas," they answered. 22 "What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?" Pilate asked. They all answered, "Crucify him!" 23 "Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" 24 When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"

Such a scene is absolutism, condemning absolutism...

Name: () Date: 10/22/2006 12:22 Link to this Comment: 20718

Such a scene is absolutism, condemning absolutism...

It is man, crucifying himself.

Paley's watch Name: Matt Wilkinson (wilko663@hotmail.com) Date: 01/09/2007 10:35 Link to this Comment: 21379

As someone who despairs at the pseudo-scientific theory of intelligent design I would offer this response to Paley's watch analogy: As you may know, Paley suggests the complexity, regularity and purpose displayed by an old-fashioned watch is a fair reflection of the apparent order + purpose in the universe. However, I would suggest the universe appears more to us like a large ant's nest. Although at first the nest appears bafflingly complicated and impressively efficient, we can deduce that the nest has taken many years and countless ants' lives to produce. Although to some the complexity of the universe appears incredibly complicated and implies design, we know that our world has taken many millions of years to develop- it is not like the watch that was made quickly by one being, rather it is like the ants' nest that has taken an incredible amount of time and energy to develop into the form we now see today.

The Design Argument: David Hume vs. Post-Science Name: Chien Yi Lee (chien_yi_lee@universalcomputersourcecode.com) Date: 01/09/2007 12:01 Link to this Comment: 21380

One of the oldest and most popular arguments for the existence of God is the design argument – that all the order and 'purpose' in the world bespeaks a divine origin. A modern manifestation of this belief is creationism.

I am quoting from the front page of the Self-Creation.org site of Dr. Hugh Ching, founder of post-science, http://www.self-creation.org and Wikipedia on David Hume http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume

Hume: For the design argument to be feasible, it must be true that order and purpose are observed only when they result from design. But order is observed regularly, resulting from presumably mindless processes like snowflake or crystal generation. Design accounts for only a tiny part of our experience with order and 'purpose'.

Post-Science: From the post-science discovery of the solution of completely automated software, post-science expects that in one or two thousand years mankind will start to think about creating itself based on a completely automated software. In the process of self-creation, we have to have a design and must decide the purpose of our creation, as whoever created us must have done. However, the problem of completely automated software involves around five hundred, or virtually an unlimited number of, variables, and is about two orders of magnitude more complex than an average problem in science, which has roughly five variables. Post-science, in its reexamination of the existing creation, finds that the current creation has almost at an optimal design, from which post-science finds little which can be surpassed and, thus, conclude that we most likely are also created. In particular, post-science realizes that evil is created as a survival mechanism for the weak to compete against strong, and pain and suffering are designed as warning devises and a way for mankind to learn lessons on non-violable laws of nature in the absence of its creators.

Hume: Furthermore, the design argument is based on an incomplete analogy: because of our experience with objects, we can recognise human-designed ones, comparing for example a pile of stones and a brick wall. But in order to point to a designed Universe, we would need to have an experience of a range of different universes. As we only experience one, the analogy cannot be applied.

Post-Science: With the permanent creations based on the completely automated software, we will have two types of permanent entities, ours is primitive and the existing seems to be optimal. One example is the solution to touch. Touch is still not even recognized as a problem, but post-science and our creators have it solved. Here, if the solution is correct, is an order of the creation yet undetected, by the people who try to refute creation.

Hume: Even if the design argument is completely successful, it could not (in and of itself) establish a robust theism; one could easily reach the conclusion that the universe's configuration is the result of some morally ambiguous, possibly unintelligent agent or agents whose method bears only a remote similarity to human design.

Post-Science: Post-science believes that the origin of life starts from unintelligent raw materials. To advance from raw materials to anything intelligent takes almost infinite amount of time, which the universe has. This transient stage of the development of intelligence is based on random chance and is very disorderly. And, mankind would be very unfortunate, if we are still in this transient stage. Post-science believes that our living system is currently in a steady state of self-creation. Post-science would welcome any design which can surpass the existing design of life. However, post-science admits that art, particularly, beauty is still lacking in the creation, but, on the other hand, it realizes that love holds a dominant position in the universe and that our creators rather create those they have loved rather than those who are most beautiful.

Hume: If a well-ordered natural world requires a special designer, then God's mind (being so well-ordered) also requires a special designer. And then this designer would likewise need a designer, and so on ad infinitum. We could respond by resting content with an inexplicably self-ordered divine mind; but then why not rest content with an inexplicably self-ordered natural world?

Post-Science: Self-creation needs not worry about prior creators. However, self-creation might go on ad infinitum only forward, but not backward in time. Before self-creation is the transient stage of creation. Maybe the next stage of the progress of development of the living system, or the intelligence of the universe, will be the “inexplicably self-ordered natural world" as well as the "divine mind.”

Hume: Often, what appears to be purpose, where it looks like object X has feature F in order to secure some outcome O, is better explained by a filtering process: that is, object X wouldn't be around did it not possess feature F, and outcome O is only interesting to us as a human projection of goals onto nature. This mechanical explanation of teleology anticipated natural selection. (see also Anthropic principle)

Post-Science: Self-creation’s purpose is for the future, not the past. With only a few thousands of years of recorded history, post-science is starting to speculate on self-creation. This shortness of the recorded history makes leaving any sign of self-creation unnecessary. Self-creation will include evolution as a design specification in anticipation of uncertainty the design.

But, before we get too ambitious with our design plan we should understand the existing situation. Sure, post-science would not rule out the possibility of progress, for example, shortening the period of irrationality and suffering from 10,000 years of recorded history, when mankind is conscious of its own suffering, to, say, 1,000 years and making our natural life span longer to or infinity, but the later is in conflict with the former; imagine what can happen if Stalin and Mao had lived much longer or if Hitler were as intelligent as Kant. We can also include paranormal phenomena into out design, but, if self-creation is correct, sometime in the distant past, pain must have been considered a paranormal phenomena before pain was discovered. The first creator to propose the creation of pain must be one of the most ridiculed being in the universe! Today, if I propose to program a computer so that it can feel pain, my proposal will equally be rejected, but the existence pain is already proven.
### [CYL]

Good and Evil in Self-creation Name: Chien Yi Lee (chien_yi_lee@universalcomputersourcecode.com) Date: 01/08/2007 21:51 Link to this Comment: 21378

Post subject: Good and Evil in Self-creation

Post-science, knowledge beyond science http://www.post-science.com, views the world from the standpoint of life science or self-creation http://www.self-vreation.org. Most traditional religions are preoccupied with social science and the struggle between good and evil. If the living system is created, it should all be created for good purposes. While religions try to eradicate evil, self-creationism considers evil an important part of creation. From the point of view of life science, evil is created for the purpose as a survival mechanism for the weak to compete against the strong. Without this survival mechanism, a large part of creatures will perish. Most wars are justified on the principle of the defense of good against evil. The elimination of this justification will greatly enhance peace and will allow the rational method of arbitration to replace armed conflicts. With peace, mankind can start to embark on the path of constructive development of our world.

In general, the belief of self-creation will put life science at center-stage of knowledge. Science uses past phenomena to predict the future and is, therefore, backward looking. Social science is based on value, which depends on future consequences. Social science has to be forward looking. Life science deals with creation and sees the world from the point of view of the creator. Post-science contains the solutions of value, software, and touch, respectively, corresponds to social, life, and physical sciences.

Subject: Pain is a warning system, and suffering, lessons in the absence of our creator—Self-creation

If the living system is created, all its elements are created with good purposes. Pain is a warning system; the very few humans who do not feel pain die before thirty from injury. Suffering is intended as lessons in learning the non-violable laws of nature. The laws of nature restrict human behavior are in social science. Today, we are in the Age of Science, in which only the non-violable laws in physical science are understood. Post-science http://www.post-science.com deals with social and life sciences. Not understanding the quantitative relationship http://www.infinitespreadsheet.com of interest rate, inflation rate, and the rate of return caused the US Savings and Loan Crisis. The solution to completely automated software from post-science set the foundation for the creation of permanent entities, such as life, which is characterized by complete automation. If someday mankind can create itself, it stands to reason that mankind is created. Post-science believes in self-creation of the living system.

[NOTE: Self-creation relates to the current steady-state stage of the development of the living system. The scientific study of the origin of life deals with the transient stage of the development of the living system. Self-creation will become apparent within the next several millennia. The transient stage takes almost infinite time, corresponding to the nearly zero probability for the natural origination of the living system.]

Science is a prerequisite for post-science. When knowledge becomes mature, it becomes a religion http://www.knowledgebook.us. Today, the world is dominated by the “Religion of Science” which is truly understandable to only a small percentage of the human population, but is believed by almost every educated person. Post-science is not against religion and would consider anyone who possesses the knowledge of creating the living system a God or a true life scientist. Thank you. ### [CYL, a student of post-science]

For further interest, please visit
http://www.self-creation.org
_________________
http://www.post-science.com
http://www.infinitespreadsheet.com
http://www.jumpulse.com
http://www.pn123.com
http://www.universalcomputersourcecode.com
http://www.self-creation.org

Intelligent Design Name: Jim () Date: 02/08/2007 11:08 Link to this Comment: 21434

What isn't being highlighted in this 'debate' is the fact that the only place on earth where evolutionary theory is being subjected to this kind of energetic, somewhat irrational scrutiny is the US. Fundamentally, this is a political debate, in the sense that it's a power struggle between ideologies.

It's something of an enigma that an otherwise advanced, technologically literate nation such as the US could contain such a strong base of unreason and, frankly, nonsensical belief in a set of archaeological texts. It's as daft as claiming that the Epic of Gilgamesh is literally true.

Scrutinise and challenge evolutionary theory, by all means - challenge is how science makes progress - but to do so with blinkers on defies belief. Join the advanced world, Biblebelt America, and try to kick marginally less shit while you're at it.

Name: Rob (rob.lockett@sbcglobal.net) Date: 02/08/2007 20:08 Link to this Comment: 21438

I wanted to add one thing, but felt it better to leave my faith seperate from my scientific thinking. It is a message from the Apostle Paul to the Romans. And it adresses the issues involved 'right now' in the design / evolution debate. And it exposes the internal motives for believing one or the other... in my opinion. I have block quoted the aeras of particular intrigue to me...

Peace be with you...

Romans 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who [suppress the truth] by their wickedness,

19 [since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.]

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, [but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.]

22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen. 26

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Name: Rob (rob.lockett@sbcglobal.net) Date: 02/08/2007 19:57 Link to this Comment: 21437

Hello Jim, I would like to share some 'unreason' (as you call it) with you. Obviously, I think I am being quite reasonable. Please bear with me, since 'sucker-punches', such as the one you gave above, do not really unmask the heart of the matter in my opinion...

No one questions scientific facts Jim. The question is, 'what is fact and what is faith'?

What is at issue in this debate is the 'theo' on each side of it. One claims to be scientific in it's 'THEO'ry, and the other, scientific in it's 'THEO'logy'.

I don't think either side has done a very good job of being objective as we look bakc through History.

The design inference has been around for centuries. Life just 'appears' to be totally dependant upon other life and sytems within which it sits. Design just leaps out as the default conclusion quite naturally. One has to purposefully seek out an alternative explaination such as evolution or materialism (for their own reasons), because it really goes against the grain of what 'appears' to be self evident to so many.

Both sides of the debate 'see' things that are 'not visible'. Evolution is not visible from the 'facts' of Natural Selection. It is extrapolated from the facts; theorized and imagined only in the mind (seen with faith not evidence or verification). However, 'God's invisible qualities are clearly seen, being understood from what has been made in the same manner.' So to call Christianity 'faith', and Scientific theory 'fact' is a great falsehood.

Facts are facts, theo is theo...

As to the latter point, that is why we see such brilliant geneticists such as Francis Crick making the following remark; "We must constantly keep in mind, that these things were not designed, but evolved". Now I have to ask, "Why Francis? Why 'MUST' we keep that in mind?" I thought we were supposed to be objective...

I would like to offer several quotes from scientists and leaders in the design movement. all but the first quote are taken from the Q&A section of a DVD documentary on the arguments for design ('Unlocking the Mysteries of Life'). It is very informative, and if you have not seen it, you should, regardless of your persuasion. The first quote is taken from the DVD documentary 'The Privilaged Planet', which is the first scientific documentary that ever provoked an emotional response in me. Just astounding! Not attempting to sell DVDs here, just wanted to give the source for these quotes, and my own opinion on them.

We must think deeply and honestly if we truely want to understand what is going on in this attempted scientific revolution.

These are compelling arguments. And are only a small portion of the information available to those who enjoy challenging their own worldview. These arguments are built upon one another, so to only look at one is to take the 'whole' out of context.

Personally, I leave behind 20 some years of evolutionary beliefs in exchange for evidence and honesty. Regardless of your persuasion, enjoy...

Rob


----------------------------




-Paul Davies, theoretical physicist / Australian Centre for Astrobiology:

Davies on the question: ‘Does the monotheistic tradition of an intelligible universe have any impact on modern science?’-


“The worldview of a scientist, even the most atheistic scientist, is that essentially of Monotheism. It is a belief, which is accepted as an article of faith, that the universe is ordered in an intelligible way.

Now, you couldn’t be a scientist if you didn’t believe these two things. If you didn’t think there was an underlying order in nature, you wouldn’t bother to do it, because there is nothing to be found. And if you didn’t believe it was intelligible, you’d give up because there is no point if human beings can’t come to understand it.

But scientists do, as a matter of faith, accept that the universe is ordered and at least partially intelligible to human beings. And that is what underpins the entire scientific enterprise. And that is a theological position. It is absolutely ‘theo’ when you look at history. It comes from a theological worldview.

That doesn’t mean you have to buy into the religion, or buy into the theology, but it is very, very significant in historical terms; that that is where it comes from and that scientists today, unshakably retain that worldview, as an act of faith. You cannot prove it logically has to be the case, that the universe is rational and intelligible. It could easily have been otherwise. It could have been arbitrary, it could have been absurd, it could have been utterly beyond human comprehension. It’s not! And scientists just take this for granted for the most part, and I think it’s a really important point that needs to be made.”



------------------------------



-Phillip Johnson - author ‘Darwin on trial’ / Professor of law (emeritus) University of California at Berkeley-

Johnson on the question: ‘What is Evolution?’-


“With Darwinian evolution, we’re dealing with something that is much more than a scientific theory; it’s a creation story. In fact, it’s the creation myth of our culture. Every culture has a creation myth, which tells the people where they came from, what is ultimately ‘real’, and how they relate to that, and where they should get their knowledge- their information from.

Every culture has a priesthood that has custody of this creation story and that gives that knowledge. In our culture, the priesthood is not the clergy or the ministers in church, it’s the intellectual class, and especially the scientists.

So the Darwinian story says that ultimately all that is ‘real’ is nature. Nature is all there is, and nature is composed of matter; the particles making up matter and energy that physicists study.

So, this is the philosophy called naturalism, or materialism. And since that’s all there is, it follows, that matter must have done all the creating that had to be done; that is to say, matter, unassisted by God, or any other intelligent force. According to materialism, a mind can’t exist until it evolves mindlessly from matter.

And so it follows that we are the products of an unguided, purposeless material force; which specifically is called Darwinian evolution when you get to the history of life.
And so we get our information about it (and really, information about everything) from science.”


----------------------



-Dean Kenyon – coauthor of textbook on theory of biochemical evolution ‘biochemical predestination’ 1969 (abiogenesis, as it is now called)/ professor of biology (emeritus) San Fransisco State university-

Kenyon on ‘describing the complexity of a living cell’.-

“Back in the days of Charles Darwin, relatively little was known about the complexity (the enormous complexity) of the microscopic world –the microscopic aspects of living organisms. There was a view in the latter part of the nineteenth century that a living cell was essentially a featureless bag of enzymes; all, kind of in a true solution. Not much in the way of detailed three dimensional complexity.

But of course in the twentieth century, we’ve made enormous strides in understanding that that’s not the case at all. There is a very great degree of intricacy of architecture down in the cell units. So today, everybody understands about bits and bites, and so perhaps a useful illustration of the complexity of, say the DNA molecule, might be helpful.

You can calculate the number of bits contained in tightly packed DNA material that would fill one cubic millimeter of space as equaling 1.9 times 10 to the 18th power, bits ( or, 1,900,000,000,000,000,000). Now that number, is by many orders of magnitude, vastly greater than the storage capacity of the best supercomputing machines. Their storage capacity is far less, than the storage capacity in the DNA Molecule.

Now moreover, the DNA itself as it functions in a living cell has about one hundred different proteins involved with just its own functioning. And then you have these tens of thousands of other proteins in the living cell also involved. So we have now a picture of immense sub-microscopic complexity. And so no longer is it a reasonable proposition to think that simple chemical events could have any chance at all, to generate the kind of complexity we see in the very simplest living organisms.

So, we have not the slightest chance of a chemical evolutionary origin for even the simplest of cells, with the new knowledge that’s accumulated in this century.”



-----------------------------



-Dr. Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Previously, Meyer worked as a geophysicist with the Atlantic Richfield Company, after earning his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Geology. He has recently co-written or edited two books ‘Darwinsim, Design and Public Education’ (2003 Michigan State University Press) and ‘Science and Evidence for design in the Universe’.

Meyer on the question – ‘Why can’t biological information originate through a materialistic process’?-

“One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, and the other one is blank. And I ask them, ‘what is the difference in mass between these two computer disks, as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses’?

And of course the answer is, ‘Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin?

And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce.
In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities in science; matter, and energy. At the beginning of the twenty first century, we now recognize that there’s a third fundamental entity; and its ‘information’. It’s not reducible to matter. It’s not reducible to energy. But it’s still a very important thing that is real; we buy it, we sell it, we send it down wires.

Now, what do we make of the fact, that information is present at the very root of all biological function? In biology, we have matter, we have energy, but we also have this third, very important entity; information. I think the biology of the information age, poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.”



---------------------



-Phillip Johnson on the question: ‘What is information?’-

“Information at the simplest level is just meaningful text. You can say it’s like the plays of Shakespear or the Bible if you want to pick something noble. It’s like the Los Angeles telephone directory if you want to pick something much more mundane. Perhaps an instruction book, let’s say a cookbook with all of the recipes would be a better example; or a computer program; the operating system of a PC.

Now, in order to have a computer operating system, you have to have lots and lots of that text and instructions. So it’s extremely complex. That’s feature number one, it’s a lot of letters (or digits) in a specific order. And the order is specified, that’s point number two; which is to say that only one complex arrangement will do to operate the computer. If you got another one, you’ve got something that won’t work at all.

So it’s specified complexity. And a third feature is called aperiodic, or non-repeating. And that means it’s not the result of physical or chemical laws, because those laws always produce simple repetitive patterns. For example, you can imagine a book tha’s written this way: you put a macro on your computer processor that says reapeat the letters ABC until the printer runs out of paper. And you’d get a book like that, and it wouldn’t be a very interesting book. And it would never get more interesting because the same laws that give you that pattern, ensure that you’ll never get a different pattern, or a more meaningful one.

So the information in the computers operating system, like the information that has to be present to operate all of the cells machinery, is complex, specified, non-repeating (meaningful) text.

And without exception, in all of our experience, you never get anything like that unless you have an author. To get computer software, you have to have a software engineer. To have an encyclopedia you actually need a lot of different authors and editors. To get the plays of Shakespear, you need Shakespear.”


-------------------


-Scott A. Minnich Ph.D., Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Idaho. He was an assistant professor at Tulane University, and did postdoctoral research with Austin Newton at Princeton University and Arthur Aronson at Purdue University.

Minnich’s research interests are temperature regulation of Y. enterocolita gene expression and coordinate reciprocal expression of flagellar and virulence genes. He is widely published in technical journals, including the ‘Journal of Bacteriology’, ‘Molecular Microbiology’, ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’, and the ‘Journal of Microbiological Methods’.

Minnich on the question: ‘What is the most remarkable aspect of the bacterial flagellum?’-

“The most amazing aspect of the bacterial flagellum to me is… (actually I can’t limit it to one aspect). You have the motor itself, very sophisticated; Howard Berg at Harvard (I’ve heard him speak several times) has labeled it ‘the most efficient machine in the universe’; the fact that it runs (normally in E. Coli) at 17,000 rmp. Two gears, forward and reverse, water cooled, proton motive force, it’s hardwired to a signal transduction system and has short term memory… That’s fascinating!

But then when you step back and look at the genetics in terms of the program, the blueprint to build this system, you find another layer of complexity. In the genes it’s not enough to have the fifty genes required; we find that they are also fired (or expressed) in a given sequence. And that there are checks and balances, so if there is a problem in assembly; that information feeds back at the genetic level and shuts down expression. There are gate keepers. There is communication molecularly at a distance (and a significant distance). So you build a scaffold on the end of this thing that is protruding from the cell, and it’s feeding back and saying, ‘ok, we have enough of that sub-unit, now send the next sub-unit.’

We don’t understand how this works yet. But it’s fascinating! It’s something that I could spend the rest of my life studying it’s so intriguing in terms of how this system works.”


---------------------------


-William Dembski, Mathematician, Baylor University- has earned Ph.D. degrees in mathematics (University of Chicago) and Philosophy (University of Illinois, Chicago) and a M. Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has also received two NSF fellowships and has conducted postdoctoral work at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and Princeton.

Dembski has published articles in journals of mathematics, philosophy, and theology. He has also written and edited several books including; ‘The Design Inference’, ‘Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology’, ‘Signs of Intelligence’, and ‘No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence’.

Dembski on the question: ‘What is the probability that a cell could have formed by chance alone’?-

“My intuitions are that it’s incredibly small. The complexities are just immense! I mean, you know, I was describing earlier a bacterial flagellum ok… Now if that thing is highly improbable, then the system within which it sits is even more improbable because you’ve got even more stuff to account for. So, you know, I mean, uh, it’s, it’s just improbabilities that just get worse and worse as you go up.

Just an individual protein… a functioning protein, I mean it has 100, 200, or 300 amino acids. And something like that, your talking improbabilities of something on the order of 10 to the minus 100 to get these things. And that’s just an individual protein. That’s just a building block. That’s like a brick in a house that you’re trying to build up. So just getting those bricks is highly improbable. And then you have to build the whole thing up. Just how complex is it? I think early indications are, that this is way beyond anything that we’re going to be able to reasonably attribute to chance.”


-------------------------


-Jonathan Wells has received Ph.D. degrees in Molecular and Cell Biology (University of California at Berkeley) and religious studies (Yale University) He has worked as a postdoctoral research biologist at the University of California at Berkeley and has taught biology at the University of California at Hayward. Wells has published articles in Development, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, BioSystems, The Scientist and The American biology Teacher. He has also authored two books, ‘Charles Hodge’s Critique of Darwinism’, and ‘Icons of Evolution: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong’.

Wells on the question: ‘What potential benefits does Intelligent Design Theory hold for science’?-

“Before Darwinsim took over in the late nineteenth century, virtually every Western Biologist believed in intelligent design. The founders of all the modern biological disciplines; Mendel, who founded genetics, Leneaus, who founded Taxonomy where we name organisms; the early Embyologists, the early Paleontologists… All of these people believed in design, and they founded modern biology.

Darwinism came along and said, ‘no… design is an illusion’, but yet it kept all these disciplines… of course that’s what we now work in. And I see the current revolution as a return to our roots; our scientific roots, which were design roots. And so I see science once again returning to a design paradigm.

Now, the Darwinists claim that this will restrict scientific inquiry. I see it just the opposite… What I see now, is that the Darwinists cannot allow any hint of design in living things. They have to exclude every possible aspect of design. And this narrows the range of explanations tremendously. And it forces them to cram the data into these boxes that end up distorting the truth.

In a design paradigm however, the whole range of explanations is wide open! It doesn’t mean everything is designed… So some things can still be a product of random variations and natural selection as Darwin said they were. But it greatly expands the range of explanations that we have, and liberates science to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

So I see a tremendous invigoration… a reinvigoration of scientific research opening up areas that are now closed.”

RandomSample Name: () Date: 02/09/2007 07:33 Link to this Comment: 21439

Short description of our knowledge:
Inteligent design-kindergarten level
Evolution-teenagers level
Randomness-master level

Self-Creation: Post-Science vs. Science Name: Chien Yi Lee (chien_yi_lee@universalcomputersourcecode.com) Date: 02/09/2007 11:57 Link to this Comment: 21440

Dear Prof. Robert Lockett (and all the other thoughtful viewers and generous contributors of the 'Serendip Evolution and Intelligent Design Forum'),

Thank you for your post and list of ID authorities, to which I might want to add some of the pioneers of post-science. The problem with post-science¡Xknowledge beyond science¡Xis that it is difficult to understand and needs to be explained or promoted in terms of those who are understandable to the society. Previously, I have posted a comparison between post-science and David Hume, and this time I would like to introduce post-science in relation to the late Dr. Milton Friedman and his Free Market, which is now a ¡§fact.¡¨

The founder of post-science, Dr. Hugh Ching, after reading my long commentary on post-science.com web site on his friend/adversary Dr. Friedman comments that ¡§Free Market is better than Regulation By Man-Made Laws, but not as good as Regulation By Non-Violable Laws Of Nature In Social Science.¡¨ Religion is similar to Regulation By Man-Made Laws, in that: Can anyone name a non-violable law of nature, such as gravitation, in religion? Laws of nature in science are discovered, not man-made; the number of man-made laws in science is exactly zero.

Post-science deals with non-violable laws of nature in social science, such as the Infinite Spreadsheet and approximate time-invariance of the rate of return on investment or of the velocity of circulation of broad money supply. In practice, not observing the Infinite Spreadsheet US economy was punished by the US Saving and Loan Crisis, which the Infinite Spreadsheet predicted publicly as early as 1984. Science is not aware of these non-violable social laws of nature. Having bridged the gap between science and post-science, Dr. Friedman should be considered the greatest thinker of the twentieth century, according, at least, to Dr. Ching. Can you or anyone name any person greater than Dr. Friedman?

Post-science approaches Intelligent Design from the point of view of life science or creation technology. The foundation of ID should be complete automation, which characterizes life and, most likely, embraces evolution designs. John von Neuman, the co-inventor of the modern computer, posed the problem of complete automation. But, has the problem been solved outside of post-science? I discover Universal Computer Source Code (UNCOSOCO), which requires that all source codes should be in the form of integers, as one of the three innovations in the completely automated software of Dr. Ching, but up to now only my teacher Prof. C. V. Ramamoorthy and the patent examiner of the completely automated software, Mr. Richard Ellis can fully grasp our solutions. I appreciate personally your references to Prof. Dean Kenyon, Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, and Prof. Phillip Johnson with their excellent intuitions on ID. If you want me to refute any of their arguments, I would add that if we can prove, through advancement in creation technology, self-creation is possible in the future, we might not need to offer evidence of creation from the past or the present.

The Age of Life Science is very far away from the current Age of Science or even the coming Age of Social Science. However, believing the post-science concept of self-creation has many benefits, many of which have been stated by traditional religions. Unfortunately, traditional religions, being the culmination of normality and mysticism, are preoccupied with social science, in particular, good and evil. Life science has a different viewpoint on good and evil. For example, self-creation believes that evil is created for a good purpose, namely, as a survival mechanism for the weak to compete against the strong, and that pain and suffering are warning devices or lessons in the absence of the creators. Taking away evil as an excuse for war will give the world a new perspective on peace.

Science views life from a materialistic point of view of life growing out of non-living materials, which is valid in the transient state of creation, but post-science views the living system as in a steady-state of self-creation, where the living system repeatedly creates itself. I hope that believers of ID can be generous enough to extend Creation to include self-creation so that the wisdom of traditional religions can bridge the gap between science and creation. ### [CYL]

The Philosophical Foundations in conflict Name: Rob (rob.lockett@sbcglobal.net) Date: 02/09/2007 12:58 Link to this Comment: 21441

Dr. Chien, my apologies for any confusion over my own credentials as I am not a professor or Ph.D. I am a truck driver with a high school education. Even so, you have marvelously encapsulated the major distinctions in thought (as I see them )in your response to the design arguments offered. But you have not refuted the arguments at all. You have rejected instead ‘the foundation’ for the arguments. That is fine, and we can discuss those things easily enough.

I would like to address, what I think, were the most pivotal points in your reply. Please bear with me in the name of open dialog…



-Chien writes: “Can you or anyone name any person greater than Dr. Friedman?”-

Well for me that is easy… Jesus Christ! But I am not suggesting at all that that is an answer that I expect anyone to accept simply on shock value alone. But it is significant in terms of His claims to precede creation and claim that He is in fact the creator God. And I do not mean the same creator context as in the pantheist stripe from which your arguments find their own philosophical foundation.

It is clear to me, that our differences lie specifically in the foundations of our repective philosophies.

-Chein writes: “The foundation of ID should be complete automation, which characterizes life and, most likely, embraces evolution designs. John von Neuman, the co-inventor of the modern computer, posed the problem of complete automation. But, has the problem been solved outside of post-science?”-

This is the most fascinating thing to me, and you appear to acknowledge that in the first sentence of your quote. But when you try to apply it to evolutionary theory, I cannot help but notice you say, ‘most likely’.

Life is already automated. Our bodies are not only the most sophisticated machines in the known universe (in material terms), but are also self replicating, and capable of adapting to changing environments to some degree.

Perhaps a useful illustration is this… A man once told me that he was waiting for ‘the aliens’ (whoever they are) to show up and save us from ourselves. I told him that it had already occurred. And that they came in a more sophisticated vessel (or temple) than we envision in our relatively ‘sub-technological’ science fiction stories.

I went on to explain that these visitors were so foreign to us, that the powers that be could not even relate to the language being spoken and that they crucified Him to alleviate the threat to their own power.
For His words were not words of peace in the way we typically use them, but of division. He said as much.

Matthew 10:34 "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

He asked us unapologetically to give up control of our treasured beliefs and philosophies and embrace instead the reality of our own depravity and His provision to save us. He came to divide fact from fiction. And that is the only peace that is real.

The fact is, we don’t want to be saved. We instead continue to build Towers of Babel (a story of man made philosophical collapse). We seek to find a way to keep our ‘individual sins’, and rid ourselves of the sins of others. We point fingers and throw stones, rather than face our own delusions.

-Chien writes: “Life science has a different viewpoint on good and evil. For example, self-creation believes that evil is created for a good purpose, namely, as a survival mechanism for the weak to compete against the strong, and that pain and suffering are warning devices or lessons in the absence of the creators. Taking away evil as an excuse for war will give the world a new perspective on peace.”-

How do you take away evil? First you must convince people that it is ‘evil’ to believe otherwise.

In order for this new philosophy to be lead to peace, then it must be ‘The way, the truth and the life’ that Jesus claimed to be exclusively.

Let me use another illustration:

Michael Savage’s ‘Wheel of Religion’

Exclusivity, Choice, and logic.


For those of you familiar with the conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage, you are likely aware of his controversial style. He makes no apologies for his views, and calls things as he sees them. I am personally a fan of Mr. Savages show, and have read one of his books and found it very informative and accurate. In my opinion, he is generally a very clear thinker, who is very logically demanding. But on at least this one issue, he seems to be suffering from what he calls ‘a mental disorder’ (liberalism), and the illogical thinking that flows from it.

Recently, Mr. Savage has spoken quite openly and plainly of his inability to accept religions that claim to be exclusively true. He finds such exclusivity unacceptable, and to a point I agree, as extremism is not in and of itself, a virtue. As a substitute for these offensive and narrow philosophies, he has offered a simple analogy, and he calls it, ‘The Wheel of Religion’.

He asks his audience to imagine a wheel. And the spokes of that wheel represent the religions of the world and the hub represents God. The premise is simple; all spokes lead to God. And in this way, it is implied, that we should be tolerant of other religious methodologies so as not to claim exclusivity over something that is so deeply personal and treasured in a persons life and culture.

What I want to do here is make three main points:

1. Truth (by definition) is exclusive.
2. The wheel of Life is exclusive.
3. How we choose a coherent worldview.


1. Truth by definition is exclusive. Probably the simplest illustration of this is mathematics. There are an infinite number of numbers available to us conceptually. The largest figure I have heard of is called a ‘Google’. But the point is that out of all of those possible numbers, only one of them is the correct solution to the problem 1+1+1=y. And the solution to that problem is the number 3. They way we arrive there is with logic.

The main function of the exclusivity of truth is to exclude the incorrect answer or answers. Often the alternative answer is the polar opposite of the solution. When we do so accurately we can, with clear understanding, see the answer and make practical application of the knowledge.

2.’ The Wheel of life’, as with all philosophy, excludes alternative solutions to the metaphysical problem that faces all men. If the wheel of life is ‘the way, and the truth’, then the claim of Jesus Christ, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, No man comes to the Father