Sunday, August 13, 2006

Hilarious.

My favorite parts of this article (not necessarily in order):

1) “American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist...."
2) “Whether it’s the Bible or the Koran, there are some people who think it’s everything you need to know,” Miller said. “Other people say these are very interesting metaphorical stories in that they give us guidance, but they’re not science books.”This latter view is also shared by the Catholic Church."
3)"The creationists are still creationists—they're not going to change because of a court decision."
4) "Scott says one thing that will help is to have Catholics and mainstream Protestants speak up about their theologies' acceptance of evolution."

I wonder what is meant by "mainstream" as used above? he must mean, the later view of quote 2. At the very least, the article did provide a half-hearted rebuttal given by proponents of ID. A full... er half a paragraph. Don't worry, they give re-rebuttal by the real scientists (here, italics indicate sarcasm). The reason that this article is Hilarious, is because the writer does not seem to draw any distinciton between micro and macro evolution. Perhaps the writer of this article is not a scientist, but its a distinction that most IDers rarely forget to make. Its as if you can't believe the one without the other. The article carlessly quotes a man speaking (if he is in his right scientific mind) of micro-evolution (i.e. "But scientists do not share doubts over evolution. They argue it is one of the most well tested theories around, supported by countless tests done in many different scientific fields. Scott says promoting uncertainty about evolution is just as bad as denying it outright and that ID and traditional creationism both spread the same message.") Incidentally, why argue that evolution is so great. Should the abundance of evidence not speak for itself?
It should be noted that the first part isn't a quote. It is from the writer. Who goes on to allow this quote: "A better explanation for the high percentage of doubters of Darwinism in America may be that this country's citizens are famously independent and are not given to being rolled by an ideological elite in any field," Chapman said. "In particular, the growing doubts about Darwinism undoubtedly reflect growing doubts among scientists about Darwinian theory. Over 640 have now signed a public dissent and the number keeps growing."

Also, if Catholicism and "mainstream" protestant chuches teach like real scientist like them to teach then why the rise in dissidents? We should be proud that america is largely skeptical of this science. It is not the gospel that this article would have you believe. Our shortcoming is said not to be faith, but rather a lack of understanding about genetics. However, it is not stated that the countries who largely accept "evolution in toto" have a signifigantly elevated understanding of genetics. Denmark Sweden France and Japan are listed to have nearly 80% or more full acceptance of evolution. Lets check shall we? Forgive the generalization but according to this website the majortiy of non-religious and atheist people live in Europe and Asia with the majority in Europe. You'll be hard pressed to find a atheiest who can believe ID or any kind of "creationism". or feel free to check out this map:
Europe Belief in God

If your geography is as bad as mine it might suprise you to find out that the three european countries listed above rank pretty low on this map. France, Sweden (its the one in the middle up there) and Denmark (its the light purple one above France-- which is the one between Italy and Spain-- you'd better know italy (the boot)) Each are aparently at a 30% or lower number of people who believe in God. Seventy percent of their population won't even consider ID. According to this article American theism is DOWN to 82%. And what about Japan you ask? According to this it is the LEAST religious nation in the world. America doesn't need a genetics lesson. And even if we did, I doubt that a coralation stronger than what i just demonstrated could be made.
It is good to know why you believe somthing. And it is natural to believe somthing on someone's authority. If two authorities contradict, its natural to ask questions and decide between the two. But its not natural to believe a specialist in evolution over a preacher. The specialist in evolution has begged the question. He or she is not discovering that macro evolution is true. They have started there. The preacher, in kind, may have started at the opposite end (and I should hope so!). I suspect that some of these 640 scientists mentioned above found themselves signing that petition not from a deep religious sentiment, but because they did not beg the evolutionary question, nor the question of God. Some of them investigated the questions and found themselves to be surpried by the lack of evidence for macro evolution or suprised by the evidence for an intelegent designer. Its not always good to be number one on a list. We probably used to be number one in: countries that used leeches to cure people, belived in the ether, did not believe in germs or using disinfectants during surgury and so on. Im glad that we are 34. Watch out Turkey.

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