If you say it's so enough times.....
Streak's Blog has a good point today regarding the discomfort some of us have with the closed-minded and arrogant views that religious faith somehow trumps scientifically or historically established theories and proofs. I am enjoying some free premium movie channels with my new satellite dish. Last night I caught Bill Maher for a few minutes and he had some good points about this. Maher grates on my nerves at times (disrespectful personal attacks, total disdain for religion, etc....) but his underlying point spoke to some of what bothers me about Creationism or ID or whatever you want to call it being taught as science. There are plenty of arguments or "beliefs" that we can readily refute. Simply presenting an alternative theory to one established through scientific methods isn't enough to make the new theory legitimate, no matter how much you BELIEVE in it. Maher's example was that you can BELIEVE that baby's are delivered by storks all you want. It doens' make it so. There is plenty of evidence to support a much messier verson.
One of the conservative evangelical Christian interpretations of the first five chapters of Genesis is now being presented as science. There are plenty of other Christian groups who support other interpretations. Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus take a bit different interpretation. Atheists and others have their theories. None of these theories or beliefs are based on scientific study- verifiable truth. Believe what you want about how it all started- evolution is taking place all around us. It can be verified and studied in the laboratory of the world at any time someone wants to open their eyes and take a look. As far as Genesis 1 goes, get into the Hebrew and you have "evening and morning, a second day" (not THE second day). Even the literal language throws ambiguity on the timing of creation. I'm happy with accepting that God created it and is still here. I would have moved on long ago, but for some reason she sticks around.
One of the conservative evangelical Christian interpretations of the first five chapters of Genesis is now being presented as science. There are plenty of other Christian groups who support other interpretations. Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus take a bit different interpretation. Atheists and others have their theories. None of these theories or beliefs are based on scientific study- verifiable truth. Believe what you want about how it all started- evolution is taking place all around us. It can be verified and studied in the laboratory of the world at any time someone wants to open their eyes and take a look. As far as Genesis 1 goes, get into the Hebrew and you have "evening and morning, a second day" (not THE second day). Even the literal language throws ambiguity on the timing of creation. I'm happy with accepting that God created it and is still here. I would have moved on long ago, but for some reason she sticks around.
posted by Bootleg Blogger at 7:36 PM
1 Comments:
BB, I think you just got scammed.
BTW, on the point of comparing evolution to the stork, New Republic had a great article on Intelligent Design and its problems.
I liked this statement about what a scientific theory is:
"It is important to realize at the outset that evolution is not "just a theory." It is, again, a theory and a fact. Although non-scientists often equate "theory" with "hunch" or "wild guess," the Oxford English Dictionary defines a scientific theory as "a scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts." In science, a theory is a convincing explanation for a diversity of data from nature. Thus scientists speak of "atomic theory" and "gravitational theory" as explanations for the properties of matter and the mutual attraction of physical bodies. It makes as little sense to doubt the factuality of evolution as to doubt the factuality of gravity. "
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