Clairification: In case it isn't obvious that I believe such: I think that if Pat Robertson is a decent human being and a Christian that he should retract his ridiculous statement about God abandoning people because of the way they vote and he should apologize. However, I have no illusion that he will do so since saying outrageous, slanderous things about God seems to be his hallmark. God's hallmark, on the other hand, is faithfulness and He will not abandon people who love Him no matter how they vote. God's not so petty -- if He were then I know without a doubt that Pat Robertson would be dead by now (along with the rest of us, I'm sure).
Pat Robertson is saying that God is going to cause disaster to befall people who voted a school board out of office after they advocated teaching "intelligent design." Actually what he said is that by voting against the intelligent design people they "rejected [God] from [their] city" and that if there is a disaster, God will not help them. The idea that God will cause the disaster seems to be only implied. First of all, lets make this clear: Pat Robertson is an idiot. He is an idiot who knows how to inflame idiots and annoy the rest of us. He is an idiot who has a very poor grasp of Biblical theology -- anyone who would advocate assassinating a political leader because he advocates something you hate has missed the whole point of the Biblical story. I think the biggest problem is that Pat Robertson has only read the Old Testament of the Bible. I don't know this for a fact, but I say it because if you take the Old Testament alone and take chunks of it out of context you end up with the kind of theology he espouses. In the Old Testament, God causes calamity to fall on His people when they start following other gods. He smites people who try to oppress His people and stand against Him. There is a constant theme of Deuteronomistic theology -- the idea that when you follow God good things happen and when you go against Him bad things happen. There is one glaring problem with Robertson's interpolation of this theology to America today (all hyper-conservative Evangelicals take note): America is not Israel. God does not have a covenant relationship with America the way He does with Israel. God did not make promises about America to its founders, and He never said that we were His people. He said all of those things about the nation of Israel. The book of Job shows that Deuteronomistic theology does not apply to individuals -- Job had bad things happen to him even though he was a good person and obeyed God. Instead we see that this kind of theology only applies to the nation of Israel, which we are not. So it makes no sense to believe that God is going to make bad things happen to punish us for not voting the way He would want us to.
All this is irrelevant in this case, however, because Intelligent Design is dumb. I don't believe that God wants anyone to teach ID. If God wanted us to teach creation in school He would want us to teach Creation, not some stupid theory backed by made-up science that refuses to name Him as the Designer. In fact, ID is just as bad as evolution when it comes to taking the role of creation away from God, because ID could point to any god or force. So if God thought it was important that public schools teach that He created everything then ID is just as off as evolution. In fact, neither one excludes or includes God. Neither one is more right about God than the other because both are scientific theories, not theologies. Neither says anything at all about God. And so Pat Robertson is now an idiot twice over: once for saying that God would punish people for how they vote and again for saying that God supports ID over evolution.
Let me take this opportunity to point out that hardcore evolution supporters are also idiots (I know, there are a lot of idiots around these days). This whole altercation was begun when some parents and the ACLU sued the Dover school board because "The board ordered schools to read students a short statement in biology classes informing them that the theory of evolution is not established fact and that gaps exist in it. The statement mentioned intelligent design as an alternate theory and recommended students read a book that explained the theory further." I've already said how stupid I think ID is, so I won't go into that. But it is ridiculous to sue the school board over this. The truth is that evolution is an incomplete theory. It does have holes in it. There are a lot of things still unexplained. That doesn't necessarily mean that evolution is wrong, but it does mean that there is still work to be done. And current high school students are going to be some of the people to do that work, so they should be told about the need for dedicated and interested researchers. Teaching that evolution has holes, since it does, will lead to greater development in the research of human origins because it will spark interest in high school students. Teaching that it is a flawless theory is at least as bad as teaching ID. So in this case there are idiots all around. My suggestion: move out of Dover.
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What is an "incomplete" theory? What is a complete theory, for that matter?
Which parts of evolution theory are wrong? Or at least, where is the theory lacking?
you call ID dumb, and you call evolution dumb. But you have to back it up.
ID is not science. Period. It does not meet the criteria to be science. It's simple assertion.
Can you back up your criticisms against evolution and a sound, solid, powerful and useful theory?
I never said that evolution is dumb. ID is dumb. Evolution is science, ID is made up crap. I called people on both sides idiots, but I didn't say that evolution is dumb.
I say that evolution is an incomplete theory because it still has to explain a lot of things. A complete theory would be one that can explain its premise from beginning to end without any gaps. I'll admit that most scientific theories are incomplete, but thats okay. As long as we can admit they are incomplete and that there is more work to be done then it's okay. The problem is when we start saying that anyone who challenges the theory we favor is bad or wrong, because then we become like the Inquisition, refusing to allow questioning and, hopefully, progress.
There are still a lot of things necessary for the theory of evolution to be complete that are unexplained, or have unsatisfactory explanations. One example is the initial formation of life. The current theory states (I'm being breif and therefore a bit vague) that there were some basic components life floating in a nutrient rich soup. They were struck by lightning, or some other electrical charge was introduced, and that provided enough energy to combine the components into a life form. A single-celled lifeform, most likely. This life form somehow managed to survive long enough to reproduce. Over millions of years the lifeform evolved into increasingly more complex lifeforms until, eventually, we got here today.
Now thats a really big overview, but it introduces some weak points in the theory. First of all, the odds that the components would be all in the same place at the time that lightning struck is incredibly small. In fact, its astronomically small. Then the odds that the lifeform would live long enough to reproduce are also astronomically small. Explaining exactly what kind of conditions would have been necessary for such an event to occur randomly is a pretty hard thing to do. In fact, its a point that most proponents of evolution take by faith -- the conditions must have exsited, otherwise we wouldn't be here today.
Another weak point in evolution is the creation of specialized organs by random mutation. The kind of evolution we see today shows the adaptation of existing traits to favor survival in a given environment. Evolving something like a retina or olefactory nerve in small, random steps seems silly. That would mean that some organisms randomly started growing something like a retina. And slowly over time their brains were actually able to make sense of the information they were recieving. And somehow this changed into an eye, which is incredibly complex, over time as a result of random mutation and adaptation. That doesn't seem like a very good explanation -- in fact its not a very good explanation. I'm not saying that there isn't a good explanation, I'm just saying that we don't know what it is right now.
So, do I have a good theory on the creation of life? No. I say that none of us really knows with any certainty, at this point, how life came to be. I also believe that it doesn't really matter. I don't have a problem with teaching evolution in school -- all my schools have. We just need to be honest about what we do and don't know. Rather than being scared of admitting when we don't know something we should realize that its only when we know that we don't know something that people can work towards figuring it out. Being honest with high schoolers about what we still have to learn about the origins of life will help insprie them to study and learn so better explanations can be made and we can get closer and closer to the truth. The only people afraid of asking questions are those that fear the answers. If we really believe that evolution is a sound theory then we should be confident that any honest questioning and future research will only strengthen the theory, not afraid that it will be undermined.
You can see my opinion about how stupid ID is and why I think that human origins are a lot less relevant than we act at an old post of mine called "Unintelligent Debate" here: http://standingoutinthecold.blogspot.com/2005/08/unintelligent-debate.html
Final Score:
Standingout- 1. Biscuit man- 0.
Final score:
Tangents: 4
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Disagree with the Biblical version of creation if you wish, especially that part about how there was no death, not even animals, before Adam sinned. But don't call those of us who believe it "idiots." I'm a 6 day creationist, have a master's degree plus, and I don't think Intelligent Design belongs in the classroom. Mainly because it is such a very weak version of the Truth. Doesn't come close to the biblical version.
Although I don't believe in evolution [it was the only thing taught when I was in school], I don't call people who have that much faith, idiots.
Norma,
When you say "I don't call people who have that much faith, idiots" I'm not really sure what you're talking about. If you're saying that people who believe in ID do so because they have "that much faith" then I do call them idiots. Faith is different than blind ignorance. I really don't see the jump from faith to ID. Faith is believing that God created the universe. ID is crap-science and ambiguity.
No animals before sin? Here's a normal translation of Genesis 1:20-27
"And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;male and female he created them. "
I think its pretty clear that there were animals before man in the Biblical creation account. Of course there is the other account in Genesis 2 in which man came first. So, which is right? According to you if I believe that man came first I am going against the Biblical account. But saying that man was around before animals clearly goes against the Genesis 1 account? You say you are a 6-day creationist. The 6 day model comes from Genesis 1, the no animals first model comes from Genesis 2. It seems like you are picking and choosing what to believe -- even with a Master's degree. I really am interested to know this: if animals came after sin, and man was created on the 6th day, what did God make on day 5?
I think she meant "there was no death before sin, not even the death of animals" not the existence of animals as a category before sin. But, nice proof-texting anyway.
p.s. – Norma, lots of idiots have master’s degrees. Some even have doctoral degrees of one kind or another. Idiots abound!
Ah, that would make much more sense.
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