Actually, it’s easier to say “God did it”. That has fewer syllables. Anyway, I don’t believe in Intelligent Design. I think it’s clear that we were Designed By A Committee.
As I just posted in another thread: BBC News, 26 Jan. 2006:
I’ve been thinking about this issue recently in light of the currently popular claims that “democracy” or “secular civilization” is going through a fundamental “conflict with Islam”. It’s widely maintained that since at least a very large minority of Muslims support shari’a law, religious censorship, gender inequality, and similar practices that are incompatible with a secular democratic society—and since these practices are supported by traditional literal interpretations of core religious texts—therefore Islam as a religion is intrinsically, fundamentally in conflict with those values.
In the present discussion, we see that at least a very large minority of Christians support positions on human biology and on science education that are incompatible with scientific values. And those positions are supported by traditional literal interpretations of core religious texts. By the above reasoning, have we reached a point where we’re justified in saying that Christianity as a religion is intrinsically, fundamentally in conflict with science?
I’d agree it certainly isn’t designed well but I’d have to argue it’s one of the most usefully-engineered (in a manner of speaking,) features we have.
Along with the brain, the eye is still one of the best features we have, both as compared to the rest of the animal world and mechanical competition.
Now, if a creationist could explain our retinal blind spot and color fatigue I’d be satisfied 
Here is an article I found on my college biology dept’s website that you might find interesting.
What’s the Vatican’s view? I’m not familiar with it.
I absolutely agree about education’s role in this. I didn’t learn the ins and outs of evolution until 11th grade–far too late, in my book. Evolution is not intuitive, as you say, but it makes a lot of sense once you get it, and it explains things a lot better than some blanket statement about supernatural powers.
Bullshit. If someone believed simply that this book is true, and they rejected everything that went against it automatically for that one reason, you would say they’re a nutter. If you didn’t, I bet most creationists would. I was recently discussing mind-blowing psychedelic drugs with an ex-stoner converted full-creationist Christian and we had an exchange as follows, right after he told me about the demon possession he’d witnessed in church and about how biology was wrong because the Bible told him so:
ESCFCC: So, what exactly does (drug) do?
Me: Well, it’s called a ‘psychedelic dissociative’ because it dissociates your mind from your body, and it’s like it pulls your soul up above you and you can look down on what’s going on around you and…
ESCFCC: I don’t want to hear about that spiritual sorcery crap, I mean what does it do in your body?
But I thought biology was irrelevant, and the only thing that mattered was the spirit? Mets…Yankees…clouds…<head explodes>
I thought the “experts” had already told us the earth is only between 6000 and 7000 years old. If they now say man is 10K years old, that’s heresy! Burn them! 
Let’s look at the largest religious denominations in the United States:
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Roman Catholicism (24.5% of U.S. pop. in 2001) has no doctrinal problem with evolution, and hasn’t since at least 1950. Evolution is taught in virtually all Catholic high schools and colleges.
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Baptists (16.3%). The Baptist Faith and Message, a summary of Southern Baptist doctrinal beliefs last revised in 2000, has no position on evolution.
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Methodist/Wesleyan (6.8%). “The UMC [United Methodist Church] does not have an official statement on any theories of evolution.”
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Lutherans (4.6%), of the major U.S. synods, the Wisconsin (410,000 members) and Missouri (2.6 million members) synods have doctrinal positions against evolution. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest synod (4.9 million members), states:
- Presbyterians (2.7%). Evolution Statement adopted in 1969:
Okay Walloon, then where are those large percentages of self-declared creationist Christians coming from? If 40–50% of the population rejects the scientific view of human evolution and cites the Bible as their justification for that position, isn’t that at least as significant as the official statements (or non-statements) about evolution put forth by the elites in their religious bureaucracies?
When I point out examples of official statements by leading Muslim clerics decrying terrorism and intolerance, etc., as wrong and un-Islamic, I get slapped down by people pointing out that those clerics are just a small unrepresentative elite, and that the real nature of Islam is being expressed by the large percentages embracing violence and barbarism.
So why shouldn’t we argue that the real nature of Christianity is being expressed by the large percentages who are rejecting scientific values when it comes to evolution?
Your position that “Christianity as a religion is intrinsically, fundamentally in conflict with science” is clearly false. The fact that roughly half of all Christians do accept evolutionary theory proves that statement wrong. So do the doctrinal positions and (non-positions) of the major Christian denominations. Some Christians believe in evolution, some don’t.
You have definitely not shown that shown that “Christianity as a religion is intrinsically, fundamentally in conflict with science.”
It’s not my position; I’m simply deriving it by analogy with widely-accepted arguments that “Islam as a religion is intrinsically, fundamentally in conflict with modern civilization” or “secular values” or some such.
There are lots of Christians who accept evolution; but then, there are lots of Muslims who accept non-theocratic societies. There are official statements from some Christian leaders that evolution is compatible with Christianity; but then, there are official statements from some Muslim leaders that tolerance and non-violence are compatible with Islam.
On the other hand, there are also lots of Muslims using their interpretation of the Qur’an to preach against secular and tolerant values. But there are also lots of Christians using their interpretation of the Bible to preach against scientific positions and methodology.
So I would kind of like to see somebody who believes the statement “Islam as a religion is intrinsically, fundamentally in conflict with tolerance and democracy” argue against the statement “Christianity as a religion is intrinsically, fundamentally in conflict with science”. Because the two positions do seem to me to be quite analogous.
Who gets to decide what the “true nature” of a religion is, and what it is “intrinsically, fundamentally” compatible or incompatible with? What percentage of Christians would have to be anti-evolution creationists before we would be willing to call Christianity “intrinsically, fundamentally” incompatible with scientific values?
That is a very weak analogy. Very weak. And I’m not even sure how many non-Muslims make the claims you lay out in your first paragraph. I hear the anti-democracy claims mostly from the Islamists like ObL.
Evolution is a small subset of science. As for when human life begins, that’s as much a religious question as a scientific one, so I don’t think it makes sense to include that in any “conflict”. You might get away with saying Christianity is in conflict with Evolution, but even that is pretty weak analogy. Evolution is widely taught in the Christian world whereas western-style deomcracy is exceedingly rare in the Muslim world.
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And yet we still have those high percentages of Christians who are opposed to it, apparently, although they have ample opportunity to learn about it. I think that makes my analogy stronger, if anything.
Have you at least agreed to ratchet your analogy down considerably, per my suggestion-- replacing “science” with “evolution”?
I don’t think so, but then maybe you need to further clarify what constitutes a “collision”. I think the collision people talk about between Islam and western-style democracy is one that manifests itself in flying airplanes into buildings. AFIAK, the anti-creationist crowd isn’t quite there yet.
If all you want to do is point out that group A opposes X for religious reasons and group B opposes Y for religious reasons, that’s fine as far as it goes. But I think the term “collision” is used specifically to speak of a potential for vilolence that could actually escalate to war. If it just means a disagreement or a resistacnce to something, then we have hundreds of “collisions” all over the place.
Okey-doke. “Conflict with evolution” it is. (However, I do rather wonder if we’re justified in trying to separate out evolution from scientific values in general. AFAICT, scientists generally agree that the basic principle of evolution by natural selection, including the evolution of humans and apes from a common ancestor, is one of the most solidly supported scientific theories around. Can we really argue that somebody who rejects evolution on Biblical grounds is somehow not rejecting core scientific values?)
“Conflict” was my word, and yes, I’m quite willing to concede that Christianity’s “conflict with evolution” or science or whatever is not currently a violent conflict.* But I think the phrase “intrinsically, fundamentally in conflict with”, in the sense of “irreconcilably opposed to” would still be applicable.
- Although apparently some creationists have been known to send death threats to defenders of evolutionary theory, e.g.:
Maybe. But I think the issue is broader than just a religious one. Most of us, to some extent, make exceptions for humans. Our langauge itself sets humans apart from “animals”, and man-made objects are set up in opposition to the “natural” world. It’s really, really hard for us to look at ourselves, as human beings, objectively.
I think creationists partition off things in a way that they are perfectly willing to apply core scientific values to much of the “natural” world, just not to humans. We don’t hear for a call to eliminate the scientific method from our schools. Most creationsist, when they get sick, go to a doctor even if they do pray for their recovery. I’d say it’s more a case of holding two parallel belief systems (if we can call science a belief system) rather than the rejection of one in favor of the other.
If you think about it, we can pick apart almost any relgious belief and say that it represents a rejection of core scientific values. The idea that the Eucharist as the literal body and blood of Jesus is a rejection of core scientific values. The concept of a soul stands in contradiction to core scientific values. THe concept of a mirlacle stands in contradiction of core scientific values. Any interaction of the supernatural world with the natural world stands in contradition to core scientific values.
I really don’t buy the argument that Bible based religions as practiced in the US doesn’t reject science. As far as I can tell, all of them teach that there is a personal god who can affect events in our daily lives.
And many churches actively promote anti-scientific points of view. This thread is an example.
A good point, but I would like to repeat what others have said - there’s a difference between a belief system being unscientific, or even in contradiction to science, and it being in conflict with science. It may be true that some parts of the Christian church are actively opposed to science (and I wouldn’t split evolution off from science for this, or for any other, purpose), but that doesn’t mean that anyone who follows the Christian faith must automatically come into conflict with science.
Pope John Paul II, Faith and Reason:
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m objecting to Kimstu’s analogy. Most Christians allow religious belief and acceptance of (some aspects of) science to exist in their psychies without a battle. They compartmentalize one for certain subjects the the other for different subjects. That’s not what is happening in large parts of the Muslim world between religion and western-style democracy. The former is found to be incompatible with the latter across the board.
Nonsense. Faith and reason are opposites; they are fundamentally hostile. At least, good reasoning is. Someone who reasons well will at least occasionally question his or her own beliefs; that eliminates faith. Faith cordons off a belief and says “NO THOUGHT ALLOWED PAST THIS POINT !”. He’s also wrong about faith promoting “the contemplation of truth”; since faith blinds the mind, a person infected with faith cannot see the truth on any subject touched by that faith.