The Church of England has developed a new section of its website at www.cofe.anglican.org/darwin to mark the approaching bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.
As media interest grows in the bicentenary, the pages analyse Darwin’s faith and his relationship with the Church of England. A new essay by the Revd Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs, gives a personal view of Darwin’s contribution to science, whilst warning of social misapplications of his theories.
The Bishop of Swindon, Rt Revd Lee Rayfield, himself a former biological scientist, has contributed a welcome page to the section, and commented: “Theology and science each have much to contribute in the assertion of the Psalmist that we are ”˜fearfully and wonderfully made’. I hope that this new section will not only provide a source of information and knowledge about Charles Darwin and his work, but that it will prove to be a resource for growing in wisdom and understanding.”
In the new section, Darwin and the Church reveals that Darwin was surrounded by the influence of the Church his entire life. Having attended a Church of England boarding school in Shrewsbury, he trained to be a clergyman in Cambridge; was inspired to follow his calling into science by another clergyman who lived and breathed botany; and married into a staunch Anglican family.
True, theology and science have much to teach us–but only when each is rightly understood.
[url=http://www.albertmohler.com/blog.php] Mohler blog [/url]
Darwin is dead. Naturally selected-out by God. He was a defective human, suffering from heart disease and a diseased faith. Probably brain too.
Perhaps next month, the CoE can celebrate the life and scientific contributions of Richard Dawkins.
“The deep beauty of the created world” If it is something you like, it is created. Everything else evolves by pure chance. Evolution is not open to question but the way it works is still not explained. See above. Sorry to stun.
Well, if everythig evolves by blind chance, then explain it?. If we we just happened then explain us? If we are not exceptional then why do we matter?
If it is not open to question, then it is not science. It may be something else, but not science.
10, Matt, so please explain!? Really. I want to hear. How do you combine Creationism and Darwinian evolution?
10, the natural materialistic worldview rules out God as an initial assumption, so where do you come down?
Evolution is perfectly reconciliable with belief in God if it is understood to be the mechanism through which God is continuing to rule His creation. But its primary value is in the ability to give a nutaral explanation for the world that doesn’t involve God. Thus, for atheists it becomes indispensible, while for the religious it is acceptable only while it seems the best explanation to all the facts. But this freedom to accept evolution or not makes the theist open, or should, to critically examining evolution, while atheists, and their fellow travelers, are ideologically hostile to the very idea of questioning it and have trained generations to regard all questioning as irrational rather than as rationally critical, hence, Hopper’s scornful wonder.
I have found that under a fee and critical analysis the ideological superstructure of Darwinism is faulty to the core. Darwin himself understood its flaws but hoped that future evidence would prove him right. No greater significant evidence has ever been demonstrated than that which he already knew. But it was not on the evidence that Darwin’s theories were accepted, but on the philosophy that was becoming dominant in society. The world needed a theory that didn’t need God. Darwing provided it. The theory was embraced. The facts would later be judged accordingly.
The crucial flaw in evolution is that without God it cannot work. it violates every known physical law that can be observed. It brings order out of chaos, life out of lifelessness, complexity out of simplicity. If true it is nothing less than a continuing miracle.
14 and 15 Ok. But the naturalist materialist worldview starts with the initial assumption that that their is no God and that evolution proceeded by bland chance. You both don’t accept this pre-supposition. As I don’t. So where are we? If we are going to argue worldviews then we need to define which worldview we are discussing, otherwise we are talking past each other.
15 sorry Chris. I think I lumped you and Matt together. My mistake.
Ok Matt. Chris states my objections to Darwin rather well. I see your statements and it seems that while you claim not to be a Diest, I can’t see any practicle difference. Deism can be defined:
Deism: [blockquote]Deism is the recognition of a universal creative force greater than that demonstrated by mankind, supported by personal observation of laws and designs in nature and the universe, perpetuated and validated by the innate ability of human reason coupled with the rejection of claims made by individuals and organized religions of having received special divine revelation.[/blockquote] http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm
And this is what they say about intelligent design:
[blockquote] Intelligent Design: Intelligent Design refers to the structures in Nature, such as that of DNA, which can be observed and the complexity of which required an intelligent Designer. In this context “structure” means something arranged in a definite pattern of organization. In Deism, Intelligent Design has absolutely nothing to do with the unreasonable Biblical myth of creation.[/blockquote]
So based on their definition you seem to meet it.
All I am suggesting is that all worldview have underlying assumptions. Science itself has underlying assumptions. Evolution as Chris points makes the critical assumpthon that God does not act in nature and that life arose overtime as a result of purely random events.
Does everything evolve by pure chance? This suggests that from perfect disorder, perfect order can come. That is to say, the Big Bang is by definition perfect disorder, namely, a condition in which no “thing” coheres to any other “thing.” And yet the result is the resent universe, in whose incomprehensible vastness there is no sign anywhere of disorder. But why is there no chaos anywhere? Surely there is sufficient energy and space to allow real chaos to develop somewhere, and yet, this seems not to be the case.
If I ask two people, one intelligent and one stupid, to take a complex item apart and then reassemble it, wht will the results be?
As a teacher, I know the results. Both will take the entity apart one way or another, but the stupid one will tend to riip apart that which does not easily yield to simple solutions. The intelligent one will grasp articulation, and separate by disarticulation. When it comes to reassembling, the stupid man will be helpless, because he is not able to grasp complex design. The intelligent man, grasping the design as he took the element apart, uses his knowledge of the overall design to reassemble the item.
And a necessary question in this context is: If these parts are left on the table, will they reassemble themselves over infinite time, by the chance forces of wind and weather? They cannot, any more than a thousand monkeys typing at random will eventually reproduce all of Shakespeare. Re-articulation requires an active force that grasps design, and this force is always what we mean by intelligence.
Disorder, and pure chance find their analogue in stupidity. Neither will put a complex puzzle together. It is therefore not difficult to look at evolution and see that its performance -its goal – is to take disorder and create pattern, design. LIke a intelligent man putting a puzzle together, it takes apparently random actions, trying to fit A with B, because that is its INTENTION. Most parts do not fit and such attempts are discarded. Those that do fit are left intact precisely because the satisfy the design, complete the intention. In the past, We have called such action pure chance because we were to close to the action to see the overall design and because so many who looked, were, as they now are, unwilling to see both intelligence and design in the evolutionary process, or they misunderstood the goal of the process. But what is the goal, can we see it and say it? Of course we can. The intention is to produce sustainable life forms whose existence is fully articulated with the rest of the inorganic and organic world.
But cannot pure chance do the same? Give a stupid man a puzzle and ask him to put it together by any means he can. He will use random acts (and often force), but he will fail because he cannot grasp design. What then will he do if he is given carbon and water and sunlight and told to produce a turnip? The presence and necessity of intelligent design so so utterly obvious that I am still baffled by those who make claims for “pure chance” when pure chance, by its very definition, will never be able to tie its own shoes. Truly pure chance never creates anything save pure disorder. Is it possible for it to create The Law? Now look at the universe and tell me where The Law does not control all, from the smallest to the largest. Larry
Larry — well articulated! You are obviously not a “stupid” man.
Matt – actually, all of us are still waiting for “science” to produce the fossil record showing one or more “missing links”. You have more faith in junk science than God. Cya later Darwinator…
Matt, I meant that if you like things like sexual diversity, then it is part of God’s creation. Everything else evolves from chaos. Darwin left the mathematical role of the dice problem for future generations who tend to ignore it. I believe life evolves but I do not believe Darwin got it all right.
No, Matt, I am just trying to figure out where you are coming from. I am probably just being dense so the fault lies with me, not you.
#22. Intelligent design cannot be demonstrated by scientific method. Indeed. What does this mean? Or do you mean that, since there is only one known universe, no comparative data base line can be established. But scientific method can indeed show that in THIS universe, there is no place known, no point in time known, where the Law has not reigned without exception or challenge. ALL is orderly.
Can pure chance be orderly? Give me an example. Or does order at all times and circumstances require a preexisting law to which it is obedient? Everything that science does shows that this formulation above is true and demonstrable and universal. Is universal not a sufficient standard? Can you name me a better?
Larry