Re: Commentary: Designs on Us

"On Fri, 05 Aug 2005 10:52:19 GMT, in article
<DxHIe.23099$Fx3.12889@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, ToniG stated..."
>
><jspaceman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:1123234989.546686.287770@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >From the article:
>> -------------------------------
>
>>
>> In a wonderful irony, the only intellectual framework in which people
>> can genuinely be expected to pursue truth dispassionately, even if that
>> truth undermines our sense of personal prestige, happens to be the
>> religious framework, in which people aren't animals at all but rather
>> beings created in the image of God.
>
>The above has to be the maddest paragraph I've read all year. It's
>*fascinating*, actually, that these kooks really seem able to believe that
>the 'religious framework' they advocate stands even *an outside chance* of
>'pursuing truth' -- when the very basis of that entire 'framework' is that
>*they already possess all the important knowledge*, since *all essential
>truth was 'revealed' thousands of years ago*! To such an addled brain, the
>'real laws of the universe' and the ultimate force and meaning behind
>everything are *already known* -- and everything else is mere
>*nail-polish*...
>
>Incidentally, I *love* that bit about how the 'religious framework'
>supposedly permits people to uncover truths 'that undermine our sense of
>personal prestige': only a true kook could assert such a thing about an
>orientation that sees human beings as 'created in the Image of God'; able to
>have a 'personal' relationship with this 'God'; possessors of an immortal
>and immutable spiritual essence; the goal of 'creation'; ; ; etc, etc...!

Again, I have to call attention to the fact that, if there is
any field of science which might be troublesome for people because
of a personal relationship ...

If there is any field of science which might be troublesome, it
would be reproductive biology, including sciences like genetics and
developmental biology and biochemistry.

It is genetics, after all, which teaches that our hereditary
makeup is due to *chance* mixture of our parents'. That, and some
random "errors", that is, mutations.

Biochemistry tells us that our bodies are made up of naturally
occuring molecules, and material atoms.

Intelligent design and creationism are about things much less
personal, immediate, and concrete. They are about vague "kinds",
about events long ago and far away.

Intelligent design, for example, focusses on features of our
bodies which we share with most other mammals. Not even things
which distinguish the human body from that of a dog, not telling
us that human bodies are designed any different from chimps or
other apes, much less anything about a personal relationship with
one's Creator (and Redeemer).

Is is supposed to be so much better to teach the kids that
the reason that they have the body of an ape is that there once
were some intelligent designers who wanted them to be that way --
or that these intellient designers were either unwilling or
inable to do it any other way?


--
---Tom S. <http://talkreason.org/articles/chickegg.cfm>
"What power of mental vision enabled your master Plato to discern the ...
process which ... the deity adopted in building the structure of the universe?
...a system that seems to be the result of idle theorizing rather than of real
research" Cicero: De Natura Deorum 1.8.19

.

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