The Evangelical Rejection of Reason

Show me where faith has been found to be real, eh? If it HAS been found to be real, then it isn't faith anymore. In other words, faith ain't real and real ain't faith.

 

So what does your church do with the verses that trace Jesus back to Adam?

 

Straw man.

That is not at all what I said. I was clearly and specifically referring to God using his superior intelligence and omnipotence to explain a concept to me, a less intelligent human, in a manner which I can understand.

That could be as simple as teaching me so that I may gain the knowledge.

 

This is a lie that evolutionists love to tell themselves. They're being scientific and anything that doesn't agree with their views is unscientific. Never mind that this is completely absurd. You start from the philosophical belief that there is no God and then you set about proving it. ID scientists are just as scientific in their research of the evidence, but they start from the premise that there must have been an intelligent designer. All science springs from a seed of belief and anyone who thinks they are starting from a premise of total intellectual neutrality is seriously deluded. Evolutionists aren't trying to find an intelligent designer. Their minds aren't open to any theory that conflicts with their religiously held "findings". Their mission and goal is to protect their precious "scientific" theory from real science.

 

The lie is entirely yours.

It's completely absurd because it's a blatant straw man. Here, I'll fix it for you...

They're being scientific and anything that doesn't fit the definition of science is unscientific.

That is a logical tautology and is axiomatically true by definition. So, since creationism does not fit within the definition of science, it is not scientific.

Not sure how you missed it, since it's in the text you quoted, but junobet isn't an atheist.

No, because ID does not fit the definition of science, and there is no evidence. There is nothing testable or falsifiable.

 

"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms"

I think S.J. Gould does a good job of explaining what is meant by the term theory- specifically the theory of evolution- within the context of science. I have no problem with those who choose to reject evolution in favor of a literal interpretation of the bible. However, I do find fault with those who distort the scientific basis of the ToE. The scientific evidence for the ToE is so overwhelming that no alternative to the ToE are accepted within the relevant disciplines. Personally, I do not find the ToE and christianity to be contradictory because I don't think the bible is meant to be interpreted literally. I do think that those who reject the ToE are at the least rejecting science and because of this I can understand why some people might think they are rejecting 'reason'.

 

I never really understood how Eistein's theory of relativity was any different than Newton's third law of motion. They both say that Action and Reaction are Equal and opposit forces. So how did Einstein add to it?

 

These verses serve to point out that Jesus was the Messiah as prophecized by Isaiah, who suggests that the Messiah must come from the house of David.

The author made a slight blunder though, probably due to the patriarchic customs of his times: Even though the Bible states Jesus was conceived via the Holy Spirit, his verses bother to trace Jesus back to Adam via Joseph. In that light the verses seem to get a bit superfluous, but their core message, the one that bears importance on our christology as supported by other bits of the Bible, stands:

Jesus is Christ, the Messiah.

Wether Adam is a historical person or a symbolic figure does not change that essential truth, nor is it changed by the fact that the genealogies Luke and Matthew give differ from each other.

 

I totally agree that there is no such thing as intellectual neutrality, but it is what scientists aim for.

And Darwin didn't say "Let's disprove God" and then developed evolution. He discovered things and gathered data that brought him to draw conclusions on how the world must have evolved that are now wildly accepted by the scientific world that keeps doing research.
Only some literalist biblical inerrancy Christian fanatics and some Atheist fanatics without a clue about Christianity deem the theory of evolution to be in conflict with religion.

Many evolutionist scientists are also Christians and see no problems at all between their work and their faith. And as a devout Catholic you surely know that even the Catholic Church - a body that's not exactly known to be a fast mover when it comes to the acceptance of new scientific findings - embraces the approach of theistic evolution by now "stating that faith and scientific findings regarding human evolution are not in conflict, though humans are regarded as a special creation, and that the existence of God is required to explain both monogenism and the spiritual component of human origins. Moreover, the Church teaches that the process of evolution is a planned and purpose-driven natural process, actively guided by God".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution

 

As I understand it(for what its worth, I'm just a biologist), Newtonian mechanics failed to explain some experimental data relating to things like the passage of time, the geometry of space, the motion of bodies in free fall, and the propagation of light, gravitational time dilation, gravitational lensing, the gravitational redshift of light, and the gravitational time delay. Newtonian mechanics are still used for all but the most complex relativistic calculations as they can accurately describe most observations.