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From: amigo2@ihuxq.UUCP (John Hobson)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: More on Creationism
Message-ID: <593@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Feb-84 10:12:21 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.593
Posted: Mon Feb  6 10:12:21 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 06:32:15 EST
References: <564@ihuxq.UUCP> <1636@cbscc.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 106

You're right, I did lift it from Kitcher.  I was just too tired to
look it up myself.  (I am not usually in the habit of plagarizing,
and I apologize to everyone on the net for having done so.)  I still
think that the argument is correct.  

I was looking over some more of the creationist literature and I
felt just too depreseed by the whole thing.  John Lind from digi-g
(somewhere in Minnesota?) sent me the following mail (reprinted
without permission):

>>	I grow increasingly distressed by the arguments in the
>>	Creation/Science controversy.  This falls into the class of
>>	polarizing arguments, wherein the conflict encourages both
>>	sides to tend to their extremes.  In this case, I have heard
>>	rather absurd and unfounded remarks from both sides of the
>>	fence, and I have seen this argument foster a lot of hate
>>	and anger, which I do not believe is a desired end of either
>>	camp.
>>
>>	The people called "Creationists" (there goes another
>>	perfectly good word from general service and into the ranks
>>	of conotatively hot words like gay, making love, et al.)
>>	have one major valid point, which is that evolution and
>>	associated topics are presented quite dogmatically.  We have
>>	done that time and again, and the list of things which have
>>	been taught as irrevocable fact down through the millenia
>>	only to be revoked and debunked by greater knowledge and
>>	learning (I am sure a listing of these would be old news to
>>	you).
>>
>>	That does not mean that I question or dispute the scientific
>>	method.  Being a senior programmer rather means that I rely
>>	upon it.  I do wonder when we will learn to be more careful
>>	in our practices of teaching and learning, though I frankly
>>	have little hope of it.
>>
>>	I belong to the Restoration movement, which is a group of
>>	fundamentalist Christians dedicated to the Biblical
>>	principles of unity.  I resent the factionalizing that the
>>	"Creationist" camp spawns.  Neither can I reject them
>>	outright without being guilty of the same transgressions
>>	that I see in them.
>>
>>	I am also a scientist (my degree is from the Institute of
>>	Technology and is a BS) and I am rather ashamed of the
>>	behaviour of some of our own in this discussion.  It seems
>>	to be that the prejudices against things that the
>>	"Creationists" attempt to represent are as strong as those
>>	in the other direction.  Name calling by either group is
>>	inappropriate and degrades the discussion.
>>
>>	At the last, I see very little point in the discussion at
>>	all.  God does not require us to defend him.  If he can't
>>	take care of himself, he falls rather short of omnipotent. 
>>	I do not preceive evolution to be an attack on him, anyway. 
>>	My religion is not afraid of honest scientific scrutiny.  I
>>	also do not see any disagreement between the Biblical and
>>	scientific views of the origin of the universe.

On the whole, I tend to agree, especially with the last two
paragraphs, with this voice of reason and moderation.  I am also a
practicing (practice makes perfect, one of these days I'll get it
right) Christian and I think that one of my main objections to
Morris et al. is their attitude that one cannot be a true Christian
and be an evolutionist (Morris says this in as many words somewhere
in the Institute for Creation Research's magazine Acts & Facts.) 
This is a remarkably arrogant attitude, and I tend to react to it in
exactly the same way I do when I see the bumper sticker on a car: 
"Warning, in case of rapture, this car will be driverless."  This I
translate as "I'm going to heaven, and you, you poor jerk behind me,
are going to hell."  There is something called the sin of
presumption, which this, it appears to me, is a perfect example of.

There is also something called the sin of pride (I like the Latin
name, superba) which many of the creationists seem to sin against. 
"We know the truth, and all others are agents of Satan"  (I once saw
a piece of creationist literature, a comic book by someone named
Chick(sp?), that said that people who taught evolution were
condemning others to hell--the same publisher also had some
virulently anti-Catholic issues).

Consider this to be my withdrawal from the creationist/evolutionist
fight on the net.  I think that the creationists are wrong, that
they work from an incorrect belief on Biblical truth, and that they
also go too far when they insist on working their beliefs into the
science classroom.  What they teach is not science, but an offshoot
from one particularly restricted version of Christian doctrine. 
Science has established evolution as a fact.  That not all of the
details of how evolution works have not yet been discovered is
beside the point; in the minds of the vast majority of thinking
people, evolution is as firmly established as the second law of
thermodynamics, and I don't think that it is going to be wholly
overturned.  Creationists think that the rethinking of evolutionary
theory is like the fight between the phlogiston theory of the
generation of heat and the oxygenation theory.  Rather, it is like
Einstein's theory of relativity, which did not overturn Newtonian
mechanics, but instead included it as a special case.

This is one of the worst written articles I have ever done, but I am
going to send it off now, and wash my hands of the controversy
henceforth.
				John Hobson
				AT&T Bell Labs
				Naperville, IL
				(312) 979-0193
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