Christian Darwinism

Just up at ENV is Jay Richards’ “Catholics and Intelligent Design, Part 2” (April 14, 2011):

it’s easy to underestimate Aristotle’s influence in Roman Catholicism, due to his influence on the “Angelic Doctor” Thomas Aquinas. The Greek philosopher’s contributions are invaluable.iv Partially for this reason, however, we’ve sometimes failed to keep critical distance between the pagan philosopher and the faith itself. Traditional Catholics are much more likely to have an Aristotelian blind spot than, say, an Epicurean blind spot. Read More ›

[If so, give your UD news staff a chance to duck before you tell their wives … Like, we just report, okay … ] Apparently worried by a recent trend toward critical thinking, the evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Covalence has republished a 2002 article by Christian Darwin stalwart George Murphy on what’s wrong with the idea that there might be evidence for design in nature; Just as the Son of God limited himself by taking human form and dying on a cross, God limits divine action in the world to be in accord with rational laws which God has chosen. This enables us to understand the world on its own terms, but it also means that natural processes hide Read More ›

The next time some learned person slowly and patiently begins to explain to you that “there is no conflict between faith and science, when both are properly understood … “, ask him point blank:

“Professor, by “science” I take it you mean Darwinism. Is that right? Few actual sciences are controversial for most Christians.

Now, you are asking Christians to change their basic understanding of human nature to conform to the latest from Darwinism/”evolutionary psychology”.

So is there any thesis in Darwinism that it would be right for a Christian to reject, on the basis of received wisdom from the millennia? Any thesis at all?”

Ask but don’t expect a coherent answer, never mind an honest or believable one.

After all, what can he say? Read More ›

In “Dissolving the Fall,” a chapter in his Saving Darwin, theologian Karl Giberson argues that Darwinian evolution created humans selfish; there was no actual fall of man.

Selfishness … drives the evolutionary process. Unselfish creatures died, and their unselfish genes perished with them. Selfish creatures, who attended to their own needs for food, power, and sex, flourished and passed on these genes to their offspring. After many generations selfishness was so fully programmed in our genomes that it was a significant part of what we now call human nature. (P. 12)

Political scientist John West notes in God and Evolution that Read More ›

Andrew Sibley writes*, While there is little doubt about the desire of theistic evolutionists to maintain their commitment to theism, it is pertinent to ask what follows logically from the scientific acceptance of some forms of theistic evolution, especially those that claim that it must be understood within methodological naturalism where all evidence of God’s handiwork is excluded from science by definition.  What follows logically is a silent God and a loud Darwin. *Andrew Sibley, “The Nature and Character of God”, p. 98 , in Should Christians Embrace Evolution?: Biblical and scientific responses, Norman C. Nevin, ed. (Inter-Varsity Press: Nottingham, 2005). Foreword by Wayne Grudem,

… allegiance to Darwinism has become a litmus for deciding who does and who does not hold a ”properly scientific’ world view. ‘You must choose between faith in God and faith in Darwin; and if you want to be a secular humanist, you’d better choose the latter.’ So we’re told. We doubt that those options are exhaustive. But we do want, ever so much, to be secular humanists. In fact, we both claim to be outright, card-carrying, signed-up, dyed-in-the-wool, no-holds-barred atheists. [ … ] Still, this book is mostly a work of criticism; it is mostly about what we think is wrong with Darwinism. The cry of their heart is to follow anyone or anything but Darwinism, for the sake Read More ›

When David Brooks’ Man: The Social Animal appeared, it was reviled by people as far apart otherwise as O’Leary and P.Z. Myers, for its Gadarene (and utterly tone deaf) slide into the fever swamps of evolutionary psychology.

These fetid bogs are usually inhabited by the Evolutionary Agony Aunt, the Darwinian brand marketer and the advocates of neurolaw (“your neurons fail, you’re in jail”). However, a review in thinkmag The Catholic Thing (“a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary”) not only heaps praise on the failed materialist novel but grabs it for Roman Catholicism.

Reviewer George J. Marlin offers Thomas Aquinas (complete with halo) to provide support for the descent, and offers

Although Brooks surveys the latest research on the human mind, he doesn’t teach Catholics anything all that new. What he does is confirm a lot of what generations of undergraduates were once taught about the human person at Catholic universities in their Thomistic philosophical psychology and ethics courses (it would be interesting to know how much this is still the case).

[ … ]

Brooks basically agrees that we have an intuitive moral sense and effectively explains how people can be taught to control irascible passions. It’s good that a columnist for The Times has surveyed recent scientific studies and reached that conclusion. But it’s best to recognize that his solid work, which some see as opening previously unexplored territory, is really a clearing of the way for a return to some of the oldest traditional truths.

Here’s a curious fact about Christian Darwinists: Read More ›

Just recently, I saw a video clip where an obviously self-important Christian history professor was explaining that “evolution” is the fundamental assumption of all biology. I remember thinking, yes, but sciences can and do make progress even when their fundamental assumptions about how things happen are wrong. In fact, that’s quite common, because evidence is what usually leads to progress. And theory only sometimes. The current Darwin toxin in biology’s system makes it very difficult, in my experience, to have any reasonable discussion of evolution as a fact. It’s all about how Darwin was right. On any find, immediately the Darwinist blunders forward and – dismissing where the evidence in any given case – insists “It’s Darwin”. Or, when that Read More ›

My friend, Five Feet of Fury and aptly so named, comments on a recent turn of events in Christopher Hitchens’ struggle with cancer (March 26th, 2011):

It never frickin’ fails: ‘Atheist Christopher Hitchens turns to evangelical Christian doctor in his fight against cancer’Oh yeah, we’re all so stupid and backward. Yep. Retards. Totally.

Atheists all come crying to us, one way or the other, eventually.  Read More ›

Michael Dowd, the guiding light behind evolutionarychristianity.com, praises the new atheists:  “Religion is about right relationship with reality, not the supernatural.” “The wisdom of antiquity—in all its forms and drawn from all regions of the world—could not possibly be up to the task of serving us now.  Ancient, unchanged scriptural stories and doctrinal declarations are inadequate for meeting modern challenges.” “In a way, the New Atheists have come to our rescue. They are shouting at us to collectively awaken to the dangers of revering texts and doctrines on no sounder basis than tradition an authority.  Because the New Atheists put their confidence (not faith) in an evidentially formed and continuously tested view of the world, these critics of religion are well Read More ›

If this isn’t a hoax, it is a rarely sighted genuine effort to “teach creationism in the schools”, as opposed to an attempt to replace the Beard Almighty with some/any kind of science thinking about evolution:

Still, when asked about adding creationism to the curriculum, Lake Zurich School Board candidate Doug Goldberg said to the Daily Herald interviewers, “I’m a good, God-fearing American and the answer is ‘Yes.'”- “Suburban School District Candidates Believe Creationism Should Be Taught” (HuffPo, 2 28 11)

Well, does Mr. Goldberg think that Francis “junk DNA yes?/no?” Collins and the infinite variety of folk over at Biologos (= anything but evident design) are not God-fearing?

Heck, more “God” yatters out of those guys than ever did out of little old Catholic me. The trouble with the Christian Darwinists is that they have way more God than evidence.

And aren’t most of the Thumbsmen and Darwinoid trolls Americans*, while not God-fearing (and I am no judge of whether they are “good”)? Read More ›

Theistic evolution seems to have permeated the arts. Listen to this song by recording artists and Nashville native Steve Earle. Steve Earle, Ashes to Ashes, from the album Jerusalem, on New West Records.

“Foresight is an imperfect thing — all prevision in economics is imperfect. And, even more serious, the economist in high office is under a strong personal and political compulsion to predict wrongly. That is partly because of the temptation to predict what is wanted, and it is better, not worse, economic performance that is always wanted.” –John Kenneth Galbraith, MONEY (1975), pp. 269-70. This quote is relevant to the ID debate. People in high scientific office, whether in the straight-up secular world or in evangelical educational circles, would look bad if they were seen as endorsing a grand scientific theory, for which they are on record as saying that this theory contributes to science’s caché, that ends up being thoroughly Read More ›

Read the last quoted line of a Nature editor’s recent story: The design Debate But external peer review hasn’t always kept the foundation out of trouble. In the 1990s, for example, Templeton-funded organizations gave book-writing grants to Guillermo Gonzalez, an astrophysicist now at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, and William Dembski, a philosopher now at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. After obtaining the grants, both later joined the Discovery Institute — a think-tank based in Seattle, Washington, that promotes intelligent design. Other Templeton grants supported a number of college courses in which intelligent design was discussed. Then, in 1999, the foundation funded a conference at Concordia University in Mequon, Wisconsin, in which intelligent-design proponents confronted critics. Those Read More ›

… and I presume that the elect are wending their way home from the “I do, I do, I do, I do, I DO believe in Darwin!” praise festival. Guitar chords, someone? I understand some Darwinists like to get folksy when fronting the message … Why, exactly, they do believe in Darwin will be long debated by social historians. I’d just shrug and say “Darwin feeds their inner ape,” and – more practically – their many genteel endowments. The ol’ Brit toff understood that sort of thing precisely, if nothing else. He got rich off Wedgwood pottery. Okay, well the (cue evil music!) Discovery Institute sent me this, about Wallace, Darwin’s co-theorist (remember, the theory could have been called Wallaceism, Read More ›