Creation vs. Evolution

A Reporter at the New York Times/Slate Admitted She Is A Creationist

Published by Papa Giorgio

See my extended debate because of this, here.

If science really is permanently committed to methodological naturalism – the philosophical position that restricts all explanations in science to naturalistic explanations – it follows that the aim of science is not generating true theories. Instead, the aim of science would be something like: generating the best theories that can be formulated subject to the restriction that the theories are naturalistic. More and more evidence could come in suggesting that a supernatural being exists, but scientific theories wouldn’t be allowed to acknowledge that possibility.

Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design ~ Apologetics315 h/t

The Blaze has this VERY interesting post!

Journalist Virginia Heffernan stunned many of her fellow reporters when she penned a piece last week entitled, “Why I’m a Creationist.” The reporter, who has had a successful career at The New York Times and Slate, among other outlets, is now the center of the ever-intense evolution vs. creationism debate. Currently, she works for Yahoo!, the outlet through which her faith-based proclamation was made.

Before we get into the nasty comments that have been thrown her way, let’s first look at what she said in the article. Heffernan began by announcing that she’s like most Americans: She doesn’t fear global warming and doesn’t hate religion. Then, she said, “at heart” she’s a creationist.

Heffernan admitted that this admission would be tough to understand for many of her compatriots in media.

“In New York City saying you’re a creationist is like confessing you think Ahmadinejad has a couple of good points. Maybe I’m the only creationist I know,” she said, touching upon the fact that it is rare for people in the city to hold such a viewpoint (one that many Americans in other areas of the country would actually agree with).

From there, Heffernan moved on, describing the process through which she became a creationist. Here’s how the explains the beginning of her journey:

This is how I came to it. Like many people, I heard no end of Bible stories as a kid, but in the 1970s in New England they always came with the caveat that they were metaphors. So I read the metaphors of Genesis and Exodus and was amused and bugged and uplifted and moved by them. And then I guess I wanted to know the truth of how the world began, so I was handed the Big Bang. That wasn’t a metaphor, but it wasn’t fact either. It was something called a hypothesis. And it was only a sentence. I was amused and moved, but considerably less amused and moved by the character-free Big Bang story (“something exploded”) than by the twisted and picturesque misadventures of Eve and Adam and Cain and Abel and Abraham.

Later I read Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population” and “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin, as well as probably a dozen books about evolution and atheism, from Stephen Jay Gould to Sam Harris.

As for the latter, Heffernan said that she has never been quite sure why the book has been credited with debunking creationism, especially considering that it is not, in her view, a book about creation.

After years of reading and taking in data, stories, theories and information, she concluded in her Yahoo! piece that the stories that involve a higher power creating human beings are the most compelling. She even charged that evolutionary psychologists have become quite contradictory in their claims, noting that their theories have changed markedly over time. In contrast, the Bible, Heffernan says, remains coveted and highly read.

“I guess I don’t ‘believe’ that the world was created in a few days, but what do I know? Seems as plausible (to me) as theoretical astrophysics, and it’s certainly a livelier tale,” she said. “As ‘Life of Pi’ author Yann Martel once put it, summarizing his page-turner novel: “1) Life is a story. 2) You can choose your story. 3) A story with God is the better story.”

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Chris Rosebrough Quickly Critiques Author Peter Enns’s Postmodern View of the Bible

Published by Papa Giorgio

Chris Rosebrough of Pirate Christian Radio (http://www.piratechristianradio.com/) discusses quickley a new book by author, Peter Enns, entitled, The Evolution of Adam. As is the problem with postmodernity and the liberal viewpoint of revelation and the Bible, eisegesis is practiced rather than exegesis.

Is Evolution Compatible with the Gospel? A Debate

Published by Papa Giorgio

From the video description:

Dr John Polkinghorne KBE, FRS (Cambridge Physicist & Canon Theological) Vs. John Mackay “International Director of Creation Research. Is Evolution Compatible with the Christian Faith? Hosted by BBC’s Roger Phillips, filmed live at Liverpool Cathedral. Don’t miss this great debate.

LIVERPOOL CATHEDRAL DEBATE A GREAT SUCCESS Over 1100 people filled the Liverpool Cathedral to hear Cambridge University physicist and Canon Theological for the Cathedral, Dr John Polkinghorne, debate Australian and International Director of Creation Research, John Mackay. The topic: Is evolution compatible with the Christian faith?”

As the UK’s leading theistic evolutionist, Dr John Polkinghorne started the debate with his claim that the universe had evolved over the past 14 billion years. Mackay quickly produced a copy of a 1990 lecture by Polkinghorne, where he had stated the universe had evolved over 15 billion years. It was fun to watch the audience react to Mackay’s claim that evolution must be so wonderful it has enabled John Polkinghorne to become 15 years older while the universe became one billion years younger, and then use it to emphasis the point that these vast billions of years are not facts that disprove a literal reading of the scriptures, but men’s feeble theories, which are constantly evolving while the scriptures in Genesis remain firm.

THE UK CHURCHMAN NEWSPAPER reporting the Liverpool Debate stated: “The controversial issue of origins was given a theological airing in the cloistered confines of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, on March 8th 2005. The distinguished Australian Creation Scientist John Mackay was, in my humble opinion, far away ahead in his creation views against the resident Anglican theologian, Canon John Polkinghorne, KBE. It was a great educational debate but in my view Mackay’s Biblical answers left the canon (and he reminded me very much of Captain Mainwaring of Dad’s Army) spluttering in his hastily assembled answers. (from Liverpool Canon Debates Creation Scientist in Cathedral by G. Patrick Battell Paper No 7568, 18 March 05) Hosted by popular BBC Commentator Roger Phillips, this exciting debate was filmed professionally.

This is one DVD you don’t want to miss. Since faith in Theistic Evolution over billions of years is one of the biggest problems in evangelical churches throughout the world, your church needs to see it as well!

To purchase this DVD go to http://www.creationresearch.net/secure/store/home.php?shopkey=3399 click on GREAT DVDS and scroll down titles:

“Ask Him Why He Doesn’t Believe in Science” Using Children in Proxy Wars

Published by Papa Giorgio

I thought this a fitting import in the “all is fair in ‘love’ and ‘POLITICS'” aspect of the above video.

How to Use Your Children to Annoy a Liberal

One of the best ways to use your children to annoy liberals is to have a lot of them.

….One of the best ways to use your children in this regard is to have a lot of them.  Liberals, being generally misinformed and detached from reality, don’t know that the Western world faces a population implosion, and the exercise of fecundity isn’t a choice they appreciate.  You know, if they see a gaggle of boys and girls following someone mother-goose style, they think carbon footprints, Malthusian nightmares and about how the “wrong” people are breeding. 

And think about the fun you could have.  For example, a nice touch would be to sport a bumper sticker saying, “My seven kids can beat up your one Ritalin-addled C-student.”  Also, when the size of your family is raised in conversation, you can casually mention how the Bible instructs us to be fruitful and multiply.  Judeo-Christian references move a liberal like nothing else.

How you raise your children matters, too.  Make sure they not only play with toy guns but that they do it publicly.  And it helps if they audibly say things such as “Bang, bang, you’re dead!”  Liberals view this the way a normal person would view the exposure of a child to pornography.  This is especially effective with the subspecies of liberals known as the suburban soccer mom. 

You see, liberals hate guns.  They feel guns are scary.  They feel that guns “teach violence” (that violence has to be taught is a notion I debunked irrefutably, undeniably and completely here).  They just plain feel.  They seem to worry that letting their son play with guns will turn him into a murderer even though they never wonder if allowing him to play with trains will turn him into a conductor.

To ensure this technique has maximum impact, you must choose the correct toy guns.  Vintage is the word, because the guns you find in stores today look like they were designed by Michael Jackson’s effeminate twin.  They sometimes come in Barbie doll colors and, at best, have at least a little red piece at the end of the barrel.  This toy-land abomination arose because undisciplined liberal children started pointing realistic-looking toy guns at police officers.  Somehow liberals don’t view this as Darwinian natural selection.

As an example of this technique, I’ll relate a story involving someone I know.  This father had given his sons some truly cool-looking toy guns from his youth, and one day he and his family ventured down to the community pool bearing these arms.  When all the liberals’ non-sex stereotyped, wearing-a-feminine-straightjacket sons saw these symbols of authentic boyhood, their eyes got wide; exclamations such as “wow” could be heard.  This also has the very positive effect of confirming in deprived liberal children’s minds that their parents really are dorks.  Oh, and you don’t have to worry about further alienating them from their (probably divorced, perhaps same-sex) parents/guardians.  Unless liberal children can be reformed, they will push the old folks into a nursing home first chance they get no matter what you do.

I also should mention that you needn’t fear liberals’ self-righteous, didactic proclamations.  Should they choose to say something to you, it only provides you the opportunity to put the icing on the cake.  If, for instance, they say, “I’m really surprised you give your son toy guns to play with” just respond, “Well, let’s be realistic.  He’s still a bit too young to have a real one.”  This upsets liberals intensely.

….

Yet liberals don’t like such things.  They bristle at the idea of treating children “like animals” even though they believe we’re just highly-evolved apes.  Letting your child run around someone else’s establishment like an animal is okay, though.

Lastly, if a liberal asks you why you have so many kids, you can just explain how survival of the fittest ensures that the right members of a species breed and inherit the Earth.  And be sure to follow up with, “Besides, every time I have another child, there’s one more person in this world to pray for you.”

Now, some may wonder why anyone would suggest using children to annoy liberals.  Well, we must properly train the young in the way they should go.  Just as importantly, we should always deal with people on their own level.

 

 

Eye Evolution Challenged Anew

Published by Papa Giorgio

This latest news from Creation-Evolution News in regards to some challenges to an old hypothesis — not theory:

Whoops, eye[I] was wrong:  “Eye evolution questioned” was the headline on a report in The Scientist.  “Invertebrates with vertebrate-like vision challenge the idea that the two groups of organisms have distinctly different visual receptors.”  Will Darwin concede, then?  After all, he’s pressed against the wall: “The standing dogma of eye evolution is challenged with the discovery of an invertebrate that sees light like vertebrates do, rather than like their more closely related cousins, according to a study published today (March 1) in EvoDevo.”  Dogma is a strange bedfellow in a science article, but this one, a “standing dogma,” must have been sleepwalking in the lab.

One possible Darwinian escape is obfuscation: “Now the story is more complicated than it was before, when we thought there was a clear-cut division between vertebrates and invertebrates.”  One outsider noted that evolutionary expectations had influenced prior work: “No one has looked for opsins in many animals, and this is exactly what we should be doing.”  Should implies moral responsibility.

Rather than concede the argument to intelligent design, The Scientist offered more ways out for Darwin, such as bluffing: “Now it’s unclear which photoreceptor originally gave animals sight, and which kind evolved to sense light later.  Or, perhaps an ancestor used both receptors to see, and over the millennia, one variety or the other lost its visual function.”  The reporter did not seem to notice this answer only multiplies problems for evolutionary theory.  Instead, Amy Maxmen cheerfully noted that ciliary opsin genes have even been found in sightless brachiopod embryos.  Parrying that surprise into a win for evolution (02/25/2010), she ended, “brachiopods may provide key insights into how vision first evolved.”

…(read more)…

So-So-Story in drawings:

Here is the evolutionary story… all of it based on supposition:

 

Study Finds Bees’ Tiny Brains Beat Computers

Published by Papa Giorgio

A great story showing the majesty of the Creator.

Bees can solve complex mathematical problems which keep computers busy for days, research has shown

Bees can solve complex mathematical problems which keep computers busy for days, research has shown.

The insects learn to fly the shortest route between flowers discovered in random order, effectively solving the “travelling salesman problem” , said scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London.

The conundrum involves finding the shortest route that allows a travelling salesman to call at all the locations he has to visit. Computers solve the problem by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the one that is shortest.

Bees manage to reach the same solution using a brain the size of a grass seed.

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