Why can't God's Plan (creation) be evolution? Couldn't God have created the earth and knew eveolution would result?

Yuval, you nailed it!

Evolution makes God unnecessary...It's one of the most imporant discoveries of all time...why would we move away from it?

For those that still want to hold on to their religious beliefs, fine, but just don't tell me it's science or try to teach it in science class...

I don't know wether to laugh or cry.

Which means that Yuval nailed the issue with a big ol' smack.

"The Democratic party is at a critical juncture...held hostage by militant secularists and anti-religious zealots"

ROFLMAO. This article is about a fortnight too soon, dontcha think?

The proposal to build a coalition with the Intelligent Design faction is lot like volunteering to be the soap retriever in a men's prison shower.

What's next on the agenda? Finding common ground with the flat eath society? Just how much photoshopping of NASA photos do you think would be necessary to achieve harmony with God's word?.

Better yet, why not strategize for electoral success by courting the 70% of southern red state voters that believe they've been abducted by UFOs?

Goose1:

The problem with invoking "God" in any argument is that the debaters never bother to define what "God" is. As I see it, there are 3 basic ideas of "God" and most believers are too lazy to differentiate between them.

(1) Intercessionay God: This definition says that God is compassionate, responds to your prayers, etc. and that evolution was a part of his Grand Plan, then please explain to me how God could sit by while billions and trillions of living things were killed and consumed by others, why there is so much disease, cruelty and suffering in this world. Also, every religion has different ideas of God, the creation of the universe, the Earth and of life. Either only one of these religions is true and the others are wrong -- or they are all wrong!

(2) Absentee Landlord: If you say that "God" just set things in motion and then stepped back, and allowed things to take their course. This may or may not be true, but then there is no point in praying to such a God. This is the Deist point of view, and this was the view of many of the framers of the US Constitution. They paid lip service to this God, but basically kept him out of political affairs.

(3) Physical Forces: If you define God as very powerful forces that control everything around us, then I accept that "God" exists. Basically then, "God" comprises the forces of gravitation, electro-magnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces, etc. -- that can explain the origins and the mechansims of the universe. But these forces do not care whether you pray to them or not. If you step forward from the top of a 50-storey building then, no matter how much you or others pray, you are going to end up as a big splat on the pavement below.

Definition #3 seems to be the one that fits all the facts available, and there is no need to believe in other definitions. If somebody wants to believe in the other definitions, that is fine with me, but please do not try to force down the throats of others what does not hold up to scrutiny.

Jonathan.

Someone please tell me this is tongue in cheek.

This really sickened me reading this.

LOL!

Brilliant!

I had been fishing around in my brain for a way to give The Moose's "vital center" the skewering it so richly deserves. I couldn't have dreamed of coming up with one this good.

Bravo!

In the interest of embracing the "evolutionary middle", I propose we balance traditional views about human birth with the stork theory.

You're kidding . . . right? Please say you're kidding. This is the most deeply stupid idea I've ever heard. Why doesn't anybody every worry about "reaching out" to say, RATIONAL people in the democratic party?

You're kidding . . . right? Please say you're kidding. This is the most deeply stupid idea I've ever heard. Why doesn't anybody ever worry about "reaching out" to say, RATIONAL people in the democratic party?

Dixie:

The Democrats are basically RATIONAL people.

It is the Repuglicans (sic) who are "faith-based" and don't see any need for reason and discussion. They have proved it since 1964 onwards, and have become totally out of control since they grabbed control of the House and the Senate in 1994.

As for any "extreme" comments, the Repuglicans must learn that what goes around, comes around.

Jonathan

Could the "middle ground" faction therefore advocate that discrimination of female gays is wrong, but to reach the middle ground, approve of discrimination of gay men? I think not. No middle ground . . . go for the "higher ground."

You're kidding . . . right? Please say you're kidding.

He's kidding.

Yeah, I've got an evolving middle that these f*@#*&$ can grasp!

Yuval your a short-sighted fool that risks a lot for relatively small political gains -- winning the next election.

There is NO middle ground between a naturalistic approaches and a supernatural one. Dembski, Behe and his gang have failed to give a positive program that would advance their ID crusade because they do not have a reliable method of identifying intelligently designed artifacts let alone figuring out what did the designing. Was it "God", E.T or ?

IDers complain about explanatory gaps in evolution and how these are "in principle" gaps via "universal probability bounds" etc, but again they failed to make their case. Which means these gaps can be filled and with real explanations. Saying God or Satan did it isn't an explanation that is of any use and retards us instead of advancing us.

Don't get in bed with those dogmatic bible thumping creationist. Just ignore those fools on issues like this one even if it means loosing an election.

The fact that so many commentors could read this post and take it at face value is a sad illustration of the pathetic state of scientific discourse in this country.

This country is headed here;

School children outside the Museum of Natural History watching wide eyed a bonfire of fossilized dinosaurs.

Jonathan - I hold tentatively to a sort of hybrid view of God that doesn't separate out like your categories. I don't believe that God intercedes in events - like fixing heavweight fights, for example - because Free Will means we're truly subject to blind chance, for better or worse, and because I don't believe that some superior people can "sanctify" themselves so much that they can get miracles through their pleading. I do believe, however, that one can very reasonably pray to God for spiritual strength and hope and for a change of heart from bitterness and anger and greed - but I would never expect the bars of my prison to fall or to get a hot stock tip or for my cancer to be cured. And I think that the Earth and heavens can very reasonably be seen as the glory of God and treated with gratitude and awe, and that science reveals the only universe we know and that we should be grateful for every bit of knowledge our intellect can discover. So my idea of God is a little Deistic and very Catholic - and emphatically not the idea of a fundamentalist mega-church "Christian" who, I suspect strongly, really just cares about Property Rights and opaque governance by his cronies at the local Star-Chamber of Commerce. And yes the world can certainly turn your stomach, even some parts that are not due to human evil.

JLB:

I largely agree with you. People do need something higher than themselves to look up to -- whether it is a hero/heroine, "God", country, Gaia (the Earth), the ideals of liberty, justice, etc.

And most of us -- including myself as a secular humanist -- are deeply moved by the majesty of the stars, the beauty of a sunset, or the smile of a child.

Also, I have no objection to people believing whatever they want to believe.

But I do object to those people who try to use religion to line their pockets. And I strongly oppose anyone (e.g. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, imams, mullahs) who says that because they believe in a certain kind of "God" or a "sacred book", therefore their beliefs must become the law of the land. And that applies no matter whatever the brand of their religion.

I would urge you to read the "Philosophy of Humanism" by Corliss Lamont. It is a wonderful synthesis of science and humanity, without all the supernatural claptrap. Another great book is "Unweaving the Rainbow" by Richard Dawkins.

Jonathan

Read anything by the late Stephen Jay Gould.

Jonathan a god that intercedes to produce real miracles is required for Christians. Otherwise, one has a deists god that is basically an "absent landlord." At that point why bother with that deist god because it just doesn't make a difference to us, that god is redundant and may as well not exist. Now since there has never been a case of anything like real miracle then the evidence is best compatible with a deists god over an interceding god. Since prayer aren't answered then the best you get as a deist is prayer as one form of self-satisfaction. Maybe there are better things to do.

Leviathan's comment reminds me of why George Kauffman's remark that "satire is what closes on Saturday night" was so apt.
FW

FW

Great post, but the in view of some of the comments, I have to say that there are a great many of us lefties who are also religious.
We Democrats are not JUST the party of rationality. That would be too narrow and would exclude many religious progressives. We don't have to impose religion on science, and we don't have to impose reductionist rationality on fellow liberal's spiritual, religious, philosophical views, as if all religious people were indistinguishable from the vocal religious right fundamentalists.
ps this comment is not a satire!
Peace

Okay. Okay. Sheesh! I finally got it. Damn! What has happened to my sense of humor? I think I lost it January 1, 2000.

I have a great sense of humor, and a well-developed satirical bone. I do not think Yuval was a bit funny. Confusing, yes.

http://lawandpolitics.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_lawandpolitics_archive.html#111086586263729340

I have a great sense of humor, and a well-developed satirical bone. I do not think Yuval was a bit funny. Confusing, yes.

Admittedly, those who have not seen The Moose recently might not get it. But trust me, this post was hilarious. It would have been funnier still if Yuval had referred to himself in the third person in the most pompous fashion imaginable, but it's still really funny.

I love the whole "evolution is just a theory" thing. A theory does not mean a guess, it means something that is provable and can be tested. We can't call it a fact because we weren't there to witness it. Evolution can be observed in the fossil record. Intelligent design is just meant to attack evolution and say, "oh, science can't possibly explain this, so it must be some designer." All organisms, from one celled bacteria to humans use DNA, RNA, have cell nuclei, mitochondria, etc. This suggests that life had a single origin and evolved into its present form. Of course, all of those Southern schools that don't want to teach evolution are probably teaching that the South won the Civil War, ahem...I mean War of the States.

Jonathan - I tend to prefer disorganized religion myself these days - organized religion seems far too much like organized crime. But anyway, I don't have any problem with your views, and I don't think you should have any (objective) probems with mine. Render unto Caesar ... and long live the establishment clause, I always say.

JLB,

I think we agree with each other.

Jonathan

Jonathan, yes we do agree. I just bristled slightly at "supernatural claptrap" - there are all kinds of claptrap. Take care.

Everyone knows the universe is just one plate on the back of a giant turtle.

Wow.

So many people here didn't get the joke.

That suggests that it was a really, really good parody.

Nice work, Yuval.

It's a democracy. More people believe in biblical inerrancy than in evolution, so of course the schools should teach Genesis and not a rickety and convoluted "theory" promulgated by a mangy group of elitist nerds.

So the DLC position is a non-starter. The ID folks are the appeasers, here -- there's nothing in the bible to support their feeble attempts at a middle ground.

Modus potus - why, I thought it was a republic, not a democracy?! But perhaps you're a Straussian.

I'm definitely going to remember this post come Koufax nomination time next year. Finest kind satire indeed.

Funny stuff, but not quite as funny as Jesse Taylor's "A Dialogue":

http://www.pandagon.net/mtarchives/004754.html

This is very funny but unfortunately I can see

(a) people taking it seriously;
(b) people agreeing with it.

To really make ours the big tent that we all - especially the DLC - so admire, we should make similar concessions to the alchemists ;)

Brilliantly written satire. Thank you.

This is complete BS. ID theory and creationism advocate teleology. Science began abandoning this line of reasoning in the 16th friggin' century! The Discovery Institute is interested in pushing ID into all parts of society. Their "wedge strategy" points that out. Undermining evolution is the first step in an ideological shift towards a theocratic government.

Oops. Meant to say 17th friggin' century.

the Democratic party will never turn its back on the scientific community, let alone rational empiricism.

Now this is satire!