From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Sep 10 12:21:47 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 54D6C37B400 for ; Tue, 10 Sep 2002 12:21:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jive.SoftHome.net (jive.SoftHome.net [66.54.152.27]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id CB32643E75 for ; Tue, 10 Sep 2002 12:21:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from yid@softhome.net) Received: (qmail 6962 invoked by uid 417); 10 Sep 2002 19:21:43 -0000 Received: from shunt-smtp-out-0 (HELO softhome.net) (172.16.3.12) by shunt-smtp-out-0 with SMTP; 10 Sep 2002 19:21:43 -0000 Received: from planb ([216.194.2.204]) (AUTH: LOGIN yid@softhome.net) by softhome.net with esmtp; Tue, 10 Sep 2002 13:21:41 -0600 Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 15:21:32 -0400 From: Joshua Lee To: "Neal E. Westfall" Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-Id: <20020910152132.1134e18d.yid@softhome.net> In-Reply-To: <20020910092057.G62741-100000@Tolstoy.home.lan> References: <20020909213532.3a804946.yid@softhome.net> <20020910092057.G62741-100000@Tolstoy.home.lan> Organization: Plan B Software Labs X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.2claws (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.7) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, 10 Sep 2002 09:43:04 -0700 (PDT) "Neal E. Westfall" wrote: > > Evolution doesn't have anything to do with "worldly or temporal > > concerns" and their source. Telihard De Chardin and, to a lesser > > extent, Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook managed to be both > > evolutionists and"Judeo-christian" theists without much of a > > contradiction. Of course, Neal Westfall claims that De Chardin, > > Catholic Church approvals of his writings to the contrary, is "not a > > xtian" because he doesn't match Mr. Westfall's version of orthodoxy. > > Since you like Teilhard De Chardin so much, do you agree with the > statement of his that defenders of evolution "must never let > themselves be deflected into secondary discussions of the scientific > 'hows' and the metaphysical 'whys.'" Sounds like dogmatism to me. Yes, but De Chardin was as well as being a paleologist a theologian; who did let the two mix. Don't ask me to defend all of his theology, I don't agree with all of what little I know of it and I'm more familiar with Rav Kook, whom I'm also not a follower of (mostly due to his stances on Zionism) but I've studied his works; than De Chardin. However, your claim that he's "not a xtian" seems specious because the Pope, a bit of an authority on the subject, seemed to think he was. :-) > > Neal Westfall claims of course that evolution is a religion. > > W.T. Jones, who is certainly no Christian, noticed that scientists had > "elevated Darwinism to the level of a religious dogma." (from his "A > History of Western Philosophy") Theodosius Dobzhansky claims to be > able to explain evolution "if the assumption is made that life arose > from matter only once." ("Species after Darwin," A Century of Darwin > (London: 1958), p. 22.) W.R. Thompson says in his Introduction to a > current edition of Origin of Species "Personal convictions... are > presented as if they were proofs." Paul Westmeyer declares: > "Evolution is useful but it is a myth." ("Twentieth Century > Mythology," Chemistry, January, 1965, p. 17) Need I say more? Neal, be honest for a change, have you actually read these sources? > > Then he goes and claims that without xtianity one cannot properly > > reason. ;-) > > Uh, no. Never said non-christians cannot reason. I said that if they > were consistent with their professed beliefs, they would not *in > principle* be able to reason at all. The fact that they *do* reason > is what makes them accountable to God. OK then, why would G-d give an ability to someone if it automatically damns most human beings to eternal torture with the measure, rather than how good the person is, to be where he happens to sit in the most segregated hour of the week? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message