Monday 12 January 2009

Lord Carey in the Telegraph

In a Telegraph article, Lord Carey criticises creationism as ‘pseudo-science’ offering to 'sympathise to a degree' with atheist critics. He believes that Christians are playing into the hands of the militant atheists by defending literal Biblical accounts of the earth's history. Carey also praised Charles Darwin as ‘one of the greatest human beings of all time’. Wow!

He is reported to have said: "Creationism is the fruit of a fundamentalist approach to scripture, ignoring scholarship and critical learning, and confusing different understandings of truth.... The argument for intelligent design may have some appeal for many Christians but is ultimately a negation of what science is about, which is to make a hypotheses from what is observable and then conduct experiments in a constant process of testing."

A shame that he, like many other theologians, need to equate creationism and ID with fundamentalism - for some it may be about fundamentalism, but for others it is about truth in science and faith and how we understand theology - spiritually significant truths rooted in real historical events, often miraculous, historical events such as the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is some irony that theologians such as Carey wouldn't dare reject Jesus' symbolic miracles in the New Testament Gospels, such as turning water into wine and raising Lazarus from the dead, but will criticise Jesus' creation of the vine in the first place and creation of Adam from the dust of the ground.

The Wiki entry on George Carey suggests he doesn't have much of a background in science, but trained from scratch in divinity. It would be nice for a theologian such as Lord Carey to have more respect and understanding for his those creation scientists and intelligent design supporters who have studied Darwinism in depth and believe it is sadly lacking in evidence. The argument is always turned into a critique of Scripture, while the fact that creationists and IDers spend a lot of their time examining the claimed evidence for Darwinism is generally ignored or suppressed. Hardly fair is it?
Andrew Sibley

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

A group of Christian theologians and scientists concerned about truth and values in science and society.

I don't think you people would have a problem with evolutionary biology if you understood how strong the evidence is. The evidence from molecular biology and genetics couldn't possibly be more powerful. Please click my name for an example.

Are you really concerned about the truth? I don't think you are. I think you're only interested in defending the stories in Genesis. That's why you have a problem with evolution and that's why you reject all the evidence for evolution.

The Wiki entry on George Carey suggests he doesn't have much of a background in science, but trained from scratch in divinity.

Who cares about George Carey? You should study the discoveries of 21st century biologists. You should find out why it's virtually impossible to find a biologist who doesn't love evolution.

There is some irony that theologians such as Carey wouldn't dare reject Jesus' symbolic miracles in the New Testament Gospels, such as turning water into wine and raising Lazarus from the dead, but will criticise Jesus' creation of the vine in the first place and creation of Adam from the dust of the ground.

I personally don't think there's any magic in the universe. I prefer scientific explanations instead of supernatural explanations.

I have met Christians who accept miracles like the Resurrection, but they are flexible enough to accept the discoveries of modern science. I think they are wrong about the Resurrection, but at least they don't deny what biologists can see with their own eyes when they compare DNA sequences of different species.

All religious people have a big problem. If they accept evolution, they have to ask themselves was God really necessary for anything. If they reject the facts of evolutionary biology, they have an even bigger problem. They are disgracing their religion. They are telling intelligent young people who love science that to be a Christian a person must be willfully ignorant about modern biology.

Religious people have 3 choices. They can reject modern science and scare away the next generation, or they can make their religion flexible enough to accommodate evolutionary biology, or they can throw their religion in the garbage.

The best choice, in my opinion, is throw God out. The 2nd best choice would be to find a way to believe in God but not invoke Him to explain the diversity of life. You have chosen the worst choice, which is denying what are the strongest facts of science, the facts of biological evolution.

Please click my name to watch a 10 minute video. I don't think a sane person could deny the evidence the video explains.

Anonymous said...

Common design is as good an explanation for the evidence of homology as common descent. Darwinists need to explain why their explanqation is better than common design.

Anonymous said...

Common design is as good an explanation for the evidence of homology as common descent. Darwinists need to explain why their explanation is better than common design.

They did say why common design couldn't possibly explain the many ERVs found in the exact same location in the genome of chimps and humans. Did you watch the video I recommended? You should watch it and you should do your own research. Your "common designer" explanation doesn't work. I know I'm right about this. Scientific facts are not opinions.

Please click my name to watch the video. There's other videos and this information can be found in thousands of websites. The professional creationists invent excuses to deny it, but biologists know they are wrong.

You can reject this ERVs evidence only if you're dishonest. I got virtually the entire scientific community on my side, and this ERVs evidence is only a very tiny fraction of the massive and extremely powerful evidence for evolution. The creationists have no idea how much evidence they have to deny and they have no idea how strong it is.

I'm convinced that any creationist who studies and understands this evidence couldn't possible continue being a creationist.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you are trying to convince yourself into believing in Darwin.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you are trying to convince yourself into believing in Darwin.

It sounds like you are not interested in watching the 10 minute video I recommended and you're not interested in understanding it. That's called being "willfully ignorant" and "a waste of time"

Anonymous said...

Anonymous is obviously not interested in learning anything, but in case anyone else bothers to read this, I will try to explain in my own words why a common designer can't possibly explain the existence of several ERVs in the exact same locations in the genome of people and chimps.

First of all you got to watch the video first.

OK, are you done watching the 10 minute video?

Let's pretend for a moment that the first humans and the first chimpanzees were magically created by God out of nothing.

After the magical creation of these two different species, ERVs were inserted into their genomes. The ERVs were inherited. Since God's magical creation of these creatures occurred before the ERVs were inserted, it's fair to say God had nothing to do with those ERVs.

Now isn't is odd that many of these ERVs are found in both people and chimps in the EXACT same location in their genomes? A common designer couldn't have done this, because like I said before, the ERVs came long after these species first appeared on earth.

Since these ERVs are inherited (a scientific fact) and since these ERVs are found in identical locations in the DNA of people and chimps (a scientific fact) and since the odds of that happening by accident are impossible (a scientific fact, see the video), the only possible explanation for these ERVs in the exact same locations is these ERVs were inherited from the same ancient ape species that both people and chimpanzees developed from.

I just explained a very simple concept. I don't think an intelligent child would have any problem understanding it, especially after watching the video I recommended.

Here's a wild and crazy idea. Are you creationists really concerned about the truth? If you are, then you must accept this evidence. Lying about it doesn't work. Every complaint about this evidence has already been refuted.

In every conflict between science and religion in human history, science has always won. When science wins, everyone wins. The creationist who finally accepts the facts of evolutionary biology wins because he has found the truth.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, just one more thing.

I thought it was strange that Anonymous would say "Sounds like you are trying to convince yourself into believing in Darwin."

He seems to think accepting modern scientific discoveries is a belief. It's not correct to say that because accepting ideas that have massive evidence does not require faith. Evolution is not a belief. It's a scientific explanation for how the world works. People don't "believe" in it. They accept it because of the evidence.

Also, Anonymous didn't make any sense when he talked about believing in Darwin, because Darwin knew nothing about molecular biology. He didn't know what an ERV is. He could never have imagined the scientific progress since he was alive.

Darwin predicted the close evolutionary relationship between human apes and chimpanzee apes. If he lived today he would be proud to know his prediction has been proven beyond any doubt to be correct.

‘Induction over the history of science suggests that the best theories we have today will prove more or less untrue at the latest by tomorrow afternoon.’ Fodor, J. ‘Why Pigs don’t have wings,’ London Review of Books, 18th Oct 2007