By Robert Michaels
HONESTLY, I HAVEN’T READ Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” Nor have I delved into dissertations within the scientific community. But I have my senses, all six of them.
The Earth teems with an abundance of things we can see, taste, touch, hear and smell. And we have a common sense at our disposal to discern what is true and what is false.
When we look at a building, common sense tells us there was a builder. When we behold 19th-century impressionism, we determine there was a master painter. When we read a famous literary work, we don’t speculate — we know there was an author who penned the book.
It’s only when we consider the origin of the universe that we deny intelligence. Is it possible that here man commits intellectual suicide?
Doesn’t the sophistication of DNA, atoms, molecules and all the laws that govern our universe proclaim divine omniscience?
Shouldn’t a seemingly infinite system that houses hundreds of billions of galaxies with countless stars, planets and moons boast unparalleled omnipotence?
Don’t the myriad colors, sounds, tastes, shapes, textures and fragrances that engage our senses reveal creative genius? Aren’t we blown away by the innumerable plants and animals that thrive in a world perfectly suited to sustain diverse species within their kinds?
Isn’t it pure brilliance?
And what of mankind? From indigenous tribal people to those who dwell in gated communities, aren’t humans unique?
Doesn’t humanity in every culture possess a conscience that has the potential to guide them in matters of morality? Don’t we enjoy a creative nature that allows us to build, orchestrate, experiment, conquer and explore like no other creature on the planet?
Yet with all the observable evidence of a Creator and His creative sustaining power, we embrace a theory of time, chance and natural process.
All this happened by accident? Where’s the science?
Since not one professional of any scientific discipline can say he or she witnessed anything related to origins, mustn’t we conclude the theory is speculation? Where is the irrefutable proof, the observable evidence, for evolution?
The Library of Congress houses no photographic or video documentation. And what human eye has seen a dinosaur become a chicken? Or observed a whale transform into a cow? Or witnessed the evolution of man and ape from a common ancestor?
Simply stated, science is systematic knowledge of the physical or material world obtained through observation and experimentation. And what is utterly absent in the discussion of origins and evolutionary theory? Observation of the theory (no one was alive billions of years ago to witness it) and practical experimentation (how does one duplicate accidents and mutations without intelligent assistance?).
Skeptics demand evidence for an invisible Creator’s existence. Since men can’t see God, they deny him. Because God won’t comply with our demands to reveal himself, we reject the idea of him.
Ironically, atheists accept that everything came from nothing. But since there is no validity for the theory, evolution must be accepted with blind faith — the same kind of faith Christians are accused of possessing in relationship to God.
But I’m not addressing atheists. My audience is Christians who have been duped into believing in different forms of (theistic) evolution.
In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis (book of origins), God tells us how He created: He spoke, and it happened. He also revealed how long His creative prerogative took — six (24-hour) days.
And just in case readers attempt to redefine the word “day” in relationship to origins, God stated in Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work … For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath Day and made it holy.”
The first chapter of John’s gospel and chapter one of Paul’s epistle to the Colossians both state that Jesus is the Creator. And when he rebuked a storm, it obeyed immediately. When he called Lazarus out from the grave, the dead man rose at once. When Christ commanded demons to flee, they did so right away. In the same manner, when Jesus spoke a mammoth universe into existence, it happened without delay — exactly as the Bible says it did.
Creation is a supernatural work of God.
From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is filled with miracles. And what miracle can be backed by science? The bodily resurrection of Jesus is not scientific. Believers accept he rose from the dead by faith — not because of scientific proof.
Have believers been intimidated by the scientific community? Does evolutionary rhetoric leave Christians doubting their Biblical foundation? Have they been made to feel like idiots for taking God literally? Perhaps.
But Christ’s followers don’t have the right, nor the wiggle room, to work any form of evolution in the Biblical text. So don’t.
Choose. Choose to believe in the words of men or the Word of God. And if evolution is true, then live it out. But if the Bible is true, then don’t be ashamed.
Robert Michaels is a long-time Benicia resident. He can be reached at robert.eagleswings@yahoo.com.
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Nice article Robert. I was recently in the woods near Jackson CA on a hunting trip. I sat in the darkness well before sun up and the forest was silent. Then, as the sun began to rise, the forest began to awaken. As I sat in the woods looking for deer and finding none, my mind was distracted by the vastness of the forest and the variety of it, along with all of the birds, animals, bugs, etc. I could not help but be in awe of the all of the creation surrounding me and I found myself going into prayer, thanking God for all of the beauty around me. To consider all of the molecules and matter and the variety of such that made up all that is in the forest, was overloading my brain. It was beyond comprehension to consider that it was all made by Him. So I just sat back and took it all in. It was a wonderful, beautiful (cold) morning.
Thank you! I hope you are stunned by the glory, majesty and love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Beautifully penned Robert.
You might want to actually read Darwin’s works to get the core sense of Evolution. This concept actually predates Darwin and can be seen in the works of ancient scholars and theologians from multiple religions. Also, check out the various individuals who are both in the scientific and theological areas and see how many people have no issue accepting both theology and science(specifically evolution in this context). I think the atheists vs. literal Christian debate is getting hold and really leaves out a huge percentage of people who really have no issue combining their theology with what science tells us. Peace.
When scientists can understand and prove what produces the most fundamental force we know and deal with daily – gravity – they will have a lot more credibility in showing they know how the universe and life itself began. It has occurred to me that if I were God the thing that I would do to prove my existence would be to create (whether or not in my image) a life form that would be capable of appreciating the wonders of other things that I had created or caused to be so. This would be a life form that would be able to create life itself and do it in way that brought joy and hope to them. We have a lot to be thankful for if we take time to think about it.
Robert, I can appreciate your wrestling in that swamp of questions which seem so profound and impenetrable to you. It saddens me how you settled on antique scriptures for guidance in the vast realms of mystery beyond understanding. Familiar superstitions are comforting. Ignorance is not bliss, so to take comfort in the grand promise and psychological reality of Jesus feels elevating and liberating. I grew up with that combination of comfort and self-challenge, but (I know this sounds arrogant to you) I kept growing, decade after decade, until I have worked through and grasped that reality which is simultaneously both spiritual and physical. Outside the metaphysics of conceptual divisions, polarizations and fragmented bifurcation is the fount of transtheism. Deism/theism, agnosticism and atheism are thenceforth moot and not worth argument or speculation. The whole subject is semantically encompassed and, for myself, retired. Does this make me heartless? No. Head and heart have become free to be one thing, not two things apart from each other or in conflict.
You haven’t read Darwin, and that’s okay because he’s merely a starting reference point in a subject that has grown immensely. Robert, the biological data is overwhelming. It extends from Geology to Paleontology, Genetics and Genomics. And, it is not true that the subject of origins goes neglected. You simply aren’t in touch with any of that literature, which is a shame because you are far from stupidity. Cosmologists are hard at work as are all manner of physicists. Science is not antithetical to religion, but religions are often antithetical to spirituality.
Science is a spiritual quest, though areas of this or that discipline sometimes devolve into types of religiosity by getting lost in pet theories contingent on big, academic personalities with intra-field axes to grind and political aims. Ongoing time tends to cure these aberrations. Science is self-correcting. There is a science of humanity composed of many fields, including the humanity of science. Mistake neither of these for some model called “Humanism” for like “Socialism” it has become a broken toy abused by bad children. Like “Capitalism” and “Enterprise” these words are hollowed out, defined only superficially by dictionaries.
Thanks for reading the column. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
Robert, what do you believe spiritually? I mean, if you were to put a name on it, what spiritual or religious faith would you claim?
Christians have the Bible. Unless you are a true atheist, from what source (literature) do you look to? What book or scriptures do you go back to?
One of my close friends tried it all. He was spiritual. At one time he was Buddhist, among other things. And than he came face to face with the reality of the (Biblical) Jesus. He has been a follower of Christ for forty years now.
I have met (former) atheists. I have also read and watched some their stories. It’s nothing short of a miracle when outspoken, even hostile, skeptics come to Christ and become preachers of the Biblical gospel.
My former pastor, who died this year, was such a man. An evolutionist, atheist and philosophy major at a local university. His brother shared Christ with him. Steve threatened him if he talked to him about Jesus anymore. Steve latter found a Bible, went to his room to read and disprove the Bible and show his brother that it was a bunch of ancient nonsense, and not for rational-logical people, not to be taken seriously or literally.
While reading though the gospel of Matthew, he said he was stunned by the person of Christ. He said, Jesus is majestic, beautiful, and glorious, not like any other man. Right there in his bedroom, in his prime, he gave his mind and heart to Jesus. Enrolled in seminary, and started a Church in Vallejo where he preached the Jesus that saved him for over thirty years.
His conversion was nothing short of straight miracle from a sovereign God. There similar stories from skeptics (C.S. Lewis was a famous skeptic) all over the world. And I’m currently reading a book with the stories of fifty scientists that are Bible believing Christians-creationists.
Thanks again Robert. In part two of my evolution op-ed I am going to discuss at least two reasons why I believe skeptics deny the Biblical God, Bible, creation, and so on.
Take care, robert
Rev. Robert, I keep telling you, I’m Transtheist. I’m like a Zen Buddhist without Buddhism or a Sufi-ist without Islam, or a Jewish or Christian mystic without Judaism, Kabbalah, Cristianity without Paulist salvation, mystery without metaphysical theory. Relative to your worldview, I’m an outsider, yet we live in the ordinary, everyday world together with most other people who are not institutionalized, each in a Cloud Cuckoo Land. How clear is that? Sorry if it’s not.
R.M., I refer you again to the first paragraph of my first comment above. It seems you didn’t read it. Nothing stuck. It’s okay to keep your own mind, but it may be a help to you to experience in full clarity those of others.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen. We Christians have that faith and enjoy all the things God gave us on this good Earth.
Old Salt, your heartfelt, oceanic faith in antique belief is truly touching. Have a nice swim, you are already at home in our collective past. No use not to feel good about it — crawling out on to dry land would be terribly difficult and our air out here is hard to breath with gills.
What in the hell are you talking about oh wise Robert.
New metaphoric usages are hard for traditionalists to grasp. The difference is that between gravestone inscriptions carved in old stone and that mental and verbal freedom shown in good, contemporary poems.
There is no meaningful freedom in language without disciplined background. No art without training in craft.
One of the most entertaining examples for the proof of intelligent design is the banana, because:
1 It is shaped for human hand
2 It has a non-slip surface
3 It has an outward indicators of inward content:
Green-too early,
Yellow-just right,
Black-too late.
4 It has a tab for removal of wrapper
5 It has a perforated wrapper
6 It has a bio-degradable wrapper
7 It is shaped for the human mouth
8 It has a point at top for ease of entry
9 It is pleasing to the taste buds
10 It is curved towards the face to make the eating process easier
Most amusing, Thomas. Your example is a notable example, virtually metaphoric, for the whole concept of intelligent design. It is also notable than bananas are a favored food of monkeys and apes.
I do wish this wordpress program had an edit function!!! Most good comment formats do.
Of course, the same cannot be said for the coconut.
😉
“Once more into the breach, dear friends!” Dear Rev. Michaels, everyone knows you’re a good fellow. We like you. I am not “condescending” when I say YOU are worth careful response with analysis of the too-often misplaced poetry in your discourse and the hoary context of its framing and informing ideas. Your orientation comports with that of myriad people who are mentally left over from former ages, left over because they have never recognized or responded to the ways up-to-date knowledge and thinking challenges their whole mental apparatus. It is a matter of “living spirituality” over “old literality.” This gives us a correct slant on the notion of “Left Behind-ism.” (It is not that our folks with state-of-the-art minds will be left to scrabble a mean, declining existence after the “faithful elect” of traditional mind are raptured away on clouds of morning, perhaps on magic carpets or heavenly spaceships, or transcendental “beamings up.”) Heaven, after all, is not “up there” anywhere in some separate domain of non-natural existence, but potentially and immanently all around those who can let it happen. The ultra-right radicals cannot let heaven happen for others without laying their specially exclusive conditions upon it, playing a stern God themselves while pretending to be loving, caring Followers of some one of three versions of The Book.
You say we have “a common sense … to discern what is true and … false.” That is false, Robert. It is not an automatic sense but procedures of interpretation, evaluation and testing, applied and reapplied that lets us discriminate the valid from invalid and real from unreal. Science uses sense-data only in the early stage of making observations. Then the work starts — work which in common life outside laboratories and studios takes place unconsciously or in low awareness. In those places mentioned, awareness gets widely broadened and highly refined.
You say when we behold [great art, craft & literature] we “determine there was a master … author.” This reveals two things: (1) deficient grasp of creative process and (2) a rhetorical preparation to LEAP from a cultural context to the ground of nature, which is not valid. [In Greek terms, this is passing from nomos to physis.] Then, you say we deny intelligence when we consider the universe. You claim sophistication for DNA, atoms, molecules and natural “laws” and that this “proclaims [divinity]” and “boasts unparalleled omnipotence.” The sidereal universe boasts nothing! You do that. There is no evidence but scripturally induced emotion for a category of divinity separate from humanity and its cultures. You suggest we should be astonished by our sensations and bio-diversity. Why any more so than by the facts of continuity, inertia and momentum? These apply in the minute realms of genetics and wave/particle physics, though not clearly farther down into the levels represented by quantum and string theory.
You suggest humans are unique. Yes, but far from completely. There is no distinct separation of humanity from animality, any more than between gods-and-demons and the human mind. Nature provides few sharp distinctions. We do that. Nature is a realm of continua and gradual differentiation between one “thing” and another “thing” or set of things [we create the sets, nature provides our possibilities.]
You next make an issue of conscience. Conscience is not a faculty but a function of whole mind in making judgments of value in previewing behavioral outcomes. In each population, some people show no conscience. We regard this as pathological. Many people show limited or compartmentalized conscience. These folks also are often dangerous to others and to the community. (The Tea Party folks have grown a bubble of illusions about themselves and what is good for everyone, and thrust their heads into it, disrupting good order in the nation.) You talk about “observable evidence of a Creator” but the most “creative” thing you have done is to manufacture that “evidence” unconsciously under influence of your prior, religious culture. You ask where is the science of all this “accident.” Robert, the academies, labs, libraries and institutes are bursting with these sciences and you ignore everything going on. Ignorance in our world is the most appalling cultural deficit we face, today. It is threatening everything.
Ignorance is not validated by resort to anachronistic thought-ways. No dinosaur suddenly became a bird.
You know this, so you’re speaking tendentiously. You know we have minute, step by step evidences of the transitions in geologic and genetic record. OR, MAYBE YOU STILL DON’T. You discount generations of dedicated work by legions of people sincerely committed to learning the truth of things. And you think accident and mutation require “intelligent assistance” in causing them, more than in perceiving them?
Lastly, you talk about atheists (whose positions are usually knee-high) and nothing? What do you know about nothing? Eastern wisdom has it that you and nothing are a “joint event.” This requires “non-Aristotelian logic. Opposites participate in unity. Atheists are guilty of blind faith? No more than you, sir.
And, here I quit. I have no need to tangle with shadows on the walls of the cave you live within. Keep your blessed scriptures if you must, they have significant literary value. But, take a look outside your warm cave? Do try not to go blind as Paul did, from ocular exposure to the sun while fallen unconscious?
Reading Robert’s missive brings to mind a quote attributed to Churchill:
“Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.” ― Winston Churchill
Dennis, that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in years! 😉 Actually, my meaning was, that like Caliban, he should come up out of the ground and dwell in today’s world. It’s as good as he cares to make it.
Have you read about nebraska man? From a single tooth (fossil) the scientific community formed an ape-man only later to discover the tooth belonged to a pig. Neanrathal man was recently discovered to be humans that suffered from Arthritis and Rickets. The discovery of Lucy’s bones are incomplete (especially head, hands and feet). Other fossils have been tampered with and or misunderstood. There are no fossils that show one kind of animal turning into a completely differerent kind of animal. And how did plants evolve, from the same single cell? How did color, scents, textures, and tastes evolve? How did the law of gravity evolve? What about the planet earth? It’s rotation, the exact speed necessary to sustain life. How did the earth know to stay 93,000,000 miles from the sun, not closer – it would burn, not further – it would be too cold. How did creatures with gills in our oceans crawl out of the water without lungs. Or did they possess lungs while still in the water? But than they would drown. What about the heart? Animals and people need hearts to survive. How long did it take the heart to evolve? And how did living things exist until the heart perfectly evolved? What about the brain, the liver, kidneys, nose, eyes, ears? How was life sustained while these things evolved over millions and billions of years. How did all this, the entire universe, happen from a bang – to a living cell – to all the amazing complexities we see today? The fossil record does not have all the answers to the universe, let alone my questions here. And once again, fossils are not a reliable source of information, in that professionals make mistakes and at times commit fraud. Yet people still believe. Why? That is the question I want answered.
Am I, or are we Christians, ignorant becasue we don’t buy the propaganda from the scientific community? Don’t you question them the same way you question the Bible? Neither evolution nor creation can be proved. They are both accepted by faith. I absolutey believe in my God and his Word the Bible. Skeptics absolutely believe in the words of their university professors. Neither you or I were there when it all happened. It’s faith in what we have read and heard from our source. That’s all.
Oh, holy mackerel, Andy! You are so far out of it, R.M. You have a notion of proof left over from the hyper-intensionality of Medieval scholasticism. It is weight of evidence science goes by, not verbal geometry in syllogisms. These are useful tools, deductively, but cannot compete with induction. Observations of what is real affords us escape from preconceived illusion and error. If God were not honest, nature itself would lie to us. Nature is the matrix we rise from, gods are imponderable and not made reliable merely by our saying so, or by the scribblings of a thousand, bearded old-timers, heartfelt though they likely were. You asked what I “believe,” I regard God as a fantasy, highly dangerous to sanity but potentially valuable for those left developmentally needy. We must be careful what we create in our minds because they become mentally real to us, and either beneficial or harmful to ourselves and others around us. Myself, I don’t believe in received beliefs of doctrinal or ideological character, except in the possible efficacy of science compared to the inefficacy of closed thought ways. If one insists on framing existence and self in metaphysical terms, one starts splitting things up that cannot be reunited. Only up-to-date, unitive thinking avoids all those pitfalls in which nearly all previous generations have floundered, no matter how comfortable they felt in the warm mud wallow inside Plato’s cave — which contains all the “Book Religions” and their confusions masked by false clarity.
Again, lungs developed from the balancing air-bladder in teleost fishes. Stiff fins preceded legs but led to them. Early teleosts marginally survived on land by crawling or slithering from tide-pool to tide-pool. These processes involve such immense passages of time as nearly to confound imagination, based of the short lives we have. Gills gradually closed, turning inward to fuse their functions with the air-bladder that doubled into left & right like many other organs. A few early-type lung-fishes survive to this day, both salt and fresh water species!
With all due respect, I know this what you were taught, or have read, but were you witness to the process of evolution in respect to the sea creature you described above? Fossils (bones) don’t provide all the supossed evidence you just wrote about.Their just bones. They don’t shed light on how old they are. They don’t provide a shred of evidence on how they were formed.
This is my point. Man refuses to believe in the existence of the Biblical Creator because he cannot experience God with his senses. Likewise, no one saw evolution take place. No one was there to document origins. Fossils do not prove evolution or creation. They are just proof of the existence or extinction of a living thing. They don’t tell us how they got there. So both evoltion and creationism are both accepted by faith. We were both taught we are products of evolution. You believe what you taught.You have faith in the men/women in the scientific community. You have faith in C. Darwin.
It boils down to faith.
“They don’t shed light on how old they are.” – Carbon dating does.
“Fossils do not prove evolution or creation.” – Fossils have proven evolution time and time again. Darwin never set out to prove creation.
“They don’t tell us how they got there.” – And, so far nothing does. Including wild conjecture.
“So both evoltion and creationism are both accepted by faith.” – No, only creationism.
“It boils down to faith.” – No, it does not.
Well at least you admit you do not have faith. No use paying attention in the future to any of your out of town comments.
“No use paying attention in the future to any of your out of town comments.” You should have started that policy before you commented. BTW – does this apply to DDL? Also, if I own property in Benicia, can I still play? Please fill me in on the rules.
“Well at least you admit you do not have faith.” I don’t believe that anything I stated can be interpreted as such, nor is your statement (in total) relevant to anything.
No answers, as usual.
Do you think all those who don’t live in Benicia anymore should stop commenting?
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/10/how-many-americans-actually-believe-the-earth-is-only-6000-years-old/
“Where is the irrefutable proof, the observable evidence, for evolution?” – I believe it is referred to as the fossil record.
You see this one?
http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/New-tyrannosaur-discovered-in-southern-Utah-4960702.php
Cool, huh?
Indeed. I wonder if they were Mormon. 😉
Robert,
You seem to say ‘believers’ should follow the rules, do what their told, and not question a text written millennia ago.
But if there is a God who went to all the trouble of creating the human race, don’t you think he (she?) might want those he created to use the intricate mind he gave them? To explore ideas? To venture out with their intellects?
And if he doesn’t – if he simply wants us to sit quietly, with our hands folded, and follow the rules – I can’t say I would have much of an interest in a God like that.
Sounds a bit controlling to me, and I’ve never found ‘controlling’ an attractive characteristic.
One last question: You also seem to say that everything must have a creator – to believe in God is to believe he exists, or is part of ‘everything’.
So who made God?
John, The common answer to this from Christians is that god has no need to have been created, since he exists either outside time (where cause and effect do not operate) or within multiple dimensions of time (such that there is no beginning of god’s plane of time). Hence god is eternal, having never been created. It’s a sort of a pretzel logic.
My issue with this sort of stuff is that if you can believe something that has no basis in fact, then it’s not a stretch to believe other things.
Like a shutdown’s not a bad thing.
And defaulting on the national debt is no big deal.
Almost 8 in 10 members of the Tea Party are Christian – and I don’t see the tendency to accept questionable religious doctrine and questionable political doctrine as coincidence…
I hear you. The same thing happens within the climate change debate. It’s seems to me to be the ultimate hypocrisy.
Yes, John and Thomas. For years I held that any God worth the name could exist or non-exist however He pleased, anywhere, any time, exclusively or simultaneously. Even if God is simply the collective, human psyche. He is largely unconscious and scattered, perhaps trying to waken and figure out who He is and what he wants. Well, that sort of theology, like all the other kinds, is a game of poker with all cards wild.
A fool’s game! To suppose a God as in my first instance above, is to drain away anything conceptually definite about Him/Her/It, hence, as footless as Deism. Where “God” only means nature or cosmos, no point remains for using that word. We do not, as did the Greeks, subscribe to ideas of logos, which now belong to mysticisms of transcendental state, no “content” from which is definable, so not useful to discuss.
Yet still hammered into the collective acumen and defended to the utmost degree. Looking forward to the coming “war on x-mas”..
Mr. Gavin, 8 in 10 Americand believe in God. 80% of religious Americans are Christian. To believe that Jesus is the son of God does not make one stupid. I am a Geologist, I have studied the fossil record, and I believe in God. Evolution does not explain everything. Isn’t interesting that Genesis 1, the sequence put forward is precisely what the fossil record describes? Darkness, light, land, water … In 7 days. The record indicates the Earth is 7 billion years old.
While I may have difficulty with parts of Creationism, I equally have trouble with parts of the Theory of Evolution.
And finally, you should get your facts straight … Republicans do not believe the shut down is a good thing, we do not believe we should default debt payments. But considering Obama has doubled the national debt in 5 years makes your debt ceiling babble a bit of hypocrisy, doesn’t it?
The Tea Party members are good people. I know many. They believe in a smaller government and less spending. For that they skewered. Very enlightened and liberal of you. Shame.
Very good Matter.
Indeed. In fact, whether one agrees with it or not the “faith community” in many cases has accepted climate change and, in any case, advocated for policies that, at their heart, are liberal or re-distributionist. I personally am uncomfortable with the mere acceptance of some things and where the remedy may well be worse than the disease, but taking cheap-shots at folks is not very liberal, or, for that matter – neighborly.
Matter, the proverbial “40 million Frenchmen” did not make Napoleon right. BTW, you need to distinguish Republicans from Reactionaries and Conservatives from radically wishful believers seeking yesterday’s utopia.
John stated: Almost 8 in 10 members of the Tea Party are Christian – and I don’t see the tendency to accept questionable religious doctrine and questionable political doctrine as coincidence…
John, what would your thoughts be if someone made the following statement?
“Almost 8 in 10 members of the Jewish faith are Democrats – and I don’t see the tendency to accept questionable religious doctrine and questionable political doctrine as coincidence…”
The Jewish faith and Christian faith after all worship the same God of the Old Testament.
Dennis, there’s no contradiction there. Throw in the Muslims, too. We don’t have to accept anyone’s dusty doctrines drawn from the writings of dim heads whose hearts exulted in discovering themselves alive in a strange world they couldn’t explain except by telling stories to themselves and the children.
Dennis,
My thoughts would be that in endeavoring to mirror my comment you’ve reversed the classifications I used.
You’ve typed religion where I used political affiliation, and vice versa.
So I’m not exactly clear on what you are asking…
Your focus is on the wrong part of the quote.
The focus should be on this part:
I don’t see the tendency to accept questionable religious doctrine and questionable political doctrine as coincidence…”
What you have done with that part, is to make a condescending comment against both Christians and the Tea Party people. Too many people are comfortable with singling out the Christian faith, it is done in this forum all the time.
Would you make a similar comment against the Jewish or Muslim faith? Probably not, so why are too many people comfortable with such anti Christian comments?
Dennis,
I’m not a big fan of religion period.
And where you make distinctions between various religions that follow a certain deity – I do not.
There isn’t enough space here nor time in the day to to cover the heartbreaks foist on this world in the name of religion.
And in that light I’d say the TP is still in a very minor league.
I’d just like to see them defused before they do larger damage.
John
“And where you make distinctions between various religions that follow a certain deity – I do not.”
Very astute comment John.
John … Defuse the Tea Party? You mean legally ban them? Damage … What damage? They stand for a political philosophy you oppose, I get that, but what do they damage? And “defused”? Have we really gotten to the point where we are calling for legal banishment of political opposition? Stalin and Hitler would be proud.
Matter,
Easy there tiger.
By ‘defused’ I mean defused (was that not clear?).
The TP has been nothing if not bombastic in their methods – hence the use of the word.
John
John when you use the word defuse I assume you mean less harmful. Less harmful to who? You call therm bombastic. I would say they are doing what they were elected to do. They were elected by the folks that they represent and they were sent to DC to represent them. So I assume if would be OK to say lets defuse some members of the Dem and Rep party also. Election normally take care of that, us folks that comment do just that comment.
Ok Tiger … I’ll bite. Defuse is to mean pull the fuse. It means to eliminate. For an author, you should be careful with words.
Now, looking back at your word, you label the TP. You use specific and extraordinary words to label. You basically dangerous and claim they cause damage.
From your words and labels, I would state that liberals are dangerous. Easily tossing around labels. Defining those they don’t understand. Yet it is the conservatives that often accept others.
I’ll say it .. Liberals are dangerous. They are intolerant. They cannot accept legitimate opposite opinions. They should be defused.
High ground almost attained … and lost at the last moment. Way to go, tiger.
Some people sure do give old Stalin and Hitler a good workout. But maybe they need a rest instead.
We do know Stalin and Hitler are getting a very long rest never to awaken.
Except when the historically ignorant trot them out now and again (and again, and again) and dangle them as the ultimate debate ender (and stomach turner).
I always thought we could agree that nothing in our politics comes close to what Stalin and Hitler did — that we all know there is no chance of a Stalin or Hitler emerging in the U.S. I am sorry to have been repeatedly disabused of that notion — and I weep for our education system.
Hi John. Thanks for commenting. I just went over my column and didn’t see that I wrote anything about following God’s rules.
My point was that Christians are those that claim to accept the Bible as God’s Word. And in the Bible God says what He did, how He did it, and how long He chose to perform it (regarding origins). So we don’t have the liberty, as Christians, to add/change/distort/speculate on God’s book.
It doesn’t mean we don’t have the freedom to read whatever we want. It doesn’t mean that we can’t sit under an atheist professor and hear theories about origins. I was taught evolution in the public school system and in college. It didn’t scari me. It didn’t threaten me. It didn’t embitter me. But I also didn’t buy into it “just because” my teachers/professors had slide shows or documentaries, or used textbooks that suggested that my common ancestors were apes. And that trillions times trillions of stars, planets and moon just happened by accident, or that the earth and all it’s wonderful mind boggling secrets, laws, complexities just happened by accident. That is not science.
You weren’t there, John, to view origins. You weren’t there to watch macro evolution take place. You have bones (fossils). And those fossils don’t tell you, or I, how they were formed, how olf they are. Their just bones.
You believe what your teachers and professors taught you. And they weren’t there to witness it either. So you, and they, must exercise great faith in the process of evolution.
Respectfully, we are both men of faith. You in time, chance and natural process. Myself in the God of the Bible, Jesus, who by very diffenition is eternal and uncreated, or he isn’t God. I accept this by faith.
Sorry for some of the spelling errors. I am evolving as a typist.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your reply – wow, still getting comments a month after you wrote your column. You definitely picked a hot button topic!
I’m going to disagree with you on your assumption that I’m operating from faith. I hope you don’t think I’m splitting hairs here, but as an Agnostic I tend to see the Atheists and the Believers as the people who need faith to support their positions in this realm.
Believers believe there is a ‘God’ which, since that claim is not verfiaible, requires faith to maintain.
Atheists believe there is no ‘God’ which, also not verifiable, also then requires faith to maintain.
I believe, as do other Agnostics, that since ‘God’s’ existence can be neither proven nor dis-proven, I can not say there definitely is a God just as I cannot say there definitely is not.
All I can say with complete honesty and assuredness is that I don’t know – and that position required no faith. I unequivocally simply do not know (which I suspect, if you dig down deep enough, is probably true of most Atheists and Believers as well).
So, ironically, Robert you probably have more in common with Atheists than Atheist do with me.
You also say that in the Bible God says what he did – but I believe he did not write the Bible (correct?) so that may not be quite right.
Over and above that the Bible, in its present form, is a very different book than was originally written. This is due to the many interpretations, languages, editing, etc. it’s gone through over the millenia. I just feel it a very questionable source to rely on as an ‘only source’, you know?
And just like you point out I was not there to view ‘origins’ I’ll point out you were not there to see the proof of God cited in the bible.
Which leads me to another question: He seems to have done his appearances/miracles, etc. back in olden times, when there were no cameras, tape recorders, scientific methods, etc.
In modern times we don’t seem to get many miracles anymore – and with all the millions of video cameras and TV cameras around the world no apparitions of God or Jesus or their miracles seem to get caught on any of that film.
Which, if you believe the actions reported in the Bible, seems weird. So did those actions just sort of stop when we developed technology with which to record them?
If so was that coincidence?
Divine design?
Thanks again for your comment.
Peace,
John
My last point here will be that I look to the mysterious Cosmos of which we are each a direct expression. I rule out God and supernatural stuff by means of Ockham’s Razor. I will not multiply entities, categories or assumptions without rational need. Specific fictions can be useful, as for instance in mathematics, but I for one don’t need the emotional crutch of an Invisible Family Extended In Heaven. Friends will do. Nature itself is odd enough to absorb much of our interest, and it includes ourselves with our “interior lives.”
Bob Said: We do know Stalin and Hitler are getting a very long rest never to awaken
It is surprising Bob to see how the leftists, even here in this forum continue to look back fondly on the Soviet Union as if to say; “ahhh, we came so close.’ The ignorance they display in doing so is astounding. It is a shame they need to be reminded.
And … the travesty of American reading comprehension levels demonstrated. Thanks, Dennis.
идиот
you are a coward.
Сон смешного человека
You are a blowhard.
Bob, here are some examples:
From Jerome Page’s piece: “the family’s initial wealth was not created by the harsh, creative forces of unfettered capitalism, but by the grace of the centrally planned economy of the Soviet Union.”
From the comments:
The main problem with Stalin was Totalitarianism not communisn (sp).
There are bneefits (sp) to be taken from Capitalism, Socialism, and Communis
You got that right, Harvey! For sure.
I read the socialist and communist documents in the 1950s and understood their shortcomings, as the then-current examples displayed
Bob, I get it now. Dennis doesn’t understand sarcasm — only explanation for his including the sentence from Mr. Page’s piece as somehow indicating approval of Stalin — OR context, otherwise he would have seen that neither Harvey nor Robert Shelby were in any way pining for the days of Stalin, only making allowances for possible benefits in (non-Stalinist) communism.
Which brings us back to reading comprehension skills …
Hank, I am sorry I fully understand the thiking of Shelby and Rifkin. I need not explain. They have presented their views very clearly in the past.
Are you saying either of them is a Stalinist?
Hank have you read over the last four years Shelby and Rifkin Forum articles. There is your answer. You also know that I am a Conservative by what I write and comment.
I’ve seen nothing to indicate either is a Stalinist. Don’t know that too many Stalinists exist anywhere, certainly not in the Bay Area.
Timely piece:
The rehabilitation of Karl Marx
Good morning Dennis,
I read the guy’s piece.
Here’s where he goes wrong (with an ambitiously colossal assumption):
“But that misses the point that Marx’s analysis was what informed that blue-print and, so, he bears intellectual responsibility for it.”
Any one who blames someone for mass murder on a grand scale, while devoting less ink to the monsters who actually perpetrated the mass murders is… well, I’ll let you finish that sentence.
Back when I was a Poli Sci major I was required to read Marx until my eyes bled.
And what I learned is that we call it ‘Marxism’ mostly because that’s easier to say than Engalsism.
Marx was a bit of a punk with a penchant for poking his finger in the eye of the bourgeoisie (the rich class he was pretty much born into) because, as a Jew, he was never really gonna fit.
So he wanted to ‘dump them back’, you know? Classic teenage behavior.
Unfortunately for him his ideas ended up being the crest of a historical wave that was way more about despotism than anything else.
When viewed under the influence of the Victorian Times in which he lived, on the heels of the French Revolution, he becomes more understandable as a fella who was writing more about Europe’s immediate past than he was about any sort of future ‘worker’s paradise’.
That’s my long winded way of saying the guy who wrote this piece either has an agenda, or ain’t that good at history.
He does have really nice hair though,
John
John do you have an agenda?
John, You quoted the man: “he (Marx) bears intellectual responsibility for it”.
I do not read that as meaning Marx is responsible for mass murder.
Are the founding father’s responsible for actions by future Presidents which resulted in the death of others?
Something a tad bit more germane to the topic of this column:
http://bit.ly/NZgoHw
Good call – I agree.
Isn’t it funny how we lose sight of what is pretty much in front of our nose day in and day out?
John