Tennessee enacts evolution, climate change law
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The Catholic Church has never taken the Creation Story (7 days, 4000 years ago) as a literal fact. That is all rooted in Prostestant Biblical literalism. The RCC has ALWAYS treated Genesis as allegorical, as defining a moral structure. At the core of its teaching is a Creator however.. and by way of that a purpose, a moral architecture.. and a destiny.
Evolution alone does not contradict any of that. But it would be wrong to define this as 'Darwinian' evolution.. which is accidental by nature.. does not speak to original causes.. and definitively denies a supernatural moral imperative and impulse.
My original post did not contest right of the Education system to present Darwinian evolution.. or AGW. I just agree that well vetted opposing positions should be presented. I'm confident enough in my version of reality that i think it will prevail. The mere fact that Darwinians or AGW proponents fear this so much.. speak volumes about their own confidence.
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I know there is deep suspicion of the roots of radical environmentalism (from which AGW spawns).. in its paganism (nature worship) and programs of depopulation.. in the Catholic leadership.
And the Pope, on matters of social policy.. is not and has never claimed to be 'infallible'.. except on matters of faith and morals promulgated 'ex-cathedra'. His views on climate change, of which he no authority, are not necessarily valid... and if he does agree with it (which i doubt)... then he's just been bamboozled like about 2/3 of the rest of the population.
Benedict is a brilliant man, as a Catholic moral theologian.. he's never pretended to be a natural scientist. His call was for consensus on a divisive issue.. he did not the endorse the psuedo science on which it is based.
Mel and i agree as to the validity of the Tridentine Latin Mass, as being the central instrument of the Church and that the Novus Ordo vernacular Mass has been a disastrous experiment, along with the deformation of the other sacraments.... and we agree to some degree on interpretation of the modernist 'Spirit of Vatican 2' as being heretical (as opposed to Benedict's interpretion of it). But i'm still in communion with Rome.. Mel is an ex-communicant.
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So a law that does nothing other than confirm what already exists is a bad thing, and should be condemned?
Because apparently it confuses scientists?
Fr. Coyne by the way stated this in that article on Intelligent Design
That is far from Darwinian evolution. The argument seems to have devolved into a difference in definitions of what 'intelligent design'..'creationism' .. and 'Darwinism' mean.. a matter of semantics. A true Darwinian evolutionist would utterly reject Fr. Coyne's interpretation.
That is far from Darwinian evolution. The argument seems to have devolved into a difference in definitions of what 'intelligent design'..'creationism' .. and 'Darwinism' mean.. a matter of semantics. A true Darwinian evolutionist would utterly reject Fr. Coyne's interpretation.
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It doesn't confuse scientists, it worries teachers, principals and superintendants.
What this law does is lay down a minefield for a curriculum enforcer. If a teacher now wants to teach creationism and does it paying lip service to it as a controversy, and the principal wants to forbid the teacher from doing so, it seems at face value like this law prevents the principal from doing so. Even though creationism is uncontroversially unscientific.
Imagine every time you wanted to teach something from history you had to mention all the insane conspiracy theories that abound. You'd never get through a proper curriculum. It would be Illuminati this, Masons this, Jews over there, CIA under the desks, etc.
That is exactly the harm in it. Not all positions are equally valid and presenting them as such is a pedagogical failure of the worst sort. That argument amounts to what Isaac Asimov sharply criticized as the stream of anti-intellectualism that runs through much of Western culture, the view that, as he put it, "your ignorance is just as valid as my knowledge." Creationism, for instance, is not a subject for the science classroom, because it's not legitimate science. It's a cultural and religious meme that can be dealt with in discussions of those subjects, but it should not be presented as a scientifically legitimate alternative to evolution.
It certainly has. Go back a few centuries.
Wow, you posted a reply to my post before I posted that post. How'd you do that!?
More lost time? Did the earth stop spinning where I was? End times maybe?
