"Cary Kittrell" <cary at afone.as.arizona.edu> wrote in message
> Well, 40% believe:
>> Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced
> forms of life.
>>> which is a rather fine and succinct description of evolution. The fact
> that they further believe that:
>> God guided this process
>>> does not mean that they do not believe in the evolutionary process, which
> is simply the observation that:
>> Human beings [and all other organisms] have developed over
> millions of years from less advanced forms of life.
>
This is patently dishonest. By throwing in "and all other organisms",
you're changing the entire context of that statement, and you're doing it on
purpose. And why would you do that? Because you don't want to accept what
this poll STATES in plain English. But there's more.
>> as opposed, to, say:
>> God POOFED it all into existence, in a week or so.
>> which is not an evolutionary viewpoint.
>>> According to Larson's 1997 repeat of Leuba's famous 1916 poll of belief
> among scientists (published in Science), about thirty percent of
biologists
> report a belief in God (up, actually, from the 1916 result). I will
promise
> you that only a tiny fraction of those do not believe in evolution,
> which is no more and no less than the premise that:
>> Human beings [and all other organisms] have developed over
> millions of years from less advanced forms of life.
>> so it is quite possible to believe that
>> Human beings have developed over millions of years from less
> advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.
>> as 40% of Americans apparently do.
>
This is preposterous. The essence of Darwinism, the reason that Americans
reject it in great numbers, the reason it's a sick joke, is that it attempts
to discredit 2,000 years of science which taught that God created life and
displace it with his "theory of natural selection". You cannot have it both
ways. Either God created life, or Darwin's "theory" [read: not] of
evolution created it by natural selection. These two are mutually exclusive
possibilities.
"Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms
of life, but God guided this process" is NOT the "theory" of evolution, nor
is it the theory of natural selection on which TOE is based, as you attempt
to suggest with this dishonest sleight of hand.
There's no way that you didn't know that Darwin's theory of natural
selection is a rejection of creation. You clearly already knew that the
instant a person believes that God was involved in creating life, he rejects
natural selection. You must be aware that when you combine "God guided this
process" with "from less advanced forms of life", you do NOT have TOE,
you've just rejected it--which is why you parsed these words.
>> Evolution does not say He did it, it does not say He did not do it.
> Will you find me a textbook on evolution that even mentions the question?
>> In fact, rather a few of Darwin's contemporaries believed they were
> enhancing the glory of God by studying exactly how He Did It. But
> in any event, if the Gallup figures are reasonably correct, then
> approximately 50% of Americans polled feel that organisms have
> slowly turned into other organisms over a very very very long period
> of time, which is exactly the definition of evolution.
>>> -- cary
Are you going to now claim that Darwin wasn't an "evolutionist"? Is this
your scam? His "Origin of Species" makes PRECISELY that claim. This is
PRECISELY what the uproar was all about. This is EXACTLY what William
Jennings Bryan said under oath in court about it.
With regard to your claim that his contemporaries thought they were doing
God a favor, you know we're not going to hold our breaths waiting for that
reference, don't you?
John Knight
