From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Sep 5 17:10:38 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 4113737B49D for ; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 17:10:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jive.SoftHome.net (jive.SoftHome.net [66.54.152.27]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 688E843E6A for ; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 17:10:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from yid@softhome.net) Received: (qmail 6669 invoked by uid 417); 6 Sep 2002 00:10:28 -0000 Received: from shunt-smtp-out-0 (HELO softhome.net) (172.16.3.12) by shunt-smtp-out-0 with SMTP; 6 Sep 2002 00:10:28 -0000 Received: from planb ([216.194.4.17]) (AUTH: LOGIN yid@softhome.net) by softhome.net with esmtp; Thu, 05 Sep 2002 18:10:02 -0600 Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 20:08:49 -0400 From: Joshua Lee To: "Neal E. Westfall" Cc: tlambert2@mindspring.com, dave@jetcafe.org, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-Id: <20020905200849.7af95707.yid@softhome.net> In-Reply-To: <20020905090556.D41451-100000@Tolstoy.home.lan> References: <20020904234425.669b500a.yid@softhome.net> <20020905090556.D41451-100000@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 Thu, 5 Sep 2002 09:14:11 -0700 (PDT) "Neal E. Westfall" wrote: > On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, Joshua Lee wrote: > > On Wed, 4 Sep 2002 12:14:08 -0700 (PDT) > > "Neal E. Westfall" wrote: > > > > > "Neal E. Westfall" wrote: > > > > > > You guys are quite amusing to read! The only thing you can > > > > > > agree on is your anemic prejudices against theology. > > > > > > > > Actually, we weren't talking much about theology until you took > > > > offense at the subject line. > > > > > > You misunderstand, sir. No offense taken. Just a friendly little > > > conversation. Evolution has certain implied theological > > > committments, however, so it seemed appropriate to "seize the > > > moment", if you will. > > > > Tellihard De Chardin seems to do a good job at being a theist of > > your stripe and accepting the theory of evolution at the same time; > > somewhat earlier, Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook seemed to > > Why is this relevant? Whether or not such and such evolutionist > identifies himself as a Christian, Jew, or anything else has little > to do with whether or not evolution is true, or philosophically > defensible. Moreover, I do not consider Teilhard De Chardin to be > a Christian. The Pope did. > You have to hold to a certain number of essential > beliefs before you have the right to call yourself a Christian. So much for your brand of supernaturalism being the only acceptable one because "it allows for intellectual disagreement". > Moreover, a theory evolution may be, but it certainly is not a > "scientific" theory. It is a way of looking at things. It could It is a way of *explaining* things. As such, it's a scientific theory; whether you or I like it or not. Personally I think that Behe has done some things to blow it out of the water, but I'm not going to distribute copies of the book of genesis in children's biology classes until there is a better *scientific* theory available. > promote it as "unscientific". It has all the earmarks and > dogmatism of a religion, so why not call a spade a spade? Lots of decent biology is done with it, some of which might be even used to lengthen your ingrate life. ;-) Believe it or not not everything that disagrees with a religion is a religion. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message