Sunday, November 19, 2006
March of the Robots
First of all, we've got another one for Glenn Morton's collection: "The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism." Jay Richards, co-author (with Guillermo Gonzalez) of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, has been reported in a Nov. 18, 2006 Christian Post article, "Science Gives Christians Upper Hand Over Atheists" to have made the following claim at the "Loving God with All Your Mind" Apologetics Conference held at the McLean (Virginia) Bible Church:Philosopher Jay Richards of Acton Institute concluded from his findings that the universe was designed for discovery. And with each discovery, the Darwinian theory of evolution is expected to go down as "a huge mistake in history," Richards said.People have, as Glenn documents at his site, been "expecting" that for over 150 years, even before Darwin published. There is an old saying: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Saying something is a type of "doing."
Of course, that does not particularly support the main contention of the article:
Over the last several decades, Christians have begun to emerge back into the intellectual public square. This is primarily occurring in the field of philosophy, New Testament studies with regard to the historical Jesus and the gospels, and it is now beginning to occur in the physical sciences as manifested in the Intelligent Design movement ...
Considering that ID goes back to before William Paley's early 19th Century work and even Behe's "Irreducible Complexity" argument against evolution originated at least as long ago as Georges Cuvier in the late 18th Century, that "beginning" is more than a little ironic. And considering how loudly the ID crowd in particular and Fundamentalist Christians in general whine about how they and their beliefs are being frozen out by scientists, universities and "intellectual elites," it seems a bit strange that you hear this kind of crowing:
Now, Christians can stand confidently within biblical truth knowing that it's in line with astrophysics and cosmology, said [Lee] Strobel, [author of The Case for a Creator] quoting a cosmology expert. "It is now the atheist who has to maintain by faith, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that the universe did not have a beginning."Strange, I hadn't noticed the slightest look of fear in Richard Dawkins ... or, for that matter, in other "atheists," such as Ken Miller.
I suppose that, sooner or later, rather than doing the hard work of actually developing theories for testing and seriously engaging the intellectual challenges, the temptation to declare victory to your followers, who are more than disposed to accept without question the enemy's surrender in absentia and parade off, is just too great.
