Happy Darwin Day!

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

What has the above got to do with the subject of this column? Did you intend to put this under another column, where people were discussing “kinds”?

The central slide comes from the video in the link above (and below)

Celebrate by watching (and sharing) this great video about evidence for evolution.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at

http://biologos.org/blogs/chris-stump-equipping-educators/happy-darwin-day3

The ENTIRE video is about whales … and so I thought that it was particularly appropriate to point out that Whales make for a pretty good exemplar regarding the discussion of KINDS.

George

[dscottjorgenson (Scott Jorgenson)]

Eddit:

“But of course, God, if he initiated the process of evolution, was fully responsible for all its consequences. So the attempt to distance God from horrible natural evils failed with Darwin, as it fails now.”

This may be off-topic… but I’m not sure I agree with your allegation here. I think the best scientific evidence suggests that mind/brain dualism is false and we volitional creatures are monistic in mind and body. Our minds are ultimately chemistry and physics; our hope at eternal life is in resurrection and re-creation, not in the survival of disembodied minds, souls or spirits… but I digress. Returning to my point, we are chemistry and physics and so too are tsunamis and volcanoes and viruses and evolution - so I fail to see a hard-and-fast line separating natural evil from moral evil. And so if being the Creator and Sustainer means that God is “fully” responsible for the one, it means he is also “fully” responsible for the other. And vice-versa, if despite our materialistic minds we can be said to have freedom, then likewise creation can to a certain degree be said to have “freedom”. And if that means that God is not fully or primarily responsible for our evil, then neither is he so for the evil in nature.

[dcscccc]

@dscottjorgenson

Our minds are ultimately chemistry and physics;

so when someone create a car its just chemistry and physics?

[dcscccc]

" She genuinely seemed to believe that evidence like this doesn’t exist - "

she actually right. there is indeed no scientific evidence for a macro evolution that we can test. and by scientific a mean that its testable.

[beaglelady]

@Eddie

I’ve read Darwin’s Autobiography a few times, and I’ve read every letter of his pertaining to religion that I’m aware of, and have read several biographical accounts of his thought by specialist Darwin scholars. It is an overstatement on your part to write: “He never thought that evolution and Christian belief were incompatible.” You don’t know what he thought; you can speak only about what he wrote.

In that case, how do the biographers know what Darwin thought?

[fmiddel]

The actual pronunciation of π is “pee.” People shouldn’t eat pie to celebrate π. They should…something else…?

[beaglelady]

Here is a very well-known quote from a letter Charles Darwin wrote to John Fordyce dated 7 May 1879:

It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.

[beaglelady]

[quote=“Eddie, post:31, topic:4414”]
The difference between a scholar and someone who is just proof-texting is that a scholar systematically examines all of Darwin’s statements pertaining to religion, and does not simply pick out those which tend to favor his or her own preferred view of Darwin’s thought. The statement you quote must be read alongside all the others. When all the others are taken into account, it’s quite clear that Darwin felt a very strong tension between the form of “Theism” best known to him and his readers – Christianity – and the results of his own researches. [/quote]

Well then, show us how it’s done. Nobody is stopping you. Systematically examines all of Darwin’s statements pertaining to religion, and present your findings here.

[beaglelady]

There is nothing wrong with my quote, and it is very well-known. If you think there is something wrong with it let me know. Perhaps you are simply upset over the idea of having a Darwin Day?

[beaglelady]

@Eddie

I didn’t say there was anything wrong with your quotation. I don’t deny that Darwin said that. But it provides nothing like an adequate account of Darwin’s own personal religious views, or even of his theoretical views regarding the relationship between evolution and God.

It was a simple blog post. Keep that in mind. It wasn’t meant to give an exhaustive account of Darwin’s religious views. But it did show that Darwin thought that his theory was compatible with Theism. If you don’t think so, by all means show us.