Jeremy Price's Library tagged darwin → View Popular

The true beauty of Rav Kook’s approach, however, is not its pragmatism but its piety. He believes that God is the premise, not the conclusion. His God is not ascertained in scientific arguments but through perception and faith.
Rav Kook explicitly rejects the very moral logic of seeking God through the scientific means: “We do not base our faith in God on an inference from the existence of the world, or the character of the world, but on inner sensibility, on our disposition for the divine (ibid.).”
3 more annotations...
- We believe that God maintains each spinning electron not because we can think of no better explanation for physics but because that is our core belief about God. And our belief in God does not preclude our working to examine and understand the workings of His world as fully as is possible.
- In fact, for Rav Kook the developing conception of science is important because it fosters a developing conception of God. Conversely, Rav Kook would argue that atheism among evolutionary theorists is not a sign that something is wrong with the structure of biological science, but rather as a sign that something is wrong with religion.
- But the real challenge we religious Jews face is not to destroy what Darwin built but to build what Rav Kook envisioned, a living religion as dazzling in its way as Darwinian science is in its way.

23 Feb 09

apologies to the memory of Charles Darwin | ken wilson online

kenwilsononline.com/...o-the-memory-of-charles-darwin - Preview

darwin controversy curriculum evolution religion

Charles Darwin was a tender soul. He eventually lost his rather conventional nineteenth century Anglican belief. It wasn’t science that led to his loss of faith. It was a broken heart.

Charles Darwin lost three of his eight children. It was the loss of his daughter Annie at the age of ten, a cruel and drawn out dying, that dealt his waning faith a crushing blow. He missed the public unveiling of his new theory because he was tending to another dead child.

Darwin wasn’t eager to start a culture war. About the time that his speculations about the origin of species appeared in his private journals, he began to suffer chronic, lifelong and undiagnosed maladies. He hated conflict.
The religious authorities of his day held great power in England. Anglican clergymen practiced “natural theology” as a hobby–the only real biology of his time. The doctrine of a static and special creation of each species independent of the others under-girded the social order: everything forever in its proper place, gender, race and class, right up to her majesty, the Queen. This doctrine supported the notion that slaves belonged in the fields and women in the parlor, serving tea.
9 more annotations...
- Darwin’s nerdy findings were going up against the powers and the principalities of his time.
- And what was his seditious idea? That one can account for the variety of species by a natural mechanism. When considered through the lens of time, the line between species is not so firmly fixed: one population of creatures becomes more like the members who breed the most and pass on their survival edge to offspring.
- He called his idea “natural selection,” as contrasted with the intentional selection of a breeder who in a few generations can shape a line of dogs or cats or pigeons as he pleases. It was nature’s means of selection. (Darwin was agnostic regarding nature’s God.)
- Darwin’s idea made perfect sense to B.B. Warfield, the father of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
- After reading The Origin of Species Warfield wrote, “I do not think that there is any general statement in the Bible or any part of the account of creation, either as given in Genesis 1 and 2 or elsewhere alluded to, that need be opposed to evolution.” This, by the way, is the same B.B. Warfield who contributed articles to that set of pamphlets called “The Fundamentals“–yes, the same volumes that gave “Fundamentalism” its name. (When it comes to science these days, most evangelicals are more sectarian in outook than were the founders of the modern American fundamentalist movement.)
- these evangelicals took the time to understand Darwin’s idea and consider the evidence for it. They sought to understand the man before calling him dangerous or his ideas heretical. They could understand if the man was too busy with his beetles and barnacles to integrate these new scientific insights with Christian faith. That was a task for people more steeped in theology than he.
- We’re hard on our scientists, we doctrine and dogma-driven Christians–we who sometimes use religion as a form of control. We who parrot the party line without stopping to think what we’re saying or why. Galileo felt the wrath of our kind in his time. Quick to condemn, slow to apologize for getting it wrong.
- I for one, on behalf of my tribe, am sorry.
- ex-christian, I think you’re making the same mistake that many evangelicals do when reading Genesis 1, that is reading it as though it were meant to be in the language and the mental construct of modern science. So genesis 1 is not presented as a scientific hypothesis. It’s a different genre of writing with its own groundrules like every other genre. Young earthers make the same mistakes, hence they refer to “creation science”. The Bible is not written in the framework of modern science since the framework didn’t exist when the bible is written. God,the Bible speaks in the thought forms of the day, not centuries hence. Unfortunately we won’t be able to keep this dialogue going on this post, as I’m reserving for evangelicals who want to say “amen” to my post and secular scientist who want to respond to my inquiry. Doing something a little different with this post, in others. We can pick up the conversation later.

You Say You Want An Evolution, Well Y’know… « Carl Safina

carlsafina.wordpress.com/...u-want-an-evolution-well-yknow - Preview

controversy evolution science critique darwin

I separated Darwin and his work from the ideological and quasi-religious impression that the word “Darwinism” apparently conveys to many non-scientists. I also sought to boil Darwin’s insight on natural selection to its barest essentials, and to show that evolution and our understanding of it is now much bigger than the subject of Darwin.
once you take away the courage and insight required at the time, and once you put in perspective the ensuing 150 years of research—natural selection is so simple, so obvious, that it need not be seen as arcane or threatening.
12 more annotations...
- Darwin remains lightning rod and whipping boy for many people who simply don’t realize that there is much more evolutionary science done since Charles Darwin than by him, comprising whole disciplines of genetics, molecular biology, developmental biology, etc. Getting some of the pressure off poor Darwin, and some of the attention to these other scientific advances, could only help public understanding of evolution (and reflect well on Darwin’s insightfulness in the process). Or so I thought; not everyone agreed, and many people missed the point entirely.
- Objection: ‘We scientists know very well that there is a difference between Darwin and all the work on evolution since. We don’t confuse the two.’
- Most people have no idea what evolution is or means, and many are under the impression it’s just something scientists believe because Darwin said so.
- calling evolution Darwinism, as many scientists and even more science writers do, is sloppy, and helps keep the public ignorant of the fact that while Darwin was right about most things, we know how right he was (or that he was wrong, unaware, or incomplete about some things like genetics) only because of 150 years of testing and advancing science by thousands of researchers.
- We’ve concluded he was right because lengthy debate, research, challenge, and testing, as well as new fields of science like genetics, molecular biology, developmental biology, and behavioral ecology have show Darwin was mainly right—life evolves. And we know this not because we simply believe what he wrote.
- I don’t “believe in” evolution. To me, it’s an obvious and proven fact that life evolves.
- “Believing in” any “-ism” does not seem scientific to me. I believe things once I’m convinced of the evidence. Believing “in” is the language of faith and not of science (though many scientists believe in God, for example).
- ‘Only when we get past Darwinism, and fully acknowledge the subsequent century-and-a-half of value added, can we really appreciate both Darwin’s genius and the fact that evolution is life’s driving force.’
- constantly making it seem to the public that evolution begins and ends with Darwin, or that Darwin is equivalent with evolution, or that we believe dogmatically in what Darwin said because he said it, or that teaching evolution is exactly the same as “teaching Darwin”—and many, many non-scientists have exactly that impression—those are things that give aid and comfort (and worse, ammunition) to enemies of science and of reason.
- Don’t use a word that sounds like an ideology or religion (Darwinism) to describe a science. It confuses people about evolution, and evolution is too important for people to stay confused about. Language matters.
- “Darwinism,” and equating evolution almost entirely with Darwin in the public mind, sounds more religious than it does scientific. And that helps open a space for religion to demand equal time in what is actually a scientific topic: evolution, or teaching about evolution.
- we stop to remember Darwin’s 200th Birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of the Species, I think it is appropriate to remember him for his discoveries, his determination, and his persistence, while at the same time remembering that this is not a static theory, but one being revised all the time as more discoveries are made.
  
  So, while Darwinism maybe should die—as an ideology Darwin himself never would have abided—Charles Darwin’s genius should be celebrated. -Posted by Pastor Bob Cornwall.

Framing Science : Safina Responds to Criticism of His Call to End Darwin Worship

scienceblogs.com/...na_responds_to_criticism_o.php - Preview

evolution darwin controversy critique

17 Feb 09

Seed: Darwin 200

www.seedmagazine.com/darwin_200.php - Preview

darwin science evolution controversy

12 Feb 09

1 - 20 of 21 Next ›

Showing 20▼ items per page

Selected Tags

darwin

Related Tags

Top Contributors

Click in to find related links.

Groups interested in darwin

Ciencias Mundo Contemporáneo

Members (9)

bookmarks (983)
BioGeo

Members (12)

bookmarks (1834)
Science teachers

Members (206)

bookmarks (1084)

Related Lists on Diigo

Darwin

items on Charles Darwin and...

Items: 7 | Visits: 3

Created by: Jorge GG
Charles Darwin and The Voyage of the Beagle

This is a set of bookmarks ...

Items: 11 | Visits: 14

Created by: Robin Heyden

Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »

Join Diigo