It's always nice to be reminded that not all who call themselves Christian are dishonest anti-science ideologues who use their beliefs to justify their haughty disdain for reality. Henry Neufeld is a self described liberal Methodist who has a few things to say about Expelled, and he nails every reason why the movie gets it all wrong with admirable succinctness. From its confusion over what "free speech" really means, to his unequivocal condemnation of the movie's most brazen lie — that "Darwinism" led inexorably to Nazism and the Holocaust, when in fact the teaching of Darwin's theory was banned in both the Third Reich and Stalinist Russia, and Hitler famously credited his own anti-Semitism to a certain invisible guy in the sky — there's not a single one of Stein and Co.'s reprehensible falsehoods Neufeld doesn't take down. His most interesting point is one which is liable to raise the hackles of most of Neufeld's brothers in Christ.
Repeatedly, Ben Stein equates the theory of evolution with atheism, and claims that all ID wants is to open the door to considering that God might have done something. Evolution may be incompatible with certain forms of Biblical interpretation, but it is in no way incompatible with basic theism.
Neufeld's batted 1000 here. True, Dawkins' passage from The Blind Watchmaker to the effect that "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" is the one often flogged by creos who want to condemn evolution as a tool of the Devil to turn everyone away from Jebus. And the "evolution=atheism" link has been effective in pushing the emotional hot buttons of scientifically illiterate religionists. But, while it's true that evolution does explain how nature works entirely on its own to effect biodiversity without any "need of that hypothesis," it's also true the theory itself is not fundamentally incompatiable with some notions of theism.
The deistic god is one who is said simply to have created the world and then left it alone. So evolution has to be operative under deism. But if the Christian God is supposed to be omnipotent, there's no reason why he couldn't have done his business via evolution either. Indeed many liberal Christians have attacked creationism on this very point, that a bunch of stick-up-the-ass fundies are trying to dictate to God how he must have created life, and that it could not have been by evolution. How arrogant! Heh heh.
I, of course, think the concept of God is entirely superfluous, but again, Neufeld's right in that a basic understanding of the principles of Darwin's theory does not necessitate atheism. On the other hand, as I read from some commenter elsewhere this morning, the makers of Expelled must be completely clueless doorknobs if they think the Nazi Holocaust is a great argument for the loving God of the Bible!
Thanks for the link. I'd like to note that I see no conflict with Dawkins' statement. Indeed, having a viable view of origins is significant to atheism, but that has no impact on the truth of the proposition at all. You and I presumably both believe that murder is wrong, but that does not make it either a Christian or an atheist idea.
ReplyDeleteEvolution is an overwhelmingly well-supported scientific theory. Who it helps with their philosophical musings isn't relevant. It just is.