For the sixth time, hundreds of religious congregations on six continents will participate in an event designed to demonstrate that the most exciting scientific findings pose no threat to deeply held religious belief. Indeed, the leaders and members of these congregations recognize that as science teaches us more about how the natural world functions, their faith becomes stronger rather than weaker. And, although there are some who find it difficult to accept, participants are fully comfortable embracing the basic principles of science without having to forsake the most important aspects of their faith.
The weekend of Feb. 11-13 is the sixth annual Evolution Weekend, an event sponsored by The Clergy Letter Project, an organization of more than 14,000 clergy members and scientists. In addition to demonstrating that religion and science can comfortably coexist, the event was created to achieve a number of additional important goals.
Promoters of Evolution Weekend want to create a space to explore the relationship between religion and science. They want to elevate the "dialogue" on the subject that has devolved into sound bites with shouts claiming that people must choose between religion and science passing as "discourse." They also want to demonstrate that it is possible to truly discuss complex issues, issues that have divided many, with sincerity and respect. Finally, they want to prove to all who are willing to take notice, that those fundamentalists who claim to be speaking on behalf of religion are not speaking for thousands of clergy and the religions they represent.
Along these lines, it is well worth noting that Evolution Weekend participants come from across the full breadth of the religious and political spectrum. Some are from our largest cathedrals while others are from tiny rural parishes. A wide variety of races and ethnicities are represented. Males and females, old and young, conservatives and liberals are all taking part in Evolution Weekend. Christians from a host of denominations, as well as Jews and Muslims are all participating. Evolution Weekend has become an opportunity for such a diverse group of people to come together and celebrate what they have in common: love for their religion and respect for science.
The name and date of Evolution Weekend were selected to help achieve yet another goal of The Clergy Letter Project: to rehabilitate the "E" word -- Evolution.
Ever since the Scopes Trial in 1925, evolution has been under attack by those who think it is more important to promote their narrow religious perspective than to understand the natural world. In the immediate aftermath of the Scopes Trial, virtually all traces of evolution vanished from American science textbooks and evolution remained missing until the early 1960s, when Americans realized that Soviet science education was fast outpacing American science education.
Creationists, in the name of religion, first outlawed the teaching of human evolution and then, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional, they began to use a number of ruses to promote their religious doctrines by claiming they were in favor of freedom on inquiry. They pretended to turn their religion into science by calling it "creation science" and when that too was ruled unconstitutional they changed the name again and promoted "intelligent design." The U.S. courts also ruled that strategy unconstitutional. Despite all of these legal setbacks, creationists have kept up their relentless attack on evolution, the most important concept in all of biology. It has been termed a religion. It has been portrayed as nothing more than a "theory." And it has been characterized, by those with precious little biological background, as pseudoscientific claptrap.
Despite the lack of intellectual and scientific substance to the attacks on evolution, the constant refrain from creationists that evolution is responsible for virtually all of modern society's ills has largely shaped the public's perception of the issue. Large segments of the public, ignorant of both basic biology and common theology, reject evolution believing that it is bad science and contrary to their religious beliefs. Even as scientists, building upon the principles of evolutionary theory, make the most astounding breakthroughs in the understanding of the human genome, leading to medical advances previously only dreamed possible, creationists work tirelessly to keep evolution from being taught in our public schools. Most politicians are scared to endorse this basic biological principle fearing a backlash in the name of religion.
Evolution Weekend is attempting to change all of that. By being celebrated on the weekend closest to the birth of Charles Darwin (Feb. 12, 1809), the founder of the modern view of evolution, Evolution Weekend purposefully brings attention to the single issue that religious fundamentalists find most abhorrent. Participants are not looking to deify Darwin, however. Instead, they are simply attempting to demonstrate that his ideas, reshaped enormously in the 152 years since he published On the Origin of Species, are important to a modern worldview and are fully compatible with modern religious teachings. By doing this, they are proudly taking active steps to publicly define religion in a positive manner.
The clergy members who are celebrating Evolution Weekend recognize the critical role science education should play in our society -- and they recognize that religion plays a different, but, in their minds, no less important, role. Join these forward-looking individuals, celebrate Evolution Weekend and help create a population that better understands both religion and science.
Follow Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mzclergyletter
Matt J. Rossano: The (Lack Of) Conflict Between Science and Religion in College Students
Over 850 Congregations Mark Evolution Weekend 2010 | Christianpost.com
Evolution Sunday - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Churches celebrate Darwin's birth on “Evolution Weekend” – The ...
The Clergy Letter Project - Butler University
It's celebrated as part of the permanent Fact24/7 program, an ongoing series of engagements with reality that point out that the physical world doesn't much care whether you have imaginary friends or not.
You can join in the Fact24/7 activities by looking out of the window, testing a hypothesis, or best-of-all by questioning the grounds on which you believe things that make no sense.
But the thing is, God is far from the only thing in our experience that contradicts science. Me being me does not exist outside of my experience, and the me that I experience can certainly not exist as an agent outside of physical reality any more than God can exist as an agent outside of physical reality, at least according to science. The brain creates agents in our experience, not because it is trying to render an accurate representation of reality, but because it works to maintain homeostasis. If our brain created a completely accurate rendition of reality, we would be dead. There is no foul in experiencing the theories of the brain as transparently real. Life is not rational, and as the theist points out, the atheist rationalist has himself for a god.
I appreciate your interest in the bible - but read it first. I think many people say things without an ounce of research.
And, evolution was under attack way before Scopes. Darwin himself was under attack, even within his own mind, and waited 20 years to publish his work because of the angst he knew it would cause.
Help us evolve away from religion.
Amen
But the views of founders of religions (and their followers) on the material world are hopelessly confused and amateurish version of whatever passed for cosmology and study of Nature at that time.
it is important for clerics and religious philosophers to leave the study of the Universe and the material world well alone and focus on moral and ethical education of the people willing to follow their particular ideology.
...but that is not going to happen.
How the physical universe relates to us and eternity is one study.
In the gatherings of our Maker, everyone is allowed to speak. The truth is what rules regardless of where it comes from.
That is the way that it should be in science too. No factual information should be off limits.
Our geology is evidence of a global flood because nothing else is able to carry and deposit that amount of sediment everywhere around the globe.
There is also never any function in the universe without having a maker of that function. Intelligence does not come from mud. Objects are unable to do anything without having orders or being ordered.
We need some sanity in science. Everything has a cause and every function has the intent of a maker.
Mutations are far too slow and are more detrimental than anything which is the reason mutations are corrected. The uniform variation of species is by design because variation has intent and maintains the order of the kind of species it is.
Function in the universe does not require a maker. No one suggests intelligence came from mud. It is not necessary for objects to be intentionally ordered in order for them to do something.
Everything has a cause, but not every function demonstrates intent.
Mutations are not too slow, although they are usually detrimental, but they are not always corrected. The variation of species is not uniform, demonstrating that there is no intent. We have observed speciation occurring, thus variation does not maintain the order of the kind of species something is.
But if you insist, lets start with these 'strata' and 'deposits' that your church pamphlets talk about. Please name a site and location where these unexplainable sediment cores were taken from. After you can name a specific drilling site, then we can go to the geology literature to find the explanation for those sediments, how and when they were deposited, etc.
I'm perfectly willing to help you follow this trail of evidence if you wish. Really, I am Daleri, I'll go to libraries and track it down for you. But I already know how this story will end. It will end with the church pamphlet that conveniently does not cite the location or core samples that they are talking about.
Science and discovery have steadily whittled away at the territory of christianity so that now the only tiny scrap left is an extremely abstract, fuzzy, undefinable notion of a god-like energy that permeates the universe. It is this last tiny remnant that the author and other apologists for the churches cling to. These essays invariably claim that the fundamentalists are only a tiny minority. This is a lie. Again, the polls, most christians believe in the creation myths. And this is born out by their massive tax-free christian political machines that are infiltrating school boards and electing uneducated idealogues into office. The christians in Ohio and Florida put Bush and his neocons in power for eight years causing millions of ravaged lives from two unwinnable wars. And possibly even worse than that, they promote the notion that our dwindling resources, environmental degradation and population growth rates are non-issues because Jesus will come back to earth and save us.
Civilization will not survive it's collision course with limited resources unless we defeat christianity.
We still have resources. We need people to harvest them.
It is not Christians that are using up the resources anyway.
All we have to do is to eat more kinds of foods.
The myth is evolution because you cannot account for the amount of sediments that are in the strata.
Your posts are directly from church pamphlets that they give you right before they pass the collection plate. You need to take some college classes, or even high school classes about these subjects before you try to write about them.
We still have resources. We have plenty of people to harvest them.
Christians are using as much resources as everyone else.
All we have to do is eat more kinds of food until those are gone as well.
The myth is Creationism because we *can* account for the amount of sediments that in the strata.
Give me a specific example where science contradicts evolution.
Geology supports evolution and does not support the flood. We have explained to you numerous times about the amount of sediment.
Everything scientists have proven is a fact. It is just that future facts have not been discovered. Many things in science contradict what the Bible says.
Science does not contradict evolution in the slightest way. There is so much just bias against Scripture it's funny. You Creationists accept a belief that is totally baseless.
Geology *does* support evolution. it does not support the flood. We can explain (and have explained) the amount of sediments that the strata consists of.
This quote stands in such stark contrast to another excellent quote you cited a couple days ago in response to a different article.
"There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn."
Attributed to St. Augustine.
Fanned and faved!
--ez
The second more pressing question is how they reconcile the two. One approach is to say evolution is true but God interferes, say to give us key adaptations or intelligence and a soul. Well, there is no evidence of God interfering in evolution. Also, God interfering is still intelligent design. Another common approach is basically to opt for deism: God created the laws of nature and left. Well, that's not Christianity then, its deism.
The question is whether Christianity and evolution are truly compatible. On one hand it is wonderful to have all these intelligent religious people accept the science. On the other hand, I don't think Christianity is compatible with evolution, evolution is at best compatible with deism and not with a personal god.
As the ancient world didn't distinguish the physical from the metaphysical world, we should understand this when reading the story. The authors intended it to be at least as much a theological statement as anything else. Moses wasn't a history junkie.
Please define what you mean by God. Is God an intelligent being? What is his attributes and abilities? What is he role in the world? Is this a personal god or more like a deist god?
Secondly, I have to wonder: you are talking about what ancient people thought. Ancient people didn't even know that disease was caused by germs and viruses, they thought it had something to do with bad behavior. They didn't even know to wash their hands. Really, why are you even giving what they thought the time of day, as if to adopt their views as your own? Why even waste time on theology?
It is one thing to take up the Bible as literature, as an appreciation of good storytelling and the artistic achievements of your fellow humans. Its something entirely different to take an outdated book written by people who didn't understand how the world work and then try to interpret it as to make it part of your life.
I'm sorry your vision of what it means to be Christian and also believe in evolution is so narrow. A lot of people seem to be able to do it without your imprimatur.
I'm guessing you are a Christian, otherwise you probably wouldn't point out "I accept evolution.". It wouldn't have been relevant. Okay then, how do you define God and what is God's role in the world?
as we see that many theists piggy back on science for relevance. Evolution is true! Yeah yeah oh I know, my god totally did that, it's not in the bible cause it was a secret.
Science has been around since the 7th century BC. Maybe if we just wait a little longer....
Only in the last 100 years has science been able to flourish, and look what that lead us to, people can literally get their hearts replaced, we can fly, go to the moon, and just recently a man in Berlin was cured of HIV
Evolution just has no connection to reality.
There is no reason to believe such a thing ever happened.