My answer to the question in the title of the thread is a resounding yes. My personal opinion is that the fact of evolution increases my sense of wonder and awe about God as a creator.
steen wrote:
Rob wrote:
That is why personally, I feel it is so important for both religious and non-religious people who see clearly the difference between science and religion to stand up and to remain proactive in keeping creationism out of our class rooms.
Agreed. I am a Christian, but I see the creationists and ID crowd as liars who spit God in the eye, liars who deliberately are bearing false witness.
Steen,
I, too, am a Christian and I don't understand your accusation, I see the creationists and ID crowd as liars who spit God in the eye, liars who deliberately are bearing false witness
Can you explain why you feel this way about your fellow Christians?
jcrawford:
Calling Christians liars amounts to nothing less than religious bigotry on the part of neo-Darwinist liars even if they also call themselves Christians. I think steen and other neo-Darwinist religionists like him want to provoke religious civil strife in the U.S. much as the Sunni Muslims wish to do promote civil war in Iraq. I'm surprised that this website allows Christian neo-Darwinist race theorist supporters to call Christian creationists and their adherents liars because once they do that it would be a form of religious discrimination to censor or prohibit creationists from calling neo-Darwinist race theorists liars and the debate would simply degenerate into accusations by each side of the other side being liars and nothing but liars.
Well, I certainly can understand people getting their ire up at having those they identify with being called liars.
If we take a fairly strict definition and say a person is a liar or is lying if they
intentionally say or write something they know is not true than we can try to objectively determine if someone is lying.
Under this definition, I think we can find examples of creationists and ID proponents who are liars. This does not, in my view, mean all are liars of course.
Ron Wyatt seems to be one example. Another example is Jonathan Wells, who claimed in his book Icons of Evolution to have come to his anti-evolutionary views during the course of his graduate work in biology, while elsewhere he is quoted as saying he went to graduate school in order to better be able to work against evolution, I think at the institgation of Rev. Moon (see "The Wedge of Intelligent Design" for documentation). Here is but one example regarding
Duane Gish who is fairly famous for his untruthfulness, quoting out of context, etc. There are certainly other examples one could find.
More than out and out lying, I think the problem with many creationists, is that they are so committed to their pre-determined viewpoint that they can't or won't look at the evidence objectively or allow to change their viewpoint except in a 'tactical way.' By the latter, I mean they will change their viewpoint or the arguments used to support it if they find their existing tactics are becoming less effective or less credible. The admittance that evolution actually does occur, and then labeling it micro-evolution is one example of this.
With respect to jcrawford's quote, I can only say that in my view, a good deal of what you have written on this site I consider to be untruthful, and in fact, has been in my view shown to be untruthful (e.g. your claims that neo-Darwinism is racist), and yet no one has stopped you from repeating the same statements over and over. If something can be demonstrated to be untrue, than it seems to me the correct approach is to show or explain why it is, not simply cry 'not true, not true!' over and over.
No, we should not cavalierly call or group or a person a liar, but it is fair to criticize someone's truthfulness if a reasonable case can be made that the person is being untruthful on a habitual basis. Ad hominem attacks of any site member is, of course, against the rules, but logically showing how a person's statements are not true does not constitute an Ad hom attack.[/url]
