"Good News" is the title of the free magazine subscription I'm receiving from the United Church of God. The good news is that every couple months I'll receive a magazine with lots of anti-scientific propaganda for me to debunk. For example, the one I got yesterday is subtitled "Creation or Evolution: Which Is More Believable?" That depends, of course, on how you view the world.
Here are some juicy nuggets from the latest installment.
In an article entitled "The Evolution vs. Intelligent Design Debate" (an interview with Dr. Jonathan Wells, one of the senior "scientists" at the creationist propaganda machine The Discovery Institute), Dr. Wells claims that "no one has ever observed the origin of a new species... by variation and selection". That's a bit like saying that no one ever observed continents crashing into each other because of plate tectonics. It tends to happen too slowly for a single person to notice.
Another article, "How Darwin's Theory Changed the World", tries to paint the picture that the theory of evolution has eroded society into anarchy and unbridled self-indulgence. On the topic of sex... "In the minds of many, sex is solely for pleasure, and children are an inconvenience." Actually, the theory of evolution is the first and only natural explanation for sex. Saying that we have sex because God told us to is like saying that we have speed limits because the government imposed them. There is a deeper purpose behind speed limits, and there is a deeper reality behind the phenomenon of sex. But religion won't find it. Science and the theory of evolution are needed to fully understand it.
One more... in the same article they state "Anything and everything can be justified once you take God out of the picture." Sorry, but you've got it backwards. First of all, "anything and everything" HAS been happening since the dawn of time, so clearly God wasn't able to stop it. Furthermore, science is not in the business of offering justification for things. Science is a way to learn about how the world works, and cannot be used to make right-versus-wrong judgements. That's more of religion's territory. For example, the Bible contains a number of references to genocide. And what do we make of religions that contradict each other? They might justify YOUR extermination. Doncha kinda wish we were all on the same page in the book of reality?
[From intelligent-falling.blogspot.com]
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