Evolution - Who wants to KNOW?

These religous' imbeciles don't know when to call it quits. Religious influence from Christians is getting to be frightful. Some of these guys are supposed to be the "better educated" amongst us.
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Evangelical Leaders Swing Influence Behind Effort to Combat Global Warming
LAURIE GOODSTEIN - Herald Tribune/The New York Times
A core group of influential evangelical leaders has put its considerable political power behind a cause that has barely registered on the evangelical agenda, fighting global warming.

These church leaders, scientists, writers and heads of international aid agencies argue that global warming is an urgent threat, a cause of poverty and a Christian issue because the Bible mandates stewardship of God's creation.

The Rev. Rich Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals and a significant voice in the debate, said, "I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created."

The association has scheduled two meetings on Capitol Hill and in the Washington suburbs on Thursday and Friday, where more than 100 leaders will discuss issuing a statement on global warming. The meetings are considered so pivotal that Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and officials of the Bush administration, who are on opposite sides on how to address global warming, will speak.

People on all sides of the debate say that if evangelical leaders take a stand, they could change the political dynamics on global warming.

The administration has refused to join the international Kyoto treaty and opposes mandatory emission controls.

The issue has failed to gain much traction in the Republican-controlled Congress. An overwhelming majority of evangelicals are Republicans, and about four out of five evangelicals voted for President Bush last year, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group of 51 church denominations, said he had become passionate about global warming because of his experience scuba diving and observing the effects of rising ocean temperatures and pollution on coral reefs.

"The question is, Will evangelicals make a difference, and the answer is, The Senate thinks so," Mr. Haggard said. "We do represent 30 million people, and we can mobilize them if we have to."

In October the association paved the way for broad-based advocacy on the environment when it adopted "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," a platform that included a plank on "creation care" that many evangelical leaders say was unprecedented.

"Because clean air, pure water and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order," the statement said, "government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."

Nearly 100 evangelical leaders have signed the statement.

But it is far from certain that a more focused statement on climate change would elicit a similar response.

In recent years, however, whenever the association latched onto a new issue, Washington paid attention, on questions like religious persecution, violence in Sudan, AIDS in Africa and sex trafficking of young girls.

Environmentalists said they would welcome the evangelicals as allies.
"They have good friendships in places where the rest of the environmental community doesn't," Larry J. Schweiger, president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, said. "For instance, in legislative districts where there's a very conservative lawmaker who might not be predisposed to pay attention to what environmental groups
might say, but may pay attention to what the local faith community is saying."

It is not as if the evangelical and environmental groups are collaborating, because the wedge between them remains deep, Mr. Cizik said. He added that evangelicals had long been uncomfortable with what they perceived to be the environmentalists' support for government regulation, population control and, if they are not entirely secular, new-age approaches to religion.

Over the last three years, evangelical leaders like Mr. Cizik have begun to reconsider their silence on environmental questions. Some evangelicals have spoken out, but not many. Among them is the Rev. Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network, who in 2002 began a "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign and drove a hybrid vehicle across the country.

Mr. Cizik said that Mr. Ball "dragged" him to a conference on climate change in 2002 in Oxford, England. Among the speakers were evangelical scientists, including Sir John Houghton, a retired Oxford professor of atmospheric physics who was on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a committee that issued international reports.

Sir John said in an interview that he had told the group that science and faith together provided proof that climate change should be a Christian concern.

Mr. Cizik said he had a "conversion" on climate change so profound in Oxford that he likened it to an "altar call," when nonbelievers accept Jesus as their savior. Mr. Cizik recently bought a Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle.

Mr. Cizik and Mr. Ball then asked Sir John to speak at a small meeting of evangelical leaders in June in Maryland called by the Evangelical Environmental Network, the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today, the magazine. The leaders read Scripture and said they were moved by three watermen who caught crabs in Chesapeake Bay and said their faith had made them into environmentalists.
Those leaders produced a "covenant" in which 29 committed to "engage the evangelical community" on climate change and to produce a "consensus statement" within a year. Soon, Christianity Today ran an editorial endorsing a bill sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, along with Mr. Lieberman, that would include binding curbs on heat-trapping gases. Mr. Ball said the strongest moral argument he made to fellow evangelicals was that climate change would have disproportionate effects on the poorest regions in the world. Hurricanes, droughts and floods are widely expected to intensify as a result of climate change.
Evangelical leaders of relief and development organizations had been very receptive, he said. "Christ said, 'What you do to the least of these you do to me,' " Mr. Ball said. "And so caring for the poor by reducing the threat of global warming is caring for Jesus Christ."
Among those speaking at the two meetings this week are Sir John and Dr. Mack McFarland, environmental manager for DuPont, who is to describe how his company has greatly reduced emissions of heat-trapping gases.
Such an approach appeals to evangelicals, Mr. Haggard said, adding, "We want to be pro-business environmentalists."
Mr. Cizik said he was among many evangelicals who would support some regulation on heat-trapping gases.
"We're not adverse to government-mandated prohibitions on behavioral sin such as abortion," he said. "We try to restrict it. So why, if we're social tinkering to protect the sanctity of human life, ought we not be for a little tinkering to protect the environment?"
Mr. Lieberman added: "Support from the evangelical and broader religious community can really move some people in Congress who feel some sense of moral responsibility but haven't quite settled on an exact policy response yet. This could be pivotal."

CI, this is why I'm beginning to think the active stance "I believe there is no god" is more useful than the " I know nothing" agnostic approach, because, while it makes you no more right than the theists, it gives you a chance to at least make a stand against this type of thing. Thoughts?

I've done my share of verbal battles with Frank Apisa on thiis very subject; but I remain, and will always be an Atheist. For me, it's not a matter of knowing or not knowing; it's a matter of no proof. Just because there are things in science we still do not know doesn't make the big jump to agnostic. This planet is almost 5 billioin years old, and 'science' is a relative newcomer to man's knowledge base when it comes to understanding this universe of ours. That's no surprise to me; with more technology and scientific research and anthropological/geological-paleontology advances, we learn more almost every day. We've advanced a great deal since the flat earth days. We don't know concerning god(s) just doesn't cut it for me.

But if there really is a God, will science be able to prove it?

In generral, science can't prove or disprove a supernatural concept.

But, if science found a God and was able to test it and interact with it, science itself would never conclude that what had found was a God. It would only say that certain aspects of the phenomena were not yet understood by science, and it would continue to try to understand how the phenomena worked. Even if the phenomena said, "I am a God", and tried to prove it, science still couldn't stop trying to figure out how it worked. There's simply no way for science itself to ever conclude that something was a God. The tests would go on endlessly trying to understand how the "God" did what it did. Science benefits from, but is limited to, the assuumption of Naturalism. So far, nothing has challenged that assumption under rigorous analysis, but even if something did, we would simply conclude that the analysis was lacking, not the assumption.

So you're saying that you can never disprove God?

Correct. Supernatural assumptions are outside the realm of proof. Science doesn't even attempt to prove or disprove God. Science only explains the world around us in naturalistic terms.

The problem most people have is that science proceeds from an assumption of naturalism, which some people reject out of hand. But science is not a world view, it's a methodology within a world view.

Most people who object to science or evolution as threats to their view, are really objecting to naturalism, and that's fine, it's their opinion, but it doesn't change the way science works, or the things which science reveals.

Why are there atheists then? Wouldn't they all be agnostic?

Frank is gonna love you

Philosophically, we can't know anything for certain, but if I were to tell you that there is a teacup in orbit around Pluto, you might think, "well that *could* be true, but in reality I know it "isn't* true". Your view on the teacup assumption would be agnostic in a philosophical sense, but athiest in a realistic sense.

Would you then choose to represent yourself philosphically, or realistically? If you had to bet your life on the truth, how would you bet?

Isn't there something like agnostic theism? I believe the bible, but many times, I cannot tell when it is being literal and when it is metaphorical.

"...I cannot tell when it is being literal and when it is metaphorical." As the literal word of god, I find that to be one of the major weaknesses of the bible including the conflicting verses.

Here we go again...conflicting or complementary...there is a difference.

Complementary? ha ha ha ha ha best laugh for today.

cicerone

I don't think it is not a matter of proof. If the christian God is transcendent - I mean, beyond our senses and reason - how could science prove or disprove it's existence?

The problem, to me, is that no religion I know has, until today, given a definition of God. What is God?
The Bible, other religious books, tell us what God did. But not what he is.
So, when we are talking about God, we are talking about what? An empty concept. A word with no meaning.
To me, it makes no sense at all to say that "God exists", the same as "God doesn't exist". What does or doesn't exist? If we replace God by a X the result is the same.
So, I prefer not even consider the question about God. It has no real meaning.

Val. I agree. The vagueness is furthermore essential. Any effort to actually define God generally opens the way for straightforward refutation, something religious psychotics, (like our vermin-in-chief), simply cannot abide.

val, It's almost impossible to prove a negative. That's the reason why nobody tries to prove santa clause. Religion is based solely on one book and faith. Science is based on observable facts and logic. Nobody can prove god, because it depends solely on faith and belief. Have you seen god? Well, I have seen many proofs of evolution which have been identified by scientists. I have seen no proof of any god or gods; only some book christians call a bible that claims there is a god.

cicerone

As I said I don't think it is possible to see a proof of God's existence.
So, God and religion, have no place in my life. I am not an atheist, because if I were, I had to define the God I say not existent. And, I repeat, I never saw a definition of God.
I can say I don't believe in santa clause, in fairies, in unicorns, because there are definitions for them. If no one ever saw an unicorn, then I must believe that there are no unicorns (at least until someone sees one).
But with God it is different. I see God as a word, a word without meaning. I don't want to offend religious people, but I cannot even understand what kind of thing they believe.
I always lived without any God perspective. God, as I said, wasn't and isn't part of my life. Perhaps just a metaphor.

val,

by the correct definition, you are an athiest. It simply means you don't actively believe in any gods, and that requires no proof. a-theism = without theism.

Some believe that there ARE NO GODS and that is a different thing, and that does require proof.

I am not sure what you guys are talking about. Scientific proof generally involves physical evidence. "Gods" are non-physical (or strictly spiritual).

The late Stephen Jay Gould fought many battles involving evolution versus creationism. In his book, Rocks of Ages, he discusses how science and religion belong to separate domains. As an illustration of his views, he even discusses the New Testament story of the apostle Thomas who refuses to believe the resurrection of Jesus unless he has physical evidence.

There's a very good debate between Gould and Dawkins on this issue. I believe Dawkins handily got the better of Gould and his talk of seperate "magesteria" for religion and science--a case I found particularly unpersuasive.

Religion most certainly DOES make statements and predictions concerning the natural world. As these statements and predictions tend to be utterly dismissible hogwash bearing no relation to the real world, I would disagree with the contention that science has failed to supplant religion among normal, healthy people.