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Pro's and Con's of "A Small Mind" |
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Articles - Real News -
Small Minds
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Written by Nigel Aves
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Monday, 17 November 2008 14:30 |
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Pro's and Con's of A Small Mind' Is science becoming a lost art or throw back to Alchemy. Nigel Aves. 2008 Once again, yesterday I managed to get into a barn burner of an argument over "Intelligent Design - Creationalist". And once again I was told I was stupid for not believing in the power of ‘their' God. Isn't it strange that it's only their God who is the true god?  Let's spend a little time and investigate this. How many Gods are there? When we look at a list of the major world religions (including those who don't believe) just which God is really the real God and that's assuming that there actually is a God. - Christianity: 2.1 billion
 - Islam: 1.5 billion
- Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
- Hinduism: 900 million
- Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
- Buddhism: 376 million
- primal-indigenous: 300 million
- African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
- Sikhism: 23 million
- Juche: 19 million
- Spiritism: 15 million
- Judaism: 14 million
- Baha'i: 7 million
- Jainism: 4.2 million
- Shinto: 4 million
- Cao Dai: 4 million
- Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
- Tenrikyo: 2 million
- Neo-Paganism: 1 million
- Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
- Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
- Scientology: 500 thousand
It should be of no surprise that Christianity comes out on top with an impressive 2.1 billion people believing but let's break that down a little. This is all forms of Christianity and as we all know there are many branches to the overall group that believes in Jesus. There are approx. 1.1 billion Catholics and I think it's very fair to say that the differences in Catholic teachings to other Christianity based teachings is actually quite enormous and does not fit in well. So we know have Christianity as two groups with approx. 1 billion on each leg. (Should these be considered the same God? I feel not because the Catholic Church has supposedly had the "hot line to heaven" for the past 1900 years and with some of their enormous mess-ups with science over the centuries it's obvious that their God had no interest at all in guiding them along the correct scientific path. One would also have to assume that if the earth is actually only 6-8 thousand years old their God would have given them the nod a long time ago! Is there an argument to be made that they have their beliefs so off base that God ignores them? If that is true then all the Christian based religions have it wrong!) But we can break this down even further with major branches of Christianity.. - Anglican Communion ** : 77,000,000
- Seventh-day Adventist Church: 16,811,519
- Jehovah's Witnesses: 16,500,000
- Southern Baptist Convention: 16,000,000
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 12,275,822
- United Methodist Church : 11,708,887
When you actually break things down and looking at the list above one can easily see with the examples given these branches have very different teachings, what their particular God is looking for in them and so ultimately one has to presume that even though this is all classified as Christianity in actuality even these branches seem to have their own God. Origins? So where does Intelligent Design come from? Originally of course the idea was born on the Creationalist side of things and deeply woven into a form of Fundamental Christianity, but that had to change (in the USA)  because the Founding Fathers made it clear that Church and State can not mix and therefore to it's logical conclusion down to the school systems. This being the case it would be impossible to teach Creationalist ideology in schools (see court cases; ‘Engel v. Vitale' and ‘Abington School District v. Schempp'), so the religious part of it was extracted and Intelligent Design was born. One thing you will discover that with the total loss of any religious teachings in school the extreme forms of Right based Christianity became very involved in the politics of the USA.. See below for more information on the Fundamentalist Christian Right. One very interesting court case did bring Intelligent Design  to the forefront. But did it actually do any good? Biochemistry professor Michael Behe, the originator of the argument of irreducible complexity, defines an irreducibly complex system as one "composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning".  These examples are said to demonstrate that modern biological forms could not have evolved naturally. Critics consider that most, or all, of the examples were based on misunderstandings of the workings of the biological systems in question, and consider the low quality of these examples excellent evidence for the argument from ignorance. In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Behe gave testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."Nonetheless, irreducible complexity continues to be cited as an important argument by creationists, particularly intelligent design proponents. Is there a unified Creationalist ideal? Simple answer is no. | Comparison of major creationist views | |
| Humanity | Biological species | Earth | Universe | | Young Earth creationism | Directly created by God. | Directly created by God. Macroevolution does not occur. | Less than 10,000 years old. Reshaped by global flood. | Less than 10,000 years old. | | Gap creationism | Directly created by God. | Directly created by God. Macroevolution does not occur. | Scientifically accepted age. Reshaped by global flood. | Scientifically accepted age. | | Progressive creationism | Directly created by God (based on primate anatomy). | Direct creation + evolution. No single common ancestor. | Scientifically accepted age. No global flood. | Scientifically accepted age. | | Intelligent design | N/A | Divine intervention at some point in the past, as evidenced by what intelligent-design creationists call "irreducible complexity" | Some adherents claim the existence of Earth is the result of divine intervention | Some adherents believe in the teleological argument, that the existence of Universe is the result of divine intervention | | Theistic evolution | Evolution from primates. | Evolution from single common ancestor. | Scientifically accepted age. No global flood. | Scientifically accepted age. |
Absolutely not! We only really hear in the main line press about the Intelligent Design crowd. But as you can see from the table above there are more than one group and I've outlined the core beliefs of each group. But what you really have to note is that it is only one group that is effecting how science is taught in our schools by carefully extracting the religious aspect from the core beliefs. Irreducible complexity (IC) is an argument made by proponents of intelligent design that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler or "less complete" predecessors, through natural selection acting upon a series of advantageous naturally occurring chance mutations. It is one of two main arguments intended to support intelligent design, the other being specified complexity. There is an overwhelming feeling among the main stream scientists that this is pure and utter pseudoscience. Just because we don't necessarily understand something does not immediately mean that it had to be created by a God. It only means that we have to work a little harder and get an understanding. Example. You do not need to go back very far in history to where the understanding of a meteor shower was considered "a Sign from God" or back to the time where the scientists / mathematicians realized that earth was not the centre of the universe but revolved around the sun. The Catholic Church imprisoned and murdered people for this belief! But where does this leave us? It leaves us where a very small minority of people who want to give this understanding of a "feel good" idea that is not based on any type of real evidence at all. In fact, it's hard to see that there is any type of evidence that they can put forward that could even lead to proving (or even a small glimmer of understanding) that Intelligent Design is remotely close to the truth. One of the statements they like to make is that there are gaps in the Darwin theories. And in truth there are (fewer today than when this argument was first used!) but let us think here, because when it comes to Intelligent Design their whole proof of concept is one giant gap based (no proof at all) on us not yet fully understanding the scientific chain of events for Darwinism. To allow this to be taught in schools shows a total lack of understanding as to what education actually is. A child's mind is an open book ready to be filled. But is must be factual of that there is no doubt. It must be based on the scientific proof of the day. It must not be religion disguised as science. Scientists have got things wrong in the past BUT where they are different is that as soon as the error is found they will admit it. (It's hard to believe that you only need go back less than 100 years and we all thought that there was only one galaxy). So, lets stop back engineering ideals like Intelligent Design as this is no better than any other type of conspiracy theory. All I ask the Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates is a little proof that there is something of an un-worldly nature (typically called God) and once that proof is established then let's move on to what that Intelligence did and did not do. BTW - I heard on TV (CNN) an interviewee actually state that there was irrefutable proof that God existed. That was a little ear opening to say the least! What surprised me even more was the fact that the interviewer did not challenge at all on this. Which leaves us with. Is there now a whole load of faiths but only one True Religion? * Ironically, the first formulation of American fundamentalist beliefs can be traced to the Niagara Bible Conference (1878-1897) and, in 1910, to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church which distilled these into what became known as the "five fundamentals": - Inerrancy of the Scriptures
- The virgin birth and the deity of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14)
- The doctrine of substitutionary atonement by God's grace and through human faith (Hebrews 9)
- The bodily resurrection of Jesus (Matthew 28)
- The authenticity of Christ's miracles (or, alternatively, his pre-millennial second coming)
For more information on the start of this research the following - Fundamentalist Christianity, also known as Christian Fundamentalism or Fundamentalist Evangelicalism. The original 20th century Fundamentalist Movement broke up along clearly defined lines within conservative Evangelical Protestantism as issues progressed. Many groupings, large and small, were produced by this schism. Neo-evangelicalism, Reformed and Lutheran Confessionalism, the Heritage movement, and Paleo-Orthodoxy have all developed distinct identities, but none of them acknowledge any more than an historical overlap with the Fundamentalist Movement, and the term is seldom used of them. For example, American evangelist Billy Graham came from a fundamentalist background, but became parted company with the movement because of his choice, early in his ministry (1950s), to cooperate with other Christians.He represents a movement that arose within fundamentalism, but has increasingly become distinct from it, known as Neo-evangelicalism or New Evangelicalism (a term coined by Harold J. Ockenga, the "Father of New Evangelicalism"). ** Anglican Body Number - Church of England 25,000,000
- Church of the Province of Nigeria 15,000,000
- Anglican Church of Australia 3,998,444
- Church of the Province of Kenya (Kanisa la Jimo la Kenya) 2,500,000
- Protestant Episcopal Church (U.S.A.) 2,500,000
- Church of the Province of Southern Africa 2,400,000
- Episcopal Church of the Sudan 2,000,000
- Anglican Church of Tanzania 1,379,366
- Church of the Province of Rwanda 1,275,000
The worldwide Anglican Church does not exist, at least not in the form that one might think. There are millions of Anglicans, many thousands of parishes, and hundreds of dioceses. There are nearly 40 independent Anglican churches, none of which has authority over any other. But there is no central administration: no Pope, no Patriarch, no overall director. There is no Parliament or Congress. There is certainly a Church of England. But there is also The Church in Wales, and the Church of Ireland, and the Scottish Episcopal Church, none of which is governed by the Church of England. |
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