From: achenbac@epcot.spdc.ti.com (Jeff Achenbach)
Subject: Re: DOES GOD EXIST?  (different from previous posting).
Organization: TI Semiconductor Process and Design Center
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 14:26:30 GMT

In article <tjohn.25@elaine.ee.und.ac.za> tjohn@elaine.ee.und.ac.za (THIAGARAJ JOHN : THIRD) writes:
>
>I hope we can have a sensible discussion on some of the proofs presented 
>below.

Probably not.

>There are the two possibilities of origins - special creation
>by a Creator God, and the theory of evolution. 

This is the creationist argument. That if evolution cannot be proven beyond
the shadow of a doubt, special creation must have occurred. You ignore a 
third possibility: that we don't know.

It has become 
>intellectually fashionable to accept the evolutionary doctrine. 
>It has won popular acceptance in science and higher education. 
>Even many professing Christian denominations have accepted it, 
>if only passively.

It has become accepted as a possible explanation for observed phenomena. 
Scientific theories are subject to change as new evidence is discovered. When
a better explanation than evolution comes forward, views will change. However,
the only problem creationists seem to have with evolution is in human terms.
Evolutionary change in the earth's crust can be seen in a single human
lifetime. With understanding of plate tectonics, paleontology, and sedimentol-
ogy, evolution becomes difficult to deny.
    
>Yet, though in the minority, there still remain scientists,
>educators, and fundamentalist religious groups, as well as those
>in Judaism, who cling to belief in the existence of God.

Old habits are hard to break.

>Of course, on the other hand, perhaps a vast majority who accept
>evolution, at least passively, were simply swept into that
>acceptance in college or university. It became the scholarly "IN"
>thing. The opposite belief, special creation, has not been widely
>taught. It has not been objectively examined. Too frequently,
>proponents utilize the psychological ploy that it is a badge of
>scholarly status to accept evolution, and a stamp of ignorance or
>intellectual inferiority to doubt the hypothesis.

Science is taught, at least in my experience, by presentation of physical 
evidence, after which conclusions (theories) are drawn. There is no place
for blind faith in a science curriculum. There is no credible evidence for
special creation.

>All of which goes to show that people in general believe what
>they do simply because they have been taught it, or because it
>has been accepted in their particular social environment. People
>want to belong! They go along with their particular group. In
>general, they believe what they have taken carelessly for granted
>- without examination or proof!

This may be true of religionists. I doubt there are many atheists who chose
to be so for reasons of social acceptance. I have known only a small handful
of confessed atheists in my lifetime.

>		
>		Creation Without a Creator?
>
>The theory of evolution provided the atheist an explanation of a
>creation without a Creator. 
>
>But this misguided "rationalism" failed utterly to account for
>the origins of things and of life; and today the more candid
>among geologists and biologists confess that they do not know
>how life could have evolved from inanimate matter, through the
>simple life forms, to the complex, interdependent species we see
>about us, finally to man. Lamarck's theory of "use and disuse,"
>Darwin's "natural selection" and other theories have now fallen
>by the wayside, and the "mutations" theory explains only the
>occurrence of varieties less fit to survive.
>

Therein lies the difference between science and religion. The ability to
say "I don't know."

I'm tired of these lunatic ravings. I think I'll stop here.

Jeff Achenbach
achenbac@epcot.spdc.ti.com