Hi Alex

Alex Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> I've just had a quick look at Origins.
>
> In the first paragraph I read: "Biologists
> consider the existence of biological evolution to
> be a fact. It can be demonstrated today and the
> historical evidence for its occurrence in the past
> is overwhelming. However, biologists readily admit
> that they are less certain of the exact mechanism
> of evolution."
>
> AH! I've been saying that for the last couple of
> days. There's hope for me yet
>

I haven't read all of the thread that started this, but there are a whole bunch of issues here which its too late to go into so I'll be short. Basically science is a bit like an artist painting a picture of a landscape. The science is the picture and the scientist is the painter. And the more and more science advances the more detail and sense of the whole scene you can see from the picture. But sometimes you can be so close to the painting, trying to get the minute individual blades of grass completely in place, that you miss something of the overall scene. Like Van Goughs starry sky which no one looks at and considers a photographic representation of what Van Gough was looking at when he painted it. But still we get can get an amazing impression of what it felt like for Van Gough to stand under than sky and admire its beauty. We can experience something more of the reality of the scene he was representing than if he had tried to make it a photographic representation. Its sort of like the thing that Goethe described as the difference between explaning and portraying IIRC.

What I think you may be doing is expecting science to show a picture like Van Gough rather than a photo like realism. But science does not deal with fundamental meaning and explanation. It deals with the physical mechanism and tries to get that as accurate as possible. When biologists say they "readily admit that they are less certain of the exact mechanism of evolution, they are talking about the fact that the blades of grass may be leaning slightly more to the left, or that tree may have slightly more leaves. What the creationists do is they say no that tree is not on the left, its on the right. They do that because they expect the picture to present something its never going to. But the scientists are only trying to present an accurate as possible picture of the scene in front of them. They are not replicating the whole landscape and everything in it. The birds that fly across the canvas are not living paint. It shows the birds form and hints at how they move and where they came from.

When someone suggested to the old pope that evolution was just an hypothesis he smiled and replied "Its more than just an hypothesis!". I'm reading the old popes latest book right now and he was a very scientific and philosophical thinker, although this is his most informal book so far. But just because he knew and accepted the science on things, he had an amazingly profound understanding of the deepest things there are behind everything, and gods involvement in them. The creationists set up this false idea that the scientists are twisting things because they deliberately don't want people to believe in god. But thats a product of their fear and of their misunderstanding of both science and theology. And they confuse many people by making it seem like science and theology are the same thing. If you have faith, I cannot see how understanding the process of evolution better is anything less than amazing. This is how science started, to try and understand gods works better. What it should have done is raised our understanding from god as micro-manager, to something even more profound and awesome. But because these people stick to their view of god as the micro manager, almost like a human that made adam and eve like a child makes a snowman, it helps make people come to the mistaken belief that science should describe theology.

This is a better explanation of the theology;

Quote

Matthew 8:8-10
8The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

10When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.

Simon