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Apologia Report 15:10 (1,015)
March 17, 2010
Subject: Danger for Darwinists
In this issue:
FICTION - archbishop of Canterbury strongly defends Dostoevsky’s dubious approach to truth
ORIGINS - 300 case studies of academic discrimination resulting from doubting Darwinism
+ a "decisive test" of the remarkable relatedness of all life on
Earth "threatens to undermine the [Darwinian] model"
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FICTION
Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction, by Rowan Williams,
archbishop of Canterbury [1] -- reviewer Jordan Easley begins: "Fyodor Dostoevsky has been hailed by many scholars as one of the most brilliant and important novelists of all time. ...
"Williams develops a brilliant argument that upholds both the
complexity and integrity of the author's Christian faith. ... 'Instead
of imagining a deeply divided authorial mind ... we have a text that
consciously writes out the to and fro of dialogue, always alerting us to the dangers of staying with or believing uncritically what we have just heard.'
"In chapter 1, 'Christ Against the Truth?,' Williams examines
Dostoevsky's narrative method in light of one of his most famous and shocking statements: 'If someone were to prove to me that Christ was outside the truth, and it really was the case that the truth lay outside Christ, then I should choose to stay with Christ rather than the truth.' From this opening, Williams demonstrates that Dostoevsky, while concerned with the truth, was not concerned with writing novels as religious apologetics. Rather, he recognized that '"Truth" as the ensemble of sustainable propositions about the world, does not compel adherence to any one policy of living rather than another.' In other words, the bare facts about Christ do not guarantee belief in Christ. Furthermore, Williams connects this understanding of Christ to the task of writing fiction."
In particular, Easley explains that Dostoevsky "addresses how the structure of dialogue itself counters the role of the demonic: 'If the Devil's aim is silence, God's is speech.' ... Williams demonstrates how Dostoevsky purposefully employs this kind of dialogue, which allows for a certain amount of irresolution in order to force the reader to enter into dialogue with the characters in the story. Thus, the reader arrives at the Truth without following an obvious agenda. ...
"Williams weaves together all the theological and narrative
strands: Dostoevsky's characters engage in a dialogue (chapter 3) that is part of an indeterminate narrative structure (chapter 1) in which the self-emptying love (chapter 4) of the Incarnate Christ (chapter 5) overcomes violence of the demonic (chapter 2)."
Buyer beware: "This book is not for those who are looking for
first-time exposure to Dostoevsky. It assumes that the reader is
familiar with all of Dostoevsky's major novels and is difficult to
follow without such knowledge." Modern Reformation, Nov/Dec '09, pp51-51.
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ORIGINS
Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth about Killing the
Careers of Darwin Doubters, by Jerry Bergman [2] -- Anyone skeptical of the thesis behind the Ben Stein film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed [3], should read Slaughter of the Dissidents. Reviewer Bradford McCall begins: "Charles Darwin once wrote that false facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long. ASA [American Scientific Affiliation] Fellow Jerry Bergman would agree heartily with his assessment. In fact, Bergman begins this title with a dedication to all the individuals who paid a high price for doubting Darwinism. ... Bergman speaks from firsthand experience, as he claims that he was denied tenure due to his creationist beliefs. Additionally, Bergman presents over three hundred case studies of individuals which show evidence that some university officials and faculty are apparently afraid of questioning what the role of Darwinian evolution should be in society today. All of the respondents reported some form of discrimination openly and often, whereas 70% claimed open prejudice, and nearly 40% claimed to possess evidence of clear discrimination based on their ID [Intelligent Design] or creationist beliefs.
"Bergman does not purport to prove or disprove Darwinian evolution, or the 'New Synthesis' (often referred to as Neo-Darwinism). Rather, his primary concern is to depict the negative actions and attitudes of the dogmatic Darwinists displayed toward Darwin doubters. ...
"This title seeks to show why it is unfair that all taxpayers fund
and subsidize the teaching of an evolutionary belief-system with which they may disagree. ... Bergman has done his research and crafted an impressive rhetoric thereby. All in all, Bergman's detailed case studies regarding the state of intellectual freedom to question Darwinian evolution is a valuable resource to the ID movement." Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 61:4 - 2009, pp275-276.
Note: Bergman is a former Jehovah's Witness who has done major work on the Watchtower movement in addition to his more recent emphasis on origins. We first learned of him via his study of the high incidence of of mental illness among Jehovah's Witnesses <www.tinyurl.com/yhln93j>. Bergman is also the author of the massive Jehovah’s Witnesses: A Comprehensive and Selectively Annotated Bibliography [4].
"Twin Features: The Big Problem That Design Convergence Poses to Darwinian Evolution" by Hugh Ross -- opens: "The creationist rejoinder [that 'evolution is only a theory'] angers scientists more than most people seem to understand. It implies that scientific theories are no more than hypotheses.
"In science, a theory is much more than an unsubstantiated guess. A theory represents an explanation that has been thoroughly tested through experiments and observations and thus confirmed as a viable explanation for a set of phenomena.
"Biological evolution is a theory in the full scientific sense of
the term. ...
"What has *not* reached the status of theory is an explanation of *how* life progressed from simple to complex, how life became more diverse, and why Earth's life forms display such remarkable
relatedness. ...
"The remarkable relatedness of all life on Earth, long trumpeted as powerful physical evidence for naturalistic evolution, now threatens to undermine the [Darwinian] model. The problem for the Darwinian perspective is this: Life forms that are only distantly related, if at all, nevertheless show amazing similarities in their morphological features (some are identical). This is not what Darwinists expect.
"Increasingly, biologists observe that two species on distantly
separated branches of the 'evolutionary tree' manifest identical
anatomical and physiological features. ...
"Paleontologist Simon Conway Morris describes dozens of examples of design convergence at the organismal level in his book Life's Solutions [5]. Biochemist Fazale Rana offers more than a hundred examples at the molecular level in his book The Cell's Design [6]. However, if chance governs the evolutionary process at its most fundamental level, one would expect repeated evolutionary events for all life forms to result in dramatically different outcomes. ...
"Replaying the tape of life, even under repeated and highly
controlled conditions, will not produce identical evolutionary
outcomes. ...
"Is it possible that the many examples of repeated structures among Earth's life forms, past and present, can be better explained as the work of a super-intelligent agent who, having achieved an optimal set of designs for life, repeatedly employed those designs in the vast array of species we see?"
Ross describes a "decisive test" in the work of a team of
microbiologists at Michigan State University, led by evolutionary
biologist Richard Lenski which studied multiple populations of E. coli bacteria. Ross calls the "landmark" Michigan State experiment "a convincing demonstration that natural biological processes tend to produce different, nonrepeated outcomes. ... Something or someone beyond nature must be responsible for them." Salvo, Issue 9 - 2009, pp336-39.
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction, by Rowan Williams
(Baylor Univ Prs, 2008, hardcover, 285 pages)
2 - Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth about Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters, by Jerry Bergman (Leafcutter, 2008, paperback, 478 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/ya7djoj>
3 - Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (DVD, Starring: Ben Stein,
Director: Nathan Frankowski, Studio: Premise, Release Date: Oct 21 '08, Run Time: 95 minutes) <www.tinyurl.com/bs8wb2>
4 - Jehovah’s Witness: A Comprehensive and Selectively Annotated Bibliography, by Jerry Bergman (Greenwood, 1999, hardcover, 368 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/y8nfw2c>
5 - Life's Solutions: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, by Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge Univ Prs, 2004, paperback, 486 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/ye75sas>
6 - The Cell's Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator's Artistry, by Fazale Rana (Baker, 2008, paperback, 336 pages)
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