Scrambled Eggs Benedict
This will be short. Seems the Pope has gotten into a bit of controversy because of a couple of ill-conveived remarks he made about Islam. Now, like most people, he probably meant Those Bad Ones Over There, who wear bombs and kill people in order to get into heaven. But he used a wide brush and painted them all as violent. The Vatican is trying its best to backpedal and make the best of it, but the fact remains, that like a lot of people, Benedict probably said what he felt. Islam, as a religion, foments violence against infidels. Many people who are not Muslim–heck, even some Muslims perhaps–believe that.
The problem is not so much that Benedict got it wrong–after all, Islam has this concept of the House of Submission, which it is charged with bringing everyone into, and it certainly has never suffered the handicap of having a turn-the-other-cheek ethic to wrestle with–but that, like most people, he didn’t cast a wide enough net.
Here’s the deal: all evangelizing religions foment violence at some point. It’s built in. They must convert the unbeliever. Since they will inevitably, eventually, run into people who will not be converted they are left with only a couple of options in dealing with them. Frustration, suffered long enough, more often than not leads to violence. Christianity had its conversion by the sword period (and there are some Christians who would still prefer that method), as did Judaism (although “conversion” wasn’t quite so high on the list of priorities, more a matter of slaying the unfaithful en masse). Islam as a movement made a good stab at it back in the first couple of centuries of its existence (pun intended) and ran out of logistical steam. It’s instructive to look at the intellectual life of someone like Martin Luther to see how this can happen. He broke from the Church and one of his differences was over the treatment of the Jews. He was magnificently tolerant–at first. The longer the Jews he knew (and as a people) continued to refuse to accept Jesus, the less tolerant he became, till finally he was hating them pretty much on par with everyone else of a Christian persuasion in Europe.
Most people also pretty much ignore that aspect of their religions. It would apall so-called mainstream christians if their leaders told them one day to pick up arms and kill anyone who didn’t believe the way they did. Part of the reason christianity got over this more or less easily is that bit of “give unto Caesar” talk Jesus gave, which implies–powerfully–that religion ought to be separate from the state. Otherwise…well, we have a rich history of theocracy and its abuses to show us why. Islam doesn’t have such an out, though. There is a political aspect to it. Still, most Muslims still keep the two separate.
But–as with all other evangelizing faiths–the propensity for theological violence is built in.
I’m sorry Benedict got himself into such a situation, but really it’s his own fault for not remembering–for not recognizing, for not admitting–that the problem is not with Islam per se but with the whole Spread The Word and Convert the Unbeliever ethos, of which his own church subscribes whole-heartedly. He didn’t include everybody. He didn’t include himself.
What was that line about the beam in the eye?
I notice that John bypassed the first four of my points and, unfortunately, most of his assertions about my fifth point are conclusory, so there is not much remaining opportunity for a meaningful discussion. Accordingly, I will respond to just a few of his statements.
John writes: “We went from a broad category of animal ie wolf to many specific different kinds of dogs, with very specialized genetic make-ups. Yet they are still all dogs. In every case, we have not observed evolution.”
John never defines what he means by the word, “evolution.” According to the dictionary, “evolution” means, “the act or process of going from the simple or basic to the complex or advanced.” It seems to me self-evident that going from one canine species to a wide variety of specie that have “very specialized genetic make-ups” is an “act or process of going from the simple or basic to the complex.”
John also writes: “Excuse me, grumpy pilgrim. But *evolution* has not ever been observed by any one. Creatures changing over time is not something you and I argue over.”
Recently, there was a human child in China born with three well-formed arms (http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_151233020.html). It seems to me such a child is an example of “change over time” in the human species. Indeed, that child also demonstrates that a new species can emerge “fully-formed” in just one generation. If that child reproduces children with three arms, and if those offspring eventually outnumber the two-armed children in that region of China, then, ten thousand years from now, we might expect archeologists to marvel at the sudden appearance in the fossil record of a new species of three-armed humans. If any of those archeologists are evangelical Christians, we might expect them to say, “That is not evidence of evolution, because the fossil record contains no intermediate species of humans with two arms and a stub.”
Finally, John writes: “…to say that evolution is divorced from the origins of life is obnoxiously wrong….”
That statement demonstrates that John is using his own (invalid) definition of “evolution,” so it is not surprising that so many of his statements are conclusory. As so many creationists do, John conflates evolution with unrelated topics so that he can then use the dearth of scientific proof of the unrelated topics to discredit evolution.
Grumpy: I’ll bet that the 3-armed child is an example of conjoined twin resorption, not genotype.
I don’t know what dictionary says that evolution necessarily goes from simple to complex. Evolution does not imply an increase in complexity (more than what can be expected from the second law of thermodynamics). Many species evolve to simpler states than their ancestors.
Blind lizards descended from sighted ones is an obvious example. A working eye is arguably more complex than a dysfunctional one. Extremophile bacteria have evolved to have a simpler DNA, weeding out most of the apparently useless interstices between active genes that their ancestors did (and modern relatives still do) carry. There are good Darwinian/thermodynamic/information-theory reasons for this that you can look up if you like.
To evolve is to adapt to changing conditions. Things can evolve in either direction of complexity. I say “things” because everything evolves, not just lifeforms.
One of my jobs is to develop computer programs. This is an evolutionary process of iterative design and re-specification to suit an ever-changing environment. In general, the code keeps getting longer as more and more features are added.
But, I often find legacy code that is unnecessarily complex, and reduce it to a simpler piece of code. As a rule, when I work on legacy code, my finished product does more, but is shorter and simpler than what I started with. The features I’ve added usually do not merit calling it a new full-version (species), but it has evolved during my code generation. When enough changes accumulate, someone in management arbitrarily decides to give a particular generation a new major version (species) identification, or even a new product name (Genus). Just like with lifeforms.
DNA is basically a programming language. The processor is RNA and ribosomes. A statistically certain portion of times that this code is copied, stochastic changes are introduced. “Stochastic” is a biological term to for things that look random, but actually are the result of a complex and certain process. From the species point of view it is random, even if the ribosome thought it had its reasons.
Most times, these changes don’t happen in active genes, so cannot be detected in the phenotype (the critter looks the same). These gradual changes in junk-code are on what DNA fingerprinting is based.
Dan writes: “I don’t know what dictionary says that evolution necessarily goes from simple to complex. Evolution does not imply an increase in complexity (more than what can be expected from the second law of thermodynamics). Many species evolve to simpler states than their ancestors.”
I pulled that definition from Merriam-Websters (www.m-w.com), but I usually define evolution as Dan does — it is merely a progressive adaptation to environmental pressures, which doesn’t necessarily involve greater complexity. Moreover, it is not always clear how one measures “complexity” anyway.
John says, “Sorry, but you cannot directly observe what happened in the past, my friend. The sooner you get that in your head the sooner things will be much clearer for you.”
John’s comment is a good example of what Erich mentions in his comment here (http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=648#comments) about the differing standards of proof that Believers apply to science and their particular religion. John obviously can’t observe what happened in the past, either, yet this does not deter him from declaring that he, alone, is an authority on the subject and that every scientist on the planet is not.
John declares that:
1) everything the Bible says about the past is true even though it is based on dreams, visions and subjective reports allegedly experienced by authors of unknown credibility who left no tangible evidence of any kind;
2) everything any scientist says about the past is false even though it is based on tangible evidence and logical reasoning; and,
3) everything that all of the world’s other ancient religious texts say about the past, which are also based on dreams, visions and subjective reports allegedly experienced by authors of unknown credibility who left no tangible evidence of any kind, are also false.
John must be fortunate to be such an authority on a past which he has never observed and for which he has no objective evidence.