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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!mcnc!bch
From: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Rules question
Message-ID: <2275@mcnc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Oct-84 16:22:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: mcnc.2275
Posted: Fri Oct  5 16:22:21 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Oct-84 07:11:53 EDT
References: @uwmacc.UUCP> <9652@brunix.UUCP> 
Reply-To: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes)
Organization: North Carolina Educational Computing Service
Lines: 43
Summary: 

In article  bmt@we53.UUCP ( B. M. Thomas ) writes:
>
>One point of clarification that I feel is needed is that we seem
>to be looking down the wrong end of the telescope here.  What I mean, if
>my metaphor applies, is that the evolotionary theory arose out of an
>unqualified rejection of the idea of a creator, specifically *the*
>Creator of the Judeo-Christian teachings.  The rejection stemmed from
>the logical conclusion that if He existed, then He had something to say
>about how I live My life, something that Darwin et al. had a personal
>problem with, as do the evolutionists of today.

Sorry, I can't buy that.  Evolutionary theory did not arise from the
unqualified rejection of a creator though it does bring under scrutiny
the history of the world as described in Genesis.  Let me quote from
Darwin (something that has not been done, to my knowledge, in the 
history of this discussion on the net.)

	  "Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully
	satisfied with the view that each species has been
	independently created.  To my mind it accords better
	with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by
	the Creator, that the production and extinction of 
	the past should have been due to secondary causes,
	like those determining the birth and death of the
	individual. ... There is grandeur in this view of
	life, with its several powers, having been originally
	breathed by that Creator into a few forms or into
	one; and that...from so simple a beginning endless
	forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and
	are being evolved."
			Darwin, Origin of the Species


Clearly, these are not the words of one who has rejected the notion
of a creator.  Similarly, most people I know who subscribe to
evolutionary theory are not atheistic in any sense.  The idea that
they are can only be attributed to fundamentalist creationist
propaganda.  Can we now dispense with this notion?

-- 

						Byron C. Howes
				          {decvax|akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch