tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post703644965387062513..comments2024-03-19T09:06:21.507-04:00Comments on Irtiqa: A new book on understanding creationism in the USSalman Hameedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-42300429515542280922012-04-10T22:21:35.404-04:002012-04-10T22:21:35.404-04:00Mashallah, Jazakallah for the article. I am sad I ...Mashallah, Jazakallah for the article. I am sad I could not find any Arab Muslim Evolutionist blogs since I am Arab and want to my area progress but I love reading your blog!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-86397022743942668342012-04-08T08:30:32.448-04:002012-04-08T08:30:32.448-04:00Thanks Asad. I completely agree with you here. In ...Thanks Asad. I completely agree with you here. In fact Bishop Ussher at the time was doing good work - as he was making a reasonable guess about the age of the Earth from the best available information he had. And he wasn't the only one. There are a number of estimates from that time - but Ussher's result made it into the King James' Bible..and that is what most people quote. <br /><br />And yes, William Jennings Bryan was a much more complex figure than we get from the popular accounts and from movies like "Inherit the Wind" (which - as a movie is terrific!). Stephen Jay Gould had a very nice essay on Williams Jennings Bryan trying to correct some of the misconceptions and in showing that much of opposition to evolution was due to the social causes he thought were linked to evolution (Bryan was big on the women's suffrage movement etc.).<br /><br />Also - Thanks for the link.Salman Hameedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04327330113822656571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38085367.post-61631889425178421512012-04-07T20:32:54.542-04:002012-04-07T20:32:54.542-04:00Interesting, esp. women’s anti-evolution stance wh...Interesting, esp. women’s anti-evolution stance which is surprising as well.<br /><br /><br />There is another book called “Darwin’s Pious Idea” by Conor Cunningham, a philosopher and theologian at the University of Nottingham. Haven’t read the book but saw a programme where he said that the supposed clash between Darwin and God has been hijacked by extremists on both sides– fundamentalist believers who reject evolution on one side and fundamentalist atheists on the other, and quite rightly says that both are wrong. <br /><br /><br />He showed that since the early days, mainstream Christianity’s view of God and Creation has not been literal. There were scholars in Roman times such as Philo of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo who interpreted Genesis as having a deeper allegorical meaning. Augustine even warned Christians against treating the Bible literally or using it as science, saying that they would be ridiculed for talking nonsense.<br />Such views are also shared by Orthodox Christianity since antiquity till present times.<br /><br /><br />But in the 17th century, Irish archbishop James Ussher interpreted the Bible (esp. Genesis) literally, even calculating from clues in the Bible that the earth was created in 4004 BC and these ideas made it to every King James Version for the next 300 years. <br /><br /><br />Then in the early 20th century this American Creationism phenomenon started which basically has very little to do with either science or religion and a great deal to do with the morality and politics of that time. William Jennings Bryan, who led the prosecution against Scopes, was a left-wing politician with right-wing religious views. He (not unlike Obama) hated ‘Social Darwinism’ used by right-wing politicians to justify the richer members in society crowding out the poorer. But he wrongly connected Social Darwinism to biological evolution, the theory which undermined his literalistic religious beliefs and thus led to his opposing its teaching in schools. <br /><br /><br />Even Bryan didn’t take the creation of the world in 6 days at face value, rather he believed in what may today be called Old Earth Creationism (of the kind that accepts the earth as millions of years old but rejects the flood geology). The modern creationism phenomenon really took off after the 1961 book ‘Genesis Flood’ which attempted to provide a so-called ‘scientific’ explanation to the Genesis account of creation and followed Intelligent Design in late 1980s.<br /><br /><br />As for why he believes that ultra-Darwinists like Dawkins and Dennett are wrong in claiming that evolution implies that there cannot or is not a God on the basis of their idea of the selfish gene, read more here in this short review:<br /><br />http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/18/darwin-pious-gene-dawkins-creationismAsad Mhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00590746399686326935noreply@blogger.com