Time Immortal

I mean, okay, let’s be realistic: Young Earth creationism and ID — at least of the Michael Behe sort — are patent falsehoods, so it makes sense that the Vatican wants nothing to do with them at the congress on the evolution “debate” that it is sponsoring. At the end of the day, the Church must strive to seek after the truth, and the discussion would become cluttered by the presence of those false viewpoints.

The Pontifical Council for Culture, Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana are organizing an international conference in Rome March 3-7 as one of a series of events marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”

Jesuit Father Marc Leclerc, a philosophy professor at the Gregorian, told Catholic News Service Sept. 16 that organizers “wanted to create a conference that was strictly scientific” and that discussed rational Philosophy and Theology along with the latest scientific discoveries.

He said arguments “that cannot be critically defined as being science, or philosophy or theology did not seem feasible to include in a dialogue at this level and, therefore, for this reason we did not think to invite” supporters of [Young Earth] creationism and intelligent design.

…

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the other extreme of the evolution debate — proponents of an overly scientific conception of evolution and natural selection — also were not invited.

So atheistic evolutionists, such as Richard Dawkins, are also not invited. Which is consistent, to be sure.

Note: I’m not entirely sure I agree with the decision…I’m usually of the opinion that we shouldn’t block any particular viewpoint from being expressed. Having said that, I can understand the desire not to have a shouting match erupt, and I can understand the desire not to clutter discussions with useless and false viewpoints. Because ultimately, that’s what the ID movement and Young Earth creationism reduce to: falsehood. Oh, I can’t deny that the proponents of these viewpoints are people of good faith, whose first desire is to serve the Lord as they understand Him and His Word. But that’s just the problem: they don’t understand the Word of God as well as they should. And as a result, it might not be constructive, nor conducive to forward progress in terms of promulgating a cohesive theology which contradicts neither the Bible nor science, to invite the other groups.

Because, as Archbishop Ravasi notes later in the article, the theory of evolution “is not incompatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church or the Bible’s message.”

Truth cannot contradict truth. Evolution, despite the controversy it has been associated with, is strongly supported by good evidence; it is, for all intents and purposes, true, in that it is a reasonably accurate description of the physical processes by which human life, and all other forms of life, emerged on Earth. At the same time, Scripture is true when it teaches us that God is creator of all things. We need to look past the ancient “history of the day” accounts as presented in Genesis, and not get caught up on the precise details of events related therein. What we need to take away from Genesis is not a message of history, but a message of faith: God is the creator of the Universe, the world, and all that live upon it. All of creation is “very good.” God made humanity in His own image. Humanity rebelled and, in sin, fell away from God.

Truth cannot contradict truth. These two truths — evolution of creatures and the creatorship of God — can be reconciled. They must be reconciled. And that, I think, is the main goal of this congress. At least, it can be so hoped.

I’ll still be following various current events, although I probably won’t be posting on as wide a range of topics in the coming days. Also, I won’t be posting as many entries. I’ve been going over my notes, and I’ve decided that I should take care of a few other bits and pieces of content that I’ve been neglecting for the last little while.

For example, there’s the ongoing series I’ve been working on concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, which I need to finish up. Also, there’s the Answers from a Catholic series, which I need to add some installments to. I’ve also got a few other articles planned concerning creationism and evolution, as well as the book review of Dr. Denis O. Lamoureux’s Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution.

So for the next little while, Catholicism is going to be the principal topic here at Time Immortal, and (as noted) the number of posts per day can be expected to diminish (but the length of posts can be expected to increase, on average). So don’t get discouraged if for some reason the RSS feed isn’t as active as it has been in the past, good Reader.

Dr. Helen links to, and reviews in brief, a very interesting-sounding book:

I spent part of the day reading Vox Day’s new book, The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. You might know Vox Day from his blog and interesting take on feminist issues — he always has something provocative to add to that particular conversation and his book proves to be just as stimulating in regards to religion and faith. The Irrational Atheistis described as follows (from the inside cover):

The Irrational Atheist is not a theological work nor is it a conventional religious defense of faith. It contains no arguments for the existence of God and the supernatural, nor is it concerned with evolution, creationism, the age of Earth, or intelligent design. This book contains no arguments from Scripture. In attacking the arguments, assertions, and conclusions of the New Atheists, Vox Day’s only weapons are the secular tools of reason, logic and historically documented, independently verifiable fact. The Irrational Atheist is not a book about God, but about those who seek to replace Him….

Day takes on the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens and seeks to demonstrate that they and other “New Atheists” are no champions of reason.

Sounds like I might just have to pick this book up. In particular, I’m left tantalized by the small sample Dr. Helen provides of Vox Day’s analysis:

For example, Day discusses one argument made by Harris where Harris questions the correlation between Christian conservatism and social health:

If there was a strong correlation between Christian conservatism and social health, we might expect to see some sign of it in red-state America. We don’t. Of the 25 cities with the lowest rates of violent crime, 62 percent are in “blue” [Democrat] states and 38% are in “red” [Republican] states. Of the twenty-five most dangerous cities, 76 percent are in red states, and 24 percent are in blue states. In fact, three of the five most dangerous cities in the US are in the pious state of Texas.

Interestingly, though, Day found that “red-state” crime is primarily committed by “blue counties” within those states and has a nice chart to show the stats on this. It seems that Harris was looking at states such as Texas that had more crime and called the states “red” but conveniently omitted the part where the counties where the crimes were committed tended to be “blue.”

Other myth busters include the notion that religion causes the majority of war as some atheists profess, Day provides evidence to the contrary–he found that more than 93% of all the wars in human history had no relation to Religion. In the twentieth century, in fact, he states that atheistic regimes killed three times more people in peacetime than those killed in all the wars and individual crimes combined.

I admit I’ve never been particularly troubled by the atheistic assertion that the falsity of religion can be demonstrated in part by the way that more secular nations seem to have lower crime rates than more religious nations do. As has been articulated many times (most recently, and eloquently, by Mark Shea), the validity of the teachings of the Church are in no way dependent on the actions of members of the Church. But neither have I had the time to really delve into the finer points of the statement, and it’s nice to see that Day has taken the time.

In the end, the numbers don’t really surprise all that much, do they? It turns out that the religious are, in fact, less to blame.

And in a more general sense, the notion that the crime rate is lower in more ardently secular nations does necessarily imply that the people of those nations are more moral than in nations where religion still has some value, and that is the more important distinction. That is to say: the murder rates in Sweden and Norway might be lower than in the U.S. or the Phillipenes, but where do the abortion rates sit? The rates of property crime might also be lower, but what about the rates of marital infidelity and/or pre-marital sex and serial monogamy?

In the end, legality is a less important metric than morality, because the laws of most free nations are designed (in theory) to enforce a minimum standard…but of course, there is more to being a moral person than just following the laws of the land to the letter, because laws are a human construct and subject to change at the will of humanity. Morality is external to human willfulness and weakness. How, I wonder, do all these secular nations measure up by that standard?

You may have noticed that I’ve been something of an absentee over the past week and change. There are two reasons for that. The first (and not nearly as good) reason is that I’ve been busy with other stuff, most notably school. And indeed, that thing called “life” has in general kept me on my toes for much of the week. If you’re at all curious about what I’ve been up to, you can check out some of the recent activity at these other sites I run:

• Lost Sosaria, where I’ve been busily adding new “stuff” to the Neverwinter Nights module I’ve been building for the past couple years now.
• My CMPUT 299 project, the Neverwinter Nights module that I have to build for my game design class
• The CHRTC 451 forum, which I built for another of my classes, this one a theology lecture on modern creationisms.

The other reason I’ve been kind of absent, besides being busy with those things above and with other things besides, is that I’ve been preparing a new website for launch!. That’s the site you’re looking at now, the product of a few months of design, testing, and CSS refinement. But I think, at last, that I’ve got it where I want it, and so here it is, brand new and ready to rock.

So anyhow, you might be wondering why I went to the new site. There are a few reasons, not the least of which is that I thought it was time for a change. However, there were a few other considerations, some worth mention:

• The move to the new site let me switch away from Mambo 4.5.0 and upgrade to Mambo 4.5.1. I realize that may not seem like a large version number increase, but believe me — it is. Mambo 4.5.1 offers me a larger degree of control over the site’s content and its display than 4.5.0 did, and it features more dynamic templates as well. Plus that, there are a few site components for 4.5.1 that weren’t available for 4.5.0. Chief among these are the Tip Jar and the Verse of the Day visible on the right sidebar.

  Please feel free to make use of the Tip Jar, especially! I can always use the help!

• The opportunity to use a fixed-width, visually dazzling template was too good to pass up.
• The Chesterton Quote Machine was something I was able to re-adapt as an actual site module instead of simply inserting the extra PHP code into the sidebar in the actual page layout. That means I can move it around the site if I feel like it…and given that some of the random quotes are quite LONG, that may eventually happen.
• The main domain page, www.timeimmortal.net, has sat empty for too long now, or rather has been un-used for too long. I’ve developed it out somewhat in the past, but in practice it’s only ever been an RSS aggregator for other Time Immortal sites that I post to. And I’m going to re-implement that feature shortly, because that’s sort of an end goal of what the site is for as well — it will be my blog, and also where you can come for news snippets from other projects I work on.

  But for the moment, it was just important that I get the main site back in use.

And so the old site is officially “closed”, and will be maintained only for posterity. In the next week or so, I’ll be sending out emails to all the folks who link to me asking them to update their links (as it were), but in the meantime welcome to the new site, and I hope you enjoy it!