4 May 2008
Baylor Prez Spins Expelled Worries: The God of the Bible is the God of the genome … but not of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab
O'Leary
Taking a break from “Imagining” no heaven, no hell, no Yoko Ono, and no delay till the Expelled DVD comes out, I note where John Lilley, Baylor’s president, has seen fit to defend his institution in the light of the unflattering portrait in Expelled.
Except he doesn’t exactly. In the form letter - apparently written to people for whom, in his words, Expelled has been a “source of concern” - he manages to say nothing at all.
Unless, that is, you believe faith and science are in conflict, in which case he reassures you that they aren’t.
But if you do believe that, why would you want to attend or fund Baylor - or any religiously affiliated university? And why would you care what Lilley says about it, given that he is hardly a disinterested witness?
The bulk of the letter is actually a quotation from The Language of God, by genome mapper Francis Collins, on why we need both faith and science, and why God can be worshipped in a cathedral or a laboratory.
No disrespect is meant to Collins when I say that the world is not queueing round and round the block for a dose of anodyne. And in fairness, Collins didn’t write the quoted material with Lilley’s future use in mind. That makes me wonder what Collins does think of the university shutting down Bob Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab? That specific incident brought the Expelled crew to Baylor, not a chance to hear that “the God of the Bible is also the God of the genome.”
In short, in his letter, Lilley doesn’t address the “source of concern” at all. He is apparently gambling that the waves created by Expelled will just subside. And anyway, if Baptists don’t give to Baylor, who they gonna give to? The Biologic Institute?
Oh, wait… maybe that’s not such a bad idea, actually …
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1
allanius
05/05/2008
6:52 am
eLyrical prose cannot mask the fact that Darwinism adds nothing—absolutely nothing—to the “alleviation of suffering and betterment of mankind.” Anyone who believes this kind of apostrophizing knows nothing about what actually goes on in medicine.
Clue: most of the most useful drugs were discovered by accident, and usually when looking for another kind of drug altogether. When this is not the case, they are almost always analogues—new chemical structures for proven entities, created entirely by ingenious tinkering.
Darwinism plays no role in a modern R&D operation. Industry chemists don’t sit around speculating about evolutionary mechanisms. They can’t afford it—they have to produce something of value. Their work has nothing to do with Theory. In fact it’s more like a sophisticated version of roulette.
And wouldn’t it be nice of Mr Collins to connect the dots between “beauty” and the genome? It’s not enough to mention them both in the same paragraph, as if merely putting them together makes all of the philosophical issues go away.
This we know: man cannot create anything as beautiful as what is already found in nature even by conscious effort; in fact can only aspire to its greatness by simply taking pictures of it. Where does this overwhelming beauty come from? Blind material processes?
Dear Mr Collins—show us the genome of beauty.
2
bornagain77
05/05/2008
8:07 am
eOff Topic;
Neanderthals were separate species, new study finds;
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20.....anderthals
excerpt:
PARIS (AFP) - A new, simplified family tree of humanity has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears.
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Neanderthals were a separate species to Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are known, rather than offshoots of the same species, the new organigram published Sunday by the journal Nature declares.
The method, invented by evolutionary analysts in Argentina, marks a break with the conventional technique by which anthropologists chart the twists and turns of the human odyssey.
3
StephenB
05/05/2008
10:31 am
eCollins’ position is indeed curious. In his judgment the genome is “the language of God,” yet he apparently thinks that this same language was not meant to be interpreted by humans. Inasmuch as Collins is anti-ID, I guess he is proposing that God would communicate only in Darwininian dialect, which is a purposeless, mindless, unconscious communication that doesn’t really want to communicate at all. Welcome to the wacky world of theistic evolution.
4
StephenB
05/05/2008
10:34 am
e—–”allanius: “Clue: most of the most useful drugs were discovered by accident, and usually when looking for another kind of drug altogether. When this is not the case, they are almost always analogues—new chemical structures for proven entities, created entirely by ingenious tinkering.
—–”Darwinism plays no role in a modern R&D operation. Industry chemists don’t sit around speculating about evolutionary mechanisms.”
Very true and well stated.