For years, the appendix has been many secularists favorite body part…if you don’t count the body parts you can use to abort babies.
The appendix’s popularity has been mainly because the organ’s perceived uselessness was thought to be evidence of a Godless universe. If God created man, they’d ask why would He have given man a useless organ. And because of this, it was evidence not only of a godless universe but it also proved evolution. Hey, at least they found a use for the appendix.
Take for example this essay on the useless organ by The Surgeon’s Blog:
In the appendix, we have a thing within us of no demonstrable value, but which is capable of doing us great harm. People may argue at the edges, but there are two things we know with central certainty: the presence of the appendix kills a lot of people or makes them real sick, and its absence is of absolutely no consequence. Evidently, that’s a threat to the concept of intelligent design/creationism…By its existence, the lowly and useless appendix would seem to deal a fatal blow to the idea (at least Ken Ham’s version) of Intelligent Design. Slain, by that ignoble worm, that surgeons’sidekick, my midnight mistress. If you deny evolution, then you have to say the designer wasn’t paying attention, says the appendix to my scalpel; or the designer acted deliberately to stick within us something which serves only to harm. Even more scary. Unless, of course, you’re a general surgeon.
Ah you see, the appendix delivered the fatal blow until…this shock of shocks. It turns out that the appendix isn’t all that useless. The Examiner says:
Some scientists are now saying that the appendix could be useful in battling disease. It may serve “as a vital safehouse where good bacteria could lie in wait until they were needed to repopulate the gut after a nasty case of diarrhea.” Other studies have indicated “the appendix can help make, direct and train white blood cells.”
Hey, you silly God-lover I know that this new science would seem to deliver a fatal blow to the useless-appendix-delivering-a-fatal-blow-to-God argument.
But you’d be wrong.
Now, the appendix’s usefulness is the latest and greatest evidence of a Godless universe and of evolution.
Weird Science reports:
Poor Darwin — everyone’s always pointing out his mistakes. But somehow, his theory that animals evolved from common ancestors is stronger and more confirmed than ever.
OK. So when the appendix was useless it was evidence of evolution and when it’s shown to have a use it’s…guess what…evidence of evolution.
Now, I have no problem with accepting some amount of evolution among species but many proponents of the theory believe that macro-evolution makes God useless in the process of creation. That’s right, many secular evolutionists see God as the appendix of the universe. We can only pray that they too one day discover God and his very real and loving purpose.
August 28, 2009 at 3:45 am
Good post Kiran – I was just going to list all the Catholic scientists I knew of, but yours is better.
As a follow up to Bob, I keep talking about evil because I KNOW it exists and atheism just doesn't give an answer. It can't explain why it exists, why it's bad, why it even matters at all. That's a major short coming in your belief.
The reason I'm a Catholic is because it's TRUE. I studied science and had several atheist professors, all their arguments (and yours) are based on bad history, bad theology and bad logic. I looked to Catholicism and I found Truth. Truth that fit with history, Truth that fit with logic and Truth that actually fit with what I had experienced in life.
Among my Catholic acquaintances I know 2 chemists, 1 physicist, 1 bio-physicist, 1 partial astrophysicist (me – bachelors only), 3 astronomers, 1 neurosurgeon, 1 doctor (unknown specialty), 3 nurses, 1 pharmacist, and about half a dozen engineers off the top of my head. It's hard to say that all these scientists have rejected science.
August 28, 2009 at 6:07 am
Actually, Darwin was an atheist and his theory was indeed born out of a desire to make sense of the "Tooth and Claw" nature of the world. The fact that his friend Charles Lyell withheld full endorsement of evolution was always a disappointment to him.
This isn't common knowledge because the Darwin family chose to hide the fact since, as an atheist, Darwin wasn't an exceptional one, just run of the mill "I saw the world and knew God was dead" stuff. They didn't release personal letters that addressed the fact until his granddaughter decided to do so in… the 1960's, I believe, but there's the collaborative evidence of his funding American atheist pamphlets "just for fun" since he didn't care about his reputation over here. When his family decided to keep his "faith" under wraps… oh, who was it, Francis or Lenard… well, one of his sons requested that the groups stop using his name.
However, Darwin was never a fan of the atheists that knocked on his door and socially was very Christian in his thoughts. He was terrified of what would happen to his daughters in an atheistic society.
ANYWAY we're on "Teh Internets" so it won't be easy to back up my claims. Nor do I have a serious interest in proving them. Instead, I'll leave you with the very easy to google fact that Thomas Huxley in fact GAVE us the term "Agnostic," used originally to define his views while defending Darwin. In fact, I think Huxley's book on Evolution was little more than a dire penny novel at the time, exciting the audiences with tales of "Horrifying Gorillas" attacking this and that. But I might be crossing people there, so, you know, feel free to enjoy a grain of salt with that tidbit too.
August 28, 2009 at 7:24 am
Oh yes. Huxley did come up with the word agnostic. Actually, Darwin's original book, and I even think his notebooks, show a kind of vague Deism. He did later gradually eliminate such Deism, and the intrinsic finality that existed in the early versions, but that was just a case of bad theology being replaced by none. That said, I don't think his initial motivation had anything to do with the problem of evil. This became a big issue later on, and implied a move away from aesthetics as well as from theology. If he did become an atheist, I don't think he started out as such. He started out as a Paleyan, who slowly got rid of more and more aspects of Paley.
Christine, you are welcome. I am actually giving a talk on this subject soon, so the information was at hand. I was thinking this afternoon, that one of the reasons why I accept evolutionary theories (which are much wider than Darwinism, which again is something else than what Darwin initially came up with: Darwinism like any other scientific theory has evolved since its initial presentation) is precisely because, as an Augustinian Thomist, I hold to the validity of natural causality. Even if the world was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago, one would still need to give an account of how this happened. Actually, before becoming Catholic, I tended to take evolutionary theories very sceptically. It was Thomas who convinced me, not of the truth of evolutionary theories, because I don't believe it makes sense to say of a modern scientific theory that it gives us truth (and this holds just as much of QM and Relativity, and Newtonian Mechanics, and Thermodynamics, and everything else), but of its explanatory validity. And ultimately, it is Catholicism that makes sense of the incredible truth that the world makes sense. In my own day-to-day life teaching undergraduates, I find that Catholics are just about the only ones who believe this any more, who also know a bit about just how messy the genesis of scientific theories can be.
August 28, 2009 at 8:24 am
I should add that before I came to the Faith, I was an Anglican, and before that an agnostic, and before that, an atheist. So, I don't hold the Catholic Faith, which I do through the mercy of God, because I don't know the alternatives, but simply because I found the alternatives either incomplete, or wrong.
And I suppose that there was something of right in all the alternatives, even atheism: The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who became incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead, and left us his Holy Spirit in His One, True, and Holy Church and Himself in His Sacraments, is not the god that atheists deny, for instance. And that God thunderously affirms something which I am sorely tempted (not out of humility) sometimes to deny – that I have a fundamental dignity, both as a human being, and as a Christian, and so does every human being: Because each of us is beloved of God.
August 28, 2009 at 11:58 am
Kiran,
You rock!
Do you do this sort of thing for fun?
August 28, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Christina said… "As a follow up to Bob, I keep talking about evil because I KNOW it exists and atheism just doesn't give an answer. It can't explain why it exists, why it's bad, why it even matters at all. That's a major short coming in your belief."
You're forgetting that I don't have any beliefs. I demand strong evidence before I accept any idea, and your god creature doesn't have a shred of it.
Not believing in your Magic Fairy doesn't say anything about evil or anything else. So what? I know what to do with evil. I avoid it. If I can't avoid it, I'm willing to kill to defend myself. There really isn't anything else to say about it.
Kiran, I was starting to think you were pretty smart until I read this idiotic insane nonsense: "and on the third day rose from the dead".
You got any evidence for that disgusting idea? I mean besides some dead gullible witnesses?
Christianity is a death cult, and it's probably the most stupid invention in human history, or it's at least equally as dumb as Judaism and Islam.
Just imagine the Jesus ape decomposing for three days. The smell must have been horrible. And, you, Kiran, for some extremely strange reason, believe this stinking corpse came back to life.
It's just horrible what religions do to people.
August 28, 2009 at 12:36 pm
A question for believers in Mr. God, who also accept the facts of evolution.
Where do you hide your god-of-the-gaps? In other words, what scientific problem do you invoke your magic fairy to solve it?
Some god nuts like to stick their magic man just before the Big Bang, knowing that it's safe there, at least for now.
If you don't invoke your invisible friend for anything, why do you bother with it?
Also, do any of you ever doubt some of the more insane ideas of Christianity, especially the Resurrection, which is really nothing more than a belief in zombies.
I'll check in later. Thanks.
August 28, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Bob,
RE: "I know what to do with evil. I avoid it."
I'm not asking what to do about it, but how atheism explains it. If we're nothing more than evolved apes then why don't we all do what we ought to do? Or, if we are doing what we ought, why do I feel any sense of evil? At most I should feel a sense of self preservation and move away from a threat. The repugnance I feel makes no sense.
RE: "God of the Gaps"
I think you're forgetting that you're talking to Catholics, we don't believe in a god of the gaps. Perhaps an analogy would help.
Lets say there is a painter painting a great picture. There is a scientist nearby who is carefully recording, measuring and analyzing how the painting is being made. He can describe how each muscle is being moved, how the paint colors being mixed create new, the theory behind putting a chalk line first, etc.
Now, there are some who might worry about where the painter comes in, who try to put him in his brain (until that is explained) or regulate him to the air between the brush and the canvas. However, it's silly to try to sever the painter from the act of painting.
In a similar way, Catholics see God as intimately involved in creation. We don't see him as a fairy or a invisible friend, but a creator. Science can sit and describe HOW He is creating all it wants, it's fascinating. In fact, we believe that God uses creation to create – so the Catholic scientists are constantly seeking to understand the laws and process by which God creates (ie – evolution, gravitation, cosmology, neurology, etc). Kiran mentioned St Thomas – you should read up on him and learn more about our God, for the god you describe isn't who we worship.
RE: "rose from the dead"
Yup, we believe that. It apparently bothers you that someone as smart as Kiran believes in something that seems so bizarre. There is actually quite a bit of evidence for it. Here is an article from This Rock that discusses some of the evidence.
One thing to keep in mind – if someone is logical and intelligent and then says one thing that seems insane, perhaps it's better to approach it from the standpoint of "I wonder what their reasons are for believing this insane thing – perhaps it's not as crazy as it seems" rather then "I guess they aren't so smart after all".
August 28, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Bob, I'm going to set aside the deeply insulting language of your posts to answer your "questions" posed on non-personal, scientific level.
If you like science and look for scientific proof of the Ressurection, do some serious study of the Shroud of Turin. The scientific studies were done by a team of scientists headed by a devout Jewish scientist who did not hold to the divinity of Christ and frankly would have liked to disprove it in anyway possible. He's still Jewish to this day- just to show you his objectivity (obstinance, however you look at it).
If the Shroud will not prove to you Christ's divinity, at least I hope it offers some scientific theory or explanation for the Resurrection- enough for you to use more respectful language about it.
As to the stench of His body after three days in the tomb, have you ever heard of the incorruptible bodies of saints? Do a google search on it- these folks were very holy, lived very altruistic lives faithful to the Church. I think the most famous is St. Catherine of Sienna (died before modern embalming practices- sometime in the 1300's) who remains uncorrupt to this day. If people we hold as mere mortals were allowed to remain incorrupt for hundreds of years (without mumification), it stands to reason there is a possiblity that the holiest Person on earth could have remained free of decay for three days.
Remember too- Christ was not a zombie when risen- He ate bread and fish with His disciples (he even throws a bbq for Peter at the Sea of Galilee). What zombie do you know of cooks and eats with his friends?
Also, as an engineer (materials engineer) familiar with thermodynamics, quantum theory, theory of relativity and evolution, I find there to be few gaps in my scientific education for which I would need to use God as a crutch. (Not claiming mastery of these theories, but familiarity of them,) Again, it's not the HOW that originally interested me in the faith, it's the WHY. All my long quest through my college education in science for the ANSWER to the WHY we're here and what is our purpose could not be fully answered in Science. (I've only been Catholic for 5 years now- I was an agnostic previously.)
In other words, reason lead me to faith for the explanation of our purpose on earth- love. I'll take love over avoiding evil, eating and procreating like a mere purposeless ape.
August 28, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I have a favorite atheist whose name I will withhold, who is a Rhodes scholar and absolutely riveting to listen to as he expounds on politics and history. I happened to catch him in a conversation with a couple who asked him about his faith if any. He mentioned that he was married to a Catholic, and intends to allow the children to be raised Catholic. He attends Mass every Sunday and even reads the readings beforehand (how many Catholics can say they do that?!). But then he said, after all that, at the end of the day, when he asks himself if he believes any of it, the answer that comes back is no, he doesn't. He also made the point that he didn't think his wife was stupid for believing it. He simply didn't believe. He did a lecture on how Jews attitudes toward God changed from Egypt to Babylonian captivity that had obvious implications, but he stuck to evidence and reasonable argumentation and never gave a hint of hostility to faith.
This is what a reasonable atheist should look like. So, when one comes on using insulting language and straw man arguments, it indicates that something else is going on rather than a mere disagreement.
August 28, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Bobx,
I don't expect you to answer this, since you conveniently ignore me.
However, I would like to ask if you can provide one concrete example of evolution on the micro level, since you so ardently believe in it?
I can, without even trying, but I want to know if you can see it, too, or if your faith rests on something you cannot prove.
Also, can you explain this circumstance to me scientifically, since you are oh-so-enlightened and it's a true story.
A 23-year-old, on their birthday, was driving down a major highway on her commute to work, in a freak blizzard that all the weather outlets had failed to predict. The temperature dropped 12 degrees in 10 minutes and there was a lot of snow and wind. While passing a semi, the driver was going 60 miles per hour in the left-hand lane. The car, an SUV, went into a spin. The driver tried to correct the spin and lost control of the vehicle. The SUV rolled over the highway median and into on-coming traffic, snapping off a large section of guardrail on the other side. The SUV came to rest, driver-side down, in the middel of on-coming traffic. What would be your predictions for a) the driver of the SUV and b)the on-lookers, and why?
I know this is a true story because I was there.
Looking forward to your answers.
August 28, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Actually, Kiran, you're correct on two accounts. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that Darwin hesitated to publish, but finally did because of… whatever that guy's name was. He deliberately decided to couch his terms carefully, even going so far as to letting a pastor write his preface. He didn't become more bold in his assessments until "Descent of Man" when he was getting annoyed at what people were bringing to his theory. Funny enough, people had already put together the dots and weren't very shocked at his book. Also, as long as I'm speaking on this, let me say that there is absolutely no evidence that Anne's death affected Darwin's worldview, despite what some romantic biographies would have us believe. He was a Scientist, after all.
But what is much less wider known is that he was indeed a half-believing Christian during his voyage on the Beagle, and was known for praising God in his letters to his sisters. He didn't come to not believe until years later after reading books in his study and reflecting on his journey (Including the South American tribe that Fitzroy famously had bad luck with). But like I said before, he always deeply respected what religion did for society, so the overlap of his beliefs does make for interesting stuff.
August 28, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Dear Bob, what's your scientific explanation for the existence of the universe?
I'm sure, that since we're both science-loving folks, we both accept that the second law of thermodynamics means that the universe can't be infinite – it must have had a beginning.
You mentioned the big bang earlier, if we use that as our working theory for the beginning of the universe, we can theoretically trace a cause and effect to show how the matter and forces present in the big bang resulted in me typing at the keyboard today. Great, that's an awe inspiring thought. Question is, what was the cause of the big bang? What made the nothingness explode with matter?
My hypothesis is that there must be a non-material Cause of the big bang. Do you have some other way of explaining matter coming into existence from nothing?
P.S. You said that you have no beliefs. That's absurd. We can't know anything without at least having first premises. You have beliefs, you just haven't realized it yet.
August 28, 2009 at 10:48 pm
And as Kiran said Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic priest, invented the Big Bang theory.
In fact, with Mendel, Georges Lemaitre, and Newton (yes, yes, Arian, but still) it seems that men of God have a lot more stout in the halls of Science.
Awwwkard.
Great posts, by the way guys. Makes me proud to be the dumb one.
August 29, 2009 at 4:44 am
Bobx, Umm, wow! You must be the world's best psychiatrist to diagnose my insanity from the other side of the world! What can I say? Well, in actual fact, becoming a Christian and a Catholic did help get rid of my depression. I think you might find that calling people names doesn't get you anywhere. It only convinces people that you don't have any rational arguments to offer for your belief. And considering that this is what you require of other people, that reeks of hypocrisy. And by the way, as Brian Walden said above, there is nothing any blasphemer could say that is anywhere near what Christians dogmatically believe, that the God who created heaven and earth became man, slept among smelly and noisy and dirty cows and sheep, that this same Incarnate Deity hung upon the cross, was beaten and spat upon, and died. It don't get no more yucky than that. Hang on. It does. Let me point out what you are saying: You are saying in contrast, that this putrefaction, this evil, Hitler and Pol Pot, and all the rest, just "are." There is no further aspect to them, no explanation, and no call for one. If Hitler had succeeded that would have been perfectly fine. It is just one human ape killing a whole lot of other human apes. What makes it particularly bad, or worth talking about? Who really cares if you get shot in the head? I prefer to concentrate on my rare steak with chips and pepper sauce. To say this, and to believe it is far more disgusting than anything Christians believe.
Oh, and I should say, materiality, dung and sex and all the rest isn't disgusting. Christianity is a very material religion.
Yes. I believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Why? On the one hand, I suppose, not to believe that Jesus rose from the dead is on some level to admit that injustice and evil and putrefaction is all that there is, which is frankly depressing. On some level, evil is the strongest evidence for the existence of God. On the other hand, one can argue from the unbelievability of death, understood as annihilation. It is a strange thing for me to die, and of all the odd things I have ever come across, one thing I cannot believe in is that "I" am going to die forever and ever. But then again, I am a materialist, for me to survive, it is not sufficient for some kind of disembodied "rationality" to survive. Somehow, there has to be a Resurrection of the body. Notice that such belief predates Christ by some 200 years (2:Maccabees 7:21). Of course, we have no right to expect it, but God is good.
Also, there is no reason why miracles couldn't happen. It is not as if physical laws are binding in the same way that logical laws are. I mean, the world could have been different. At any rate, empirically speaking, physical laws are completely unknown to us in any kind of transcendent sense. You can keep on repeating your belief in the world as it is, but in reality, all you have is perspective, as Quine argues. And by the way, Quine didn't, I don't think, believe in God, but I think he does point to the fact that empiricism is necessarily nominalistic. To believe that, outside of physics and biology and chemistry as practised here and now, there is some kind of underlying substratum of truth, requires a metaphysical commitment.
August 29, 2009 at 4:44 am
Oh by the way, have you ever read Nietzche? I highly recommend Nietzche, particularly On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense as therapy for overindulgence in the drug of scientism. Let me quote two particular aphorisms:
"No genuinely radical living for truth is possible in a university."
and a little later in life:
"What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins."
In contrast to this, I can only offer Thomas Aquinas: "Truth Himself speaks truly or there's nothing true." You are welcome to take the second alternative, but to pretend that truth is out there in some kind of perspective-independent way, and that there is no God is, after Nietzche, a huge act of faith, compared to which, Christianity is relatively minor.
August 29, 2009 at 5:19 am
Mouse, thank you. I do enjoy it, but I suppose that fundamentally, I believe (nay, I know) that Christianity alone can make people happy, if only they would try it. When I started out, that was all I was doing it: giving it a try after all else had failed. But also, I think we have a vast intellectual heritage, and have no reason to allow ourselves to be bullied. I mean, compared to Augustine and Aquinas and Newman, modern atheism is a child throwing a tantrum. Indeed, modern atheism doesn't even have the grandeur of Huxley, or the self-knowledge of a Nietzsche, or the ability to land on a serious philosophical problem like Hume or Russell. It is a blind faith clinging to a crumbling edifice, abandoned by those who constructed it.
Christina, thank you for the compliments, and also the very nice statement of what historians call the "charity principle". In all honesty though, I am merely expanding on Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. Jaroslav Pelikan on Creation and Causality is a good place to find the arguments about what Christians mean by creation, and how this eventually got misread in the reformation debate over the sacrifice of the Mass. The Thomistic part of it is very well presented in Thomas Crean OP's God is No Delusion.
William, thank you. I am only really incidentally interested in Darwin, though both Darwin and Huxley had Christian and Catholic friends (in case of Huxley, the Wilfrid Wards and Kingsley) in whom I am very interested. Apart from that, my concern is only that (a) Catholics aren't irrational, and indeed, Catholics did and do science as part of who they are. (b)Modern science is intimately tied up with Catholic theology, and (c)Catholic theology isn't a fairy tale. It carries with it a very real anthropology as well as a metaphysics, and consequently an epistemology. But beyond all this is God, before whom all human knowledge is straw, dumbness if you will, but dumbness with a point.
Scott, thank you very much for that very nice anecdote. I also know numerous very reasonable agnostics and atheists.
August 29, 2009 at 8:35 am
Man, Kiran, You rock. I wish there were more like you; the world would be a much awsesomer place.
August 29, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Awww…
It looks like the little troll picked up his toys and went home.
Hope he read all ya'll's final arguments first. 😉