Is Creationism Paganism

[Scott J]

The OP quote seemed to have a gnostic hint to it.

In any event, this isn't a new idea but in fact part of the theological premise that led Darwin and others to dream up evolution during the 1800's. The idea was (and apparently is) that natural evil precludes God from being involved with the creation of nature. It further says that scripture cannot be trusted as an authoritative, self-verifying source of objective truth.

The idea that science led Darwin and his contemporaries to evolution is false. It was their ideals about God that led them to look for a means of separating a "good" God from the evil in nature.

The book "Darwin's God" researches this subject well.

 

[BobRyan]

Good points all.

Atheist darwinist evolutionism is fully exposed in the words of that well known atheist evolutionist "Richard Dawkins".

Richard Dawkins is Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the author of many books including the international best-sellers "The Selfish Gene", "The Blind Watchmaker", and "Climbing Mount Improbable."

FROM : http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/dawk-frame.html
Excerpt –

QUESTION: What is your response to the view that some Christians are putting forward that God is the designer of the whole evolutionary system itself?

MR. DAWKINS: In the 19th century people disagreed with the principle of evolution, because it seemed to undermine their faith in God. Now there is a new way of trying to reinstate God, which is to say, well, we can see that evolution is true. Anybody who is not ignorant or a fool can see that evolution is true. So we smuggle God back in by suggesting that he set up the conditions in which evolution might take place. I find this a rather pathetic argument. For one thing, if I were God wanting to make a human being, I would do it by a more direct way rather than by evolution. Why deliberately set it up in the one way which makes it look as though you don't exist? It seems remarkably roundabout not to say a deceptive way of doing things.
But the other point is it's a superfluous part of the explanation. The whole point -- the whole beauty of the Darwinian explanation for life is that it's self-sufficient. You start with essentially nothing -- you start with something very, very simple -- the origin of the Earth. And from that, by slow gradual degrees, as I put it "climbing mount improbable" -- by slow gradual degree you build up from simple beginnings and simple needs easy to understand, up to complicated endings like ourselves and kangaroos.
Now, the beauty of that is that it works. Every stage is explained, every stage is understood. Nothing extra, nothing extraneous needs to be smuggled in. It all works and it all -- it's a satisfying explanation.Now, smuggling in a God who sets it all up in the first place, or who supervises the details, is simply to smuggle in an entity of the very kind that we are trying to explain -- namely, a complicated and beautifully designed higher intelligence. That's what we are trying to explain. We have a good explanation. Why smuggle in a superfluous adjunct which is unnecessary? It doesn't add anything to the explanation.

(Note for the Reader: In the above quote Dawkins argues that Christian evolutionist think “God does something”, that “God contributes something” to the subject of origins. And on that point alone – Dawkins argues for the inconsistency and flawed logic of so-called-christian-evolutionism.

 

[BobRyan]

Christian evolutionist sometimes argue against Dawkins claiming that HE has made too much of a grandiose claim about what Christian-evolutionists think God is doing. In essence those Christian evolutionists argue that Dawkins has to HIGH a view of God!! He needs to be better in formed about the “downsized god” of Christian evolutionists because he makes too HIGH a claim for God AS IF Christian Evolutionists actually “believed” the Bible on this subject!!

How sad that Christian evolutionists are prone to going to such extremes.)[/b]

QUESTION: What is your view of more liberal religious views that are held by people like your Oxford colleage Arthur Peacocke, who is both a biochemist and an Anglican minister?

MR. DAWKINS: More sophisticated theological views, people like Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne – obviously they're not creationists in any simple sense -- they're not fundamentalists, they're not stupid. So do I respect them more? Well, in one respect obviously I do, because really you could have an intelligent conversation with them -- they're not ignorant. On the other hand, I can't understand what they're doing it for. I mean, I don't understand what it is that is being added, either to their lives or to the storehouse of human wisdom by bringing in this additional dimension of explanation. We have science. Science is by no means complete -- there's a lot that we don't know -- but we're working on it. Both of those two gentlemen are scientists, and they know what that means. They understand it and they respect it. We're working on building up a complete picture of the universe, which if we succeed will be a complete understanding of the universe and everything that is in it. So I don't understand why they waste their time going into this other stuff which never has added anything to the storehouse of human wisdom, and I don't see that it ever will.

QUESTION: Why do you think that in an age of science so many people, even in the West, and particularly in America, continue to believe in religion?

MR. DAWKINS: I don't understand why so many people who are sophisticated in science go on believing in God. I wish I did. You'd have to ask them.

I know that in some cases what they mean by God is very different from what the ordinary people that they talk to think they mean by God. There are physicists who are deeply awed, as I am, by the majesty of the universe, by the mystery of origins -- the origins of the laws of physics, the fundamental constants of physics, and who are moved by this to say there is something so mysterious that it is almost like God, and maybe use the metaphor of God. God is in the equations. God is in the fundamental constants. And that's fine. I mean, that's just redefinition of that which we find mysterious at the basis of the universe.
But other people misunderstand that, because to them God is that which forgives sins, that which transubstantiates wine, that which makes me live after I died -- and that is a totally different matter. And yet the misunderstanding is ripe for the picking. People will listen to sophisticated physicists, using God as this kind of metaphor for the deep constants, the deep problems, the deep principles of physics, and say that in that sense I believe in God. The reaction is, "Oh, this great physicist believes in God -- that means I'm free to believe in the trinity and in the crucifixion and in the reincarnation of Christ -- and all that stuff, which of course has nothing whatever to do with the fundamental constants of physics, which is what these physicists are talking about.