Science & Religion Exam 1
Biblical Inerrancy
as formulated in the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy", is the doctrine that the Protestant Bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching"; or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact".
Dispensationalism
belief in a system of historical progression, as revealed in the Bible, consisting of a series of stages in God's self-revelation and plan of salvation.
Intelligent Design
the theory that life, or the universe, cannot have arisen by chance and was designed and created by some intelligent entity.
Natural Theology
theology or knowledge of God based on observed facts and experience apart from divine revelation.
Fundamentalism
a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture. strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline.
Contingency
a future event or circumstance that is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty
Denomination
a recognized autonomous branch of the Christian Church.
Creation Science
the interpretation of scientific knowledge in accord with belief in the literal truth of the Bible, especially regarding the creation of matter, life, and humankind in six days.
Natural Selection
the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The theory of its action was first fully expounded by Charles Darwin and is now believed to be the main process that brings about evolution.
Williams Jennings Bryan
"The Great Commoner"; three-time Democratic nominee for President, and Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ruling elder—argued for the prosecution, the State of Tennessee, which alleged that Scopes had broken the Butler Act by teaching human evolution at a state-funded school. Is the Bible true?
Bacterial Flagellum
"most striking evidence of intelligent design," Irriducibly complex; could only come about as a whole; had to be created all at once because everything fits together so well; looks like a machine designed by humans; the world most efficient motor; (Michael Behe); the two structures look similar for instance the siringe like disease tramsmitting structure (god is not all good) (irriducible complexity argument: machine is complestly usless unless all the parts are prestent) Each flagellum is made of around 40 different protein components. The proponents of an offshoot of creationism known as intelligent design argue that a flagellum is useless without every single one of these components, so such a structure could not have emerged gradually via mutation and selection. It must have been created instead.
Michael Behe
(/ˈbiːhiː/ BEE-hee; born January 18, 1952) is an American biochemist, author, and advocate of the pseudoscientific[2] principle of intelligent design (ID). He serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Behe is best known as an advocate for the validity of the argument for irreducible complexity (IC), which claims that some biochemical structures are too complex to be explained by known evolutionary mechanisms and are therefore probably the result of intelligent design. Behe has testified in several court cases related to intelligent design, including the court case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District that resulted in a ruling that intelligent design was not science and was religious in nature.[3] Behe's claims about the irreducible complexity of essential cellular structures have been rejected by the vast majority of the scientific community,[4][5] and his own biology department at Lehigh University published an official statement opposing Behe's views and intelligent design.[6][7] Scientist and senior fellow at the discovery institute. Writer of darwins black box.
John Nelson Darby
(18 November 1800 - 29 April 1882) was an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher, one of the influential figures among the original Plymouth Brethren and the founder of the Exclusive Brethren. He is considered to be the father of modern Dispensationalism and Futurism. Pre-tribulation rapture theology was popularized extensively in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren,[1] and further popularized in the United States in the early 20th century by the wide circulation of the Scofield Reference Bible.[2] He produced translations of the Bible in German "Elberfelder Bibel", French "Pau" Bible, Dutch New Testament, and English (finished posthumously) based on the Hebrew and Greek texts called The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation from the Original Languages by J. N. Darby. It has furthermore been translated into other languages in whole or part.
George McCready Price
(26 August 1870 - 24 January 1963) was a Canadian creationist. He produced several anti-evolution and creationist works, particularly on the subject of flood geology. His views did not become common among creationists until after his death, particularly with the modern creation science movement starting in the 1960s.
William Paley
(July 1743 - 25 May 1805) was an English clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theologyexposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, which made use of the watchmaker analogy.; Created the Watchmaker analogy; ordered and complicated must mean that there was a watchmaker- that being said this idea was proposed about life and how since it is so ordered and complex there must be a designer. The most famous statement of this teleological argument using the watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in his 1802 book Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity.
Premillenialism
(among some Christian Protestants) the doctrine that the prophesied millennium of blessedness will begin with the imminent Second Coming of Christ.
Kenneth Miller
(born July 14, 1948) is an American cell biologist and molecular biologist who is currently Professor of Biology and Royce Family Professor for Teaching Excellence at Brown University.[2] Miller's primary research focus is the structure and function of cell membranes, especially chloroplast thylakoid membranes.[2] Miller is a co-author of a major introductory college and high school biology textbook published by Prentice Hall since 1990.[3] Miller, who is Roman Catholic, is particularly known for his opposition to creationism, including the intelligent design (ID) movement. He has written two books on the subject: Finding Darwin's God, which argues that acceptance of evolution is compatible with a belief in God; and Only a Theory, which explores ID and the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case as well as its implications in science across America.
William Dembski
(born July 18, 1960) is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a prominent proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience,[1] specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC).[2] On September 23, 2016 he announced his official retirement from intelligent design, resigning all his "formal associations with the ID community, including [his] Discovery Institute fellowship of 20 years."[3] In 2012, he taught as the Phillip E. Johnson Research Professor of Science and Culture at the Southern Evangelical Seminary in Matthews, North Carolina near Charlotte.[4] Dembski has written books about intelligent design, including The Design Inference (1998), Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology (1999), The Design Revolution (2004), The End of Christianity (2009), and Intelligent Design Uncensored (2010). The concept of intelligent design involves the argument that an intelligent cause is responsible for the complexity of life and that one can detect that cause empirically.[5] Dembski postulated that probability theory can be used to prove irreducible complexity (IC), or what he called "specified complexity."[6] The scientific community sees intelligent design—and Dembski's concept of specified complexity—as a form of creationism attempting to portray itself as science.[7]
The Lemon Test
In 1971, the Supreme Court heard the case of Lemon v Kurtzman (403 US 602). In the case, the Court decided that a Rhode Island law that paid some of the salary of some parochial school teachers was unconstitutional. The case is discussed in more detail on the Constitution and Religion Page. One of the results of this case is the Lemon Test. The Lemon Test is used to determine if a law violates the 1st Amendment. The Lemon Test is not immutable - there is discussion in the general public and on the current Court about the Lemon Test. However, it has stood as a good guide for lower courts ever since 1971. The following paragraph is taken from the Lemon v Kurtzman opinion and establishes the rules of the test: Three ... tests may be gleaned from our cases. First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion
Scopes Trial
In a This Day in History video, learn that on July 10, 1925, the Scopes Monkey trial began in Dayton, Tennessee. High school teacher John Thomas Scopes was charged with violating Tennessee's law against teaching evolution instead of the divine creation of man. The trial was the first to be broadcasted on live radio. Though Bryan and the agnostic Darrow shared many of the same political views, the trial quickly became defined as a battle between the forces of Fundamentalism and Modernism, and headlines to that effect proved irresistible to the media. The trial was the first to be broadcast on radio.
Non-Overlapping Magisteria
Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is the view that was advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that science and religion each represent different areas of inquiry, fact vs. values, so there is a difference between the "nets"[1] over which they have "a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority," and the two domains do not overlap.[2] He suggests, with examples, that "NOMA enjoys strong and fully explicit support, even from the primary cultural stereotypes of hard-line traditionalism" and that it is "a sound position of general consensus, established by long struggle among people of goodwill in both magisteria."[1] Some have criticized the idea or suggested limitations to it, and there continues to be disagreement over where the boundaries between the two magisteria should be.[3]
Of Pandas and People
Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins is a controversial 1989 (2nd edition 1993) school-level textbook written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon and published by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE). The textbook endorses the pseudoscientific[1][2][3][4] concept of intelligent design—namely that life shows evidence of being designed by an intelligent agent which is not named specifically in the book, although proponents understand that it refers to the Christian God.[5] They present various polemical arguments against the scientific theory of evolution. A third edition of the book was published in 2007 under the title The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems. The book argues that the origin of new organisms is "in an immaterial cause: in a blueprint, a plan, a pattern, devised by an intelligent agent". The text remains non-committal on the age of the Earth, commenting that some "take the view that the earth's history can be compressed into a framework of thousands of years, while others adhere to the standard old earth chronology". The book raises a number of objections to the theory of evolution, such as the alleged lack of transitional fossils, gaps in the fossil record and the apparent sudden appearance ex nihilo of "already intact fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc". The book makes no explicit reference to the identity of the intelligent designer implied in the "blueprint" metaphor. Kevin Padian, a biologist at University of California, Berkeley reviewed the book and called it "a wholesale distortion of modern biology".[6]Michael Ruse, a professor of philosophy and biology, reviewed it, calling the book "worthless and dishonest".[7] Gerald Skoog, Professor of Education at Texas Tech University, wrote in his 1989 review that the book reflected a creationist strategy to focus their "attack on evolution", interpreting the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling as though it legitimised "teaching a variety of scientific theories", but the book did not contain a scientific theory or model to "balance" against evolution, and was "being used as a vehicle to advance sectarian tenets and not to improve science education".[8]
The Origin of Species
On the Origin of Species (or more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life),[3] published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.[4] Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation.[5] Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream. The book was written for non-specialist readers and attracted widespread interest upon its publication. As Darwin was an eminent scientist, his findings were taken seriously and the evidence he presented generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. The debate over the book contributed to the campaign by T. H. Huxley and his fellow members of the X Club to secularise science by promoting scientific naturalism. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution, with a branching pattern of common descent, had occurred, but scientists were slow to give natural selection the significance that Darwin thought appropriate. During "the eclipse of Darwinism" from the 1880s to the 1930s, various other mechanisms of evolution were given more credit. With the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s, Darwin's concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became central to modern evolutionary theory, and it has now become the unifying concept of the life sciences.
Parachurch Institution
Parachurch organizations are Christian faith-based organizations that work outside and across denominations to engage in social welfare and evangelism. Parachurch organizations seek to come alongside the church and specialize in things that individual churches may not be able to specialize in by themselves. They often cross denominational, national, and international boundaries providing much needed specialized services and training.
Scientific Materialism
Scientistic materialism is a philosophical stance which posits a limited definition of consciousness to that which is observable and subject to the scientific method. The term is used as a pejorative by proponents of creationism and intelligent design.
American Scientific Affiliation (ASA)
The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) is a Christian religious organization of scientists and people in science-related disciplines. The stated purpose is "to investigate any area relating Christian faith and science." The organization publishes a journal, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith which covers topics related to Christian faith and science from a Christian viewpoint. Members of the organization are from various movements, such as evangelicalism, and represent several Christian denominations including the Lutherans, Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and the Orthodox. The organization frequently runs seminars at universities in the world, such as Baylor University, the University of Cambridge, and The Catholic University of America.
The Butler Act
The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of mankind's origin. It was enacted as Tennessee Code Annotated Title 49 (Education) Section 1922, having been signed into law by Tennessee governor Austin Peay. That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.[1] When the ACLU received news of the bill's passage, it immediately sent out a press release offering to challenge the Butler Bill.
The Discovery Institute
The Discovery Institute (DI) is a politically conservative[4][5][6] non-profit think tank based in Seattle, Washington, that advocates the pseudoscientific principle[7][8][9] of intelligent design (ID). Its "Teach the Controversy" campaign aims to permit teaching of anti-evolution, intelligent-design beliefs in United States public high school science courses in place of accepted scientific theories, positing that a scientific controversy exists over these subjects.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16]
The Fundamentals
The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth (generally referred to simply as The Fundamentals) is a set of ninety essays published between 1910 and 1915 by the Testimony Publishing Company of Chicago. It was initially published quarterly in twelve volumes, then republished in 1917 by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles as a four-volume set. Baker Books reprinted all four volumes under two covers in 2003. According to its forward, the publication was designed to be "a new statement of the fundamentals of Christianity."[1] However, its contents reflect a concern with certain theological innovations related to Liberal Christianity, especially biblical higher criticism. It is widely considered to be the foundation of modern Christian fundamentalism. The project was initially conceived in 1909 by California businessman Lyman Stewart, the founder of Union Oil and a devout Presbyterian and dispensationalist. He and his brother Milton anonymously provided funds for composing, printing, and distributing the publication. The project had three successive editors: A. C. Dixon, Louis Meyer, and Reuben Archer Torrey. The essays were written by sixty-four different authors, representing most of the major Protestant Christian denominations. It was mailed free of charge to ministers, missionaries, professors of theology, YMCA and YWCA secretaries, Sunday School superintendents, and other Protestant religious workers in the United States and other English-speaking countries. Over three million volumes (250,000 sets) were sent out.[2] The volumes defended orthodox Protestant beliefs and attacked higher criticism, liberal theology, Roman Catholicism (called Romanism by many Protestants of the time), socialism, Modernism, atheism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Millennial Dawn (whose members were sometimes known as Russellites, but which later adopted the official title of Jehovah's Witnesses), Spiritualism, and evolutionism.
The Genesis Flood
The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications is a 1961 book by young earth creationists John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris that, according to Ronald Numbers, elevated young earth creationism "to a position of fundamentalist orthodoxy."[1] A sophomore in a Georgia college informed me, at the conclusion of an address in Atlanta, that in order to reconcile Darwinism and Christianity, he only had to disregard Genesis. Only Genesis! And yet there are three verses in the first chapter of Genesis that mean more to man than all the books of human origin: the first verse, which gives the most reasonable account of creation ever advanced; the twenty-fourth verse, which gives the only law governing the continuity of life on earth; and the twenty-sixth which gives the only explanation of man's presence here.
The Templeton Foundation
The John Templeton Foundation aims to advance human well-being by supporting research on the Big Questions, and by promoting character development, individual freedom, and free markets. The Foundation takes its vision from its founding benefactor, the late Sir John Templeton, who sought to stimulate what he described as "spiritual progress."The John Templeton Foundation (Templeton Foundation) is a philanthropic organization with a spiritual or religious inclination that funds inter-disciplinary research about human purpose and ultimate reality. It was established in 1987 by investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, who had links with fundamentalist Protestantism;[2] his son John Templeton, Jr. took over the presidency until his death in 2015. Heather Templeton Dill became president in June 2015.[3] The mission of the Foundation is: According to the Foundation, it gives away about $70 million per year in research grants and programs.[5] The Foundation restructured its grant making process in January 2010. It is divided into five core funding areas which include: Science and the big questions Character development Freedom and free enterprise Exceptional cognitive talent and genius Genetics The Foundation accepts online funding inquiries each year. If the initial inquiry is successful, applicants are invited to make a full proposal.[6]Typically, grants are approved in a process that incorporates scientific peer review.[7] The Foundation funds many high-level scientific research projects, usually by means of international competitions to which research teams from large universities apply. In 2008, the Foundation received the US National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities.[8] Many scholars have raised concerns about the biased nature of the awards, research projects and publications backed by the Templeton Foundation.[9][10][11][12][13][14]
The Wedge Strategy
The Wedge Strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement.
Watchmaker Analogy
The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument which states, by way of an analogy, that a design implies a designer. Complexity requires a designer
Theistic Evolution
Theistic evolution, theistic evolutionism, evolutionary creationism or God-guided evolutionare views that regard religious teachings about God as compatible with modern scientific understanding about biological evolution.
Young Earth Creationism (YEC)
Young Earth creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism, a religious belief,[1] which holds that the universe, Earth, and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of God less than 10,000 years ago.[2] Its primary adherents are Christians who subscribe to a literal interpretation of the creation narrative in the Bible's Book of Genesis and believe that God created the Earth in six 24-hour days.[3][4] In contrast to YEC, old Earth creationism is the belief in a metaphorical interpretation of the Book of Genesis and the scientifically-determined estimated ages of the Earth and Universe.[5] Since the mid-20th century, young Earth creationists—starting with Henry Morris (1918-2006)—have devised and promoted a pseudoscientificexplanation called "creation science" as a basis for a religious belief in a supernatural, geologically recent creation.[6] Contemporary YEC movements arose in protest to the scientific consensus, established by numerous scientific disciplines, which demonstrates that the age of the universe is around 13.8 billion years, the formation of the Earth happened around 4.5 billion years ago, and the first appearance of life on Earthwas at least 3.5 billion years ago.[7][8][9][10][11][12] A 2017 Gallup creationism survey found 38% of adults in the United States held the view that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings, which Gallup noted was the lowest level in 35 years.[13]
Inherit the Wind
is a 1960 Hollywood film adaptation of the 1955 play of the same name, written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, directed by Stanley Kramer. It stars Spencer Tracy as lawyer Henry Drummond and Fredric March as his friend and rival Matthew Harrison Brady, also featuring Gene Kelly, Dick York, Harry Morgan, Donna Anderson, Claude Akins, Noah Beery, Jr., Florence Eldridge, and Jimmy Boyd. The script was adapted by Nedrick Young (originally as Nathan E. Douglas) and Harold Jacob Smith.[3] Stanley Kramer was commended for bringing in writer Nedrick Young, as the latter was blacklisted. Inherit the Wind is a parable that fictionalizes the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial as a means to discuss McCarthyism.[4] Written in response to the chilling effect of the McCarthy era investigations on intellectual discourse, the film (like the play) is critical of creationism. The film had its World Premiere at the Astoria Theatre in London's West End on July 7, 1960.[5] A television remake of the film starring Melvyn Douglas and Ed Begley was broadcast in 1965. Another television remake starring Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas aired in 1988. It was once again remade for TV in 1999, co-starring Jack Lemmon as Drummond and George C. Scott as Brady.
Methodological Naturalism
is a strategy for studying the world, by which scientists choose not to consider supernatural causes - even as a remote possibility. There are two main reasons for pursuing this strategy.
Irreducible Complexity
is a term coined by Michael Behe, who defines it as follows. Irreducible complexity is just a fancy phrase I use to mean a single system which is composed of several interacting parts, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to cease functioning.
Biblical Criticism
is the scholarly "study and investigation of biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings".
Scientism
thought or expression regarded as characteristic of scientists. excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques. Scientism is the ideology of science. The term scientism generally points to the facile application of science in unwarranted situations not amenable to application of the scientific method[citation needed]. In philosophy of science, the term "scientism" frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism[1][2] and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek,[3] philosophers of science such as Karl Popper,[4] and philosophers such as Hilary Putnam[5] and Tzvetan Todorov[6] to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measured or confirmatory.[7] More generally, scientism is often interpreted as science applied "in excess". The term scientism has two senses: The improper usage of science or scientific claims.[8] This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply,[9] such as when the topic is perceived as beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference to the claims of scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any result described as scientific. This can be a counterargument to appeals to scientific authority. It can also address the attempt to apply "hard science" methodology and claims of certainty to the social sciences, which Friedrich Hayek described in The Counter-Revolution of Science (1952) as being impossible, because that methodology involves attempting to eliminate the "human factor", while social sciences (including his own field of economics) center almost purely on human action. "The belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry",[10] or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective"[5] with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological [and spiritual] dimensions of experience".[11][12] Tom Sorell provides this definition: "Scientism is a matter of putting too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches of learning or culture."[13]Philosophers such as Alexander Rosenberg have also adopted "scientism" as a name for the view that science is the only reliable source of knowledge.[14] It is also sometimes used to describe universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or the most valuable part of human learning—to the exclusion of other viewpoints. It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society".[15] The term "scientism" is also used by historians, philosophers, and cultural critics to highlight the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism in all fields of human knowledge.[16][17][18][19][20] For social theorists in the tradition of Max Weber, such as Jürgen Habermas and Max Horkheimer, the concept of scientism relates significantly to the philosophy of positivism, but also to the cultural rationalization for modern Western civilization.[7][21] British writer and feminist thinker Sara Maitland has called scientism a "myth as pernicious as any sort of fundamentalism."[22]
