Fortunately, nuanced debate is permitted here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/national/13evolution.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Quote :

"At Churches Nationwide, Good Words for Evolution On the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin, ministers at several hundred churches around the country preached yesterday against recent efforts to undermine the theory of evolution, asserting that the opposition many Christians say exists between science and faith is false. At St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church, a small contemporary structure among the pricey homes of north Atlanta, the Rev. Patricia Templeton told the 85 worshipers gathered yesterday, "A faith that requires you to close your mind in order to believe is not much of a faith at all." In the basement of an apartment building in Evanston, Ill., the Rev. Mitchell Brown said to the 21 people who came to services at the Evanston Mennonite Church that Darwin's theories in fact had compelled people to have faith rather than look for "special effects" to confirm the existence of God. "He forced religion to grow up, to become, really, faith for the first time," Mr. Brown said. "The life of community, that is where we know God today." The event, called Evolution Sunday, is an outgrowth of the Clergy Letter Project, started by academics and ministers in Wisconsin in early 2005 as a response to efforts, most notably in Dover, Pa., to discredit the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools. "There was a growing need to demonstrate that the loud, shrill voices of fundamentalists claiming that Christians had to choose between modern science and religion were presenting a false dichotomy," said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and the major organizer of the letter project. Mr. Zimmerman said more than 10,000 ministers had signed the letter, which states, in part, that the theory of evolution is "a foundational scientific truth." To reject it, the letter continues, "is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children." "We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator," the letter says. Most of the signatories to the project and those preaching on Sunday were from the mainline Protestant denominations. Their congregations have shrunk sharply over the last 30 years. At the same time, the number of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians has risen considerably, and many of them, because of their literalist view of the Bible, doubt evolutionary theory. The Clergy Letter Project said that 441 congregations in 48 states and the District of Columbia were taking part in Evolution Sunday, but that was impossible to verify independently. Around Chicago, two churches that were listed on the project's Web site as participants in the event said they were in fact not planning to deliver sermons on the subject. Still, those who did attend sermons welcomed what they heard. After the service at St. Dunstan's, Brett Lowe, a 41-year-old computer engineer, sat in a pew as his son Ian, 2, and daughter, Paige, 6, played at his side. "Sermons like this are exactly the reason we came to this church," Mr. Lowe said. "Observation, hypothesis and testing — that's what science is," he said. "It's not religion. Evolution is a fact. It's not a theory. An example is antibiotics. If we don't use antibiotics appropriately, bacteria become resistant. That's evolution, and evolution is a fact. To not acknowledge that is to not acknowledge the world around you." Jeanne Taylor, 65, a recently retired registered nurse attending services at St. Dunstan's, said the Bible was based on oral tradition and today "science is a part of our lives." At the Evanston Mennonite Church, Susan Fisher Miller, 48, an editor and English professor, said, "I completely accept and affirm the view of God as creator, but I accommodate evolution within that." To Ms. Fisher Miller, alternatives to evolutionary theory proposed by its critics, such as intelligent design, seem an artificial way to use science to explain the holy. "It's arrogant to say that either religion or science can answer all our questions," she said. "I don't see the need either to banish one or the other or to artificially unite them.""

2/13/2006 9:21:52 PM

while i would like to see a list of the churches participating, i understand why they might be reluctant to have that list made public right now

2/13/2006 9:27:23 PM

this has restored my faith in god

2/13/2006 9:37:27 PM

I wonder if you can start a club at your own church

2/13/2006 9:41:57 PM

I'm sure you could find out.

http://www.uwosh.edu/colleges/cols/rel_ad_campaign.htm

It looks like they're just asking for money to get the campaign going at this point. It's going to be a little tougher for them to do because they won't be making promises about protection from God's wrath or anything, but I hope it will be successful.

2/13/2006 9:47:49 PM

Has there been a thread on this "missing" link, yet? Search doesn't work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens_idaltu

Quote :

"Homo sapiens idaltu (roughly translated as "elderly wise man") is an extinct subspecies of Homo sapiens that lived almost 160,000 years ago in Pleistocene Africa. Its fossilized remains were discovered in Ethiopia in 1997 by Tim White, but first unveiled in 2003. The fossils were found at Herto Bouri, a region of Ethiopia under volcanic layers. By using radioisotopes dating, the layers date between 154,000 and 160,000 years old. Three well preserved craniums are accounted for, the most well preserved is from an adult male (BOU-VP-16/1) having a brain capacity of 1450cc. The other craniums include another partial adult male and a six year old infant. These fossils differ slightly from those of early forms of H. sapiens such as Cro-Magnon found in Europe and other parts of the world in that its morphology has many archaic features not typical of H. sapiens (although modern human skulls do differ in certain regions around the globe). It appears to be the oldest representative of the H. sapiens species found so far. The name idaltu is an Amharic word for "elder". These specimens are likely to represent the direct ancestors of modern Homo sapiens sapiens thought to have originally evolved in Eastern Africa."

I ask because this Wikipedia reference was the first I'd ever heard of them.

2/14/2006 3:43:04 PM

i saw that this morning and what struck me was the 3 quotes at the end. So is the NYT trying to make us believe that they picked 3 random, normal churchgoers at the churches of these ministers, and they all spoke rationally and fully in support of what was going on?
The article could have at least hinted at some of the opposition that is surely there in some of those churches.

2/14/2006 3:58:47 PM

I still don't undertand why someone can't accept both Christianity and Evolution, Big Bang, etc.

2/15/2006 1:43:11 AM

Because Evolution, the Big Bang, etc. aren't explicitly written ver batim word for word by the hand of God Himself in the Bible.




<---- Is what I do when I hear "Christians" use that arguement.

2/15/2006 1:51:45 AM

In either case, I usually put it something like this: "THE FUCKING POPE SAID THE TWO ARE COMPATIBLE!!! THE POPE!!!! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF TO COME DOWN FROM THE CLOUDS AND SAY "HEY, GUESS WHAT? GOD WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BIG BANG AND EVOLUTION, SO STFU!!!""

It usually helps to remind them how mystical many tenants of Catholicism are before it sinks in just how significant the Pope's words really are.

[Edited on February 15, 2006 at 3:32 AM. Reason : ...]

2/15/2006 3:32:35 AM

^Because the people that would say "Evolution, the Big Bang, etc. aren't explicitly written ver batim word for word by the hand of God Himself in the Bible" would also point out that the word Pope doesn't appear either.

There are far more protestants (people that don't recognize the Pope as their spiritual leader) than there are catholics.

Just saying.

[Edited on February 15, 2006 at 7:55 AM. Reason : p]

2/15/2006 7:32:32 AM

^ Are there? I'm not sure of the numbers but there are over a billion Catholics world wide, I thought.

2/15/2006 11:27:36 AM

^Latin America might throw off the claim but it is certainly the case in the US.

2/15/2006 3:06:08 PM

It's by far the largest single denomination, though.

2/15/2006 3:11:11 PM

Quote :

"this has restored my faith in god humanity "

2/15/2006 3:13:56 PM

FOI:

http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions

It looks like as of March 2002 protestants were 52% and catholics were 24% (US only). I suspect that the numbers are still pretty close to being the same today. But, yeah the catholics make up the largest denomination.

[Edited on February 15, 2006 at 3:38 PM. Reason : -]

2/15/2006 3:30:37 PM

It seems like the farther you get from fundie-ness and literalism, the more accepting churches get toward science.

Funny, that.

2/15/2006 3:50:15 PM

Quote :

"At St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church"

The Episcopals are notoriously liberal. Show me some Baptists saying this shit and I'll be impressed.

2/15/2006 3:53:49 PM

Episcopals are also the ones allowing gay marriage

2/15/2006 4:23:19 PM

yeah, didn't they also have a gay priest and the book of daniel (until the fundies put a stop to that nonsense)

2/15/2006 4:31:35 PM

Quote :

"Nerdchick: Show me some Baptists saying this shit and I'll be impressed."

Quote :

"Woodfoot: I wonder if you can start a club at your own church"

Start being impressed.

2/15/2006 4:39:05 PM

I believe the Episcopals even have a gay bishop

oh and Woodfoot doesn't count, he's my cuppycake gumdrop snookums

2/15/2006 11:00:31 PM