Dr. Schwab’s Surgeonsblog is one of my favorite blogs ever. He has tremendous stories, and tells them very well, and I am inspired by his example as a caring and competent surgeon.
Lately, though, he’s taken to posting political and religious rants (his word) on the weekends. Creationists are a common target. I’ve got to respond to his latest post, but so many ideas came to mind I thought it would be better to write on my own blog.
Dr. Schwab’s post opens with an 8min clip of an ABC news segment on two creationist men who give tours of a Denver science museum to Christian homeschoolers, giving the creationist point of view in contradiction to the evolutionary teachings of the museum.
First, two things about the video: the two men, while I applaud their beliefs and their activism, are not the best possible spokesmen for young-earth creationism. When asked how long the period was between Adam’s creation and Noah’s flood, they stumble, and end up guessing that there were six or seven generations. In other instances, I agree that their responses are simplistic. If they know of the scientific evidence for creation, they’re not adept at mentioning it when called on. In their defense, this could be due to the young age of the children; most of them look to be in early elementary school. A disquisition on carbon-dating would be over their heads. I would bet that if you filmed an elementary school tour led by an evolutionist, there wouldn’t be much more sophisticated discussion than there was here. However, the ABC producers slanted the segment nastily. When the two creationist spokesmen guessed that there were six or seven generations of 800-yr olds between Adam and the flood, they multiplied 800 x 7 and got 5000+ years, making the creationists look ridiculous. Actually, the egg should be on ABC’s face. You don’t multiply generations like that. Each generation ought to start 20-40 years after the previous one. Better informed young earth theorists add up the genealogies in the Bible to make 1500 years between Adam and the Flood. There are other ways, as well, in which the producers went out of their way to pick soundbites that would make the creationists look bad. You might also notice that their claims, and those of the evolutionary scientist at the museum, are equally without evidence – in this video. Those watching this news segment were being asked to choose between creation and evolution based simply on the mockery of the museum’s scientist and of the producers.
(For further information on all kinds of questions regarding creation science, check out Answers in Genesis (specifically the answers page) and the Institute for Creation Research, which give much better evidence-based and Bible-based reasoning than the tour leaders in that video were able to do.)
Now, to Dr. Schwab’s comments. He says,
My reaction to the above video goes beyond anger: it makes me sick. These kids are deliberately being deceived. Brainwashed. And, yes, abused.
My question to Dr. Schwab is, who doesn’t brainwash their kids, by his definition? Children sent to public schools and taught to believe that the entire universe sprang into existence on its own (where, after all, did the material for the Big Bang come from?), and that random atoms then coalesced into organic molecules, which then arranged themselves into the infinite complexity of data coding which is DNA, and that information was somehow progressively added into the system, making more and more complex organisms, until their own intelligence randomly developed – are they not being “brainwashed” as well? They’re told that these are the facts, this is how life is, this is what they should believe, and the alternatives are mocked and laughed at, if they’re even mentioned at all. All parents want to teach their children the same things that they believe. That’s not abuse, that’s good parenting. If you, as an adult, believe that you know what is true, you want to protect your children and save them from the painful errors that you yourself may have made. I’m sure Dr. Schwab would not be thrilled to let a creationist lecture to his children. Neither would creationists want evolutionists teaching their young impressionable children – although most of us do encourage the study of the theory of evolution for older children, say highschoolers.
But this is the part that really annoys me:
They are being led to extremism which differs not from the kind that creates believers in paradise filled with virgins. And we know where that leads.
I respect Dr. Schwab’s right to believe whatever he wants about the origin of life and the universe, and to make his arguments for what children should be taught. But to accuse Christian creationists of being morally on a par with Islamic suicide bombers is – I think slander is the right word, although more loaded than I’d like for a polite discussion. There is nothing, nothing, nothing in orthodox Christian teaching which would in any way condone the killing of other innocent people simply to make a point. You cannot show a single instance in recent history of Christians, acting on teaching which has anything near polite acceptance in the Christian community, killing other people. (The rare instances of killing abortionists don’t count: the number of Christians who would approve of this is vanishingly small, too small to count in a percentage.) Islam, on the other hand, teaches repeatedly and clearly, throughout the Koran and the hadiths, and among the vast majority of imams, that it is not only right, but necessary, to kill unbelievers. Creationism, which teaches children that they were made in the image of God (and therefore they should respect and value their own bodies and the lives of others) comes nowhere near this kind of violence.
Dr. Schwab continues:
These are the people putting religious tests to our potential leaders, proclaiming their holiness above mine . . . banning books and destroying public education. Rioting over cartoons. These are the people claiming our country needs more religion, even as their religion-above-all attitude is subverting the very foundations of our democracy and aiming us toward societal failure by substituting indoctrination for education.
What can I say? I learn from the Bible to proclaim, not my holiness, but my sinfulness – and God’s holiness and mercy. My homeschooling family, and those like us, are not destroying public education, but trying to rescue our children from an educational system which has already failed disastrously (school shootings on a regular basis, drugs available in schools, high school graduates who can’t read or do simple math, high schoolers who can’t compete with most other developed countries in math and science, schools which spend more time teaching young children how to have sex than telling them basic facts about American history). When our religion is mortally insulted (as in the demeaning and gross “art” exhibits in New York a few years ago, which were far more insulting to Jesus than those cartoons were to Islam), we didn’t riot. We wrote polite letters to the editor.
I don’t want to make this sound like boasting, but in the homeschooling creationist community nationwide that my family is part of, there are many young people becoming doctors and nurses; we are acing the SAT and ACT, and are competitive applicants to the best universities in the country. My friends from college, creationists like me, went on to become biochemical researchers.
Dr. Schwab, your indignation would be better spent on the disaster that is the public school system, and the teachers’ unions who refuse to allow any changes, and the truly dangerous religious extremists (Muslims) rather than on a group which is simply trying to raise their children in peace to be good and productive citizens.
Cut On The Dotted Line 
March 29, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Hi Alice – I enjoyed your post and am blogrolling you.
I am just too emotionally drained right now to leave a decent comment anywhere.
I will just say that it is both sad and frustrating to see the many misrepresentations and misguided believes about Christianity because of a select few.
March 30, 2008 at 1:07 am
Thanks for inviting me, Alice. I really don’t want to argue too much. I suppose that’s inconsistent with my ranting in the first place. I feel like expressing my feelings, but I’m not necessarily interested in changing others. I will say a few things, however.
In a sense, what those men are teaching is WORSE than believing in the 77 virgins. We can’t disprove their view of paradise, but we CAN disprove that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. There’s simply a point at which it becomes specious to argue that: you must reject all of science if you reject carbon dating, geological strata, etc. Which is your right, I guess. But I don’t get the selectivity: the same science has given us nuclear reactors, plotting trajectories to Mars, radiation therapy, etc etc. So if it works there but not in adducing the age of the earth, well, I don’t get the disconnect.
When I see the complexities of life — a nephron, the immune system, you name it — there are times when I find myself wondering how it could have just evolved without a designer. Then I remind myself a billion years is a long time (we disagree on that, of course.) More importantly, I think well, if such complexities need a designer, what could me more complex than the designer thereof? Where did he/she/they come from? If irreducible complexity is the mantra of creationism, what’s more irreducibly complex than God? Who created him? At some point both you and I have to accept the existence of something pretty complex without creation. So I choose to go where the science is. As Richard Feynman said, I’d rather live with doubt than to believe something that’s wrong. Science doesn’t have all the answers, but it has a way to get there. Religious belief is static, especially to the extent that it’s stuck on words written 2000 years ago, translated many times, and revised many more. I can’t get past the question, where did God come from? I can’t reject science. I agree we all “brainwash” our kids in some sense of the word. But since there are billions of people on Earth who believe something very different from that which you do, religion-wise, and do so with equal fervor and certainty, it looks from afar that it’s all delusion. I believe in the importance of spirituality, and in the need for us all to find and honor our common humanity. I think that possible without religion; in fact, more likely, because those billions who all believe with fervor in starkly different gods are not very open to accepting the other.
you might be interested in this quite amazing lecture. (For some reason the link doesn’t always work. If not, go to andrewsullivan.com (a Christian) and scroll to his post dated 27 March 11:01 am, titled When a brain scientist has a stroke.) It’s spiritual and scientific and quite extraordinary.
I guess it’s disingenuous of me to say I don’t mean to offend. But I don’t mean to offend. Not everyone, at least.
March 30, 2008 at 2:28 am
This, unfortunately, is a very widespread myth. However, I have two freshman-level astronomy textbooks on my book shelf, both of which are used extensively in state universities, and neither of them characterize the Big Bang as “the universe coming into existence on its own”. Which, as it happens, is the correct view. Because that’s not at all what the theory says. Sorry you were misinformed.
This is another myth, that evolution is a completely blind, random process. It is not. The primary mechanism in biological evolution is natural selection. The “selection” part of that should at least give you a hint that randomness is not the primary factor. If it were, then complex organisms would clearly be very improbable.
I don’t know how long it has been since you’ve taken a biology course, but this is just wrong. Biology textbooks go through great pains to discuss how ideas about biology developed over time. They do not mock and ridicule outmoded ideas. They explain them in detail, and discuss the modern evidence that shows them to be incorrect. I don’t think there’s a single standard biology textbook in use that doesn’t talk about Paley, Lamarck, etcetera. I think your views on this are somewhat removed from reality. Too much time spent on the blogosphere, methinks.
March 30, 2008 at 6:52 am
Alice,
I’ve read your blog with interest for a while now, and this is the first time I’ve hit a brick wall. As a Christian, currently in med school, I like to think that my faith will inform my practice of medicine. But I have to hope that it won’t make me stupid. I was raised in fundamentalist circles, so I know where you’re coming from. I actually used to believe the Creationist dogma. Thankfully, my education at a Christian University taught me that there was another way. A couple of thoughts:
-Creationists work very hard to make the world what they want it to be. They perform backflips trying to make what they see fit into their theory. As flawed as modern science is, it just doesn’t work that way. A scientist (and I would argue, an honest Christian scientist) sees the world and then formulates her theory. Incidentally, fundamentalists operate this way across the board; they have an image of what they think the world should be, and refuse to see the reality around them. IMO, this makes it very difficult to love one’s neighbour when all you’re trying to do is stuff them into a mould instead of seeing exactly who they actually are. When I look at the Antarctic ice cores (with one layer for every season of snowfall), and when they start approaching hundereds of thousands of layers, it’s pretty hard to believe in 7000 year old earth. There are thousands of examples. If you’re really looking at the world around you, you see it as it is, not as your dogma tells you it should be.
-Genesis 1 is not a scientific document. It is a theological document, that must be interpreted through the lens of the culture of the day. One of the biggest problems that fundamentalists have is an inability to grasp metaphor. The idea that a supreme being might communicate in metaphorical language is somehow not graspable. Yet in Genesis, we clearly have a metaphor for God’s care and attention, and man’s place of stewardship in the world. I don’t have time to go into the original Hebrew and compare the Genesis myth to other near-Eastern creation acounts, but suffice it to say, the language is metaphorical. I have had classmates and friends say, “If I can’t believe Genesis, then I can’t believe anything in the Bible.” But there is other metaphorical language in the Bible, Jesus himself taught in metaphors. Why is it so hard to accept that Genesis 1 is a parable, not a peer-reviewed journal article? When examining any literature, it is important to ask what genre it is. You wouldn’t analyze poetry the same way you would a newspaper article; so why do you insist on applying the same analysis to Genesis 1 that you do the NEJM?
-The amount of time Fundamentalists spend worrying about origins allows them to be distracted them from Christ’s real message of love and social justice. My cynical view is that many Fundamentalist Christians don’t really want to love their neighbour, so spend all their energy and attention on these divisive matters. They appear “spiritual” without actually having to live as Christ taught us. (this is a gross generalization not directed at you) My brother had a friend commit suicide because he was unable to reconcile the truth he saw in the world around him with what he was being told was truth by his “Christian” community. My question is, “Where’s the love in this equation?”
-You complain that you’re being attacked for being a Creationist, for being homeschooled, despite your academic success. Honey, it’s possible to be very smart, and still very wrong. When Sid wrote his piece, it wasn’t directed at you, but “if the shoe fits…” I know I won’t change your mind with anything I write. But I do want to suggest to you that it’s possible to be a devout Christian while seeing the world as it truly is, not as we wish it. It’s possible to be a devout Christian and read the Bible with a firm appreciation of the varied genres and cultural viewpoints it contains. It’s possible to be a devout Christian and avoid these “foolish controversies,” focusing instead on loving our neighbour.
March 30, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Alice, our public schools are not a disaster. There are many amazing things happening in our public schools with fantastic kids. I teach in a place where kids live in poverty and have had more disadvantages than any of us can even fathom, and they’re making it. Part of the reason they’re making it is that school is the only place where they feel safe. And they have teachers and other adults (that just may be in a union) that care about them and are helping them make sense of the mess that is their life.
Teachers unions across the country are organizations that are trying to HELP students and make the educational system better. Unions advocate for change, not the reverse.
Schools are now charged with doing things that should fall in the realm of what parents should be doing. You’re lucky you came from a family that valued your education and was equipped to teach you. Many are not.
Are public schools perfect? Of course not. But I can easily say that the kids in my school are much more color-blind than their counterparts in the suburbs. They are way more accepting of differences than the average person. Their differences are embraced. This is one important lesson that is not learned from a textbook. And I don’t think you can learn it at home either.
Attacking the public school system doesn’t serve a purpose here. It’s just shifting the blame to something else. But hey, us teachers are used to it.
March 30, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I think you might have more in common with Muslims than you might think. Many Muslims also believe in some form of Creationism. Muslims feel compelled to seek knowledge for the sake of glorifying God. Muslims also have tremendous respect for Jesus and Mary, may Allah bless them both.
March 30, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Dr. Schwab, there is a great difference between rejecting all of science, which is based on evidence, and rejecting dating methods, which are based on assumptions. Similarly, it is very reasonable to accept natural selection as a fact while not accepting the belief that natural selection is the mechanism by which all life has formed over billions of years. There is good evidence for the former, not for the latter. On a side note, from an evolutionary perspective, what makes you value human community and spirituality?
Jon, natural selection is based on random processes. Are you implying that something directs specific mutations to occur?
March 31, 2008 at 1:20 am
A quick question for Beach Bum: do you believe in the miracles described in the Gospels? If you, as a scientist, claim to see the world as it is and then formulate your beliefs, how can you believe in the miracles of the Bible, which are inconsistent with what science observes? But if you are really a Christian, how can you refuse to believe in miracles, the chief of which was Christ’s rising from the dead (something I doubt science has observed and accepted)?
March 31, 2008 at 1:27 am
“On a side note, from an evolutionary perspective, what makes you value human community and spirituality?
Strange way of asking it. If you mean what makes ME value it, the answer isn’t about evolution, it’s about me. If you mean what is the evolutionary explanation for valuing human community and spirituality, it seems fairly obvious: banding together makes a community stronger in a world full of tigers. And a sense of spirituality motivates one to follow rules. Moreover, it’s a possible “side effect” of the desirable survival trait of the very young to follow authority. Which is why indoctrinating the very young with such things as “young earth creationism” is effective: there are reasons such brains have evolved to respect authority unquestioningly. Wait a few years, the ability to burn in nonsense has lessened. But if you want a better exposition than what I might say, read Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” He offers both evolutionary propositions, and intuitive — and quite rational — ones. I sense you are implying the usual concept that without religion you can’t have “values.” Silly on its face. Once again, Dawkins discusses this with more clarity than I likely can. I imagine you can find a used copy fairly cheap. Why not know what the enemy thinks? I’m sure it won’t change your mind, but it’s possible you’ll find it stimulating.
March 31, 2008 at 1:40 am
And a couple observations for certainabsurdity too, who said: “Schools are now charged with doing things that should fall in the realm of what parents should be doing.” That’s certainly true, but for public education to pick up the slack when parents fail is like asking the government to take over dissemination of the news to the public when private news organizations fail. News would be disseminated, true, but could you trust it? Wouldn’t you want alternative sources of news? And is education less important than news in our culture?
March 31, 2008 at 1:55 am
Dr. Schwab, a Christian would certainly agree that without religion you can have values, but the problem is not in having them but in accounting for them, isn’t it? It seems reasonable enough to suggest, as you did, that values make communities stronger, but how does the idea that we should protect and help the poor and the weak make us stronger? Or how does belief in the virtue of self-sacrifice make us stronger? The theory of evolution wouldn’t seem to lead us to expect what we actually see in human society: we call self-preservation in battle cowardice, selfishness is blamed as a vice, adultery is considered shameful, theft is called a crime. The theory of evolution would seem to lead us to expect exactly what we see in the animal world where there is protection of the weak and sick and nothing like self-sacrifice, but how does it lead us to expect what we find in human society? Of course, since we do find in human society the opposite of what evolution would lead us to expect, aren’t evolutionists forced to interpret those observations to fit their presupposition, the very thing they accuse Christians of doing?
March 31, 2008 at 1:57 am
Beg pardon – I meant “… in the animal world where there is NO protection of the weak and sick…”
March 31, 2008 at 6:09 am
Dr. Schwab – Thank you for coming by. Essentially, we come down to the same thing: choose, based on our presuppositions about the nature of life and reality, to believe in a self-determining Creator who undergirds the Universe, or to believe in pre-existing atoms and the incredible power of billions of years to form them into the complexity you admire in the human body. The bottom line is that we both choose something to believe in, and go from there.
Jon – My question is about where the original atoms came from. I understand that current theory about the Big Bang is quite complex, but no matter how many fancy words you use to describe what the atoms did, the question is still, how did they come to be here in the first place?
Wes – Thanks for chipping in. I can’t add anything but, hear, hear!
Beach Bum – You make a good point about reading a passage in the context it was intended. The problem is that Genesis 1-11 are part of a book of history, which is clearly intended to be taken at face value. Moreover, Jesus clearly refers to the events of Genesis 1-11 as though they were literal fact. For the rest, as others have mentioned here, there are underlying assumptions (static state, the units of years to be used) that go into the dating systems. The basic question is, are you going to assume that human reason is paramount, or that the infallible revelation of your Creator is paramount?
Certainabsurdity – I don’t mean to be attacking teachers like you who are working hard in difficult circumstances. My main point was that homeschoolers are trying to protect their children from a flawed system, not to destroy that system. Next, teachers’ unions on the whole tend to oppose firing unqualified teachers, and tend to oppose the voucher system which would offer real competition to their monopoly on education.
Asad – Thanks for commenting. Try your syllogism the other way around: You already have a lot in common with Christianity, but the fact is that the question of Christ’s divinity is a life-changing difference between Christianity and Islam. Jesus is God, and he loves you, and died for you, and rose from the dead for you. Read the gospel of John for more information.
March 31, 2008 at 10:28 am
Alice: perhaps, once again, it’s semantic: choosing versus accepting. I accept that I don’t understand everything. But I choose to follow a path of learning about what I don’t understand, following fact rather than making things up or rejecting fact to bolster the beliefs. I think it’s possible to come closer and closer to understanding the origins of the universe by open-minded investigation. If God were found at the end of the process, provable, I’d welcome it. (I’d be really surprised, but I’d be happy to accept anything that’s provable.) Doubt is healthy. Fixed and unalterable belief isn’t; it’s easy and eliminates a lot of stress for some. But it’s stifling of inquiry.
wes: I won’t argue this further in Alice’s blog. Read some books you’d likely prefer not to: be open at least to thinking about it. There are quite specific answers to your questions, based on evolution, and which need and are getting continued inquiry. The search is part of the fun.
March 31, 2008 at 10:38 am
This was an amazing piece, thanks to God for your stand and diligence in knowing the issue. If Dr. Schwab could only see real life videos like those from http://www.powermentor.org than maybe he would open up his heart. Evolution is being destroyed by logic and science. Their is absolutely no evidence of and real missing link.
March 31, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Miracles. Hmmmm… Belief…
Belief as “upholding certain facts to be true” is a relatively recent definition in Christian thinking (the last 2-300 years). My faith is not one of believing certain facts, it is one of engaging and embracing ideas and learning how to live in communion with the divine.
Do I believe in the miracles and the death/resurrection of Christ? Yes, as powerful ideas, metaphors, and thematic expressions of our relationship with the divine and with each other. As factual events, I cannot. They may have happened, they may not have, but I can not prove or disprove any of them.
Alice would probably disown me as the worst of liberals for denigrating her carefully husbanded facts. I prefer to see myself as someone who is reclaiming the essence of Christianity and the power of its ideas from those who would reduce it to a mere laundry list of facts to which we must give assent.
March 31, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Dr. Schwab, thank you for a kindly intended response. I would buy you a cup of coffee if I could. 🙂
But please consider what appears to be the arrogance of your response: you say there are specific answers to my questions yet you offer me none of them; you just tell me to go read more books and have an open mind. You apparently cannot conceive of someone actually honestly considering your position and being well-read in the philosophical, scientific, and historial literature and still holding to the historical Christian faith. You know nothing about what or where I’ve studied nor where I’ve been in my own intellectual journey, yet you assume I’ve never searched, thought, or studied, and you assume that simply because I disagreed with you. You seem to think that I would not have asked my questions if I’d actually read more widely (with an open mind, of course) in the evolutionist literature; but again, you can’t imagine someone reading that literature and still thinking the answers there are not satisfactory. Not very charitable, is it? 🙂 At least I didn’t assume that you know nothing about Christianity. I simply asked how you would answer certain questions.
March 31, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Beach Bum: surely you don’t *really* believe that evolution is literally true? That’s so gauche, don’t you think? It reduces science to such a laundry list. No, evolution is a wonderful metaphor that appeals to our human sense of wonder. We don’t have to define evolution according to what evolutionists have always said it is, we can make it be whatever we want!
I’ll buy *you* a cup of coffee, too. 🙂
March 31, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Wes: I could give you lengthy answers, but, as I said, this isn’t my blog. That’s not arrogance; it’s deference to Alice. And I not only can imagine rejecting evolutionist literature by intelligent people, I see it every day. And, as I said, it worries me. But really: this isn’t the place. Nor would either of us, I suspect, say anything the other has never heard, nor already rejected. The difference, I’d say, is what we reject. I reject a self-contradictory book written by a few men a couple of thousand years ago. I reject that a loving and all powerful and omniscient god could exist in the way Christianity claims, while we see suffering of the innocents everywhere. I reject that a loving god would consign people to an eternity of hell only for the sin of rejecting him. If that’s who god is, then any person with self-respect and values ought to reject him, too. (I’ve said as much on my blog not long ago, and detailed it more.) You reject a method of inquiry that has shown itself to be powerful at discovering truths of the world as it is. That’s how I see it. I also have many very religious Christian friends whom I respect and admire. With some, I’ve had very interesting and spirited discussions. The need to believe is very powerful, because for many it’s impossible go live with certain doubts. I find it tolerable and exciting and invigorating. I’d go so far as to say I consider it more admirable and more likely — as a general philosophy — to advance the human condition. In a few centuries, maybe. If we survive that long, as a race.
March 31, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Dr. Schwab, again I appreciate your irenic tone and desire to respect Alice’s blog. Allow me to say that I do not reject the method of rational inquiry you refer to; I think it’s critical to human culture and understanding. I also happen to think that it can only be grounded on a Christian worldview; modern science arose as the fruit of a Christian culture, not as a result of the rejection of Christian culture. I think you have mischaracterized Christianity in very much the same fashion that creationists often mischaracterize evolution. No, what I reject is a view of human origins and nature (atheistic evolution) that gives me no good reason to defend abused women, feed hungry children, love my wife and kids, teach students the value of history and literature, speak out against government-sponsored torture, teach my sons to be courageous and noble, lend my neighbor my lawnmower, and all the other things I think are most important in life.
March 31, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I’d better add that I hardly blame Dr. Schwab for what I called his misscharacterization of Christianity — we Christians are often our own worst enemies. The video on Dr. Schwab’s blog that caused his rant makes me cringe; that (along with, oh, say, Hieronymous Bosch) make it very easy to see Dr. Schwab’s point of view.
March 31, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Wes, I don’t agree that it takes a certain religious faith to protect the weak or help the needy. The Golden Rule can be seen as essential without religion; in my case, it certainly is (one of the more fascinating parts of Dawkins’ book is the relating of studies that have been done to see to what extent ethics are “imbedded” (my word, not his, as I recall)). Nor do I agree that science arose from Christian culture; in fact, when you think of what the church did to Galileo and many others, one might argue the opposite. There was good science going on in many other cultures as well. In any case, I feel we may risk wearing out our welcome here, so I’m happy to leave the last words to you. I think if we were in each other’s company we could have a respectful and interesting conversation.
March 31, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Dr. Schwab, I’ll accept your offer of the last word only to make an apologetic clarification. I didn’t mean to suggest that those without religious faith cannot or do not practice Golden-Rule-like virtues; many of them do so far better than many Christians. I only meant that I can’t see how such practice can be accounted for by evolutionary thought (and I quite understand that you think it can be). I’m sorry for not being more clear and hope I didn’t give offense. I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence.