Meet a modest evolutionist

If you do much reading on the Origins debate you'll have noticed that evolutionists like to accuse creationists of being arrogant. Apparently it's the height of arrogance to believe in creation. I want to take a brief look at some comments made along these lines by Michael Ruse.

Quotes and comments;

A. 'The Darwin Bicentennial continued this week [June 2009] with a series of articles in PNAS by leading Darwinists. Michael Ruse (Florida State U) evaluated the “meaning and significance” of the so-called Darwinian Revolution.

"At some level, the Darwinian revolution destroyed forever the old picture of humans as somehow miraculously special, symbolically and literally as touched by magic. Admittedly, to this day Christian fundamentalists (and those of other religions) refuse to accept this, but it is true. Even if you think that you can still be religious, a Christian even, you have to rethink dramatically, emotionally even more than intellectually, what it means to be a human. Starting with a certain modesty about ourselves." [1.]

- Modesty! Apparently Michael Ruse and his friends think it's modest to throw God out of the universe, or to pretend He didn't create the both the world and the universe. Apparently it's modest to claim Christianity is obsolete, that it's been destroyed by a pigeon fancier from Victorian England.

- One wonders how the eminently modest Michael Ruse knows that the 'old picture of humans' (as made in the image of God) has been destroyed? And how does he know it's been destroyed forever? This hardly seems like a prudent and humble comment to me. Does he know the future? Is he certain he's on the winning side? Is he certain that Darwinism is a correct view of origins? Did the evolved chemicals in his brain tell him this? Were they telling him the truth or trying to manipulate him?

- Is it humble to conflate biblical creation with magic? Isn't that a tad insulting? Or is mocking people considered humility these days?

- Is it humble to claim that some explanation of variation (micro-evolution) has destroyed a 'rational man's' ability to be a christian?

- Ruse is conflating 'religion' with theism; ignoring the fact both Christianity and Darwinism are both worldviews.

- I find it amusing that a claim people must totally rethink what it means to be a human being can be called modest. (Does Ruse ever read his own comments?)

- Apparently Ruse believes in a humble arrogance, or an arrogant humility. (Sounds like another humble fellow from history; the one who said, ''yeah, hath God said?")

- When he says we need to develop (need? where does this need come from? matter knows nothing of moral ideals) to develop modesty about ourselves, he apparently is not including himself. (Maybe he thinks he's already modest enough.)

Summary; I reject the idea materialism is a humble approach to cosmology, and that a belief in creation is arrogance. I see this claim as just another debating tactic. People who insist that M2M evolution isn't a mere theory, can only with great difficulty be called humble. [2.]

Notes;
1. Leading Darwinists Pool Their Speculations: Creation/Evolution Headlines 06/22/2009
2. 'Max Born (1882 – 1970), a Nobel laureate, clearly pointed this out with respect to the natural sciences;
“Ideas like absolute correctness, absolute accuracy, final truth, etc. are illusions which have no place in any science. With one’s restricted knowledge of the present situation, one may express conjectures and expectations about the future in terms of probabilities.
In terms of the underlying theory any probabilistic statement is neither true nor false. This liberation of thought seems to me to be the greatest blessing accorded us by presentday science.” [In the beginning was information' - Werner Gitt/25]